To Indigo, Tanith Lee [best ereader for comics .TXT] 📗

straight blue glasses. The other cabinet contained cleaning materials, a Dyson. Above on shelves packets of tea, coffee, canned goods, matches. Towards the back of the room was a large piano, lid raised, and a guitar and a mandolin hanging from two hooks in the beams. A music centre rose behind the piano. Several carousels below revealed CDs of many classical composers. A lot of it was piano music. There was some jazz too, and R and B.

No radio or TV were visible.

The lighting consisted solely of table-lamps with parchment-coloured shades. Mr C had turned them all on.

Set back in one wall was a small kitchen annexe, that had a stalk-thin fridge-freezer, a small expensive-looking washing machine, a microwave oven, a miniature electric oven with two gas hobs, and a toy-size sink and drainer.

In the narrow bathroom, which was white and very clean, as the whole upper space appeared to be, were a long bath on lion’s paws, a lavatory, a bidet, and two washbasins under a wide mirror. An ultra-modern shower cubicle filled one corner. From rails hung clean crisp towels, all of them white. White soaps, still in plastic wrappers, lay by basins, bath and shower. Another cabinet revealed several Lilliputian shampoos of the type found in hotels, a selection of chemist counter painkillers, such as aspirin and paracetamol, elastoplast and tubigrip, and a large plastic container of hydrogen peroxide.

There were also two hampers in the bathroom. One was empty. One held more clean white towels, white sheets, pillow-slips and blankets, all neatly folded.

“What’s in the fridge, I wonder?” said Mr C.

He undid the door and we looked in.

There wasn’t much. Some black truffles in a box, some strong cheddar in white paper. The wine rack held one bottle of Dom Perignon, one of red wine, (French) and a single bottle of Dutch geneva. A couple of two litre bottles of Volvic occupied the lower shelf.

In the freezer compartments were bread, pork sausages, steaks, chicken breasts and chunks of free range salmon. And a big carton of chocolate ice cream. None of these items had been opened.

Neither Mr C nor I were apparently tempted. Though sealed, it could all have been poisoned after all.

“That skylight is definitely polarised glass. Bullet-proof too, I’d say. But the lock…” He sneered and snapped his fingers.

The apartment was quite dark, or had been until he switched on the lamps.

“What do you think?” he asked me.

“He lives here.”

“I would entirely conclude he does. Or it’s his HQ. Basic nutrition, doctor supplies, hygiene, sleeping facilities. Not bad, for an amateur.”

Below us even now we could hear the mindless blundering of flat No 5’s music. It was much fainter, but still intrusive. Sound rises, like scum.

“Have you seen enough, Mr Phillips?”

“I – yes, I suppose so.”

“Do you want me to do anything?”

I thought he meant smash it all up, unplug the fridge-freezer, score the CDs and tear up the books – God knows. I said inanely, “I’m baffled.”

“Are you?” said Mr C. “I’m not. Your man’s a nutcase.” Then he reverted to his alternate accent. “A total nutter, our Sejjy. And that sort – I’d wipe ’em off the arse of the world.”

EIGHTEEN

May was moving towards June. The weather changed for the better. It was warm and usually bright. Upstairs, I was told, I could/should open the small upper panels of the windows.

This was the time when regime change happened.

I had been obedient, subservient perhaps.

Each night I slept only a couple of hours. But I hadn’t slept well, had I, for fifteen, nearly twenty years.

He had never intruded, that I knew, on my slumber, despite the bedroom door’s being off, aside from that one striking time with the torch. Since that night I’d been very careful of him. Which is a crazy thing to say, of course. I was already careful of him. And it had done me no good.

And too I’d formerly taxed my brain, trying to find ways to outwit and deal with him, evict him. Destroy him.

I was hampered, naturally, by my authorial brain, which went too far. Frankly, my scenarios ended often in his maiming or death. They were fantasies. They were not possible to me. Either I am an indoctrinated pacifist, (my father, always think of others) or merely an utter coward – by which I mean, in this context, squeamish. I don’t boast of any truly moral wish to spare his life. I can’t lay claim to any saintly fastidiousness of that sort. But the end of the road was before me, and still I could think of nothing at all.

The wasp entered my life two days after I started to leave the upstairs windows open.

This had happened during other summers. Even given a notable dearth of insects constantly reported in the news, and put down to human vileness and global warming, intermittent moths, flies and wasps had always penetrated the house. Like, if not in the same spirit as my kindly mother, I tend to catch them all and put them back outside. Even wasps I spare until the autumn, when the damn things will perish anyway. I’d been stung sufficiently to know I wasn’t allergic to them. But also I was aware that, if they got into the mouth and stung, they would cause a swelling in the soft tissues and membranes which, closing the throat and airway, might result in death.

This wasp was obviously young and inexperienced. I caught it easily in the glass from the bathroom. Having caught it, I decanted it into a large empty jam jar I’d retained in my study to house spare biros. On top of the jar I placed a piece of card, pierced by me with air holes. Did they need to breathe? I had to assume so. Would it also need food? I dropped into the jar some crumbs from the breakfast toast I’d carried upstairs.

My wasp crawled about in the jar. buzzing in blind, automaton-like anger. Then settled on a bit of the toast.