BRUNO KILLS THE ENGINE out front of the O’Grady house. The dashboard clock reads 11.35 pm. Not a light on in the entire street. He drags his father’s sledgehammer out of the passenger seat footwell and takes it through the front door and across the foyer to the stairs, then down the stairs to the basement storage area.
A plain white empty room with a concrete floor.
Like the plain white empty esky.
The walls are almost glowing. Freshly painted and re-rendered in Bruno’s mind by one simple match: the dead bank robber, Seth Blackwell, he had a job.
‘He told me he was a plasterer’s apprentice.’
Bruno knocks on the walls.
Solid.
Solid.
Solid.
Hollow.
Bruno takes the sledgehammer and marks the spot and swings.
Dust fills the air.
He braces for the stench, but as the hole appears, nothing like that floats out. He keeps working, smashing a hole large enough to crawl through. When it’s done, he shines a torch inside and finds a secret room. A rug on the floor. The legs of furniture.
Bruno goes through on hands and knees, half-terrified of the dark as he shuffles through with the flashlight. He stands up on the other side and puts the wall firmly against his back.
Something isn’t right.
He waves the light around, the beam flashing over indistinguishable shapes. He’s scanning for horror. He’s scanning for a demon squatting in the corner. Another man with a shotgun. Bruno’s cop instincts run rampant, screaming at him to leave and call for back-up.
But he did that last time and it was for naught.
So, he slows himself down.
The torchlight finds a desk.
There’s a lamp and a switch.
Moving very carefully, Bruno walks across the space and hits the lights.
It’s an office.
A workspace: a chair, stationery, paper on the walls, a screen for a projector, electrical equipment and bookshelves. There’s a small single bed and a shelf packed with what looks like linen and towels. Just as Bruno is about to breathe out, he sees something else, something out of the corner of his eye.
Three squat objects.
Three waist-high plastic barrels.
Chemical hazard stickers on the side.
A funeral wreath on the floor beside them.
He knows immediately.
Phillip O’Grady.
Marion O’Grady.
Samson O’Grady.
Dead bodies in barrels.
Buried in the basement of the house in which they were killed.