‘Where is he?’ My voice was calm. Non-threatening. Reasonable.
‘I don’t know. I told you I don’t know. He’d left here before I came.’ The skinny twat wasn’t struggling any more. After I’d cut him, he’d stopped being lippy. Was making out he wanted to be helpful. Only problem with that: he wasn’t helping. Not at all. I wanted answers and he wasn’t giving me them. Not the right answers anyway.
‘He lived here. In this flat.’
‘Yeah, I’d heard he had, but I never met him. He left before I moved in.’ He was crying again. Sobbing; his face screwed up, the blood mixing with his tears, running down his scraggy cheeks.
I sighed. Repeated the question. Reasonably. Keeping my anger in check.
‘Where is he?’
‘If I knew, I’d tell you.’ He was really sobbing now, shaking, his scrawny arms waving in the cold night air. It was getting colder by the minute. Up here on the roof of the tower block, the wind was stronger. Twenty-two storeys high, almost completely dark, I could barely make out the expression on his face, but I’d heard enough. If he knew the answer to my question he’d have told me by now. When I ask a question, people usually want to answer. Especially when there’s so much at stake.
I lowered my face closer, fixed his eyes on mine, making sure I had his full attention. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I believe you.’
He closed his eyes for a moment, his relief evident. ‘I’ll look somewhere else,’ I said. He was shivering, his flesh felt cold. He was naked and it was a cold night. Not exactly comfortable, but it had been the best way to find out what he knew. Very little, as it turned out. I took one hand away, flexed my stiffening fingers and he wailed with a fresh surge of terror.
‘Relax,’ I whispered, ‘I’ve still got you.’ I closed my hand on his ankle again, still dangling him upside down over the edge of the parapet. ‘I don’t need you any more,’ I said. ‘Time to say goodbye.’
I took both hands away, watched him disappear from my sight. He didn’t scream, or if he did it was whipped away on the wind. I looked over the edge, but it was too dark now to see anything.
When I reached ground level, walking down the stairwell, all twenty-two floors, I walked through the rear doors. I’d no desire to look at the body. I’d seen the effects of gravity on a naked human being before. Not from this particular block, but others just like it. It wasn’t pretty, but that wasn’t why I walked the other way. I’m not squeamish. It was dark now and by the time it got light the body would have been tidied up, taken away. Nothing worth seeing. I had more important things to do. This had been a dead end, but I had other ideas. Other people to see. I’d ask the same question. Someone knew the answer. I’d just have to keep on asking.
