He had seen the man on several occasions, along with others, going in and out of Berenice’s house: one arm, he noted (anxious to take in every detail), the hand of which was clenched around the knife, had a thin gold chain suspended from the wrist: the bicep bulged beneath the short sleeve of the sweatshirt. On the other wrist, equally decorous, was a silver-strapped watch. The man gazed fraternally in his direction, the nostrils flared, the teeth, visible as he panted, reminding him of Isaacson’s, each projecting at a different angle. He indicated the party-wall behind his back, announcing, companionably, ‘I’m trying to get in.’

  ‘Where?’ Maddox said.

  ‘Berenice’s.’ He spoke with a lisp: in his twenties, muscular, the knife, flat-bladed, indicating the wall and then the street. ‘The window’s locked. I can climb in from there.’

  ‘How did you get in?’ Maddox enquired, civility, he concluded, taking the lead from his intruder, his principal concern.

  ‘The front door was open. Berenice owes me money. She won’t pay up. I’m going to fucking kill her.’

  ‘Why not try her door?’ he said, civility, again, he concluded, to the fore: something of the sort, his tone suggested, happened almost every night. On the other hand, he recalled the poker-work wood panel beside Berenice’s bell: the snarling Dobermann head, the five-second warning: impropriety, crime: compassion: love!

  ‘She won’t let me in,’ something unreasonable in her behaviour suggested by his voice. ‘She won’t pay up. I’ll fucking kill her and that fucking Isaiah,’ an inference Maddox might share in his distress.

  ‘You can’t get into her house from here,’ he said.

  ‘I can reach it from your window.’ He indicated it once again.

  ‘It’s too far away,’ Maddox said: a logistical enterprise in which he might play a vital part. ‘You’ll never reach across.’

  ‘Have you got the thing that unfastens it?’ the man crossing to the window, glancing out, then, reminded, turning back to the room. ‘I can get in through the roof as well. I was trying your trap-door when you came upstairs.’ He gestured to the landing.

  ‘It only leads into the roof space,’ Maddox said.

  ‘There’s a trap-door that lets you onto the roof. Berenice has one. I can get in there. Have you a chair or a pair of steps? I’ll easily reach up.’ Already he was on the landing, leaping up at the dislodged panel.

  ‘I’m sorry. I can’t help you,’ Maddox said. ‘Either you leave or I’ll call the police,’ he added. ‘I can’t say fairer than that.’

  ‘Fuck the police,’ the man said. ‘Just get me a fucking ladder.’

  ‘I’ll unlock the front door. I’ll leave it open for you to go out,’ he said.

  ‘Just get the fucking steps, man,’ still leaping, his trainer-shod feet pounding on the landing. ‘Nobody knows I’m here,’ gasping, the hole fully revealed, the panel thrust aside.

  ‘They’ll know you’ve come over the roof,’ he said.

  ‘Just get the fucking steps. She won’t let me in at the front. She owes me fucking money.’

  ‘Why not try the back?’

  A foolish suggestion: collusion, on his part, evident again.

  ‘Her back window’s got a grille. Like the front. Just get the fucking steps,’ switching the knife from hand to hand as he leapt up at the space again.

  ‘I could ring her doorbell,’ he said.

  ‘No way, man. She knows I’m coming. Get the fucking steps. Or a chair. I’ll leave you alone after that.’ Already he was going down the stairs, arriving at the bottom, blocking Maddox’s way, looking into the room off the hall, failing to see the choice of four appropriate chairs arranged around the table by the rear window. ‘Get the fucking ladder,’ the knife pointing at him now, companionability no longer a negotiable matter.

  ‘I want you to leave,’ Maddox said, ‘by the door,’ feeling, demonstratively, in his pocket for the key.

  ‘The fucking door was open, man!’ reasonableness, if only the vestige of, still to be deployed.

  ‘I want you to leave,’ Maddox said, he merely an adjunct, his manner suggested, of the logistics involved. Fear, of a familiar nature, brought the heat up around his neck. This he had felt before, he reflected. ‘So what’s the diff?’ he said, surprisingly, aloud. He had begun to relax. For a moment, confusingly, he thought of Taylor.

  ‘I only want to see Berenice for five fucking minutes. It’s no shit to you, man. She owes me fucking money.’

  ‘How much?’ he enquired.

  ‘A lot.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘You got it, or something?’

  ‘I wondered how much it was worth to get yourself arrested.’

  ‘I want a fucking chair. I can reach up from a chair. I’ll tell her I climbed up a drainpipe.’ Moving closer, he blocked the way to the door.

  Pausing on the next-to-bottom stair, Maddox saw the veins swelling at the back of the man’s hand, the muscle swelling, too, on his lower arm: sweat ran into the man’s eyes, and into the top of his shirt. Closer to, he was aware of the discoloration of the man’s eyes. Saliva had crusted white at the corners of his mouth. The smell of the man’s body came to him as the knife was pressed against his chest. He was increasingly aware, too, of the intimacy which the incident had introduced, a closeness to someone greater than that he had experienced with his brother, with Viklund, with anyone recently he had known, other than Simone and, before her, Charlotte.

  ‘Back up.’

  Maddox turned, removing the pressure of the knife from his chest, feeling it raised, lengthways, across the back of his neck. He’s not serious, or he would have applied the point, he thought, nevertheless moving upwards.

  ‘Faster. No fucking funny stuff,’ the man had added.

  ‘Go ahead,’ he said, lamely, not sure what he meant. Turning to him, he added, ‘How many years will you get? Fifteen? If you’ve got any form it could be more.’

  The man was breathing through his nose, his lips closed, his head level with his chest.

  He’s thinking whether to do it or not, he reflected.

  ‘Your fingerprints are all over the place. The window, the trap-door, the banister,’ looking into the dilated, reddened eyes.

  ‘Got any money?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘How much do you want?’

  ‘Give me fifty.’

  ‘I haven’t that much.’

  ‘Thirty.’

  ‘Twenty.’

  ‘Twenty.’

  ‘Ten.’

  ‘Just give me some fucking money!’ The knife pointed at his chest.

  Maddox felt in his back pocket: there he had a wallet: he wasn’t sure how much was in it, certainly more than ten.

  ‘Don’t do anything fucking stupid. Just give me the fucking money.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Don’t call the fucking police.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘If you do I’ll be fucking back.’

  ‘Right.’

  Getting, he reflected, into Berenice’s habit: infectious behaviour on every side.

  He drew the wallet out. Concealing its contents, he drew out a ten-pound note.

  He wondered why he was doing this: the man, just as easily, could appropriate the wallet. On the other hand, he was negotiating with a malleable witness: something to be gained on either side, as something to be lost. They were coming to an agreement, negotiating a contract (a world of contracts: caveat emptor). Weren’t all contracts, to some degree, one-sided, expediency the guide?

  On the other hand (again), here was an opportunity to bring his own contract, unilaterally, to an end, the instrument rising at his throat: an optimum solution. He held out the note.

  ‘You fuck me up and I’ll be fucking back.’

  ‘Sure.’ He gestured to the banisters, the overhead trap. ‘I’ll leave your fingerprints untouched.’

  ‘Give me another.’ The man’s hand enclosed the note.

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘Another ten.’

  ‘No deal.’

  ‘Five.’

  ‘I haven’t a five-pound note,’ looking for the first time directly into the man’s eyes, evenly, unblinking: kill me now, he might have said: kill me and take the wallet, his own eyes filling with moisture. He blinked. ‘Take the ten and think you’re lucky. Don’t come back again.’

  ‘I know where you live.’

  ‘Next to Berenice.’

  ‘Fuck me up, I’ll be back,’ the man moving down the hall, removing the chain from the door, trying the handle. ‘It’s locked.’

  ‘I’ve got the key,’ following him, the proprieties of the contract they had concluded preoccupying him unduly: even now, even now, not too late to bring it to an end.

  Taking out the key, he unlocked the door. The man stepped outside.

  The door to Berenice’s house opened at precisely the same moment: a black figure came out. The man beside Maddox gave a shout, darted across the forecourt of Maddox’s house, vaulted the wall into the forecourt of Berenice’s, reaching the door as it was slammed shut from inside. ‘Open this fucking door, you cunt! I want that fucking money!’ screaming, his intruder, kicking at the door, beating it, kicking it, beating it again. ‘I’ll come in and fucking kill you, you cunt! Open this fucking door!’ a voice responding, inaudibly, from inside.

  ‘I should go while you have the chance,’ Maddox said, his calmness increasing, stepping into his forecourt, calling across. He wiped his neck, the sweat pouring into his collar, his hand, as he withdrew it, smeared with blood. He felt the skin beneath his chin: blood, he now saw, was dripping on his chest. In turning to the knife on the stairs the blade must have made an incision. Irritated by his touch it began to sting, a burning sensation.

  ‘Open this fucking door. I just want to talk to you,’ a relative lowering of volume. ‘I’m here to get my money,’ the window opening above his head, Berenice’s formidable head protruding: gaunt, the blonde dyed hair dishevelled.

  ‘I’ve called the police, you cunt. They’re coming,’ dropping, each word, like rocks, below.

  ‘You owe me fucking money. You and that fucking Isaiah.’

  Leaning out of the window further, glimpsing Maddox for the first time, her next remark diverted: ‘Call the police,’ she said. ‘Tell them he’s got a knife. This man is threatening to kill us,’ no interrogative, ‘Right.’

  ‘Come down, Berenice. I only want to talk,’ the voice more conciliatory than ever.

  ‘Go fuck yourself,’ Berenice’s head withdrawing, her further appeal to Maddox, ‘Call the police. Tell them he’s got a knife,’ the window, having been raised, drawn down.

  The figure was leaving: he slammed the gate against its hinges, a contraption already damaged from previous assaults, walking backwards, calling to Maddox, ‘I’ll kill the cunt, once I fucking get her. And that fucking shit inside,’ starting to run, still calling, the words no longer audible, accompanied by the sifting sound of his trainer-shod feet against the pavement.

  As Maddox turned back to his door the upstairs window reopened. Berenice’s head once more emerged.

  ‘Have you called the police?’ more threat than enquiry.

  ‘I haven’t,’ he said.

  Another contract, he prospected, to exchange.

  ‘We haven’t called them, either. We will,’ she went on, ‘if he comes again. Right?’

  ‘Right,’ he said.

  ‘So we haven’t called them.’

  ‘We haven’t,’ he said.

  The first civil words they had ever exchanged: things looking up, he reflected.

  The head was withdrawn: before the window was closed a renewal of complaint, directed, presumably, to Isaiah inside: ‘I’m talking to the cunt next door,’ followed by an inaudible response, and then, definitively, ‘The cunt next door. All right?’

  A vibration of glass indicated the window was now secured.

  In the bathroom he washed the cut, examining it in the mirror: a light incision, like a thread of red cotton, drawn unevenly, and several inches long, around the front of his neck. He put on antiseptic, waiting for the blood to congeal, a peripheral event on the edge of a catastrophe but not embracing it, returning downstairs, carrying the step-ladder from behind the kitchen door to the landing, opening it out, climbing up, looking into the roof space, returning to the kitchen to find a torch, returning upstairs, aware of how defeated he felt.

  No sign that the outer trap-door leading directly onto the roof had been disturbed, he replaced the landing trap-door and, taking the steps and the torch, went back to the kitchen.

  Domestic felicities: wondering on the propriety, should the opportunity occur, of living with Simone, an increasing source of speculation, reassuring himself that the back door was secure, returning upstairs, closing the front bedroom window which the intruder had opened as far as the burglar locks, and went back to his room where, only moments before, it now seemed, he had been peacefully sitting.

  He was relieved – glad – he was still alive (a satisfactory piece of negotiating there), his well-being, nevertheless, increasingly, he concluded, in the hands of others. This satisfaction, however, when he finally sat down, had not communicated itself to his body: he picked up the block of wood, the paper, the pen, sitting there, vibrating: a heavier convulsion took place inside his chest: blood – he fingered it lightly – still oozed from his neck. And yet, the strange relief he was experiencing alongside the agitation: the awareness that whatever the distress he was reacting to it was not an otherwise indiscernible encounter taking place inside his head.

  Unsure, previously, what he might have been driven to write, he found the words coming easily: a resurrection, of a kind, however tenuous, he thought, and cheap at the price, the consequences, however, not immediately ascertainable. Other visits, for instance, were possible from next door. How would Isaacson have reacted (taken the knife and plunged it in himself?). Did this take him any further into his imaging of Taylor’s experience? Was Doctor Death, alias Cavendish, alias Norman, a comparable intruder? Was Taylor? Was everything, in short, nearer its end? How much further, in his own case, did he have to go?

  16

  The model was, ironically, black, and insisted on wearing shorts: a muscular, moustached and bearded figure who had entered the room wearing a broad-brimmed, black felt hat, angled sharply to one side, a cloak, also black, and khaki trousers with bulging, buttoned pockets at the calves, his feet shod in boots which reached above his ankles.

  Naked, but for his shorts, he appeared aloof, glaring at the women with a cornered, baleful expression, Maddox finding it difficult to disassociate this aura from the figure itself, and difficult, too, to distinguish between the shadows and the colour of the skin, this a rationalisation, he concluded – as was his inability to follow the articulation of the hips inside the shorts – of his longing for the sense of dispossession which had characterised the young Kosovan mother, a sense subtler, however, than the one characterised by humiliation, truculence and pride, before him now. He wished he hadn’t come (had mentally given up on the life-class as he had on the support group), fingering the stinging at his neck which had irritated him throughout the night, staining the sheets, the pillow, his pyjama top, wondering where the blade had been, what contact it had had with other blood before penetrating his skin.

  His own indignity, too, he’d been assessing: the privileges – his own as well as those he shared with others – which enhanced his life, looking across at Genius as, groaning, scuffing his booted feet, he charcoaled the sheet of paper before him, other, identical sheets, screed with charcoal, his earlier efforts, strewn on the floor beneath his own and adjoining easels: a curious, white-skinned, exclamatory version of the half-naked figure in the centre of the room, Genius, his and the model’s eyes, without a trace of mutual recognition, occasionally meeting – the self-preoccupied, occluded gaze of the damned.

  His attention – he was drawing very little – drifted to the women – past Duncan in his beret (playing the part), seated disconsolately on his donkey, rarely attempting to mark his paper despite a perplexed, obsessive scrutiny of the model – the stoical, intrepid, fearsome women who drew uncomplainingly, devoutly, devotedly (they might so easily have been in church, in chapel, principally the synagogue), hand-maidens, hand-men, none of them a virgin, the former spoken for by men, the latter, presumably (Duncan alone in doubt), by women, penetrated, the majority, penetrating, presumably, the other two.