IT’S PAST MIDNIGHT on a Saturday when someone knocks. There are knocks and there are knocks. I have learnt to read knocks. If it’s someone I know, I can usually tell who it is just from how they knock. The way they breathe is in the knock.
Nathan’s knock is designed to be as steady and normal as possible − in his business, it doesn’t do to attract attention to your knock. Elijah’s knock used to be absent-minded − mid-knock he’d be thinking about something else, and just when you thought he’d changed his mind, he’d knock again, anxiously this time, always worrying that people might have disappeared on his watch. Klaus’s knock is authoritative. It says, ‘You have nothing to fear from this knocker.’ And I don’t, except that it is the voice that also says, ‘Ek is jammer, Paola. I have no news for you. We are doing everything we can. She has disappeared into thin sky.’ He hangs his head when I reply, ‘You’re always sorry and you never know anything, Klaus. I’m sorry too. She’s fourteen and she’s out there on her own. How does your best guy feel tonight, Klaus? I hope he feels shit! And it’s thin air, Klaus, she has disappeared into thin air!’ The last is a shout, my rage tinged with terror, as I shove him back until he almost trips backwards over the threshold, and just manages to keep his balance, that big man who lifted hay bales in his youth, by holding onto the security gate as I slam my front door shut in his face, three Yale locks clicking into place almost simultaneously.
This knock is so soft I think I am hearing things, but it is woodpecker persistent and the woodpecker is saying, ‘Let me in! Let me in! I have some news for you!’ My body has learnt to dread knocks so I have to force myself to look through the keyhole.
Uriah, the sales assistant who’d showed me up to Elijah’s attic office and who still guards the bookshelves of W&W&W, slides past the half-open door, past me, into the flat. As usual, he looks as if he’s escaped from a Dracula movie, his white skin bloodless, his mouth painted red. We haven’t seen each other since the inquest into Elijah’s death, when he arrived in dark glasses and a coat with a hood. The presiding judge had asked him to take the sunglasses off when he’d taken the witness stand, but Uriah’s lawyer had said he had a medical condition and could provide a letter, and the judge had sighed and left him alone. Uriah hadn’t been at the funeral; the daylight must have been too daunting a thought. Elijah would have understood.
He is the oddest boy in that long thick black coat, not looking around, just standing there, trembling slightly as if he is cold.
‘Uriah, why are you here?’
Now he looks around, an emaciated stork startled as if there might be other bird ghosts listening, and when he speaks he mumbles so quietly I almost think I’m imagining it.
‘Uriah, look at me. There’s nobody here.’ I quickly correct myself, ‘Just Simone − she’s sleeping. You have to speak up or I can’t understand you.’
He mumbles something and all I catch is ‘gone’ and ‘blame’.
‘You know she’s gone? Blame for what …?’
He makes an effort, the red lips distorting and twisting. ‘I wasn’t supposed to tell anybody about Elijah’s Control Centre.’
‘What Control Centre?’
Silence from Count Dracula, whose head is bowed, as if awaiting a deserved blow from the executioner on his thin neck.
‘Okay. Let me guess. This has something to do with the Interplanetary Detective Agency? And you showed it to Simone?’ My brain says things these days that surprise me. Even I don’t expect what it says next. ‘I don’t blame you, Uriah, for Simone being gone. If anyone’s to blame I am. She found out I lied to her.’ His head snaps up; there is something hopeful glittering in his black eyes. ‘Tell you what, I’ll make us a cup of Horlicks and you can tell me about it.’
The red mouth cracks into what might be an attempt at a smile. ‘Horlicks? You like Horlicks? My mother used to hate it.’
Just from the way he says it I know he loves Horlicks and he thinks he hates his mother.
‘Yup, it’s kind of a small strange society of people that get the charm of Horlicks.’
He sits there sipping Horlicks like a small boy, and I extract it from him bit by bit.
‘I was the only one Elijah could trust. He knew … stuff about me. There’s a secret room … in the bookshop. I told Simone about it at the funeral. She asked me to show her and she said I mustn’t tell you. She could be very persuasive …’
‘Uriah, this is very, very important. Do you understand me? I am not angry with you. We have no idea where she is, and the police say if we don’t find her in the first week, the statistical odds are tiny to ever finding her again. Do you understand? We are on Day Three. What did Elijah keep in the secret room?’
‘Now they want to sell the whole building − they’ve started bringing people round to see the attic part. So I came round. We have to do something.’
We?
I do a quick tour in my head, and come up with all space accounted for, but it’s a big rambling space. ‘It’s in the shop? Wait, did he own the shop? He told me he was working for the owner …’
‘It’s not technically in the bookshop. It’s another attic in the building next door. You go up three flights of stairs and you’re there, the highest point on Long Street. The Indian family that owns the building sold it to him for a couple of hundred rand − some token amount. Elijah said they had one of their lawyers make it all legit but now they want to sell it.’ Uriah rubs his stubble frenetically with his knuckles, as if he wants to slough off some layers of dead skin. ‘I think he found their niece or something, a pissed-off business partner stuck her in his car trunk.’
‘But there must be papers for it? It must be part of his estate?’
‘His family don’t know about it, I know that. You’re not going to tell them are you? Oh, Jesus, Elijah will kill me if you tell them.’ Uriah bites his thumbnail as if he is going to rip it off. His hands are in a terrible state: all the nails bitten down to bleeding point, some of the fingertips covered in two or three plasters in a vain attempt to make them stay on.
‘Uriah, the lawyers probably just haven’t figured it all out yet. Why don’t you show it to me before they work it out?’
‘You know that once you came and I said he wasn’t there, he was by Lefty?’
‘The first time?’
‘It was our code name. He was always in the control centre. He rigged up a bell system through the windows so I could call him. One pull, toilet break − for me, that is. Two pulls, wanted in the bookshop, three pulls, somebody in the upstairs office. So I did three pulls and he just walked in the front door and then walked up the stairs to you.’
I’d always had the distinct impression I wasn’t Uriah’s favourite person but he’d come to me, and that would have to do.
Uriah took me to Elijah’s hidey-hole. He had a key to an outside service entrance that had access to a service lift and a gloomy stairway away from the main thoroughfare. The building housed a popular restaurant that went by the name of Gatsby’s and was famous for its cocktails and colonial decor − its clientele favoured lunchtime and the sunset hour, when the law firms in the area spilled their contingents out onto the same pavements frequented by overseas tourists and backpackers. The sound of loud laughter and clinking glass came from the wide veranda that overlooked the busy street. Inside, the restaurant smelt like waxed Oregon pine floors and stale alcohol and oily food.
I switched a light on and started walking up the stairs, eager to get this done with. Uriah accompanied me up the stairs, sidling up sideways with his palm on the wall. What had happened to Uriah to make him this neurotic?
He hesitated, standing in front of the closed door as if we might find Elijah inside, furious that he’d spilt the beans about the secret place.
‘Uriah, it’s okay. He wouldn’t have expected you to carry this around with you all your life. You need to open up or someone will come along and ask what we’re doing here.’
Uriah spoke to the keyhole, his soft voice faint on the dark landing. ‘That day they came − the day he died − I was just across the road. I never leave early − why did I leave early that day? Sometimes I wonder about that …’
‘Random chance,’ I said unsympathetically, the old Paola rearing her head. To myself I thought, Let’s not go there, to the land of guilt, Uriah, or we might have to swap stories, and I couldn’t bear that.
He put one hand inside the neck of his black polo sweater − it was a sweltering day but Uriah didn’t seem to feel it − and used the other one to extract a silver chain with some keys on it. The lock opened smoothly. He went ahead of me. I don’t know what I expected, but not such a large room with the blue glow of flickering flat screens. The two people working at the screens barely looked at us. The Elijah I knew had used old-fashioned HB pencils with a sharpener, because they were ‘reliable’. He’d mistrusted anything to do with the new world.
I stood there slack-jawed for what seemed like a long time before I managed to get my voice back. ‘Those computers, they belonged to Elijah?’
‘He used to take me with him to the meetings of the Intergalactic Investigators − they needed a way to store all the information they were collecting. I told him I could design a computer database, and then they could retrieve the data easily. That’s how it started. Then some of the other members brought their computers here.’
‘How many people have keys?’
‘Only me. And Elijah of course. The agents wanted his key − I had to give it to them. The others always came up with one of us. Or whoever’s on duty lets the next two in.’
‘How many people knew about this place? Besides you and Elijah …?’
‘Maybe ten people, sum total. That I know about anyhow.’
‘Is Nathan one of them?’
‘He visited sometimes but he was never a regular.’
My brain starting to work, I swung around to face the strange boy who was entrusting me with what I guessed was the smaller of the secrets in his life, but an important one nevertheless. Could he be trusted?
‘It’s too quiet here. It’s making me nervous. Did Elijah have a radio? Can we get some music going?’
‘You want music?’
‘Yes, loud music.’
‘I guess I could play some music off the PC …’
‘Good. Do it. Make it loud.’
When he’d done what I asked, I dragged him over to the furthest window, some kind of monotonous rave music loud as hell in the background.
He was looking away from me, rubbing his arm as if I’d hurt him.
‘Do they have names, these ten people?’
I wasn’t surprised when he shook his head slowly. ‘Not real names. They have handles, if you know what that is?’
‘Yes,’ I said impatiently. ‘Okay, that’s good, so you have that information on computer and you can get it to me pronto, yes?’
He squirmed unhappily, the black pencilled eyebrows lifted in doubtful v’s, like a tearful clown at the circus. ‘Elijah wouldn’t want me to do that.’
‘Uriah, I wish it wasn’t the case but Elijah’s dead. If you want to help Elijah, you have to help me find the creeps who did it. Maybe, maybe, somewhere inside one of those machines is information that’s going to help us. Maybe, even, one of those ten people isn’t as innocent as he or she seemed. Maybe the perpetrators know all about this place and they even know the two of us are standing here right now. Maybe they’ve bugged the room, that’s why I wanted the loud music and why we’re standing by this window. Have you got my drift so far?’
I had learnt long ago that to speak crisply and clearly is to hold panic and grief at bay. What’s all this detective speak? I could almost hear Elijah chuckling. You’re starting to sound like Klaus Knappman.
Uriah stared at me mutely, looking more despondent than ever, as if he regretted bringing me here, his pointed chin trembling. I knew that rebellious look from Simone − it meant I was about to lose her. She was about to make her own decision, and it invariably involved doing the opposite of what I wanted her to do. Uriah needed a job to keep him busy, and I knew exactly what that was going to be.
‘So, I’m in a major hurry here, and you’re clearly a whiz kid on these things because I know for sure Elijah wasn’t. So what I want you to do right now is start backing up everything that’s on those computers to a safe site whose name I’m going to provide. Can you do that?’
It took a moment but eventually the primped red mouth relaxed and said, ‘Yes. I can do that.’
While he worked, I walked around Elijah’s Control Centre. On one wall, a huge world map had been attached with coloured pins and stick-it notes marking what I could only assume were reported alien sightings and abduction sites. On the other side, old-fashioned filing cabinets stood in a neat row with date stickers marking Elijah’s intergalactic research notes. Next to it was a trestle table with a few chairs. While Uriah typed away, I started checking the drawers methodically, one by one. There was very little material on the de Luc case in the boxes Klaus’s team had appropriated from Elijah’s office. And there was nothing in his flat; it looked as if he hardly lived there. Are you sure he was even working on your case? Klaus Knappman had asked with narrowed eyes, ever suspicious.
These drawers held historical records of possible alien-related incidents from all over the world; everything was of interest, from military research into ‘extra terrestrial technology’, electromagnetic fields, and crop circles to mysterious orbs. Some hanging files held nothing but newspaper clippings, others had Elijah’s own research notes as well, occasionally with a computer printout, and a few had audiotapes enclosed that appeared to be recordings of interviews that Elijah and others had conducted. Nothing, absolutely nothing that might help me was in those filing cabinets. I smiled to myself, remembering how Elijah had used very similar words when he’d found Daniel’s drawing of the bus-stop girl − ‘absolutely nothing that might help us’ − and something in his voice had bothered me.
Elijah had been a bad liar. Later that girl had turned out to be Simone, and Elijah hadn’t been surprised at all.
He’d apparently wanted to hide the copious research material relating to Daniel’s missing-person case, or it would have been in the bookshop office with the other boxes. What was Elijah thinking in the days leading up to his death? There was something I needed to find in those filing cabinets, I was sure of it, but it eluded me.