The Frightened Man

sewage: it was said that some of the new London was built on the cleanings of the old London’s privies.

‘We can ask there for Satterlee,’ she said, pointing at a cluster of men by a stack of cut stone.

‘We can see the pub,’ he said.

‘If the Satterlees are still there. Let’s ask.’

She irritated him, but he did as she wanted. They turned off the track that others had beaten and crossed the rough ground towards the men. He stumbled once over something hard, almost entirely buried and now frozen in, swore, caught himself, the pistol swinging heavily in the overcoat. When they came to them, none of the men paid any notice but stood as they were, gathered in a semicircle around a well-dressed man who had laid out a piece of paper as big as a tablecloth on the building stone. He was saying something about the water table and hydraulic pressure and cellar walls, but when Denton moved around the men to have a look at him, the man glanced up and said, ‘Yes?’ It was less a greeting than a challenge.

‘I’m looking for the site manager.’

‘I’m the site manager.’

‘Satterlee?’

‘You want Satterlee? Should have said so sooner.’ The man gestured over his shoulder with a thumb. ‘Try the public house — might still be there, might not. Removal van was there at six.’ He looked down at the paper plans, looked up again and said, ‘Satterlee’s part of the job is over; he’s moving on.’

‘Where’s he gone?’

‘I told you, I don’t know if he’s gone yet. If he’s gone, I don’t know where. Ask at the company office. In the City.’ He looked down at the plans again and began to trace a line with a finger, talking about four-inch pipe and ‘domestic connections’.

Denton looked towards the pub. Janet Striker was doing the same thing. He could see now that what had been from the road a white dot at one side was now a closed wagon; a horse had separated itself, too, from the dark brick of the building.

‘Removal van,’ Denton said.

‘Too late,’ she said.

‘We don’t know that.’ He started to stride across the rubble; she almost ran to catch up. She told him to slow down, but he paid no attention. Closer by then, he could see two men carrying some big, dark piece of furniture up a ramp to the van’s innards, and he strode faster. When they were a hundred feet away — the men clear now, faces, one taller than the other, a red scarf at a neck — she caught his arm and almost pulled him off balance. ‘Denton!’

He swung around on her.

‘Don’t!’ she said. ‘Don’t go in there like this!’

His instinct was to pull away and charge on. She was panting, more colour in her face now, and he remembered the other days, his liking for her. She became somebody else, not the woman he had resented in the cab. She said, ‘We don’t know.’

He chewed his lower lip. He breathed out — he, too, was a little out of breath. ‘All right.’ He put his hand into the pocket where the Colt rode. ‘You lead.’

Her hand was still on his arm. She passed in front of him very close, and she said, ‘He isn’t your father.’

She led them more slowly over the hard earth, her skirts lifted a little in her hands. Behind her, shortening his stride, he held the bulge of the heavy pistol against his hip with a forearm. When they reached the back of the removal van, they found a kerb and a pavement; the smell of horse surrounded them, straw-filled dung on the ground.

‘The Satterlees?’ she said to one of the removal men, who was coming out of the house with a small armchair held against his chest. He jerked his head back. ‘Inside!’ He was sweating.

She stood aside for the other man, also coming out; she was right at the front doorway then, turned back to Denton, giving him a look as if to say, Now, mind your manners. When she turned back to go in, a young girl was standing in the doorway.

Denton knew it was the right Satterlee because of her. Later, he would be able to anatomize her and explain why he knew, but at that moment he knew only that he could see the dead young woman in her face and his sister in the entirety of her — pose, smile, clothes — which told him all he needed to know about her and about her relationship with her father. A terrible realization struck him: This was how Josie looked. I didn’t remember, but I do — it was this, this look of — of not being a child.

‘We’re looking for Mr and Mrs Satterlee,’ Janet Striker said.

‘Looking’s free,’ the girl said. She laughed.

Mrs Striker glanced at Denton and said, ‘May we come in?’

The girl looked not at her but at Denton. She gave him a smile, cocked her head, gave another smile. Flirting. Denton said, ‘You’re Edna, aren’t you.’

‘I might be.’ She made a movement with her whole body, swaying forward and dropping her right shoulder and then straightening, never taking her eyes from him, the finish of the movement leaving her partly in profile so that if she’d had breasts they’d have been shown well. ‘What’ll you give me if I am?’

‘Is your mother here?’ Janet Striker said.

The girl laughed. ‘She is for as long as the gin lasts.’ She laughed again and looked at Denton. ‘She’s here, but she’s not all there, if you know what I mean!’

The removal men pushed past them then; the girl flattened herself against the open door, but as the younger of the two went past she moved forward so that he brushed against her and she looked up into his face, smiling. The man looked at Denton and Janet Striker and muttered something and went on inside, down a narrow hall to stairs at the back, and up.

‘We’ll come in,’ Janet Striker said.

The girl shrugged. ‘Suit yourself.’ She gave Denton her smile again.

The hall ran right through the house to another door at the back, now standing partway open. Two doors on the left led to a parlour and, at the back, he supposed, to a kitchen. The hall was small, barely big enough for two people, he thought; the walls, papered in a small pattern in shades of grey-green, were nondescript, probably depressing after a little time; the woodwork was dark but dull.

Janet Striker looked back from the first door, nodded at him, and he followed her, feeling the girl close behind him.

The parlour had been emptied of furniture except for one armchair, in which a woman in a dark coat and a small black hat was sitting. She looked at them with dull eyes, said nothing.

‘Mrs Satterlee?’ Denton said.

‘Oh, she won’t say nothing; she never does.’ The girl giggled.

Denton went closer to the woman, bent down to see her face. Under a layer of powder, it was lined and blotchy. The eyelids quivered.

‘Mrs Satterlee, we’re looking for your daughter — Alice.’

‘I told you, she won’t say nothing! She don’t know nothing! ’ The girl danced into his line of vision. ‘Ask me; I know lots of things.’

He felt real physical revulsion, wanted to slap her. In a hard voice, he said, ‘Where’s your sister Alice?’

‘She went away.’

‘Where?’

‘How should I know? She went away and she didn’t come back, now my story is all told.’ She gave him the smile, then bent her torso forward and put her right hand into the small of her back as if to deepen the curve of her spine. The posture was that from a cheap postcard — a woman offering herself, the pose designed to reveal the breasts, cleavage if she had had such a thing. Denton felt his attention lurch, saw his sister at thirteen, and in an angry, pained voice, he cried, ‘Don’t! You stupid little-’ He’d have said bitch, but a louder voice from the stairs stopped him, stopped them all, and their eyes, even the seated woman’s, went to the door, hers open with fright.

‘You bloody stupid bastards, I told you to be careful! Now look what you’ve done to the plaster, you stupid bastards! God, man, lift it-!’ Something heavy bumped against the wall; there was a thump, a different voice swore, and a third male voice said, ‘You talk to us like that any more, guv, I’ll drop this bloody thing on your toes.’

More sound — bumps, a dragging along the floor, men’s heavy breathing — and the first voice shouting, ‘Have