BRUNO PLAYS IT BY the book. He files for a search warrant on the house. It’s a long shot—he’s petitioning off the back of his anonymous photographs and a kid stealing mail—but he gets lucky: the magistrate signing off on the warrant knows the O’Grady family. ‘Phil O’Grady’s a good egg,’ he says. ‘A bit of a law-and-order guy, actually. Loves cops. He’s not going to get his knickers in a knot if this turns out to be nothing.’
It’s 8 pm by the time Bruno has the warrant in hand, but going home for a quiet night in isn’t on the cards. He tries, mind you. He heads home and makes himself dinner and hits the hay, but there’s no sleep to be had.
By eleven, he’s back on the streets. He drives to Pohlman Drive and has a good look around the yard with a flashlight. At the back door, Bruno notices some loose brickwork by the stair and in the mortar line, a glint of metal in the beam of his light. He lifts away bricks and there it is. The spare key.
When Bruno steps inside the O’Grady house, the lights are on. He’s in the rear kitchen.
‘Hello?’ he hollers.
The kitchen is spotless. No dishes or dust. He opens the fridge, and it’s still running. Empty but cool. Closing it, he notices a fridge magnet for a local cleaner. Bruno takes the number down.
The rest of the house is in a similar state. It looks like a display home. Everything neat, clean, orderly, vacant.
A static dining room.
A bare-bones study.
He finds bathrooms, bedrooms.
There’s a doorway and a stair down to an empty basement under the house: a plain white vacant room with a concrete floor.
Back up on ground level, he locates the garage, a black BMW parked inside. The other spot is empty. Bruno runs his hands over the paintwork of the car and there’s a little dust there. He writes that down.
Up on the second level, Bruno yells out again. ‘Hello? Anybody home?’ But the place is silent. There’s freshly steamed carpet in the hall leading off to the bedrooms. The place is so devoid of life that it gives Bruno the creeps. He has to splash water on his face in the bathroom just to settle himself. He desperately wants a smoke.
Bruno makes his way into the master bedroom and gives the place the once-over. The walk-in robe is full of clothes, drawers and shelves heaving with personal effects. At the back of the robe, there’s luggage stowed under a line of coats. He kneels down and studies the bags and finally breathes out. There’s a missing slot from the luggage row. It’s big enough for two suitcases.
They’re on fucking holidays.
This is all a mix-up.
The elation quickly turns to annoyance. He walks back out to the king-size bed and lights up that cigarette he’s fanging for.
Bruno sneers, angry at himself.
But there’s something else, too. Some subterranean feeling. His interior is churning—has been, constantly, since his father died. He’s uneven.
Did I want this to be a murder case?
Am I fucking disappointed?
Am I that desperate?
‘Pathetic,’ he whispers.
Bruno ashes his smoke on the carpet, and that is almost that, except that the carpet is so clean and crisp that he feels bad about the ash on it and kneels down to rub it away. That’s when he notices that the weave is brand new to touch. Down at that angle, he also notices that the bed is new, as well. The sheets starched white. He lifts them up: the mattress label is pristine. Scraps of plastic cling to the castor wheels at the bottom of the bedhead.
Bruno pulls the bed away from the wall.
Nothing under it.
He peels up the mattress.
It’s clear.
He turns on his torch and uses the beam to zero in and focus. He works back and forth, up and down, studying the room.
There.
A slight discolouring on the wall, where the bedhead normally sits. Bruno gets down on hands and knees and rips the fresh carpet back from the wall and finds it: a small pool of dried blood on the exposed flooring.