Catherine said, ‘So let’s work on the assumption Kim’s still alive. She’s discovered she’s expendable, and she’s gone to ground. But she is, as Shirley claims, pretty smart. So where would she hide?’
‘The last place they’d look,’ said Louisa.
‘And where might that be?’
River said, ‘Ho’s place.’
THERE WERE STILL GLASS splinters in the gutter, their brief brilliance catching the eye when the angle was right, but the house itself was in darkness. The curtains were undrawn, though the big broken window had been boarded over, the resulting black eye adding to the air of vacancy. Crime scene tape sealed the door. It looked like a property about to succumb to dereliction: give it a week, River thought, it would be festooned with graffiti, and occupied by crusties, dogs and mice.
They’d arrived in the same two cars, Louisa’s and Ho’s. Same pairings, too. ‘Why split up a winning combination?’ Louisa had asked. River had spent the journey working on a comeback; now they were here, his attention was focused on the fact that the spare keys taped beneath Ho’s desk hadn’t included one for his front door. Shirley, though, was already forging ahead. River expected her to kick the door in, or headbutt it into submission. Instead, having ripped away the tape, she produced a set of keys and tried each in turn. The third worked.
‘… You’ve got keys to Ho’s house?’
‘They were Marcus’s.’
‘… Marcus had keys to Ho’s house?’
‘Duh.’ Shirley waggled the key ring. ‘Universals?’
Marcus hadn’t always kicked doors down. Sometimes he’d gone the quiet way.
They trooped into the house, and fell to whispering.
‘The Dogs have been,’ River said. This was obvious: there were traces of official, inquisitive presence – drawers hanging open; spaces where electrical equipment had sat. It was an article of faith that anything you could plug in could transmit data: even toasters weren’t above suspicion. Roderick Ho had had a lot of kit, and now he had a lot of empty shelves.
Louisa said, ‘Well, I damn well hope so. That’s their job.’
‘So if Kim was hiding here they’ll have her.’
‘Unless she waited until they’d been and gone.’
She’s a kid, River wanted to say, a club hustler, scamming idiots like Ho: what would she know about tradecraft? But he could feel his chest constricting again. His organs felt like they’d been wrenched a notch tighter. But he managed to say, ‘I’ll do upstairs.’
Louisa said, ‘Yeah, me too. Shirley, you clear down here. Coe – watch the door.’
It was halfway through River’s mind to ask how come Louisa was giving instructions, but his wiser angels hushed him. There were recent, compelling reasons why neither River nor Coe should be allowed unsupervised charge of a tin opener, and the idea of Shirley taking command: well. His wiser angels had better things to do than finish that sentence.
Louisa led the way, and they parted company on the landing; Louisa taking the door into Ho’s bedroom – which accounted for the appalled look she was wearing – and River heading into the sitting room with the big, now broken, window.
Someone had entered the room, so she made herself stiller than ever. She was a coat on a hanger, a folded-up sweatshirt; something you’d expect in a wardrobe: one glance, you’d turn away and close the door. And then she’d be alone in the dark, and before long could start to breathe once more.
The trick was to occupy a space just slightly smaller than yourself, and then to keep doing that, over and over. Once you were done you’d vanished, and nobody would find you ever again.
The floorboard creaked. Something opened and closed. There were only so many places a hider could hide; so many a searcher could search. The time left to her was measured in seconds, and she could feel them dropping away, slipping through the gap beneath the door. They were noisy seconds, and made fluttering noises; they would give her away.
It had been an unwise choice, Roddy Ho’s house. She’d have been better off risking the streets.
Kim clenched her fist, around which she’d wrapped a wire coat hanger, and waited.
In Ho’s kitchen, Shirley was thinking:
By the back door was a tower made of pizza boxes; next to it, an overflowing bag of plastic bottles: energy drinks, coke, some brand names she didn’t recognise. The fridge was huge but underused, though its freezer section contained more pizzas and two bags of oven chips, putting Shirley in mind of a corner shop on a Sunday evening. Mind you, her own fridge was nothing to boast about; its only hint of green was bottled beer. But it was a relief Ho lived down to her expectations. If he’d turned out a secret gourmet, with a stash of white truffle oil and unrecognisable vegetables, she’d have had trouble with it.
