Cremains

'Cremains' - Chapter Two

CHAPTER TWO

I deliberately walked straight past the shop without so much as a sideways glance and stopped in front of the next one. The plan was to pretend to be checking out the contents of the window display while I listened for any undue noise. But then I realised I was staring at a window that had been completely blanked out and remembered it was one of those sex shops – private shops, they call them nowadays – so I carried on to the hairdresser's next door. Not much to see here either except for a bunch of women getting their weekend hairdos done. Better not hang around here too long or one of them might clock me for a peeping tom with a shampoo and blow-dry fetish and call the cops.

I couldn't hear what I'd been listening out for from this distance, so I doubled back to the shop I'd ignored and took the key out of my pocket. A proper key. Still no noise out of the ordinary, so I shoved the key into the lock and turned it. Except it wouldn't. Turn, that is. I tried the handle, and the door swung open with the slightest of creaks. Christ almighty, the bloody idiots hadn't even bothered to lock it.

Once upon a time, the shop had been a gents' outfitters, but it had gone bust months ago. Presumably, the modern world hadn't any need for gents' outfitters any more, or maybe there just weren't enough gents left to be outfitted. Either way, I'd taken out a short lease on the place a few weeks ago in the name of a bogus company I'd set up specifically for the purpose. Not that I ever had any plans to run it as a shop, of course. God, no. I had something else in mind altogether, and this was going to make me a whole lot richer than flogging a bunch of ties and the occasional suit.

The light was dim inside the shop, partly because I'd had the door and window completely obscured with sheets of newspaper – from the copies of The Times I hadn't binned – and partly because the air was so thick with dust, you could have grown spuds in it.

Better get out of these togs sharpish or Carla will go into meltdown if she has to take another suit to the dry cleaner's.

I ducked down behind the counter that butted up at right-angles to the window and pulled out a bulging carrier bag. I was just about to take off the suit jacket and lay it on the counter top when I spotted the half-inch layer of dust that had settled on it. I scanned the rest of the shop for somewhere I could temporarily deposit the jacket, but apart from a few shelves bolted to the wall and also covered with dust, there was nothing. Not so much as a hanging rail with a bunch of coat hangers that must have been here when the gents' outfitters was still up and running. Bailiffs must have cleared pretty much everything that wasn't nailed down – and probably quite a lot of the stuff that was, apart from the counter.

I considered my options for a couple of seconds. Not even for that long because there was only one. If I didn't want the suit to end up making me look like a nuclear fallout survivor, I'd just have to put the overalls on over the top and hope to Christ I didn't roast down there. So, out they came from the carrier bag – grease monkey green rather than Guantanamo orange – and I had them on and buttoned up to the neck in a flash. Well, not quite a flash exactly, on account of twice nearly falling flat on my arse when each shoe got snagged up in a trouser leg.

Making for the far corner of the shop, I noticed several pairs of footprints in the carpet of dust, leading in both directions between the front door and where I was heading. Buggers must have been in and out a fair few times since I left them here last night. They'd better not have been sat swilling ale in some club or other instead of getting on with the job in hand. The sound I'd been listening for earlier was clearly audible now and getting louder with every step I took, so they obviously hadn't finished yet.

The swirling dust was getting even thicker too, most of it coming from the top of the metal spiral staircase that led down into the basement. These things are lethal at the best of times, never mind when you can hardly see a hand in front of your face, so I grabbed the handrail tight and took the steps one at a very steady time. At the bottom, I pushed through the heavy blankets we'd hung up the night before to muffle as much of the noise as possible, but they hadn't created enough of a seal to stop some of the dust escaping.