The Archive

Chapter One — The Summons at 02:17

The digital display on the microwave in the kitchenette cast a thin, sea-green light across the linoleum, dying three feet short of the doorway. Beyond that threshold, the hallway sat in total blackness, cold and narrow as a trench.

James lay awake waiting for the radiator to knock. At 01:30 it had done so; at 01:50 the last bus had gone past, rattling the sash. He knew these things because, lately, he knew the timetable of everything that could wake him. He checked the time: 02:14.

When he closed his eyes the house became louder: a footstep on the landing, a frame contracting in the cold. He had given up trying to sleep before midnight. Tonight he wanted only to know whether Ali had found the missing file.

His eyes stung. He had left the heater on too long again.

He turned his head slowly on the flattened pillow. On the nightstand sat a half-empty glass of tap water, cloudy with tiny air bubbles that had adhered to the inside of the glass like a coat of spawn. Next to it was a blister pack of zopiclone, empty except for two foil pockets he was saving for a crisis he could not yet define, and his mobile phone, resting face down on a faded paperback book he hadn't read a page of in three months.

He had left the phone face down. Every call had once meant another demand for dates, names or proof; then came the calls with no voice at all. Since changing his number the silence had felt almost as calculated.

The flat was small, two rooms on the top floor of a converted Victorian terrace that had been divided into four cheap units by a private landlord who used the cheapest partition board available. Through the wall behind his headboard, James could hear the faint, wet cough of the tenant in 4B, followed by the soft click of a lighter. Everything in the building was thin, permeable, exposed. There were no real walls, only the illusion of separation.

From a working edition. The final published text may differ.