The Hollow Man by Oliver Harris Read Free Book Online Page B

immediately useful, a bank statement. But he was also now intrigued by the enigma of Alexei Devereux. What had brought this situation about? Where was he? As a good detective, Belsey did not like mysteries, and as a bad one he found too many. In his first week of CID, Inspector John Harlow—the only DI he ever truly respected—had seen it in him: It will be your downfall, Nick Belsey. Not knowing when to call it a day and stop asking bloody questions .
    He found three pizza-delivery menus, a letter from a call-forwarding company encouraging him to upgrade his service, and a lot of catalogues: for office supplies, outdoor sports equipment, children’s educational toys, health supplements and designer luggage. Devereux had also received several brochures about tooth whitening. Belsey read them then checked his own teeth in the bathroom mirror. They were streaked with coffee; the gums appeared to be falling away.
    A foul smell had begun to permeate the house. Belsey lit a scented candle from the bathroom. He sat at Devereux’s desk, took a fountain pen and some letterhead (“AD Development: Hope Springs Eternal ”), and popped the cap of the pen. He wrote: Hello, I am here , and watched the ink soak into the thick paper. Then he took a fresh sheet and wrote his name and date of birth at the top. He wanted to write a confession. He wrote: I have been a police officer for twenty-one years , and then his mind went blank.
    He couldn’t ignore the stench any longer. It smelt like rotting meat. Time to clear the fridge out, Belsey told himself, and tried not to think what else it might mean. The smell was getting worse by the minute. Belsey walked to the kitchen but there was nothing rotting in the fridge, or any of the kitchen cupboards, or the bin. A single fly crawled across the tiled floor.
    Belsey crouched down to see it: a bluebottle, shimmering, turquoise. Belsey lay on his stomach, inching closer until he could see the jewel-like eyes and the twitching of the individual legs.
    Calliphora vomitoria . Nature’s pallbearers. It crawled to Belsey’s fingers and inspected them for signs of life. He had an awful feeling.
    There were two flies circling the light fitting in the living room. A third flew in from the hallway. The Calliphoridae could smell death ten miles away, but Belsey sensed he wouldn’t have to go that far. He followed another up the stairs.
    The smell was strongest in the bedroom. He covered his mouth and nose, checked behind the curtains, under the bed, the wardrobes, but couldn’t find any body.
    He walked down the corridor. The next door led into a laundry room the size of an average bedroom, with cupboards, rails, wicker baskets, two washing machines and a dryer. Belsey opened the cupboards and took the lids off the wicker baskets. He opened the washing machines and dryer. They were all empty. The room was large, but not large enough to hide a corpse, and he couldn’t understand what came between the two rooms to fill the rest of the first-floor corridor. Belsey walked back and knocked on the wall. It sounded hollow.
    He walked back to the bedroom. He looked at the right-hand wall and the floor-length mirror. He pressed on the surface of the mirror and it shifted. He pressed on the edge and it swung open.
    The mirror hid a small room. Belsey peered inside. A middle-aged man stared back from a swivel chair, suited, his throat sliced open and crawling with maggots. The space was rigged as a safe room: windowless, with electromagnetic locks, a phone and two CCTV monitors on a small desk. It had its own chemical toilet in the corner and a stack of mineral water and tinned food. Blood had reached the ceiling and the walls: shallow brown drops, held at the point where gravity had lost interest.
    Belsey walked back downstairs.
    He’d never been sick at a body and wasn’t going to start now. He went out to the garden and crouched down breathing the fresh air. It wasn’t enough to clear the smell from his