The next day was Sunday. Nevertheless Lil got up bright and early, ready to begin work on the Ned Stubbs case. She collected Nedly from his sleeping quarters in the airing cupboard on the first-floor landing and they went down to breakfast only to find that her mother had already left.
There was a note pinned to the fridge door:
Sorry, had to go into work again (the last weekend, I promise!).
Big project, almost finished.
Mum x
Lil crumpled it up and stuffed it in her pocket. ‘If she was here I’d probably have to tell her about me running into Abe. But she’s not here so …’ She shrugged. ‘I suppose it can wait.’
Peligan City was bleary with rain as they took the 9.25 bus downtown. On the corner of Shoe Street and Spindle Lane, a newspaper seller was changing the front-page story on his board. Lil paused under the awning of his stall to read the bold black writing: ‘Doctor Killed in Prison Office Inferno!’
‘Another fire,’ Nedly pointed out.
‘That’s the third one this week. I wonder if it’s another of the old mobsters.’
On the seventh floor of the Mingo, Abe answered the door on Lil’s twelfth knock. He fired his best glower at her through eyes that were drooping and bloodshot. His hair was sticking up like a hen’s backside and yesterday’s stubble had sprouted into a tufty beard overnight. ‘What time do you call this?’ he growled.
‘This is what we call morning,’ said Lil chirpily, darting under his arm and into the room beyond.
‘Make yourself at home, why don’t you?’ he called after her.
Hawaiian Island Suite Three couldn’t have looked less homely. On every available surface were clusters of empty bottles and dirty glasses, plates and piles of old newspapers. The palm-leaf-patterned carpet was strewn with pizza boxes and there were mounds of crumpled laundry balled up in torn plastic bags on the settee.
‘You actually live here?’
The detective looked affronted. ‘Well, I work here and sleep here, if that’s what you mean. It’s plenty good enough for me. Times are tough, kiddo.’
Lil spotted the twin set Hawaiian sunset prints on the wall behind him.
‘They’re nice,’ she said lamely, pointing at them.
The detective didn’t look round. ‘They came with the place, obviously.’
Lil wiped a strip of grime off one of the windows that looked down onto the street. Clouds of steam billowed up from the noodle bar downstairs, and over the line of shirts that were hanging outside.
‘It gets the creases out of them,’ Abe said, and then frowned at himself.
‘Can we have the fire on, Abe? I’m soaked,’ said Lil.
‘Don’t worry about it; you’re not staying long.’
Lil shivered. Abe sighed and shook his head but he knelt by the gas fire and lit it with a match. ‘I’m not made of money, you know. I suppose you want a drink too?’
Lil glanced at the almost empty bottles. ‘Um, water please – or tea. Tea would be nice.’
Abe pulled open the curtain that divided the kitchenette from the rest of the bedsit and started rattling about with some crockery. As soon as he’d disappeared, Lil nodded Nedly towards Abe’s desk and filing cabinet. Nedly stood his ground, looking like he hadn’t understood.
‘Don’t pretend you don’t understand me,’ Lil hissed. ‘Have a poke around while he’s out of the way.’
Abe stuck his head through the curtain. ‘Did you just say something to me?’
Lil flashed him an honest smile. ‘I just wondered if there were any biscuits.’
‘There aren’t.’ He closed the curtains again.
Nedly whispered, ‘No way, Lil. We’re guests – it’s not polite to go poking around in other people’s stuff.’
‘I’m the guest. He doesn’t even know you’re here.’ Nedly looked hurt. ‘Just see if there is anything about your case, that’s all. Check on a few of the cupboards and desk drawers; see if he’s hiding anything.’
‘It doesn’t look like he’s hiding anything,’ Nedly said doubtfully. ‘It looks as if most of his belongings are here on the floor.
‘Are you going to tell him about the latest fire, the one at the prison?’
Lil pursed her lips and gave a quick shake of the head. ‘We don’t want him to get side-tracked now that he’s finally back on your case. We’ll tell him later.’
‘He’ll see it on the newsstand anyway.’
‘We’ll distract him,’ Lil said confidently. ‘Come on.’ She pointed to a tall metal cabinet propped up against the wall. ‘You look in there; I’ll check out these files.’
One corner of the room obviously functioned as the ‘office’ since he had downsized from 154c Wilderness Lane. Collapsed towers of files and cardboard document boxes were stacked high alongside leaning rows of lever-arch folders spilling pages of notes and photographs, and boxes of tapes without cases.
Lil was drawn to a dusty typewriter on the desk. ‘Nice typewriter,’ she called out, wincing as she kicked over a number of glass bottles lined up by the chair. ‘I mean it. It’s an Olympia SM-3. I’m going to get one of those. One day,’ she added quietly.
The bitterness in Abe’s disembodied voice carried through the closed curtain. ‘It was a retirement present. I can’t even type.’
On the wall behind the desk Lil examined the map that Nedly had described on his previous visit. He had been right: this was nothing to do with his case, it was Abe’s record of the activities of the Peligan City Firebug. News clippings about arson attacks and other miscellaneous fires were pinned to it like moths, and a half-made cobweb of brown woollen threads connected the scenes with old mug shots of the Lucan Road Mob. In the centre was a photograph of Abe’s nemesis, Ramon LeTeef. His skin was pale and chalky-looking and his hair was white like lamb’s wool. His teeth, which looked grey in the black-and-white picture, were filed to sharp points and he was baring them in a snarl for the camera. He reminded Lil of a picture she had once seen of an anglerfish: all teeth and small eyes staring out from the murk.
On the floor below the map, on top of a partially unravelled brown pullover, was a bloated box file labelled ‘Lucan Road Mob’. Lil picked it up and started thumbing her way through. She gazed at the mug shots of the nurse Shirley Kreutz, aka Cold Shirl, and the security guard, Antonio McConkey, aka Lay z Boy. Both had black crosses obscuring their faces, marking them out as deceased.
She found pictures and descriptions of the other mobsters holding up crime identification numbers. Cornelius Gallows had a single wisp of hair sticking up on top of his head, like a feather stuck on an eggshell. His eyes were large and almost colourless; they sank back beneath his hairless brow. Lil shuddered and slammed the file shut.
Nedly’s head appeared through the door of a large metal cabinet. ‘Nothing in here; just old photo albums and folders.’
Lil put down the file and pulled open the door of the cabinet. She reached in and picked up an album just as Abe started coming through the curtain. She threw it back and quickly shut the door on Nedly, who was trying to get out again. He transported into the room with a shudder and staggered queasily away.
Abe looked suspiciously at Lil. ‘I found you a biscuit.’
‘Thanks,’ said Lil. Taking the tea, she took a bite and swallowed with difficulty. ‘I think of prawn crackers being more like crisps than biscuits.’
‘What’s the difference?’ Abe picked up his prawn cracker with his pliers and tried to dunk it into the tea. He gripped it too hard and the cracker snapped in half, both bits falling into the cup. He scooped it out with his good hand and winced at the scalding water.
Lil picked a book off the desk. ‘“Disembodiment and Existential Phenom–en–ology” by Dr C. Gallows PhD – sounds like a real pot-boiler. Have you read it?’ she asked him.
‘I’m not much of a reader. I’ve dipped in a couple of times – but it’s not what you would call a page-turner.’
Lil pondered the haughty-looking photograph of Gallows wearing a bleach-white lab coat on the back cover. ‘What I don’t get is, why would he have associated with the Lucan Road Mob in the first place? He doesn’t seem the type.’
‘My guess is they were funding his research in exchange for the high-tech burglarising equipment he designed to help them in their exploits. According to his psychiatrist’s testimony at the trial, Gallows was experimenting with near-death out-of-body experiences; only his hypothesis involved not just near but actual death experiences.’
Lil thumbed through the pages. ‘What kind of experiments?’
‘Well, I’m no egghead, but it was some kind of Frankenstein’s-monster stuff to do with harnessing the spirit of the recently deceased.’ Abe took a slug of tea and coughed on the sludge of prawn cracker that was lurking in the dregs. ‘Luckily he was stopped at the animal-testing stage, before he had a chance to try it out on a human subject – otherwise they could have added first-degree murder to his list of crimes.’
Lil pondered this. ‘How do they know he never tried it out on a human subject? She looked at Nedly. He shuddered and the lights in the Hawaiian Island Suite buzzed dimly.
In the kitchenette the kettle switched itself back on and started boiling furiously. Abe lumbered to his feet, hit it and it went off again. ‘Because his lab was full of dead rabbits, not dead people. Anyway, he’s toast now. Forget about him. We’ve got other fish to fry.’
‘But he died in a fire too, didn’t he?’ Lil persisted. ‘Is that just a coincidence or was he the first victim?’
Abe shrugged. ‘Not my concern, or yours. I’m only looking into the Firebug because he’s going to lead me to LeTeef. End of.’
Lil stared at him, disbelieving. ‘But even if all his victims are mobsters it’s still murder. If someone is taking them down one by one – it’s still wrong. Shouldn’t you be trying to stop them?’
‘That’s a job for the police.’
Lil snorted. ‘You were police once.’
Abe gave her a grim look. ‘Yeah, once, and look where it got me. Now, if you’ve finished lecturing me on law and order, we can get to work.’
He ploughed a heap of papers off the settee and Lil sat down. Nedly sat on the floor at a distance, his back to the palm-tree-print wallpaper, and Abe paced back and forth across a small patch of worn carpet that was free of litter. ‘OK, so I know from the caretaker, Mr Kolchak, that there were no disturbances at the orphanage the night Stubbs disappeared, aside from the usual kids’ stuff: lost toys, tears before bedtime, nothing serious. So we can assume that he left there by his own accord. That gives us two lines of enquiry – why did he leave, and where did he go? The first might give us an answer to the second so we’ll start there.
‘You say you knew the boy; can you think of any reason why he might have snuck out after dark?’
Lil looked at Nedly; he seemed thoughtful for a moment. ‘I remember … no, it’s gone. He shrugged back at her and she passed it on to Abe, who rolled his eyes.
‘Nothing? How well did you know him exactly?’
‘Maybe not as well as you’d think,’ Lil admitted.
‘So we start from square one. We need to get some background on the kid. The orphanage was a dead end. Kolchak didn’t have any information about Stubbs before he arrived but there will be a record somewhere. If we could get a look at his file, find out who his parents were, where they lived, etcetera, we can start to build up a picture of who he was, and then perhaps we will be able to make an educated guess as to where he would go.’
‘OK,’ said Lil, unconvinced. She caught Nedly’s eye but he nodded back at her in agreement. ‘Let’s do it.’
Abe chewed it over. ‘Our problem is those files are confidential. The police or a magistrate could access them but we may have to grease some palms, and I’m all out of grease.’ He caught Lil glancing at his stained tie and scowled. ‘You know what I mean. Hard cash.’
‘We might not need it,’ said Lil. ‘Mum works up at City Hall in the Public Records Department. I bet she can help.’
Nedly raised his eyebrows hopefully but Abe snorted. ‘That doesn’t sound like the Naomi I know.’
Lil sank back down on the settee, and a spring boinged ominously from under the cushion. ‘Maybe you’re right; she probably won’t want to get in any trouble.’ She saw Nedly wilt despondently against the wallpaper like an overcooked egg noodle. ‘But everything is worth a try – right?’
She jumped to her feet and made for the door but Abe stayed put. He was stroking his almost-beard and looking thoughtful. ‘Do you think she’d want to see me?’
Lil puffed out her cheeks impatiently. ‘Mum? Who knows? Maybe.’
Abe looked dismally at his crumpled suit and stained tie. ‘Entertain yourself for a few minutes, kid. There are a couple of things I need to do before we leave.’ With that he disappeared into what Lil took to be the bathroom. Moments later they heard the sound of water running.
Lil collapsed back onto the settee and twisted her head round to look at Nedly. ‘Do you really not remember anything about your life before you … before that night?’
He looked at her uncertainly. ‘I just have this one memory – I mean, I don’t know if it’s a real memory. I don’t like thinking about it.’
‘Go on,’ urged Lil.
Nedly’s eyes clouded; his voice was gravelly, barely above a whisper. ‘It starts with a trip, the sort of feeling that you get in a dream when you wake up before you hit the floor. Except when I wake up I’m not really awake. I’m in a corridor with hundreds of doors that all look the same and I walk slowly past them all until I reach this one – the one I have to go through. I’m trying not to be scared but this creepy feeling is clinging to me like sweat. The door handle is metal; it’s humming in my palm as I hold it, like its alive …’ He paused for breath and Lil thought she could hear his heart beating frantically over the sound of Abe’s electric razor. ‘And that’s when I realise … that I’m not alone. There’s something in there with me, something I was looking for. It has stringy black hair, thin arms and no neck, and it’s staring right at me with these white, empty eyes. And I can hear someone laughing. Then a pale blue light blinds me and there’s only silence and this smell …’
Lil gulped noisily. ‘What kind of smell?’
‘Burning,’ said Nedly. ‘I can smell burning.’
Abe wandered in wearing a clean vest and pulled a freshly steamed shirt off the washing line outside. Lil turned to face him, her mouth still hanging open from Nedly’s revelation, her eyes wide and haunted.
Frowning at her, Abe knotted a navy-blue tie patterned with flying saucers round his neck and then slapped his cheeks with a potent cologne that smelt like anti-freeze.
‘Looking good,’ Lil said weakly.
‘All right, I scrub up the same as anyone – no need to go on about it,’ he said, looking at his reflection in a spoon, before straightening his tie and adjusting his hat. ‘So, we’re ready to go?’
Lil glanced at Nedly, who shivered. The lights flickered on and off. Abe looked grimly up at the bulb.
‘It’s only a matter of time before they cut me off,’ he said.