Mr. Flood's Last Resort(54)
Renata opens the oven door and pulls out a manila envelope.
“The newspaper cuttings?”
“Now you know where I keep the valuables,” she whispers. “It was what they were looking for.”
I frown. “Really?”
“It was obvious. They went through every book, all my papers, and they stole nothing.”
I speak as gently as I can. “But if it was a hate crime—”
“It wasn’t.” She looks me dead in the eye. “I know it wasn’t.” She taps the envelope. “It was this they were after.”
“But who knew we had it?”
“The old man, his son?” Renata says. “Someone must have seen you take it from the house.”
“But how?”
“I don’t know. You feel watched in there, don’t you?”
I nod. Ghosts, cats, mechanical card-playing stoats, you name it, to say nothing of an ancient shape-shifting giant who can stand a foot away without me knowing.
“What made you hide the envelope, Renata?”
“Instinct.”
“So what next?”
Renata’s face is sober. “We keep going. This shows that we’re getting warmer.”
CHAPTER 25
There’s an arrow on the kitchen table sketched in spilt custard powder. It appeared in the time it took me to turn and take up a cloth. Not just any arrow but an arrow fletched with feathers. This ghost is quick on the draw.
The arrow is pointing to the pantry.
I open the door and see scrubbed shelves and orderly packets, regiments of tins and rows of bottles. Cathal eats like a man under siege, preferring the preserved to the fresh. Everything is arranged with a pleasing neatness. I nudge a tin of minted peas into line; there are no clues here.
To the left of me, a jar of pickled beetroot edges forwards diffidently. Its neighbor, a box of savory crackers, follows suit with more conviction. As does a bag of sugar and a bottle of brown sauce, sliding boldly out of their places as if they are offering themselves up for a dangerous mission.
I wait. Nothing else happens. I clear the shelf, checking each item I move. Then I see it. A key, taped underneath the shelf above.
Bright black iron, long-shanked.
There is the door we mustn’t open.
I peel away the tape, put the key straight into the pocket of my tabard, and emerge from the pantry to see a nose nudging through the back door. Then a snout, then two eyes and a gaze of molten honey. The fox comes cautiously, ready to retreat. His musk reek is bolder; it stalks into the room, signaling his arrival before he has entirely arrived. His shoulders follow, so that Larkin stands half inside, with his front paws on the doormat. He gives a yawn that comes with a faint whine and closes his muzzle with a snap. Then he looks at me meaningfully.
By the time I’ve crossed the kitchen to the back door, he’s at the bottom of the steps standing on the garden path.
I know better than to follow a fox in life.
*
LARKIN LEADS me past car batteries and suppurating bin bags, beyond bed frames and rusting bicycles. I wonder if we might stop at the caravan but we don’t, although he hesitates there, one paw held up.
We weave through bushes and shrubs, stacks of roof tiles and broken window frames. I tread gingerly through piles of scrap metal and rotten planks of wood with proud nails. Even in my excitement I’m mindful of the risks of lockjaw and septicemia and ear spiders from the webs that break over me like sticky curses.
Larkin shuttles forwards and back, perhaps impatient at my slowness.
Out past the refuse there’s an untouched jungle of plants: legions of fat-stalked weeds furious with bristles and wonderful mushrooms in unreal shapes and colors. Some speckled scarlet like brilliant, cautionary tales, others the shape of baby ears, sprouting neatly all in a row.
Stems snap with pungent smells, leaving sap on my legs. Twigs break and twist. Burrs stud my cardigan and thorns pull at my skirt. Soon my hair is spotted with ladybirds and my ankles are ringed with ants. On my shoulder a caterpillar rides: a ferocious orange-quilled monster in his world.
Sometimes I lose sight of Larkin; when I do I trample to a standstill and wait for the bushes ahead of me to quiver.
With every step I seem to shrink and the plants grow taller and the light grows greener.
Then all at once we come to a clearing.
*
THERE IS a round brick structure set into the ground: a half-buried beehive, an old icehouse.
Leggy saplings dot the surrounding bank, dappling the afternoon sun that shines into the clearing.
I follow Larkin down a flight of steps. Nature has reclaimed this place: the brickwork is vivid with mosses and the path is thick with brambles. The iron gate is held open by a clump of nettles and just beyond leaves are piled high against a riveted wooden door. I kick them away and see the door is gnawed at the bottom. Larkin noses along it.
“Would there be rats in there, Larkin?”
As if in answer, Larkin snorts.
I try the key. It turns surprisingly easily.
*
THE DOORWAY is squat and the air inside clotted with the smell of damp and leaf litter. And it’s cold, so cold you feel that the sun has never trespassed here.
In the light from the doorway I can see that the floor falls abruptly away to form a great bowl, perhaps ten feet deep. There is a narrow walkway all around it. Ice would have been stored here, packed in straw, kept intact by the subterranean chill of the building. From this dank place frozen slabs were carved and spiked and heaved up to the house to keep food fresh, to make cool drinks and sorbets. There is nothing in the bowl now but leaves and twigs and the remains of fallen birds: matted bundles of feathers and tangled wings. I hesitate to go any farther, for the little building has the strange sad air of a plundered tomb, a disturbed burial site.