looks like it is ready to fall down; another looks brand new, as if it was built yesterday. I figure the houses in this area are, like many, slowly getting replaced. New replacing the old. The new

then slowly becoming the old. Then the new becoming so old it

becomes condemned. Hard to imagine, I guess, that any house

becomes that way when it’s getting built. But I suppose the same thing happens with people too. It’s the cycle of life.

I strain to read the numbers on the letterboxes, but at last

I park outside and walk up the driveway, the murky light from

the streetlights detailing more of the house with every footstep.

Warped weatherboards and chipped concrete tiles, the windows

smeared with grime, or cracked, The windowsills uneven. There is no garden, just grass and weeds and mud. The concrete foundation and steps leading up to the front door are flecked green with

mildew, and it’s the first time I’ve become aware that concrete can actually decay. There are no lights on inside. If a house could look as if it has cancer and is in its dying stages, then it’s this one.

When I knock on the door the house creaks and I have the

sudden fear it might topple over. Somebody inside yells for me to go away. I keep knocking, using the heel of my hand to keep the impact loud and annoying. Another thirty seconds go by. Then a minute.

‘Jesus Christ, man, what the hell do you want?’ The voice

comes from behind my knocking.

It’s turning into one of those long days when I’m not in the

mood for personality clashes, so instead of telling him to open up the goddamn door before I kick it in, I grab a business card, identify myself and tell him I have a few questions.

‘I’ve had questions all day,’ he answers. ‘People only ever come to my door if they want something. I’m sick of people wanting

something. How about what I want, huh? I want people to leave

me the hell alone. Jesus, doesn’t it look like I want to be alone?

You see any invites?’

‘It won’t take long.’

“No’

‘That’s a real shame,’ I say, ‘because it’s cold out here. I’m going to have to keep myself warm somehow, and the best way

to do that is to keep pounding on your door.’

There is a small shudder as the door catches, then frees from

the frame before swinging open.

The man confronting me is the man I saw pictured earlier this

evening in the article about the retired caretaker. I reach out and offer Sidney Alderman my card, but he leaves me hanging.

‘I know who you are,’ he says. ‘You’re the cop who had to bury his daughter.’

He spits the comment at me as though it’s some kind of insult, and I’m unsure how to respond. The fact this man remembers me

makes me shudder. Two years ago he covered Emily’s coffin with dirt. How the hell did he remember? The way he says it makes

me want to hit him.

He grins, his aged face stretching dozens of wrinkles in dozens of directions. He has a few days’ worth of grey stubble; his hair is dishevelled, as are his clothes. He looks like he just spent a week in the desert. If I saw him two years ago I don’t recall it. His eyes are unreadable in this light.

He smells of cheap beer and even cheaper vodka, and there is

another smell there too, something I can’t identify, but it makes me think of old men hanging out in hospitals and homes gathering a collection of old diseases.

“I’m looking for your son,’ I say.

Only you’re not a cop any more, are you, Tate,’ he says.

‘ You don’t have to be a cop in this world to want to look for somebody,’ I point out. ‘That’s why they have phonebooks.’

‘Then let your goddamn fingers do the walking,’ he says, and

starts to close the door.

I stop it with my foot.

‘What happened?’ he asks. ‘You get sick of the donuts?’ He

starts to laugh, then scratches at his belly as if he has just come up with a real humdinger. ‘No, they fired you, right? Why was that again?’

He keeps grinning at me. His teeth look like they haven’t seen fluoride in years.

‘Sure is a nice place you got here,’ I say — and hell, maybe the day isn’t long enough after all, because here comes that personality clash. ‘You in the middle of renovating?’

‘Yeah. It’s a real fucking palace,’ he answers, but his laughter doesn’t have an ounce of humour in it. It’s as though he’s heard other people do it, maybe on TV or on the radio, and he’s trying to imitate it. ‘Somebody died, right? Isn’t that why they fired you?’

‘Where’s your son?’

SNobody knows. The police have been here all afternoon,

right? They’ve gone through this place and asked me the same

damn things over and over, and my answer didn’t change for

them and it ain’t changing for you.’

‘Your boy is guilty of something. Things will go easier for him if he starts helping himself here. Tell me where he is and I can start to help him.’

‘You’re a fucking joke,’ he says, sneering for a few seconds and then grinning like the madman he’s turning out to be. I feel sick knowing this is the man who covered my little girl’s coffin with dirt. Sick he was anywhere near her.

‘You can’t hide him for ever.’

‘You finished?’

I think about Bruce Alderman and how he was behaving while

we dug up the coffin, and I think about him driving away in

the stolen truck with the coffin sliding off the back and hitting the ground. I think about how he has perhaps behaved his entire life. This man was his role model. Maybe the world should be

thankful there were only four corpses found in the lake and not a hundred.

‘You know, I am going to find him,’ I say, ‘only now it’s going to be the hard way’

“I don’t fucking care about making your life easy’

“I’m not talking about hard for me. You should have given him

up, Alderman.’

Instead of getting angry Alderman starts to laugh again. ‘You’re just a fucking cliche,’ he says. ‘And on top of that, you have no authority here.’ He composes himself immediately, as if the laugh was as fake as the concern he’s displayed over the years filling in and digging out holes. ‘They never found him, did they?’

‘What?’

“You know what I’m talking about.’

I slip my business card back into my pocket. I’m glad he didn’t take it. I don’t want this guy touching my card; I don’t like the idea that my name could be in print anywhere inside this house of the damned — worse, I don’t like the idea of his fingers brushing against mine.

“I’ll find your son,’ I promise.

‘Ya think so?’

“I know so.’

He shrugs, as if it doesn’t bother him either way. Maybe it

doesn’t. Maybe he really doesn’t care, and that’s always been the problem for his son. Already I can see Bruce Alderman being

found not guilty on a plea of insanity. With this man as his father, there isn’t a jury in the world who would be unsympathetic.

It’s been a pleasure,’ I say, and I back away from the door,

keeping my eyes on him. He stares at me as if he is trying to unlock some great mystery. The only mystery here is how somebody so

antisocial can have worked these grounds for so many years. He Closes the door.

“I’m ashamed at myself, angry with him. I came here to

intterview the bastard yet the only thing I achieved was to let him crawl under my skin. And I can’t take it out on either of us.

I reach the footpath, unlock the car and swing the door open.

And that’s when it happens. I sense it immediately. It’s a sprinkling of goose bumps that covers my arms and the back of my neck, and at first I think it’s just a residual feeling that anybody leaving that house would get; but then something touches my back. I know

it’s a gun even though I’ve never felt one pushed there before.

‘S-s-slowly,’ he says, ‘just move s-sl-low-ly’