Chapter 7

Alley

The bar is not much farther. Ellen can see its neon sign beyond the next junction, throwing colour across the wet pavement. The rain has diminished to a drizzle so fine that she feels it on her face before she can see it in the light. Water still runs along the kerbs. The air smells of wet concrete, damp earth and drains that have been asked to carry more than they were designed for.

Across the road, a floodlight illuminates the church noticeboard:

“THOU CANST NOT SEE MY FACE: FOR THERE SHALL NO MAN SEE ME, AND LIVE” - Exodus 33:20

In the biblical account, God speaks these words to Moses, who has asked to see his glory. Sheltered in a cleft in the rock, Moses is permitted only a glimpse as God passes, for no one can look upon the face of God and live.

The words fill the space where Ellen remembers jumble sales and requests for donated winter coats. Beneath them, a smaller panel gives the times of the Sunday services. She shifts the holdall strap away from the sore place on her shoulder and keeps walking.

The walk has given her time to think, although for much of it thinking has consisted of accepting the same facts repeatedly. This is happening. She has left Tod. She has no money, nowhere to sleep and three bags containing everything she has managed to take. There is no misunderstanding waiting to be cleared up, no version of the evening in which she returns to the flat and discovers that the people in the bed have become somebody else. She has kept walking while those facts gradually cease to feel like information about another woman.

By the time she sees the sign, her thoughts have begun assembling themselves around practical requirements. A bed. Food. Somewhere to wash. She would like to be clean almost as much as she would like to be dry, but neither wish seems likely to be granted without money. Every route through the problem leads back to it. Her wages are not due until the end of the month. Whatever arrangement she makes now will have to be paid for with something she can obtain today.

Ellen likes numbers. They give her something definite to work with when everything else depends upon another person’s mood. One plus one remains two whether she has slept, whether she is crying, whether the person asking the question thinks she ought to be grateful for being asked. She begins estimating the cost of a cheap room, then adds enough for food. Nothing ambitious. Pizza, perhaps. Fries. A drink. She rounds up because discovering she is a little short at the end of all this would be unbearable.

“A cheap hotel,” she mutters. “At most it’ll be…” She holds the estimate in her head, adjusts it and adds the food. “Call it that. That should do it.”

Tips are immediate. Cash she can count before leaving, something that does not require another night to pass or a payroll date to arrive. The physicality appeals to her. She wants money she can touch, put in a pocket and take out again to establish that it is still there. At the moment, too many things she thought she possessed have proved dependent upon somebody else allowing her to keep them.

She works through the usual range of tips. The little ones are frequent. Larger ones arrive less reliably, often after she has spent half an hour being patient with somebody whose principal contribution to the conversation is that she ought to smile. She chooses a cautious average and divides the amount she needs by it. The calculation occupies enough of her attention to ease the pressure in her chest.

“Thirty-seven,” she says. “Forty to be safe.”

She finished the night shift only a few hours ago and is not expected back until six this evening. If she can persuade somebody to let her cover the day shift, she will have one long stretch in which to earn the money. By two tomorrow morning she will have been awake for the best part of two days, most of them spent working or getting herself from one place to another. She considers that without enthusiasm. It will be brutal. But forty tips across all those hours is possible, and possible is considerably better than anything else she has come up with.

Then she can sleep. She returns to that part whenever the calculation threatens to become overwhelming. Work, collect the money, find a room, sleep. The sequence has an end. She runs it again, as though repetition might persuade the day to follow the arrangement she has made for it.

The bar’s steel shutters are down, their graffiti shining with rain. She does not have a key. She never locks up. For a moment she stands looking at the front, then reminds herself that this is what she expected and, in a limited way, what she wanted. Nobody inside means she can reach the toilets without being seen like this. She knows the code for the rear entrance, the one used for deliveries, rubbish and cigarettes. She knows the alarm code too.

She turns into the service alley. She has never approached the back of the bar from this direction, but she has watched delivery trucks use it and knows where it must lead. The neon disappears behind the corner. Damp brickwork closes around her, with rusting fire escapes above and rainwater dripping from somewhere she cannot see. Dumpsters line one wall. Their contents have risen above the edges, wet cardboard collapsing around bags that nobody has bothered to push farther down. The smell reaches her before she is alongside them: old food, soaked packaging and urine. She breathes through her mouth.

“You need to get the hell away from me!”

Ellen stops with the suitcase still swinging slightly beside her leg. The voice has come from close by. She turns carefully and finds a man sitting beside a dumpster, almost concealed beneath blankets and flattened cardboard. His coat has been stained until its original colour is no longer clear. A tangled beard spreads beneath the peak of a faded baseball cap, and an almost empty bottle hangs from one hand.

He is not looking at her. His attention moves through the darkness farther along the alley, following something she cannot identify. She waits, unsure whether he knows she is there.

“I see what you are,” he says.

The words are clear. Whatever he has been drinking, it has not blurred them into the vague complaint she might have expected. Then his gaze snaps towards her. “Don’t think I don’t see it. I got enough bad luck without you bringin’ more Shades my way.”

Her grip tightens around the suitcase handle. Shades means nothing to her. Bad luck does. She looks past him, finds only the alley and the wet surfaces within it, then looks back at his face. He seems angry, but the anger carries a conviction she cannot dismiss as easily as she would like.

She has no wish to ask what he means. There are questions for which obtaining an answer merely creates another difficulty, and she has enough already. She turns towards the bar and resumes walking. After a few steps she quickens her pace, feeling the man’s attention behind her even when she can no longer hear him.

At the rear entrance she stops and lets out a slow breath. Another dumpster stands beside a row of overflowing bins. The service door is scarred and rusted around its lower edge, familiar enough to offer a little reassurance despite the surroundings. She reaches towards the keypad, then looks down at the bags.

She cannot take all of them inside.

The moment somebody sees them, the questions will begin. Is she all right? Does she have somewhere to stay? She knows she can talk to them, doesn’t she? Every question will mean well. Each will require her to turn the night into a story she can tell, to say Tod’s name and Amy’s name and explain why everything she owns is wet. She is not ready to hear herself doing that. It is difficult enough to know what has happened without making it available for other people to imagine.

She searches the space beside the door. Behind the dumpster there is a narrow gap between the metal container and the wall. Nobody passing through the alley would see the bags there unless they knew to look. It is not secure. She understands that. Leaving her possessions beside rubbish while she works is not a sensible arrangement, but sensible arrangements seem to require resources she no longer has. For now, hidden will have to be enough.

She lifts the suitcase onto the dumpster’s closed metal lid. It lands with a dull thud. The holdall follows, then the backpack. By the time she has finished, her shoulders burn and her arms tremble. She stands with her hands hanging at her sides, waiting for the muscles to stop complaining so that she can ask them to do something else.

The drizzle ceases while she is standing there. For a moment the alley becomes merely an unpleasant place in which she has some things to sort out. The absence of rain makes such a difference that she almost mistakes it for encouragement. Perhaps she can still get through today. The thought is too modest to count as hope, but it helps.

She opens the bags and begins choosing what she needs. Most of the clothes are damp. Some are worse, especially those she collected from the park, but there are things she can wear once she has warmed herself enough to stop shaking. Her toiletries have survived. She finds them, checks the lids and places them in the backpack with a change of clothes. The suitcase remains open beneath the holdall while she shifts things around, trying to leave the wettest items where they will not soak everything else.

She has just closed the backpack when voices enter the alley.

At first they are distant, the words carried unevenly between the buildings. Two men, speaking with the calm expectation that somebody else will do as instructed. Ellen recognises the manner before she catches enough of the conversation to identify them.

“C’mon, old man. Let’s go. You can’t stay here. You know how this works. There’s a shelter four blocks away.”

“Can’t bring drink in the mission. Just let me finish what I got. I ain’t hurting no one.”

“Get up. Don’t make me ask again. Today’s not a good day to be on the street.”

“Knew it. Fucking knew it.” The homeless man’s voice rises. “I see ’em congregating. Knew somethin’ shit was coming. Why can’t you fuck off and leave me alone? Look at me. I ain’t got nothing left to give.”

Ellen stands very still beside the bags. The conversation pauses. When the man speaks again, his voice has changed, becoming quieter and more purposeful.

“Anyway, you don’t want me. There’s someone else back there.”

Her stomach contracts. She looks at the service door, then at the open suitcase, as though one of them might provide a reason the words cannot apply to her.

“Go check it out.”

Boots splash through the puddles. The sound grows closer. Ellen turns towards the keypad too quickly, catches the suitcase with her elbow and feels it move before she can stop it. The case slides across the wet lid. She reaches after it, misses the handle and watches it tip over the edge.

It catches a bin on the way down. Clothes spill from the open case as the bin falls, strikes the concrete and sends a metallic crash through the alley. The footsteps accelerate.

Ellen drops to her knees and begins gathering things. A shirt, a pair of trousers, something she cannot identify before she pushes it into the case. Her hands work without a plan. All she can think is that she must get the clothes off the ground before anybody sees them.

“Stop what you’re doing and show me your hands!”

Two policemen stand at the bend. Their uniforms are dark against the brickwork, but she can see badges, radios and the equipment on their belts. The older officer is in front, one hand raised, the other close to his waist. The younger man stands a little behind him, looking from Ellen to the open case and back again.

She freezes with her hands among the clothes.

“I said, hands where I can see them.”

She looks up. For a moment the alley is overlaid by another narrow space, another man standing where she needs to go. Her stepfather’s breath fills the hallway, whiskey and sweat close enough that turning her face does not help. His fingers close around her wrist. Did I say you could leave? Behind him, a door opens just far enough for her stepbrother to look out. He is younger than she is, almost a teenager. He watches helplessly, and she knows he understands that neither of them can stop this.

Ellen blinks. Wet concrete presses through her knees. She draws her hands out of the suitcase and holds them where the officer can see them.

“Good,” he says. His voice is low and husky. “Now raise them higher. Get up and step away from the case.”

She obeys carefully, struggling to stand without lowering her hands. The sleeves of her cardigan hang heavily from her wrists. The older officer approaches while the younger one watches the gaps between the dumpsters, as though somebody else might emerge. His posture is stiff. He looks new, Ellen thinks: still learning what to suspect, still conscious of everything attached to his belt.

The older man shows no uncertainty. A thick handlebar moustache moves as he studies her. His thumbs settle against his belt, and the smell of cigars reaches her, stale and concentrated. It catches at the back of her throat.

“I’m going to ask you some questions,” he says. The measured tone lasts just long enough for her to begin listening. Then he raises his voice. “And don’t you dare lie to me. You hear?”

She flinches before she can prevent it. His eyes narrow, examining the movement. Then he looks at the suitcase and the clothes around it.

“Who’d you steal this crap from?” A small smirk disturbs his moustache. “And don’t try telling me it’s yours.”

“I didn’t steal anything.” Her voice comes too quickly. She hears that and cannot slow it. “They’re my clothes. I just left my boyfriend. That’s all I have.”

He watches her without responding. Ellen waits for the explanation to reach him, then realises he has already made room for it as another thing she might say. His gaze drops deliberately down her body. It stays there long enough that she cannot pretend he is inspecting something else.

A metallic snap makes her jump. The younger officer reacts too. A baton has appeared in the older man’s hand, extended with a movement he seems to have made without looking.

“Rodriguez!”

“Yes, Chief?”

“What’s the booty?”

Rodriguez hesitates. “The what?”

“The bags. What’s in the damn bags?”

The younger man crouches beside the suitcase. He moves the clothes carefully, almost apologetically, although Ellen cannot tell whether that is consideration or simple reluctance to touch wet belongings. She watches him lift a sleeve, set it aside and look beneath it. Her mind keeps insisting that this is not happening, despite the thoroughness with which it continues.

“It looks like clothes and stuff, Chief.” Rodriguez straightens and rubs the back of his neck. “I think she’s telling the truth.”

For half a second, Ellen believes that will be enough.

The older officer steps past him and begins moving the contents with the baton. He flicks a sock aside, turns over a shirt and pushes at a bundled hoodie. There is no care in it, no apparent concern with finding anything in particular. Then the tip catches a small piece of white lace.

He lifts it. Her bra unfolds and hangs from the metal.

Ellen stares at it. It is cheap, ordinary underwear, something she has washed, worn and put away without thinking about it. In his hand it becomes an object she cannot bear to look at and cannot make herself stop looking at.

“This yours?” he asks.

Heat reaches her face. She nods.

His expression changes. “I asked you a question. Show me some respect and answer so I can hear.”

“Yes,” she says. “Sorry. Yes. It’s mine.”

He looks her over again while the lace hangs between them. “Well, Officer Rodriguez, seems we’ve got ourselves a little dilemma.”

“A dilemma, Chief?” Rodriguez shifts his weight.

“Exactly. A suitcase full of what could be stolen clothes, and a suspect who says they belong to her.” He turns the baton, making the fabric move. “How can we be sure?”

Ellen looks at Rodriguez. The question is directed towards him, but whatever answer the older man wants has already been decided. She can feel the shape of it approaching.

The baton rises. He brings the lace beneath his nose and inhales.

For a moment the smell of the alley disappears. She is seventeen, standing inside the house with its yellowed walls and smoke-stained ceiling. She has come home late. Her stepfather looks away from the television, and his nostrils flare as he catches perfume and cigarette smoke on her clothes. He leans towards her, smelling her as though the truth is something he can obtain directly from her skin. Then his hand strikes her mouth, splitting her lip before she understands that he has moved.

Did I say you could leave?

Her stepbrother is in the doorway. He looks at her, then quietly closes the door. He cannot watch any longer. She learns, with the taste of blood spreading through her mouth, that obedience will not always prevent the next blow. Sometimes the purpose is simply to establish that he can do it.

The alley returns. The officer is still holding her underwear near his face. Rodriguez’s jaw tightens. Disgust, perhaps. She wants it to be disgust. He says nothing.

Her stepbrother was a child. At least he had that.

“What we need,” the older man says, lowering the baton, “is a way to prove she’s telling the truth.”

Ellen looks towards the entrance to the alley. Nobody appears. She looks back at Rodriguez, trying to make him understand the request without saying it. He avoids her eyes.

The older officer comes closer and holds the baton out. “Take it.”

Her hand moves before she has properly considered the instruction. She pulls the lace free, brushing the wet metal with her fingers. The bra feels altered by what he has done with it. She holds it loosely, unable to put it away.

He begins to walk around her. “What’s your name?”

The politeness is worse than the shouting. She swallows, then swallows again. “Ellen.” She hears how little sound she has made and adds quickly, “Ellen Persephone.”

“Ellen Persephone.” He repeats it as though testing how it feels to say. “That’s a pretty name.”

He leans close enough for her to smell his breath. “Ellen.”

She wishes she had given him any other name.

“Let me ask you something. Assuming these really are your bags, would you say they’re precious to you?”

She knows there is a wrong answer waiting, but she cannot work out where it is. “Yes. They’re all I have.”

“Exactly. That’s what I thought.”

His boots scrape behind her. She hears his belt shift and a small jingle as he rises and settles on his toes. The movements have an awful familiarity: a man preparing himself, comfortable in the knowledge that nobody present will interrupt.

“Now imagine somebody took those precious possessions. You’d want them back, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes—” Ellen begins.

“And you’d want the law to help. Somebody like me.”

She looks at Rodriguez. His face has become pale. He knows, she thinks. He knows what this is, and knowing has not made him move.

The baton strikes her thigh.

The blow is controlled, delivered with no wasted movement. Pain spreads through the muscle, and her leg gives a little beneath her. She cries out and tries to regain her balance.

“What did I say about using your words?”

Her stepfather’s fingers are in her collar. Whiskey reaches her face. The memory is not complete enough to be something she can examine; it is a collection of sensations arriving where the alley ought to be.

“Show me respect,” the officer says. “Answer the question.”

“Yes!” she cries.

“That’s better.”

The baton touches her thigh again. This time it moves slowly instead of striking. Cold metal travels against the wet fabric, and Ellen discovers that waiting for pain can leave even less room for thought than pain itself.

“Here’s the problem,” he says near her ear. “I can’t quite work out how to prove these are yours. But I believe in you, Ellen. I think you can find a way to convince me and Officer Rodriguez that what you’re holding belongs to you.”

The metal presses against her inner thigh.

Rodriguez stands with his jaw clenched and his fingers moving slightly beside his belt. He is unhappy. She can see that much. She cannot use it.

Her thoughts become very small. There is the instruction, the thing she thinks it means, and the possibility of another blow if she fails to understand quickly enough. She begins working at her cardigan. Her fingers miss the first button twice. She opens it at last, then the next, holding the bra awkwardly while she tries to make her hands perform an ordinary task.

The wet cardigan drags against her arms as she removes it. She lets it fall onto the suitcase. Her T-shirt clings to her body, made thin by the rain. She puts her fingers beneath the hem and starts to lift it.

“Good girl,” he whispers.

Then somebody speaks from behind them.

“Hello. Is that The Washington Post?”

The voice is calm, clear and so unrelated to what is happening that Ellen initially cannot understand why she has heard it. Her hands stop. The older officer moves slightly away from her, no more than a fraction, but enough for her to feel the absence of his breath.

“I have a news story you’ll be very interested in,” the stranger continues. “You’ll want to hurry.”

Someone is there. The thought reaches her slowly. Someone who has seen enough to speak and has not chosen to look away.

“The alley behind Jack’s Bar. That’s right. On Fifth.”

“What the hell do you think you’re doing, you little prick?” the older officer demands.

Footsteps approach at an ordinary walking pace. “I don’t have time to explain all the details,” the stranger says into his phone, “but it involves two WPD officers. If you’re quick, you might be able to ask them yourselves.”

“I could arrest your ass. Don’t do anything stupid.”

The footsteps stop. “And what a fantastic photograph that would make,” the stranger replies. “Perhaps I’ll get the front page.”

Ellen lowers her shirt. She keeps hold of its hem for a moment, needing something definite beneath her fingers. Nobody speaks. She can hear water dripping nearby and the officer breathing through his nose.

His radio breaks into static.

“Chief Anderson, we’ve got a ten-sixty-six over on Seventh. I need you and Officer Rodriguez to assist.”

Anderson takes the radio from his belt. “Copy. This ten-sixty-six—is that the Sunny Meadow incident?”

Rodriguez stiffens. Ellen sees it because she is watching for every movement now. Whatever Sunny Meadow means, both men recognise it.

“Yes, Anderson. I can confirm that.”

Anderson remains still with the radio in his hand. His baton hangs beside his leg. For a moment she can see him deciding which obligation he considers more pressing, and she cannot quite believe that leaving her alone requires a decision at all.

“C’mon, Rodriguez,” he says abruptly. “You heard. We need to get our asses over to Seventh.”

The younger officer looks at her. There is something apologetic in his face, a brief attempt to communicate what he has not been willing to say or do. She has no place to put it. He turns and follows Anderson towards the bend.

Before leaving, Anderson looks back. “You both had better hope we don’t cross paths again. This isn’t finished.”

He means it. Ellen does not need to analyse his expression to know.

“Goodbye, Chief Anderson,” the stranger says. “Officer Rodriguez.”

Anderson hesitates at the sound of his name, then disappears around the corner. Their footsteps continue for a while. Ellen listens until she can no longer distinguish them from other sounds beyond the alley.

Her knees begin to shake. She bends to retrieve the cardigan, needing its weight over her shoulders, but putting it on proves unexpectedly difficult. One sleeve folds beneath her arm. She pulls it free and pushes her hand through, still gripping the bra. The buttons are beyond her. She leaves the cardigan open.

Footsteps approach from behind.

A hand rests lightly on her shoulder. “Turn around,” the stranger says, his voice low.

Her breath catches. Something inside her gives way before she can prepare for it, and the first sob comes out with enough force to hurt. She puts her hands over her face, the lace caught between her fingers, and tries to contain the next one. It comes anyway. Her body folds around the effort of crying, and the alley becomes too close: rotten food, wet concrete, oil and urine, everything she has been trying not to smell.

Why her? What has she done?

They are old questions, worn through by use. She asked them as a child beneath a table, listening to a belt crack through the air. She asked them while deciding what to take when she finally left home. She has asked them in quieter forms ever since, usually while making another practical arrangement that would allow her to avoid asking aloud. Work more. Sleep less. Save enough. Get the qualification. Keep going until there is somewhere better to arrive.

She has kept going. She is standing beside a dumpster with her clothes on the ground, and she cannot understand what further effort is supposed to change.

“Please,” the stranger says gently. “It’s going to be all right. They’re gone.”

She turns towards him, her head lowered. Tears and mucus run together over her mouth and chin. She cannot clear them quickly enough to make speaking possible. The need to appear composed has become another task she has failed, and she no longer has the strength to attempt it.

Through blurred eyes she sees his shoes. Then fingers touch beneath her chin, and her whole body stills.

The contact is light. His hand smells of soap. That small, clean smell reaches her with an importance she would not know how to explain. She allows him to raise her head.

He is tall, strongly built, and looking at her without the expression she expects. There is no visible disgust, no curiosity about the humiliating details, and none of the pity that makes her feel she ought to apologise for being in front of somebody. He searches her face as though he is trying to establish whether she can hear him.

“Everything is going to be okay,” he says.

“No.” The word breaks in her throat. She wipes her face with the damp sleeve. “It isn’t. It never ends.” She tries to breathe, fails, then manages a little air. “It’s never going to end. I accept that now.”

His expression changes.

“No.”

She looks up sharply.

“No,” he repeats, quieter, but with the same certainty. “It ends now. It ends today. Do you hear me?”

Ellen draws back a little. He notices immediately, and the intensity leaves his face.

“Tell me,” he says more gently. “Tell me things are going to be okay. I want to hear you say it.”

She lowers her head. His fingers lift her chin again, carefully enough that she could move away if she chose.

“Say it. Everything is going to be okay.”

She looks into his eyes. He appears to believe what he is asking her to repeat. For a moment that is something she can borrow without having to decide whether it belongs to her.

“It’s…” Her lips tremble. “It’s…”

“Okay,” he says softly.

She closes her eyes and takes an uneven breath. “It’s going to be… okay.”

The sentence feels strange in her mouth. She has not made it true, but saying it has interrupted the other sentence, the one she has been repeating for years. Her tears begin to slow. A small, uncertain smile reaches her face.

“That’s it,” he says. “You’re doing great.”

She nods. Her body is still shaking. She is still cold, and the bags are still beside the dumpster, but she has enough room inside herself to notice those things separately again.

“Now let’s get you and your stuff indoors.” His tone becomes practical. “You look as though you could use a hot drink.” A grin appears. “Between you and me, I have cookies.”

A laugh escapes her, abrupt and wet. She is startled by the sound. She wipes her face again and succeeds mainly in moving the tears around.

“Here,” he says. “Hold this for me.”

He puts his phone into her hand. She takes it automatically. A faint voice murmurs from the speaker, reminding her that his call is still connected. Before she can decide whether she ought to say something to whoever is listening, dry fabric touches her cheek.

She flinches. He is using the sleeve of his sweater to wipe her face, doing it with the same matter-of-fact care somebody might give to removing rain from a window. There is no pause in which she is expected to become embarrassed enough to refuse. Ellen stands holding his phone in one hand and her bra in the other, unable to account for the last few minutes by any sequence she understands.

He bends and gathers the scattered clothes. A shirt is shaken once, folded loosely and put into the case. He checks beneath the bin, retrieves another item and rights the container. Then he closes the suitcase and rearranges the other bags so that he can carry all three.

“C’mon,” he says, heading for the service entrance.

The door is open. A bulging black rubbish bag holds it that way. Ellen has no idea when it opened, although she realises she has spent much of the last few minutes looking only where somebody told her to look.

At the threshold he nudges the bag with his boot. “Sorry, would you mind putting that in the bin? I was taking it out when I saw you.” He adjusts the holdall against his shoulder. “I’ll put your things in the boiler room. They should dry out in there.”

The ordinariness of it unsettles her almost as much as the kindness. Rubbish needs taking out. Wet clothes need somewhere warm. Only a few moments ago Anderson stood beside her with the baton, and now this man is discussing chores as though the world can be returned to a manageable scale.

“Wait,” she calls.

He stops and looks back.

“Who are you?”

Something flickers across his face, a brief distraction that does not seem entirely related to the question. Then he smiles and makes an awkward attempt to scratch the back of his neck while holding the bags.

“Sorry. I have a strange habit of…” He pauses. His attention appears to go somewhere else for a moment before returning. “Sometimes I talk to people. Strangers. In a way that probably makes it sound as though I’ve known them longer than I have.”

Ellen studies him. She cannot think of an answer to that.

“My name’s Seth,” he adds. “I’ve just started here. Day shift. Today’s my first day.”

Her brow tightens, then gradually relaxes. He works here. There is a reason he has come out of that door, a reason he knows where to put things, a reason for the rubbish bag. She had not realised how much she needed a reason.

“Hello, Seth.” Her voice is still rough. “I’m Ellen. I work here too. Nights.” She hesitates. “Usually nights.”

“Nice to meet you, Ellen.”

He says it as though this is a perfectly acceptable way for two colleagues to be introduced, then turns and carries her bags inside.

Ellen approaches the rubbish and stops. Her hands are full. She looks down at the bra, then at the phone. Seth’s phone. She is still holding it, and somebody is still speaking on the other end.

The Washington Post.

Have they heard all of it? The crying, the things she said, the little effort of repeating that she would be all right? She imagines somebody sitting at a desk with a receiver against their ear, waiting for the story to resume. She raises the phone, uncertain whether to apologise or explain that Seth has gone inside.

“On the sound of the third beep,” says a mechanical voice, “the time will be six seventeen and thirty seconds.”

She stands motionless.

“Beep. Beep. Beeeeep.”

Ellen ends the call. Her arm lowers slowly until the phone hangs beside her leg.

The Talking Clock. Not a newsroom. Not somebody taking notes, not somebody sending a photographer, not anybody at all who knew what was happening in the alley.

She looks towards the open door where Seth has disappeared with her bags, then back at the screen. He stood in front of Anderson, gave the address, named the uniforms and continued walking towards them, with nothing on the other end of the line but a recorded voice telling him the time.