It was brought to him. A mug with painted flowers and a chip at the rim was passed through the grille gate, then the door was locked again. He cradled the mug and the heat from it seeped into his hands.
Later, a woman screamed and the noise was like a rabbit with a cat at its throat, and echoed between the blocks. It frightened him, unsettled him, and he swallowed the last of the tea, put the mug down behind her grille gate and went inside flat thirteen, his place, locked the door and pushed up the bolt.
That night he slept on the floor, dressed, hungry, his shoes still laced on his feet. He did not know where his journey took him, or care. He had fallen so far. The sleep was deep, from exhaustion, and his mind was black, blank, and he did not dream – small mercy – of whom he had been and where he had once walked and what had been said of him. On the worn, stained carpet that was pocked with cigarette burns he slept away the night, and he did not know of the road that now stretched in front of him.
Chapter One
Malachy Kitchen lived behind the locked and bolted door.
The autumn days had come and gone from the
Amersham. The winter weeks had visited the estate, freezing the rainwater pools on the level three walkway, with chilled winds funnelled up the stairs, and round the flaking concrete corners of the blocks.
Spring beckoned and in the window-boxes of a few ground-floor units daffodils bloomed, and where there had once been gardens, now used as short-cut paths, there were a few battered crocuses. The seasons had changed but the torment in his mind had not calmed.
For all the hours, days, weeks and months he could, Malachy stayed inside the cell that was flat thirteen on level three in block nine. The doctors from his past, and the psychiatrist, had had trite names for his condition and explanations; they had not allayed his feeling of disgust for himself and the shame that had come with his actions – all a long way back. Inside the flat, behind the locked door and with the bolt pushed home, he felt secure. Everything that had gone before