The Office of the Dead by Andrew Taylor Read Free Book Online

nobody. That’s my name.’
    ‘Nobody’s called nobody.’
    ‘I am.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Because nobody’s perfect.’
    And so she was. Perfect. I thought, Henry, you bastard, we could have had this.
    I called after Rosie as she skipped down the path towards the house. ‘Rosie! I’m Auntie Wendy.’
    I felt a fool saying that. Auntie Wendy sounded like a character in a children’s story, the sort my mother would have liked.
    ‘Can you tell Mummy I’m here?’
    Rosie opened the door and skipped into the house. I picked up my case and followed. I was relieved because Janet must have come back. She wouldn’t have left a child that age alone.
    The house was part of a terrace. I had a confused impression of buttresses, the irregular line of high-pitched roofs against a grey velvet skyline, and small deeply recessed windows. At the door I put down my case and looked for the bell. There were panes of glass set in the upper panels and I could see the hall stretching into the depths of the building. Rosie had vanished. Irregularities in the glass gave the interior a green tinge and made it ripple like Rosie’s hair.
    A brass bell pull was recessed into the jamb of the door. I tugged it and hoped that a bell was jangling at the far end of the invisible wire. There was no way of knowing. You just had to have faith, not a state of mind that came easily to me at any time. I tried again, wondering if I should have used another door. The skin prickled on the back of my neck at the possibility of embarrassment. I waited a little longer. Someone must be there with the child. I opened the door and a smell of damp rose to meet me. The level of the floor was a foot below the garden.
    ‘Hello?’ I called. ‘Hello? Anyone home?’
    My voice had an unfamiliar echo to it, as though I had spoken in a church. I stepped down into the hall. It felt colder inside than out. A clock ticked. I heard light footsteps running above my head. There was a click as a door opened, then another silence, somehow different in quality from the one before.
    Then the screaming began.
    There’s something about a child’s screams that makes the heart turn over. I dropped the suitcase. Some part of my mind registered the fact that the lock had burst open in the impact of the fall, that my hastily packed belongings, the debris of my life with Henry, were spilling over the floor of the hall. I ran up a flight of shallow stairs and found myself on a long landing.
    The door at the end was open. I saw Rosie’s back, framed in the doorway. She wasn’t screaming any more. She was standing completely still. Her arms hung stiffly by her sides as though they were no longer jointed at the elbows.
    ‘Rosie! Rosie!’
    I walked quickly down the landing and seized her by the shoulders. I spun her round and hugged her face into my belly. Her body was hard and unyielding. She felt like a doll, not a child. There was another scream. This one was mine.
    The room was furnished as a bedroom. It smelled of Brylcreem and peppermints. There were two mullioned windows. One of them must have been open a crack because I heard the sound of traffic passing and people talking in the street below. At times like that, the mind soaks up memories like a sponge. Often you don’t know what’s there until afterwards, when you give the sponge a squeeze and you see what trickles out.
    At the time I was aware only of the man on the floor. He lay on his back between the bed and the doorway. He wore charcoal-grey flannel trousers, brown brogues and an olive-green, knitted waistcoat over a white shirt with a soft collar. A tweed jacket and a striped tie were draped over a chair beside the bed. His left hand was resting on his belly. His right hand was lying palm upwards on the floor, the fingers loosely curled round the dark bone handle of a carving knife. There was blood on the blade, blood on his neck and blood on his shirt and waistcoat. His horn-rimmed glasses had fallen off. Blue eyes stared