I could smell it before I opened the door. It was a deep sweet smell, cloying and pervasive. It hung in the stairwell like a miasma. I fumbled the key into the lock and pushed open the door. There was a slight resistance and a rustling sound. In the light from the landing it looked as though there had been a snow storm in the apartment. Every surface was carpeted in white. I reached for the light-switch.
There were flowers everywhere. White flowers. Hundreds of white flowers strewn over the floor and table and chairs. Freesias and lilies, phlox and stock, orchids and chrysanthemums. They were beginning to wilt and beneath the perfume that filled the room like mist there was the green stench of corruption. I crossed the floral carpet to the bedroom. It was like treading on a field of living creatures. Or genital organs. I felt as though I was involved in some kind of irreparable damage and I had that sensation of vertigo that you experience when you reach the top step of the ladder and there is nothing there to hang on to.
The window in the bedroom was open and the curtains exhaled in the breeze. The bed was covered with white roses. They spilled over onto the floor and in the orange light coming in through the shifting yellow curtains they seemed to smoulder and burn.
I went into the bathroom. There was a candle burning on the edge of the tub. Sykes was in the bath. He was smiling up at me. That crooked, rueful half-smile. There was a purple patch on his cheek. Like a beauty spot. It made him look rakish, like an Elizabethan roué. The bath was full of blood. Sykes was dead.
I stood in the doorway for a long while, looking at him. His eyes were half closed and for a moment, in the fluttering candle-light, I thought I saw his lashes flicker. I touched his white face. It was cold. The water was cold as I reached down to release the plug. It felt thick and syrupy and it left a pink stain on Sykes’s body as it ebbed. I removed the shower nozzle from it’s attachment on the wall and tuned it so that the spray was warm. I played it over Sykes and sponged him clean with a flannel. His skin was dappled with lesions and the slits in his wrists gaped like bloodless lips. He had cut through his beautiful veins. I took a roll of gauze from the bathroom cabinet and bound up the wounds as gently as I could, wrapping the bandage round and round and then pulling it tight and anchoring it with a sticking plaster, in the same way that Grace did when I hurt myself.
I lifted Sykes out of the bath and dragged him into the bedroom. Although he was very thin he seemed incredibly heavy. I stumbled and fell across him. A gasp escaped from his chest and I thought, maybe he’s not dead. Maybe there’s something left. I turned him onto his back and pushed down on his chest with all my might, desperately trying to remember the rules of resuscitation. I tilted his head back and put my mouth onto his. I breathed my air into him and waited for it to come out. Nothing happened. I blew into him and panted into him and cried out to him again and again. Nothing. I pummelled his chest until I was exhausted but nothing happened. I collapsed on top of him. His lovely face was wet with my tears.
I cleared a space in the flowers on the bed and hoisted Sykes up onto it. I stood there, at the foot of the bed, looking at him for a long time, memorising him. All that liquid, I thought. All that water and blood. That’s all we are — 90% water. Tears and blood and snot and piss and sweat and come. Wet machines. And it’s pumping around inside us under pressure and the only thing protecting it, the only thing stopping it from getting out, is skin. That flawed envelope. The skin is too soft, too weak. It sags and shrivels and stretches. It’s too thin. It breaks and lacerates. It punctures. And then everything spills out. And then you’re dead.
Sykes looked so beautiful in the benign amber light, reposing on that coverlet of roses. As delicate and pale as an ivory statue of Jesus Christ spattered with purple stigmata. I arranged his limbs and heaped the flowers over him so that he was swathed in petals. And then I closed his eyes and kissed his lips.
I found Detective Inspector Savage’s card and left a message on her answering machine. It was almost dawn. I drew the curtains and the morning light crept into the room. Then I went into the kitchen to make some coffee. There was a bottle of champagne in the sink, resting in a bucket of melted ice.