“He isn’t here, Gid. He must have left with the others.”
Gideon stood in the middle of the living-room floor. He guessed that this space had once been used for living of some sort, at any rate—other than that, a short corridor led to a bedroom, a shower room and toilet, and he could see from here into the tiny kitchen opposite. The house made the barest provision for human existence, although he knew that judgement was a privileged first-worlder’s view. He and Lee had lived happily together in a flat smaller still. Square footage wasn’t the point.
There was certainly nowhere to hide. Nevertheless he waited, hands on his hips. “I don’t think so.”
Zeke turned round from another glance up and down the corridor, eyebrows on the rise. “Well, unless he’s planning to jump out of the loft to give us a Halloween scare—”
“There’s loft space?”
“I assume so. There’s a hatch in the bedroom, anyway.”
“Then we look.”
“Seriously?”
Gideon strode past him. He was annoyed with himself: he was a copper; he should have observed the hatch. He had absolutely no sense of his husband’s existence above him, though, not in the loft or the roiling grey-orange clouds or the glimmering star vaults beyond. The bedroom ceiling was low, but he’d still need a boost. “Give us a hand, Zeke.”
“So you can plant your size ten in it?”
“Coming from a record-breaking size fourteen, that’s rich.”
“Nonsense, Gideon. My feet, and all other parts of my anatomy, are in excellent proportion.”
Gideon’s jaw dropped a little. Mischievous Samhain spirits must have got into his brother tonight. “I’ll take your word for that,” he said, and carefully laid one boot into the double-handed stirrup grip Zeke was offering. “Right. Brace up—here I go.”
“Good Lord. It’s like lifting a tank.”
“Better than a tank and a half, which is why we’re doing it this way round. Save your breath for holding me still.” Gideon’s own parts were in proportion too, and included shoulders too broad for the hatch. It didn’t matter: he could see all he needed to with one sweep of the torch he carried from long-established policeman’s habit. The loft was bare, not even a pair of mouse eyes gleaming back at him to alleviate its dry deadness. “Nothing up here. Coming down.”
“Let’s head back to the last place where we were getting a signal and give him a call. Knowing Lee, he’ll have invited the film crew to the party, and they’ll be home by now, hip deep in the punch and mulled wine.”
But the truth was that Zeke didn’t know Lee. Had become a devoted brother-in-law to him, loved him with a generosity Gideon could never have predicted, but the bone-deep knowledge of him—heart, marrow, intermittently besieged soul—was Gideon’s alone. Only Gideon could read him, using the pores of his own skin, the follicles of his hair, the very soles of his great big copper’s feet... “Cellar space,” he said suddenly, stepping back from Zeke.
“I’m sorry?”
“Cellar space. If there’s a loft, why not a cellar?”
“It could have catacombs, for all we know. But I knew there was a loft because I’d seen the hatch. But there’s nowhere at all to hide a cellar entrance, let alone TV’s most popular psychic. Come on, Gid.”
There wasn’t a scrap of carpet in the house. There was only one large cupboard, a closet in the hall both Gideon and Zeke had checked twice. Like the walls, the floors were laid to concrete. Zeke was right, of course. It was time to go.
But the soles of Gideon’s feet were tingling. He drew a deep breath. He’d worked every day since midsummer to counteract the injuries he’d sustained in Falmouth, and had no regrets about his decision to steer clear of CID. He was only the village bobby of Dark, but his inspectors included him on teams and sent him to investigations beyond his official remit. His experience, running in tandem now with Lee’s gifts, made him a force to be reckoned with. He knew how to walk through a crime scene.
That was the one thing he hadn’t yet done. He’d entered the house as a casual, unobservant lover, a bit concerned that the place was in darkness, but still expecting to find Lee any second, packing up his kit and coming to meet him with a smiling, ferocious end-of-day hug. Ezekiel had done better than he had. Deliberately he set aside his growing fear. “Zeke, have we touched or disturbed anything since we came in?”
“Other than the loft hatch? No, I don’t think so. There’s nothing else in here to move.”
“Can you put all the overhead lights on for me, then? And once you’ve done that, stand clear?”
For a moment he thought Zeke would protest. Then his brow contracted. “You’re worried, aren’t you?”
“I’m sure there’s no need. But... yeah.”
“All right. Do what you need to do.”
Neon tube lights everywhere, as if someone had been determined to throw the ugliness of the house into the harshest possible relief. The glare made Gideon’s eyes ache, but it was what he needed, a dead blaze that allowed for no concealment. In the living room, Zeke was waiting, pressed obediently back against the wall. Gideon came to a halt just inside the door. “He was wearing the sweater Ma knitted for him for Halloween.”
“The day-glo orange one with the pumpkin head? She was thrilled that he was going to wear it on the show. Does he, er... does he love it as much as he told her he did?”
“Hates it, poor bugger. Brought him right out in a rash. I can see a couple of fibres from it on the floor.”
“Well, that’s normal, isn’t it? He must’ve been back and forth through here all day.”
“Yes, but...” Gideon scanned the room once more. Then he strode across to the far wall and crouched beside it. “It is not fucking normal,” he went on, voice tight, “for a fibre to be caught between the floor and the wall.”
“What? I don’t understand.”
“Nor do I. It’s set into the concrete.”