‘I’m not expecting the police.’
Cody wants to answer that he wasn’t expecting to be expected, but he chooses not to.
‘It’s just a routine call.’
There’s a long pause. ‘Okay. Go ahead.’
Cody waits for the door to be unlocked. When it isn’t, he realises he is being invited to continue the conversation over the intercom.
‘Er, this would be a lot easier face to face.’
Another pause. ‘Well… I don’t know who you are.’
Cody sighs loudly, then looks helplessly at Webley. She leans in.
‘Toby, it’s the police. Please open the door.’
‘Your voice just changed.’
‘There are two of us here, Toby. My name is Detective Constable Megan Webley, and my colleague is Detective Sergeant Nathan Cody. We just want a friendly chat. Is that okay with you?’
A few more seconds pass. ‘Okay.’
‘You’ll buzz us in?’
‘I’ll come down. I’ll need to see identification.’
The discussion ends. Cody and Webley exchange glances, then they wait.
When Toby eventually comes to the door, Cody sees that he is even skinnier than he had imagined. Toby’s T-shirt, emblazoned with a food-stained Batman logo, could hardly look less full if it were on a wire hanger. Milk-white arms hang from the centres of his wide sleeves like bell-ropes. His hair is dark and lank, flopping low over one eye in a Hitleresque style. The lenses of his thick-framed glasses are clouded with a film of grease and dust that surely must give him a world view that is either permanently romanticised or else filled with gloom and despair.
Cody puts on his most disarming smile, but it seems to make Toby even more wary.
‘I need to see—’
Before he can finish, the two detectives hold up their open ID wallets in unison. Toby bends forward and squints at the warrant cards, but Cody isn’t convinced he’d be able to read even the top line of an eye chart through those besmirched spectacles.
‘Do we pass the test?’ Cody asks.
‘Maybe. I still don’t know why you’re here.’
‘We just want to ask you a few questions. Nothing too difficult. We’re not putting together a team for University Challenge.’
Cody’s attempt to relieve the tension seems to have the opposite effect.
‘If this is about the accident, I already apologised for that. I offered to pay for the damage.’
‘Accident?’ Webley asks.
‘Yeah. When I hit that car. I know it was stationary, but I lost control. I couldn’t steer properly, and I didn’t have no brakes.’
‘Your car has no brakes?’
Toby blinks at her. ‘I don’t have a car. I can’t drive.’
Webley shakes her head. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t—’
‘My shopping trolley. It was heavy and I couldn’t control it on the slope. They shouldn’t have slopes like that at supermarkets. It’s dangerous.’
‘We’re not here about that, Toby. Come on, let’s talk about it inside.’
Toby shuffles from one leg to the other as though he’s desperate for a pee, but eventually he reaches a decision.
‘Uh, okay.’
He leads the way up a narrow creaking staircase, its carpet threadbare and darkened with dirt. Long cracks down the adjoining wall suggest subsidence. As he trudges up the steps, Toby frequently turns his head to check on the progress of the detectives. When he gets to the top, he pushes open a plain white slab of a door.
The open-plan area within consists of a small living space and a kitchenette. The place reeks of damp and stale food, but its most noticeable feature is the comics and magazines. There are stacks of them on every horizontal surface. There are patches of mould visible in the corners of the room, but most of the wall space is hidden behind posters of superheroes. Cody notices a replica of Thor’s hammer on one wall and Captain America’s shield on another, while on a windowsill is a green lantern belonging to, well, the Green Lantern. Next to an open graphic novel on the tiny dining table is a half-eaten meal of beans on toast and a glass of milk.
‘I just got home from work,’ Toby says apologetically.
‘Where do you work?’ Cody asks.
‘Coleman’s. You know it? The DIY place? It’s mostly just stacking shelves, but it covers my bills.’
Cody thinks that whatever Toby is paying in rent for this dump, it’s too much.
Toby dashes over to a couple of dining chairs, shifting his literature from them before dragging them over to the detectives.
