Nothing Too Dangerous

AN UNKNOWN HUNGER

AN UNKNOWN HUNGER

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The body lay face down on the sidewalk, hands pointing at ten and two. Puffy red sports-jacket, bluejeans, workboots with the rubber worn down at the toe. Officer Packer crouched, lifted the dead man's head as gently as he could. Black goatee, black eye. Even in life he would've looked rough. Brick-chin bouncer material. The snag of a broken tooth jabbed through the upper lip.

Footsteps to his right. Officer Elliot's heavy, flatfooted gait. "I'm just saying. He fell, hit his head. It was a cold night. Write it up."

Packer rolled the body over. The only blood on the concrete was from the dead man's lip, dried dark as rust. "Why are his hands up? Robbery?"

"What, scared to death?"

"It's happened. Or maybe he tried to crawl."

Elliot grinned. "Have fun, Holmes. Five bucks says heart attack and hypothermia."

A young sikh man in a turban frowned from the doorway of the milk bar, rolling a cigarette from one side of his mouth to the other. "You gonna move him? Can't open up till you move him."

"Five minutes." Above the doorway, nestled in a dark corner, the gleam of a CCTV lens. Done by lunch, if he was lucky. Plastic sheeting crinkled across the sidewalk. "Elliot. You want to come on the doorknock?"

"What, you know him?"

"Seen him around." In the distance, over the tiled rooftops and coughing chimneys, was the first blush of sunrise.

* * *

Con Stannis jerked upright in bed to the buzzing of cicadas. His bedroom was layered in blue and grey and corners of deep shadow. The alarm clock read 05:42 and the early morning chill settled heavy on his chest. "I was in the scouts," he said to his sleeping wife. "I was a boy. In my dream, I mean. I made First Class. I'd forgotten 'til now." The room was silent apart from his breathing. He reached out to tangle her soft hair in his fingers but his knuckles bumped the wall and he remembered that his bed was only a single these days, that the space beside him was always cold.

He stood to look out the window. The street was empty. Of course. Nobody awake at this hour. But, for a moment, he'd been certain there would be someone waiting below. A man with a gun in his hand, staring upwards, patient, unmoving.

That was just another dream. Nobody waited for him any more. Not for many years.

In the morning he sat naked on the edge of the bed holding a cup of coffee, the heat seeping through the porcelain into his hands, up his arms, down his spine. He looked at himself in the closet mirror. His paunch was growing a little heavier every week, starting to sag and fold. The hairs on his chest were greying. Not white, he told himself. Still life in there.

His knees popped as he forced them into his bluejeans. A shirt one size too large covered up everything else. When he sucked in his gut and squared his shoulders he looked almost respectable. Time to face the day.

The lobby was almost empty. A few kids in corduroy pants and collared shirts tugged on the leaves of a plastic plant. The young receptionist said hello as he passed and he waved back. "Quiet day?"

"Everyone hides inside this time of year." She tapped the counter with painted nails. Couldn't have been more than twenty-five, her eyes still bright, hair pulled back in a black bun. He tried not to stare at how her breasts pressed tight against the buttons of her shirt. He could just make out the outline of her bra. "Sir?"