For once in this whole sorry story I’m ahead of the curve. Eight minutes later I’ve dealt with both locks, and I’m in.
One bedroom, one bathroom, one kitchen-dining-living-room … it’s not a patch on most places I stay, of course. It is a lot more lived in, which makes sense. If you inhabit a one-bed flat about 450 square feet in total, there’s bound to be more living per square foot than in most of my residences. This must also be why the air smells of old Thai food.
There’s a magnificent TV-game-console display in the living room, and two shelves of fantasy comic books:Dragonborn,Witchslave,Return of the Swamp Crusader. That sort of thing. A big one-seat armchair faces the TV; there isn’t quiteroom for a sofa. The dining table is flush with the wall, and there’s one chair, also facing the wall.
Yeesh.
Enough idle snooping. Time for some purposeful snooping. The object I’m looking for is going to be … where? Where’s the space in this tiny box for all theotherbits of life, the ones you don’t use every day?
That’s what I don’t like about these small flats, there’s never any ‘mop space’. In about half these places there’s not even a cupboard in the hall, so you either have to keep your coat on the back of your bedroom door with your dressing gown, which is weird, or on the one railing you keep all your clothes on because the landlord hasn’t provided a wardrobe either.
Small wonder the resident spends all his time escaping into the books and the console. This is why I live the way I do. Because if not, I’d probably be in the flat next door to this one, and all the people living in nicer houses would still be getting away with their careless wealth.
The bedside table is a bust: lots of old rubbish and batteries and loose foreign coins, a broken alarm clock, one pack of condoms with the cellophane still on. There can’t be anywhere else in here you’d keep the thing I need. The Hobbit-size wardrobe packed in behind the door? No. Little IKEA bureau for pants and socks and T-shirts? Nothing either in or behind any of the drawers.
Back into the main room. Why’s it so much harder searching somewhere small? Video game rack: obviously not. Kitchen cupboards? Unlikely.
Then I turn back to the bookcase, and within thirty seconds I’ve spotted it, nestled betweenNightmare Realm IandNightmare Realm III. Of course. Just to be certain, I open it, and flick through until I see a familiar face. Thank goodness. I can work with this.
Someone passes by in the corridor outside, and comes to a halt at the door. They’re standing there long enough to give me a micro-coronary – but then I hear keys jangle and the door of the neighbouring flat opens and slams. God, you really can hear everything here.
Time to go – with any luck, discreetly enough that nobody will spot me leaving, or ask the homeowner what they were doing back in the middle of a working day. Although it’s not a terribly neighbourly place, I suspect.
I give the flat the once-over, pocket my find, and – masked up again – head down to the street.
31
Em holds the passport at arm’s length, squints, then holds it up to me.
‘Doesn’t look much like you.’
‘It got me through security, didn’t it?’
‘They check again at the gate.’
‘Oh.’
We’re at Heathrow.
Jonny arranged the flight by various dark online methods. (Or so he claimed. When pressed, it turns out he’d just booked it.) Hand luggage only, and we’re booked on a return flight taking off thirty-six hours after we land. We have Marshall Rivers’ address; we have a little technical device that will help us immeasurably; we have no phones, nothing that could be used to track us, and about twenty Covid masks. We haveeverything we could need to make this trip a success. There really is no need for me to be feeling this nervous.
Then it occurs to me that this is just the sort of journey Davy was slated to make, and look howhewound up. Even though he missed his flight, and we’re about to catch ours, it’s not a parallel to spend the next ten hours brooding on.
Em and I are in Departures. I was a little clumsy going through security, and needed a bit of assistance from the distinctly unfriendly staff, and Em told me I was making a scene, so I know now she’s as nervous as I am, although neither of us has admitted it, in the vain hope that if we don’t comment on the other’s anxiety perhaps they won’t notice our own.
I think the stress of the last week might be catching up with us, but as long as nobody else is catching up with us, I’m happy.
I’m also trying to keep one particular fact from Em, which I should have known is a fool’s errand, but for the moment I’ve managed it.
‘So this is your brother?’ She looks again at the picture. ‘Frederick. He doesn’t look like a Frederick. 1997. So he’s younger than you, right?’
I take the passport back and pocket it. ‘Do we need suncream?’
‘For a trip of twenty-four hours?’
‘What, you think you won’t burn in a full day of Caribbean sun?’
‘Good point.’
