As soon as he was home he dashed into the front room to discover what the choked sound was. The battery must be low; the mobile wasn't ringing so much as rattling. Even when he leaned on the cushion the ragged noise refused to be suffocated. When the cushion began to twitch as if the phone was struggling to reach him, he left the room and slammed the door.

He couldn't eat much. He couldn't concentrate on music or reading or even the news. It seemed impossible that he could hear the half-dead sound through both the cushion and the door, but wherever he was in the house, he did. Was lack of sleep inflaming his senses? When the words of a Victorian chapter grew as restless on the page as he heard the mobile was, he retreated to bed.

At last his ears gave up straining to listen for activity in the house. In the early hours he awoke and hastened downstairs to return the mobile where he'd found it. He used its glow to search the pa.s.sage for the owner. It wasn't she, however, who wobbled upright in the gloom, raising a face so withered it was featureless except possibly for eyes and parting tattered greenish lips to mouth "Give it back." As some of a hand groped to catch hold of him he managed actually to waken. He wanted to think he was still asleep, because he heard a whisper somewhere near him.

He had to force himself to extend a hand into the dark. Once the light was on he identified the noise as the death rattle of the mobile. This wasn't rea.s.suring; it sounded far too like a sluggish almost formless repet.i.tion of the phrase from his dream. As he struggled to believe he was imagining the similarity, he heard a feeble thumping downstairs-a knocking on a door.

He kicked away the bedclothes and stumbled onto the landing. The sound was in the front room. Something was b.u.mping weakly but persistently against the far side of the door. He ran downstairs and flung the door wide, sweeping the object backwards. At once it began to crawl towards him in the midst of a dim flickering greenish stain that was the only illumination in the room.

He'd had enough. The police could deal with its antics however they liked. He dashed upstairs to drag yesterday's clothes on. Having picked up the mobile between finger and thumb, he dropped it in an outer pocket of his jacket and left the house. He mustn't be fully awake. He was making for the local police station before he remembered it had been closed last year.

The one by the school was the closest, half an hour's walk away. As he tramped in that direction, the houses shrank around their loudness. Beyond some of the open windows sleepless televisions flared, while other rooms were packed with discoloured silhouettes jigging to pile-driver music. Once a car screeched past him, full of boys who looked too young to be out so late and drawing behind it the smoke of a fat shared cigarette. He was glad not to recognise any of the boys, but shouldn't the police be dealing with them? If the absence of the law meant the police station was shut for the night he would leave the mobile outside.

The buildings closest to the railway were derelict but not untenanted. He had the impression that the district was as teeming with life in the heat as a corpse. The intermittent light of a single streetlamp apparently too tall to smash plucked at the rooms beyond the broken windows and brought shapes that might be alive lurching forward, dodging back. It kept spilling into the tunnel and retreating from the dark. Whatever lay in there was almost asleep if not worse; he couldn't judge whether the scrawny form was twitching with the instability of the dimness or with a trace of life. Sharpe didn't know of any other route to the police station from this side of the track. He ran through the pa.s.sage, almost colliding with the opposite wall in his eagerness to avoid the denizen. He was within inches of the exit when a whisper, or at least the fragments of one, halted him. "Give it back."

Had he really heard it? The mobile in his pocket hadn't rung or stirred. As he faltered at the end of the tunnel he heard footsteps wandering towards him. A woman whom he seemed to recognise was drifting from side to side of the street. He didn't move until he was certain, by which time she was mere yards away. "I believe this belongs to you," he said.

Her eyes glimmered dully with the light across the railway as she turned to look, first at him and then at the mobile. "I've got one," she mumbled.

"You wanted this. You've asked for it often enough."

"I've never."

"Then who's been calling," Sharpe demanded, "if not you?"

An uneasy glint began to surface in her drugged eyes. "She used to. She told me she was shooting up when she was meant to be at school."

"If it's your daughter you're talking about I rather think that's your responsibility." Sharpe was provoked into raising his voice over the approaching screech of wheels. "You can't expect us to keep children at school without the support of their parents."

"You're a teacher, are you? Maybe you're the kind that made her stay away." Just as accusingly the woman said "She called me when she od'd. She didn't know where she was and I couldn't find her in time."

Sharpe was about to retort to all this when the woman's gaze strayed past him. Her eyes widened and her face sank inwards from the mouth as she staggered backwards. She grew aware of the car full of boys, and her expression changed. Sharpe didn't know whether she tripped on the kerb or deliberately stepped in front of the vehicle. She sprawled in the roadway in time for the front wheels to crush her legs and her head. Her body jerked as the rear wheels caught her, and then she was utterly still.

As the car put on speed Sharpe dashed into the road, then turned away hastily, clapping a hand over his mouth. When he was able to speak without choking he pulled out the mobile and dialled 999. "Woman run over," he gabbled. "Boys on drugs in a car." He gave the location and ended the call and fled into the tunnel.

He was suffering more guilt than he understood. He only knew he didn't want to be linked with the woman's death. The glow from the mobile tinged the walls green and made them quiver nervously as he ran towards the light at the far end. When he glimpsed movement at the foot of the wall midway through the pa.s.sage, he was able to imagine it was caused by the shaky glimmer. Then the shape produced thin limbs like an awakening spider and floundered towards him. He didn't know whether it seized his ankles with fingernails or needles or the tips of bones. It sounded barely able to produce a whisper that rustled like litter. "Yours now," it said.

The Winner (2005)

Until Jessop drove onto the waterfront he thought most of the wind was racing the moonlit clouds. As the Mini left behind the last of the deserted office buildings he saw ships toppling like city blocks seized by an earthquake. Cars were veering away from the entrance to the ferry terminal. Several minutes of clinging grimly to the wheel as the air kept throwing its weight at the car took him to the gates. A Toyota stuffed with wailing children wherever there was s.p.a.ce among the luggage met him at the top of the ramp. "Dublin's cancelled," the driver told him in an Ulster accent he had to strain to understand. "Come back in three hours, they're saying."

"I never had my supper," one of her sons complained, and his sister protested "We could have stayed at Uncle's." Jessop retorted inwardly that he could have delayed his journey by a day, but he'd driven too far south to turn back now. He could have flown from London that morning and beaten the weather if he hadn't preferred to be frugal. He sent his windblown thanks after the Toyota and set about looking for a refuge on the dock road. There were pubs in abundance, but no room to park outside them and no sign of any other parking area. He was searching for a hotel where he could linger over a snack, and realising that all the hotels were back beyond the terminal entrance, when he belatedly noticed a pub.

It was at the far end of the street he'd just pa.s.sed. Enough horns for a bra.s.s band accompanied the U-turn he made. He swung into the cramped gap between two terraces of meagre houses that opened directly onto the pavement. Two more uninterrupted lines of dwellings so scrawny that their windows were as narrow as their doors faced each other across two ranks of parked cars, several of which were for sale. Jessop parked outside the Seafarer, under the single unbroken street lamp, and retrieved his briefcase from the back seat before locking the car.

The far end of the street showed him windowless vessels staggering about at anchor. A gust blundered away from the pub, carrying a mutter of voices. The window of the pub was opaque except for posters plastered against the inside: THEME NIGHT'S, SINGA-LONG'S, QUIZ NIGHT'S. He would rather not be involved in any of those, but perhaps he could find himself a secluded corner in which to work. The lamp and the moon fought over producing shadows of his hand as he pushed open the thick shabby door.

The low wide dim room appeared to be entangled in nets. Certainly the upper air was full of them and smoke. Those under the ceiling trapped rather too much of the yellowish light, while those in the corners resembled overgrown cobwebs. Jessop was telling himself that the place was appealingly quaint when the wind used the door to shove him forward and slammed it behind him.

"Sorry," he called to the barman and the dozen or so drinkers and smokers seated at round tables cast in black iron. n.o.body responded except by watching him cross the discoloured wooden floor to the bar. The man behind it, whose small eyes and nose and mouth were crammed into the s.p.a.ce left by a large chin, peered at him beneath a beetling stretch of net. "Here's one," he announced.

"Reckon you're right there, cap'n," growled a man who, despite the compet.i.tion, would have taken any prize for bulkiness.

"You'd have said it if he hadn't, Joe," his barely smaller partner croaked past a hand-rolled cigarette, rattling her bracelets as she patted his arm.

"I'm sorry?" Jessop wondered aloud.

She raised a hand to smooth her shoulder-length red tresses. "We're betting you went for the ferry."

"I hope you've staked a fortune on it, then."

"He means you'd win another, Mary," Joe said. "He wouldn't want you to lose."

"That's so," Jessop said, turning to the barman. "What do you recommend?"

"Nothing till I know you. There's not many tastes we can't please here, mister."

"Jessop," Jessop replied before he grasped that he hadn't been asked a question, and stared hard at the beer-pumps. "Captain's Choice sounds worth a go."

He surveyed the length of the chipped sticky bar while the barman hauled at the creaking pump. A miniature billboard said WIN A VOYAGE IN OUR COMPETt.i.tTION, but there was no sign of a menu. "Do you serve food?" he said.

"I've had no complaints for a while."

"What sort of thing do you do?"

"Try me."

"Would a curry be a possibility? Something along those lines?"

"What do you Southerners think goes in one of them?"

"Anything that's edible," said Jessop, feeling increasingly awkward. "That's the idea of a curry, isn't it? Particularly on board ship, I should think."

"You don't fancy scouse."

"I've never tried it. If that's what's on I will."

"Brave lad," the barman said and thrust a tankard full of brownish liquid at him. "Let's see you get that down you."

Jessop did his best to seem pleased with the inert metallic gulp he took. He was reaching for his wallet until the barman said "Settle when you're going."

"Shall I wait here?"

"For what?" the barman said, then grinned at everyone but Jessop. "For your bowl, you mean. We'll find you where you're sitting."

Jessop didn't doubt it, since n.o.body made even a token pretence of not watching him carry his briefcase to the only unoccupied corner, which was farthest from the door. As he perched on a ragged leather stool and leaned against the yielding wallpaper under a net elaborated by a spider's web, a woman who might have been more convincingly blonde without the darkness on her upper lip remarked "That'll be a good few hours, I'd say."

"Can't argue with you there, Betty," said her companion, a man with a rat asleep on his chest or a beard, which he raised to point it at Jessop. "Is she right, Jessop?"

"Paul," Jessop offered, though it made him no more comfortable. "A couple, anyway."

"A couple's not a few, Tom," scoffed a man with tattoos of fish and less shapely deep-sea creatures swimming under the cuffs of his shabby brownish pullover.

"What are they else then, Daniel?"

"Don't fall out over me," Jessop said as he might have addressed a pair of schoolchildren. "You could both be right, either could, rather."

Resentment might have been a reason why Daniel jerked one populated thumb at a wiry wizened man topped with a black bobble cap. "He's already Paul. Got another name so we know who's who?"

"None I use."

"Be a love and fish it up for us."

At least it was Mary who asked in these terms, with a hoa.r.s.eness presumably born of cigarettes. After a pause Jessop heard himself mumble "Desmond."

"Scouse," the barman said it wasn't clear to whom or even if it was an order. Hoping to keep his head down, Jessop snapped his briefcase open. He was laying out papers on the table when the street door flew wide, admitting only wind. He had to slap the papers down as the barman stalked to the door and heaved a stool against it. n.o.body else looked away from Jessop. "Still a student, are you, Des?" Betty said.

He wouldn't have believed he could dislike a name more than the one he'd hidden ever since learning it was his, but the contraction was worse. Des Jessop it was the kind of name a teacher would hiss with contempt. It made him feel reduced to someone else's notion of him, in danger of becoming insignificant to himself. Meanwhile he was saying "All my life, I hope."

"You want to live off the rest of us till you're dead," Joe somewhat more than a.s.sumed.

"I'm saying there'll always be something left to discover. That ought to be true for everyone, I should think."

"We've seen plenty," Daniel grumbled. "We've seen enough."

"Forgive me if I haven't yet."

"No need for that," said Mary. "We aren't forgivers, us."

"Doesn't it make you tired, all that reading?" Betty asked him.

"Just the opposite."

"I never learned nothing from a book," she said once she'd finished scowling over his words. "Never did me any harm either."

"You'd know a couple's not a few if you'd read a bit," said Joe.

"Lay off skitting at my judy," Tom warned him.

For some reason everybody else but Jessop roared with laughter. He felt as if his nervous grin had hooked him by the corners of his mouth. He was wobbling to his feet when the barman called "Don't let them scare you off, Des. They just need their fun."

"I'm only . . ." Jessop suspected that any term he used would provoke general mirth. "Where's the . . ."

"The p.o.o.p's got to be behind you, hasn't it?" Betty said in gleeful triumph.

Until he glanced in that direction he wasn't sure how much of a joke this might be. Almost within arm's length was a door so unmarked he'd taken it for a section of wall. When he pushed it, the reluctant light caught on two faces gouged out of the wood, carvings of such crudeness that the female was distinguishable from her mate only by a mop of hair. Beyond the door was a void that proved to be a corridor once he located a switch dangling from an inch of flex. The luminous rotting pear of a bulb revealed that the short pa.s.sage led to an exit against which crates of dusty empties were stacked. The barred exit was shaken by a gust of wind and, to his bewilderment, what sounded like a blurred ma.s.s of television broadcasts. He hadn't time to investigate. Each wall contained a door carved with the rudiments of a face, and he was turning away from the Gents before the image opposite alerted him that the man's long hair was a patch of black fungus. He touched as little of the door as possible while letting himself into the Gents.

The switch in the pa.s.sage must control all the lights. Under the scaly ceiling a precarious fluorescent tube twitched out a pallid glow with an incessant series of insect clicks. There was barely enough s.p.a.ce in the room for a pair of clogged urinals in which cigarette b.u.t.ts were unravelling and a solitary cubicle opposite a piebald slimy sink. Beneath the urinals the wall was bearded with green mould. High up beside the cubicle a token window was covered by a rusty grille restless with old cobwebs. Jessop kicked open the cubicle door.

A watery sound grew louder an irregular sloshing he'd attributed to the cistern. He urged himself to the seatless discoloured pedestal. The instant he looked down, only the thought of touching the encrusted scabby walls restrained him from supporting himself against them. Whatever was gaping wide-mouthed at him from the black water, surely it was dead, whether it had been drowned by someone or swum up the plumbing. Surely it was the unstable light, not antic.i.p.ation of him, that made the whitish throat and pale fat lips appear to work eagerly. He dragged one sleeve over his hand and wrenched at the handle of the rickety cistern. As a rush of opaque water carried the mouth into the depths, Jessop retreated to the first urinal and kept a hand over his nose and mouth while he filled the mouldy china oval to its lower brim.

He dodged out of the fluttering room and was nearly at the door to the bar when he faltered. A confusion of angry voices was moving away from him. A clatter of furniture ended it, and a hoa.r.s.e voice he identified as Betty's ordered, "Now stay there." He was wishing away the silence as he eased the door open a crack.

The bar seemed emptier than when he'd left it. Two considerable men who'd been seated directly ahead no longer were. The stool hadn't moved from in front of the exit. Could the men be waiting out of sight on either side for him? As he grew furious with his reluctance to know, the barman saw him. "Food's on its way," he announced.

Mary leaned into view, one hand flattening her scalp, to locate Jessop. "Aren't you coming out? This isn't hide and seek."

When embarra.s.sment drove Jessop forward he saw that Daniel had changed seats. He was penned into a corner by the men from the abandoned table, and looked both dishevelled and trapped. "He was trying to see your papers, Des," Betty said.

"Good heavens, I wouldn't have minded. It isn't important."

"It is to us."

As Jessop resumed his corner Tom said, "Got a sweetheart abroad, have you? Was she the lure?"

"His bonnie lies over the ocean," Mary took to have been confirmed, and began to sing.

"No he doesn't," Jessop retorted, but only to himself while he busied himself with his tankard, which had been topped up in his absence. Once the chorus subsided he said guardedly "No, they're over here."

"How many's that?" enquired Joe. "Bit of a ladies' man, are you?"

"A girl in every port," said Tom.

"Not in any really," Jessop said, risking a laugh he hoped was plainly aimed at himself.

"Same with us," Daniel said and gave his fellows an ingratiating look.

The microwave behind the bar rang as if signalling the end of a round, which let Jessop watch the barman load a tray and bring it to him. Once the bowlful of grey stew had finished slopping about, Jessop had to unwrap the fork and spoon from their tattered napkin. He was spooning up a blackened lump when Betty said "What do you make of that then, Des?"

This struck Jessop as the latest of several questions too many. "What would you?"

"Oh, we've had ours. We gobbled it."

"Sup up, Des," Daniel advised. "You'll get plenty of that where you're going."

Was the dish Irish, then? Jessop seemed to have no option other than to raise the dripping lump to his mouth. It was either an unfamiliar vegetable or a piece of meat softened beyond identification, presumably in whatever pot had contained the communal dinner. "Good?" Mary prompted as everyone watched.

"Gum." At least the mouthful allowed him not to answer too distinctly. He swallowed it as whole as an oyster, only to become aware that his performance had invited however many encores it would take to unload the bowl. He was chewing a chunk that needed a good deal of it when Joe declared "If you're not a student I'm saying you're a teacher."

Jessop succeeded at last in downing and retaining the gristly morsel. "Lecturer," he corrected.