Suddenly Symes is there, standing behind him. He pushes something cold into Croft’s hand, and Croft sees that it’s a bottle of Budweiser. The thought of the beer entering his mouth makes Croft start salivating. He raises the bottle to his lips. The liquid is icy, familiar, heavenly. Croft feels numbness settle over him, an almost-contentment. Whatever is happening here need not concern him. It is only an hour.
“I see you’ve met Ashley,” Symes says. He squats down next to the armchair, leaning in towards the fat woman and taking her hand. He presses his fingers into the flesh of her wrist as if to restrain her, as if she is something dangerous that needs to be managed. The woman shifts slightly in her seat, and Croft sees that her eyes, which appeared so dull, are now bright and alive. He cannot decide if it is wariness he sees in them, or cunning.
She doesn’t like Symes though, this seems clear to him. Join the club.
“Ashley is my wife,” Symes says. He grins into the face of the woman, a smile of such transparent artifice it is as if both he and the woman are playing a practical joke at Croft’s expense.
Suddenly, in the overheated room, Croft feels chilled to the bone.
Is Symes serious? Snatches of words and images play themselves across his brain like a series of film stills: Symes’s grin, the woman’s slack features, the sticky word “wife”.
You’re wondering if they fuck, Croft thinks. Is that all it is, though? He takes another swig of the beer and the thoughts recede.
“Would you excuse me, just for a moment?” Symes says. “There’s a phone call I need to make. I’ll be right back.” He stands, and walks away. The woman in the armchair looks after him for a second, then strains forward in her seat and puts her hand on Croft’s knee. Croft can smell her breath, a sickening combination of peppermints and something else that might be tuna fish.
“You know him,” the woman says, and for a moment Croft imagines she’s talking about Symes, though the words that follow make his supposition seem impossible. “Even though you don’t know it yet, you know him. He’ll steep all his children in agony. Not just the agony of knowing him, but true pain.” She tightens her grip on his knee, and Croft realizes that she is strong, much stronger than she appears, or than he would have believed.
The mad are always strong, Croft thinks. He does not know how he knows this, but he knows it is true.
“Who are you talking about?” Croft says quietly. “Who is the master?”
The woman leans towards him. Her face is now so close to his that her features seem blurred, and Croft thinks for a confused moment that she is about to kiss him.
He sees himself, straddling her. Her mounded flesh is pale as rice pudding.
“He is the tiger,” she says. She grins, and her grin is like Symes’s grin, only just like the Jesus man she has a tooth missing. The sight of the missing tooth fills him with horror.
“I need to get out of here,” he says. “I mean, I need to use the bathroom.” The room feels unbearably hot suddenly, stifling with the scent of unwashed bodies. He places his half-drunk beer on the coffee table, and as he makes his way back to the hallway he finds himself wondering if the woman will take advantage of his absence to taste the alcohol. He imagines her thin lips, clamping themselves around the mouth of the bottle in a wet, round “o”.
He can hear Symes’s voice, talking softly off in another room somewhere, but Croft ignores it. The staircase leads upwards to a square landing, with four doors leading off it, all of them closed. Croft tries one at random, not through any logical process of deduction but because it is closest. By a stroke of luck the room behind it turns out to be the bathroom, after all. Croft steps hurriedly inside and locks the door. He sits down on the closed toilet seat, covering his face with both hands. The room feels like it’s rocking, slowly, back and forth, like a ship in a swell, though Croft knows this is only the beer, which he is unused to, he has barely touched a drop of alcohol since leaving prison. He presses his fingertips against his eyelids, savouring the darkness. After a minute or so he opens his eyes again and stands up. He lifts the toilet seat, pisses in an arcing gush into the avocado toilet bowl. He washes his hands at the sink. His face, in the mirror above, looks pale and slightly dazed but otherwise normal. It is only when he goes out on the landing again that he sees the photographs.
There are six of them in all. They are arranged in two groups of three, mounted on the blank area of wall at the far end of the landing and directly opposite the bathroom door. He had his back to them before, Croft realizes, which is why he didn’t see them when he first came upstairs. He recognizes them at once. He thinks it would be impossible for an artist not to recognize his own work. One of the photos is of Murphy, or rather Murphy’s hands, secured behind his back with a twist of barbed wire. The Kennington case. Four of the other photos are also work shots, all photos he took for the Met in the course of his twenty-year career as a forensic photographer.
Lilian Beckworth, an RTA.
The Hallam Crescent flat, gutted by fire.
The underpass near Nunhead Station where the Cobb kid was found.
The sixth photo, not a work one, is of Rebecca Riding. The police believed it had been taken less than thirty minutes before her death.
Croft told his lawyer and the police that the photos they found at his house were not taken by him. His camera had been stolen, he said, and then later returned, placed on his front doorstep, wrapped carefully in a Tesco bag. Whoever left it there had not rung the bell. When Croft later developed the film, he found pictures he remembered taking at various sites around Lewisham and Manor Park. He also found the photos of Rebecca Riding.
“The photos are good though, aren’t they, Dennis?” the cop kept saying. “They’re no amateur job. You’re a professional. You remember taking these, surely?”
Croft said he didn’t, and kept saying it. In the end he could hardly remember, one way or the other.
It was true that they were very fine photographs. He’d spent some time working on them in his darkroom. The excellence of the results surprised even him.
Croft turns away from the photographs and goes back downstairs. In the stuffy living room, they are all waiting, and for a moment as he returns to his place near the doorway Croft gets the feeling that he has been lured there on false pretences. He brushes the thought away, sits down on the uncomfortable wooden chair. The hour passes, and at the end of it Croft cannot remember a single thing that has been said. People are standing, going out into the hallway, pulling on coats. As Croft moves to join them, he feels a hand on his arm. It is Richard Symes.
“Some of us have clubbed together to buy you this,” he says. “Your work means a great deal to us here. We’re hoping this will help you find your feet again.”
He hands Croft a package, a small but heavy something in a red-and-white bag. He knows without having to be told that it contains a camera. The gift is so unexpected that he cannot speak. Symes is smiling but it looks like a snarl, and finally it comes to Croft that he has been drugged, that this is what has been wrong all along, it would account for everything.
Drugs in the Bud.
Bennies in the beer.
It’s the only thing that makes sense. Fourboys was right.
Outside, he feels better. The air is cold, bright as a knife. The sensations of nausea and unreality begin to recede. Croft walks smartly away, away from the house, along Sydenham Park Road and all the way to the junction with Dartmouth Road. He stands there, watching the traffic, wondering how much of the past hour was actually real.
The camera is a Canon, a top-of-the-range digital. It is not a hobby camera. Whoever chose it knew exactly what they were getting.
He has given up asking himself why this has been done for him. Having the camera in his hands is like coming alive again. He remembers the dream he had before he was in prison, his idea of giving up the police stuff and going freelance
He has been taking photographs of the boy, Alexander. They are in the old L
eegate shopping precinct just over the road. The boy is in a T-shirt and clean jeans, it is all perfectly harmless. When Croft returns the boy to the pub afterwards, Sandra is behind the bar. There is a complicated bruise on her upper arm, three blotches in a line, like careless fingerprints.
Croft has a bank account now, with his dole money in. He has filled in a couple of application forms for jobs. One is for a cleaning job with Lewisham Council, the other is for a shelf stacking job at Sainsbury’s. He can afford to buy a drink at the bar.
“Why is the pub called the Old Tiger’s Head?” he asks Sandra McNiece.
“It’s from when it was a coaching inn,” says Sandra. “Tiger used to be a slang word, for footman. Because of the bright costumes they wore.”
“Is that right?” Croft says. Croft briefly imagines a life in which he asks Sandra McNiece to run away with him. They will travel to Scotland, to Ireland, wherever she wants. He will take photos and the boy will go to school. He does not dare to take the daydream any further, but it is sweet, all the same, it is overwhelming.
“That’s boring,” Alex says. “I think it’s because they once found a tiger’s head inside the wardrobe. A mad king killed him and brought him to London, all the way from India.”
Sandra laughs and ruffles his hair. “What funny ideas boys have,” she says. “What are you doing in here, anyway? You should be upstairs.”
Croft buys a small folding table from the junk shop at the end of Lee Road that sells used furniture. He places objects on the table – an empty milk carton, two apples, an old Robinson’s jam jar filled with old pennies he found at the back of the wardrobe – and photographs them, sometimes singly, sometimes in different combinations. He places the table in front of the wardrobe, so the objects are shown reflected in the oval mirror. Croft experiments with taking shots that omit the objects themselves, and show only their reflections. At first glance, they look like any of the other photos Croft has taken of the objects on the table. They’re not, though, they’re pictures of nothing. Croft finds this idea compelling. He remembers how when Douglas Fourboys was stoned he became terrified of mirrors and refused to go near them. “There are demons on the other side, you know,” he said. “They’re looking for a way through.”
“A way through what?”
“Into our world. Mirrors are weak spots in the fabric of reality. Borges knew it, so did Lovecraft. You have to be careful.”
“You don’t really believe this stuff, do you?” Croft knew he shouldn’t encourage Fourboys, but he couldn’t help it, his stories were so entertaining.
“I believe some of it,” Fourboys said. “You would too, if you knew what I knew. There are people who are trying to help the demons to break through. They believe in the rule of chaos, of enlightenment through pain, you know, like the stuff in Hellraiser and in that French film, Martyrs. They call themselves Satan’s Tigers.” Fourboys took a coin out of his pocket and began swivelling it back and forth between his fingers. “If you knew how many of those sickos were on the loose it would freak you out.”
The next time the boy comes to visit him in his room, Croft shows him how to set up a shot, then lets him take some photographs of the Robinson’s jam jar. Afterwards, Croft takes some photos of Alex’s reflection. He has him sit on the edge of the bed in front of the mirror.
“Try and make yourself small,” Croft says. “Pretend you’re sitting inside a cupboard, or in a very cramped space.”
The boy lifts both his feet up on to the duvet and then hugs his knees. In the mirror shots he looks pale, paler than he does in real life. It’s as if the mirror has drained away some of his colour.
“What’s in there?” Alex says. He’s staring at the chimney alcove, at the built-in cupboard that Croft has been unable to open.
“I don’t know,” Croft says. “It’s locked.”
“Perhaps it’s treasure,” says the boy.
“If you can find out where the key is, we can have a look.”
“I know what it’ll be.” Alex grins, and Croft sees he has a tooth missing. “It’ll be the tiger’s head.” He throws himself backwards on the bed and makes a growling noise. “I bet that’s where they’ve hidden it.”
“Isn’t it time for your tea yet?” Croft says.
“I’m scared of tigers,” the boy says. “If they come on the TV I have to switch off.”
That night, Croft dreams of Richard Symes. There has been a break-in at Symes’s house and there are cops everywhere. They’re trying to work out if any valuables have been stolen.
Symes’s throat has been cut.
There is no sign of Ashley Symes, or anyone else.
At his next meeting with Symes, Croft is able to tell him he’s been offered the shelf-stacking job. Symes seems pleased.
“When do you start?” he says.
“Next Monday.” He wonders if Symes will say anything to him about a burglary at his home, but he doesn’t. Instead, Symes asks him how he’s getting on with his new camera.
“It’s great to use,” Croft says. “The best I’ve had.”
“Why don’t you bring some of your work with you to show us when you come on Tuesday? I know Ashley would love that. Bring the boy with you, too, if you like.”
How does Symes know about Alex? For a moment, Croft feels panic begin to rise up inside him. Then he remembers Symes knows the McNieces, that it was Symes who found him his room. “I couldn’t,” Croft says. “He’s only eight. His mother wouldn’t allow it.”
“What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her. It would be an adventure for him. All boys love adventures.”
Croft says he’ll think about it. He thinks about himself and Alex, walking down the road like father and son. On his way back to London Bridge Station, Croft buys Alex a present from one of the gift shops jammed in under the railway arches near Borough Market, a brightly coloured clockwork tiger with a large, looped key in its side. It is made of tin plate, made in China.
The journey from London Bridge to Lee takes seventeen minutes. As he mounts the stairs to his room, he meets Sandra, coming down.
“I’ve just been trying to find you,” she says. “I found this. Alex said you were looking for it.”
She holds something out to him, and Croft sees it is a key. “It’s for that cupboard in the chimney alcove,” she says. “We’ve not opened it since we’ve been here, so God knows what’s in there. Just chuck out anything you don’t need.”
“That’s very good of you,” Croft says. He searches her face, for tiredness or bruises, anything he can hate McNiece with, but today he finds nothing. He thinks about asking her to come up for a coffee but is worried that his offer might be misconstrued. He closes his fingers around the key. Its hard, irregular shape forms a core of iron at the heart of his hand.
It is some time before he opens the cupboard. He tells himself this is because he has things to do, but in reality it is because he is afraid of what he might find inside. Late afternoon shadows pour out of the oval mirror and rush to hide themselves in the corners and beneath the bed. As the room begins to fill up with darkness, Croft finds he can already imagine the stuffed tiger’s head, the mummified, shrunken body of a child, the jam jar full of flies or human teeth. When he finally opens the cupboard it is empty. The inside smells faintly sour, an aroma Croft quickly recognizes as very old wallpaper paste. The wallpaper inside the cupboard is a faded green colour. It is peeling away from the walls, and in one place right at the back it has fallen down completely. The wooden panel behind is cracked, and when Croft puts his fingers over the gap he can feel a faint susurrus of air, a thin breeze, trapped between the wooden back of the cupboard and the interior brickwork.
Croft puts his whole head inside the cupboard and presses his opened mouth to the draughty hole. He tastes brick dust, cool air, the smell of damp earth and old pennies.
He closes his eyes and then breathes in. The cold, metallic air tastes delicious and somehow rare, like the air inside a cave. He exhales, pus
hing his own air back through the gap, and it is as if he and the building are breathing together, slowly in and out. It is then that he feels the thing pass into him, something old that has been waiting in the building’s foundations, in the ancient sewer tunnels beneath the street, or somewhere deeper down even than that. Its face is a hideous ruin, and as Croft takes it into himself he is at last granted the knowledge he has been fumbling for, the truth of who he is and what he has done.
Strange lights flicker across the backs of his closed eyelids, yellow stripes, like the markings on the metal tiger he bought for the boy near Borough Market.
You are ready now, says a voice inside his head. Croft realizes it is the voice of Ashley Symes.
* * *
And in the end, it is easy. Both McNieces are downstairs, working the bar. Alex is alone in the living room of the first-floor flat. The carpet is a battleground, strewn with Transformers toys and model soldiers. The tin-plate tiger is surrounded by aggressive forces. The TV is playing quietly in the background.
When Croft sticks his head around the door and asks if Alex would like to come on an assignment with him, the boy says yes at once. The boy knows the word “assignment” has to do with photography, because Croft has told him so.
“Where are we going?” Alex says. It is getting on towards his bedtime, but the unexpectedness of what they are doing has filled him with energy.
Croft knows that unless he is very unlucky the boy’s absence will not be noticed for at least three hours.
“To visit some people I know,” Croft says. “They keep a tiger in their back garden.”
The boy’s eyes grow large.
“You’re joking me,” he says.
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