Katie stopped on the landing.
She felt slightly out of breath—she hadn’t realized how much she had been bracing herself to find something terrible. And so on one level she was relieved. But there was also space for a little anger to creep in. For the worry and concern Chris had caused their mother through his behavior.
Just as he had done so often in the past.
But the apartment was far nicer inside than she would have guessed from the street outside. The carpets were all new; the walls had been freshly painted; and while the furniture was sparse and functional, each piece had clearly been carefully chosen. As an adult, she had become used to Chris finding the cheapest lodgings on offer, using them up until there was nothing left, and then moving on. But this place felt different. It had more of a settled feel to it, as though he’d found a house and made an effort to transform it into a home.
She couldn’t remember him ever doing that before.
She walked back into the front room and looked around. There was a television on a stand, a couch and an armchair, and two small shelves stacked with a random selection of secondhand paperback books. The Death House. The Stand. The Doll Who Ate His Mother. She found a few bits of personal debris scattered on top of the shelves—a faded library card; a spread of small change; a couple of half-burned tea-light candles—and at one end, a hundred-sided die.
Katie picked that up and ran it between her fingers. It was one they’d played with together—part of the set she’d saved up and bought for his birthday. But it was so old now that it had the polished feel of a pebble, and so many of the numbers had rubbed away that it would be impossible to use. Even so, it brought a pang of nostalgia and sadness. She wondered why Chris had kept it. As a reminder, perhaps, of simpler, happier times. Or maybe of the more serious games he had spent his life playing and losing since.
She put it down again.
There was a cheap cell phone next to the television. It was out of charge, and so she assumed this was the phone her mother had tried to call. Which raised the question of why it was here when Chris wasn’t, and why it had been left to run out of power. There had been a time when a cell phone, however inexpensive, would have been good currency for him. But she didn’t recognize the model, and there was no sign of a charger.
The bedroom was small. There was just enough space for a double bed with a wardrobe on one side of the headboard, and a small table on the other. The bed was unmade, and there were clothes scattered across it. She opened the wardrobe. While a few clothes remained, it was filled mostly with empty wire hangers.
Almost as though Chris had left this place in a hurry.
Like he was looking over his shoulder, she remembered.
Like he was scared of something.
She moved around to the table. There was a drawer built in below. When she opened it, she was greeted by the smell of wood and dust drifting up.
There were a few sheets of paper inside. She picked one out and saw it was an old, faded letter printed on university-headed notepaper. It hadn’t been delivered to the apartment, and both the address and the name of the person—James Alderson—meant nothing to her. But directly underneath, she spotted a glossy sheet of photographs, and she put the letter aside and picked those out instead.
There had been four originally, taken in a booth, but one had been clipped away. The remaining three showed the same image of the same two people. She recognized Chris, leaning into the picture on the right-hand side, and yet at the same time she didn’t. For one thing, he looked healthy. He was tanned and freckled, he’d grown his hair out into a style that really suited him, and his smile was as genuine as she could remember seeing since he was a little boy. And most important of all, he didn’t seem remotely self-conscious about the scar that ran down the side of his face.
He was pressing his cheek against that of a man Katie didn’t recognize. She guessed he was about thirty years old—although, like her brother, there was something about his face that made him seem boyish and younger. He had long brown hair, round glasses, and a smile that matched her brother’s in terms of happiness.
She turned the photos over and recognized her brother’s handwriting there.
Mr. Christopher Shaw, Esq., and Mr. James Alderson Jr., Esq.
So he had a boyfriend—another sign that he had been building a life. She put the photos back in the drawer, and as she did, she noticed the sheet of paper directly underneath. It looked like it had been printed off the internet and showed a black-and-white photograph of a stern-looking man with a broad mustache. He was dressed in a smart black suit with a flower in the lapel. Beside the picture, above a dense wall of small text, the headline read: THE DESPICABLE HISTORY OF JACK LOCK.
The front door opened downstairs.
Katie froze and then listened carefully. For a moment, she could hear nothing beyond a slight rush of outside air from below. Whoever was down there was hesitating. There was something about the silence that made her think it wasn’t her brother.
That it was someone like her who shouldn’t be here.
“Chris?”
A man’s voice calling up.
“James?”
She heard the front door close, followed by a tentative series of creaks as the man made his way slowly and cautiously up the stairs. Katie glanced desperately around the room—but there was nowhere to hide. She closed the drawer quietly, and then pulled out the key and clenched it between her knuckles.
As she heard the creaks reaching the top of the stairs, she stepped out onto the landing with her fist raised.
“Shit!”
The man flung his arm up to protect his face and then stumbled and lost his footing, falling backward onto the floor against the wall.
“Don’t!” he cried out. “Please! No need!”
Her heart was hammering. She recognized him—it was the shirtless man she’d seen talking to himself across the road. Except now that she was seeing him up close, cowering on the floor in front of her, she realized he wasn’t actually a man at all. He was barely older than the senior boys at school. He was bone-thin, his skin almost blue, and there was a mottled, cup-shaped scar curling beneath the bristles on his closely shaved skull. When he looked up, he seemed more scared of her than she was of him.
“No need,” he repeated.
Katie hesitated. Then she put the key away and took out her phone, keeping her distance. He didn’t seem much of a physical threat, but she wasn’t taking any chances. She tried to summon a little of the authority that she didn’t feel.
“You’ve got about two seconds before I call the police,” she said. “What are you doing in here?”
“I saw the lights.”
He started to get up.
“Don’t,” she warned him. “Just stay where you are.”
He settled back.
“I thought Chris and James were home,” he said.
“So you know them?”
“They’re friends of mine. They used to give me money sometimes. I live opposite.”
He gestured with his head in the direction of the street. It took her a moment to realize he was referring to the old toilet block across the road. Then he looked back at her again, a little more suspicious now.
“Who are you, anyway?” he said. “Are you one of the people watching them?”
His choice of words sent a chill through her.