What an odd man, she thought as she walked back from the station, puzzled by the little police department above the entrance to Mornington Crescent Tube. But then they had all seemed odd: the female police sergeant who looked like an old-time movie star, various startled and excitable juniors with slept-on hair and slept-in clothes, the spectacular disorder of the place, the back-room experiments and half-laid floors. Could the PCU really be a legitimately sanctioned branch of the law?
By the time she reached the underlit alley connecting Alma Street to Balaklava Street, she realized how comfortable and familiar her new neighbourhood was starting to appear. She was used to gangs of rowdy kids setting off alarm bells and encouraging her to cross the road, but here was nothing to be nervous of—except that the unbroken arrangement of house-backs made it impossible not to feel as if one was being scrutinized.
As she emerged from the alley, she glimpsed a man—no more than a ragged dark shape—passing on the opposite pavement, as if he had been startled into flight. She stopped for a moment to take stock: a row of terraced houses with flaking white paint, worn front steps and defunct chimney pots like orange milk churns; black spear railings; hydrangeas and bay hedges and windowsills with green plastic tubs of dead chrysanthemums; the back of the Catholic primary school; saffron lamps shining through the branches of mangy plane trees. She saw him again, standing like a statue in the recessed doorway of the end house, watching as she passed, and couldn’t bring herself to continue without stopping.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked. ‘Do you need help?’ As she spoke, he stepped forward, dropping down the steps toward her, and she glimpsed brown eyes above a filthy white beard. Then he was gone, hobbling with fast, truncated steps toward the alleyway, and she remembered Heather’s words: ‘We even have our own tramp, a proper old rambly one with a limp and a beard, not a Lithuanian with a sleeping bag.’ The idea didn’t bother her, but she wondered what went through his mind as he stood in the doorway watching the street.
‘I suppose I should feel relieved.’ Paul opened a bottle of Beck’s and sank back on the sofa to drink it. ‘At least I know where I stand.’ He had been given two months’ pay and notice to quit. The company in which he had been promised such a wonderful career was heading for liquidation.
Kallie had wanted to raise the subject of paying for the house to be rewired, but knew it was time to hold off. ‘What do you want to do?’ she asked softly.
‘What I don’t understand is this, right—they hired me to look for innovative music, and the moment things get tight they fall back on old material, repackaged compilations, safe stuff they can hawk around to advertising agencies. The superclubs are dead, the bands are crap and the industry is heading down the toilet. Everyone’s downloading, who needs to buy CDs? If we’re going to stay here, I’ll have to make a complete career change.’
‘What do you mean, if we stay here?’ she asked. ‘I’ve put every penny I have into this house. We made the decision jointly—where else can we go?’
The ensuing silence worried her more than any answer. She knew he had viewed the move as a way of giving up his old life rather than starting a new one.
The television had no aerial and reception was lousy, but Paul sat before it anyway, opening his third beer while she went downstairs and tackled the painting of the built-in cupboards. She had set up a battery-powered lamp in the bathroom now, making the room a little more cheerful, and further dousings of disinfectant beneath the bathtub had taken care of the spiders. The room still seemed abnormally large compared to the kitchen, and she disliked the fact that it was below street level, but Benjamin Singh had explained that part of the basement was once a coal cellar. Kallie tried to imagine the rumble of coal in the chute, the stone-floored scullery and outside plumbing, but the history of the house had been erased by successive owners.
She remained unbothered by the idea of Mrs Singh dying at home in unexplained circumstances. She considered herself practical, rarely given to overactive flights of imagination. And yet there was something . . .
Kallie was moving the lamp when she saw the damp patch on the far wall, beneath the tiny window, a creeping sepia stain roughly the shape of Africa. Perhaps it had been there all along, but this was the first time she had noticed it. Her fingers brushed the brickwork and found it dry to the touch. Could coal dust have permeated the walls to the extent that it returned, spreading through paint and plaster like asbestos powder silently accreting within the lungs?
Perhaps she had taken on too much. Paul was unhappy and unhelpful. Later, as she lay in the cool, darkened bedroom nursing a headache, she wondered if they had really done the right thing. The property anchored them more firmly than any child. Certainly, Ruth Singh had never stirred from the house. Kallie couldn’t let it have the same effect on them.