The Sudden Dark

Four

I knocked on the door and didn't know what to expect on the other side, other than the possibility of a kid named Kit Markwell with a pretty girl, nine thousand dollars scattered around, and a frightened look of consequence darkening his fresh face.

But there wasn't. The door to 91 Temple Court was opened by a tall man with hard forearms, spots of grey touching the temples of his thin brown hair, and a hard look in his angry colourless eyes. He was unshaven and ragged looking; his clothes sweaty and loose.

I looked at him a while—studied him, rather—until he spoke first in a sawdust voice. 'Well? What the bloody'ell you want then, selling insurance?'

'Pardon me, sir,' I said in my congenial policeman's voice, civil but weighted. 'I'm looking to talk to a girl named Madison Reed.'

He turned his eyes low over me. 'You a cop?'

I paused. I'd learned long enough on the job to know about speaking to bundles of dynamite like the man in the door—say the wrong thing, and it sparks the fuse. So I spoke carefully.

'It relates to an investigation, yes. But she hasn't done anything wrong, if that's what you're asking. I just need to speak to her about a matter of someone she might know. Is she here?'

His face didn't liven, and was lined deep enough to look as if it hadn't for a long time. 'Not here,' he said quick. 'Hasn't been here in ages.'

And with that he went to throw the door shut, but I stopped it with the blunt end of my hand and took a step inside.

The man stopped and turned at me. He didn't like that.

'I'm sorry, sir,' I said. 'I just need a few pieces of information before I can leave. It won't take more than a few minutes.'

'Don't have a few bloody minutes for coppers,' he said, barbed.

I went on anyway. 'You live here too, is that right?'

He nodded cautiously.

'What's your relation to the girl, if I might ask?'

He was silent. When he spoke, it was through thin lips and hard teeth. 'I'm her father,' he said simply.

I nodded. 'Your name is?'

'Clive. Clive Reed, if that's so bloody important. Am I under arrest or something now? Under suspicion? I have my goddamn rights.'

'Of course, sir. As I said, there's no investigation right now, just inquiries. Has your daughter been with a boy named Kit Markwell that you know of?'

Slowly his face turned to a harder mold of stone. 'Like I said, I haven't seen her for ages. I don't know what's going on in her bloody life.'

'You didn't know she had a boyfriend?'

After a moment, he said, 'He's the one you're looking for?' in a voice that sounded as if it had turned to ice. 'She run off with him?'

I didn't want to answer that, afraid I'd lit the spark.

Eventually, Clive Reed blew an airless breath and said, 'Look, I don't know where the hell Maddie is. She's a grown woman and she doesn't give a shit about me or anyone else. If she has a boyfriend, I wouldn't be bloody surprised if she wasn't stringing him along like she does everyone else. If you want to look for her, you can try a place called the Shooting Star. That's on Kings Cross. Look for the little slut there. Now please fuck off out of my house, would you?'

We said no other words of parting, and I was glad to be out of the Reed household, past the overgrown path to my car, out of the world of someone like Clive Reed. If I wasn't in his air another moment of my life, it would've been alright with me.

Already I was kicking myself for following along with such a nothing job, wondering if the distraction was worth it if it meant I'd be sharing space with men like him for the next couple of days.