Mabry counted out the money for Viveca's murder while her father held the envelope open.
The driver got three hundred for a delivery. This was fifteen hundred, the same amount Mabry had paid him in June, when a man who wouldn't go back to his employer had disappeared from the holding house. The driver had returned his clothes. There had been a bullet hole in the collar, and Mabry had folded the coat with the hole underneath.
"Her things as well," Renwick said, putting his keys beside her hand. "Empty the cupboard. Nothing for you to sort out tomorrow."
Beyond the office windows the rain was beginning to bounce off the pavement. They had waited eleven dry nights for it. On the twelfth, people hurried under awnings and her father's men came out of the garages.
Viveca had tried to take a guard's keys two weeks ago. He'd needed stitches. Renwick had called a driver, then cancelled him when the weather cleared. Mabry had gone on carrying the meals upstairs. She hadn't told Viveca about the driver.
"Will she need a coat?"
"The car's heated."
He touched the back of Mabry's neck as he passed. At twenty-seven she still stood motionless for that, as she had when he checked her collar before school. He was going to the holding house to collect the night's payments. He left the envelope on her desk for the driver, who went out to bring his car to the side entrance. Her father trusted her with the keys and fifteen hundred dollars, and she had earned his trust.
She took the envelope too.
Through the upstairs meal hatch, Mabry saw Viveca sitting on the bed in her grey clothes. She had already been locked up for ten months when Mabry came home, eight months ago. A small radio stood on the bedside table. Mabry had brought it upstairs inside a bundle of clean laundry; its cord was too short for Viveca to take it to the window, where the reception was better.
"It's tonight," Mabry said.
Mabry held the keys in the hatch. Viveca looked at them. "Yes."
"You knew?"
"He stopped having the sheets changed."
Mabry couldn't get the key into the lock. She steadied it with her other hand. In her coat pocket was a train ticket for the morning, bought with money she had taken from the petty cash. She had meant to leave before the office opened. She had meant to do several things that would still have left Viveca in this room.
The door opened inward. Viveca didn't immediately stand.
"Get dressed," Mabry said. "I can pay the driver. There's enough."
"That one? No. Get my red dress. It's in the cupboard. And the knife."
Mabry had seen the blade when she inventoried the confiscated belongings: broad as her palm, with coarse teeth along its back. Her father kept everything he took, though he sometimes threw away shoes.
"He'll kill me if I go out without it," Viveca said. "Then he'll take you to your father."
The dress smelled stale. There were no shoes in the cupboard. Under the folded hem lay Arvid's wedding ring and the paper that certified his death. Renwick had brought them to Viveca himself. When Mabry asked why he kept her locked up, he showed her the scar Viveca had left beneath his jaw that day.
Mabry fetched the knife in its oilcloth and stood outside while Viveca changed. From behind the door came the same small request she'd heard through the hatch for months.
"Stay there."
"I'm here."
They used to sit on opposite sides after the staff went home. Viveca told her about Arvid, who had hummed answers during the radio music quiz before the presenter finished asking the question. He sang tunelessly and with absolute confidence. On bad nights she still turned toward the empty end of the bed to tell him to shut up.
Mabry had told her about the ticket before she'd bought it. She had once asked her father for the money he owed her, and he'd fetched the bills he'd paid when her dressmaking shop failed. She was still working off those bills. With Viveca there had been no counting. She hadn't laughed or asked how Mabry expected to manage alone. She had said to take a window seat, even if it cost more.
Now she came out barefoot, her white hair loose over the red shoulders of the dress. The knife sagged in her hand for a moment. She adjusted her grip.
"The switch beside the front door," she said. "For the warning. Turn it on."
The red sign hung above the office, high enough to be seen from the junction. Mabry had never seen it lit. She knew it belonged to the business; her father had charged its repairs to security. She'd asked what it was for in her first week, and he'd told her she had enough to learn downstairs.
"Won't that bring them here?"
"They'll know I'm out. They won't touch us."
"And then we go to the station."
Viveca brushed a crease from Mabry's collar. "First I need your father to tell me where he buried my husband."
Mabry looked at the knife.
"Don't kill him."
"He's going to answer me."
Mabry went downstairs with her.
When the switch clicked, red filled the puddles outside.
STORM WARNING.
A shopkeeper across the street let his shutter fall with customers still inside. A man sheltering under the office awning stepped into the rain rather than stand beside Viveca. Cars hissed past. In the back of one, a man held an open umbrella flat against the side window so that nothing behind it could be seen. In a downpour you couldn't tell whether someone bent over a car door was helping a drunk or forcing a head down. Mabry had heard her father explain this to a new driver. She had been ordering lunch for them.
The hired driver saw Viveca and stopped halfway round his bonnet. She held out her empty hand.
"Keys."
He looked past her at Mabry, then up at the sign.
"Your father's going to want those lights off."
"Then he can come back and turn them off," Viveca said.
The hired driver dropped his keys on the bonnet and backed away. A second car came through the junction and slowed when the man at its wheel saw Viveca beneath the sign. Its rear window was open an inch. Someone inside was crying. Viveca left the keys where they lay. With someone in the back, the second car was going to the holding house anyway, and nobody there would stop it at the door.
She bent to the returns driver's window. "Holding house. Now."
"I saw. I'm going." He looked at Mabry and the office keys still in her hand, then back at Viveca. "He's let you out, then."
"We're coming with you," Mabry said.
He opened the locks. Viveca took the front seat, laying the knife across her knees. Mabry climbed in beside a woman whose wrists were tied together beneath an open raincoat. She was perhaps forty. One of her shoes had come off, and she kept trying to cover her bare foot with the other.
"I went back to him last time," the woman said when she saw Viveca. "I did what you said."
Viveca turned. Rain ran from the ends of her hair onto the seat.
"Keep your voice down."
Mabry reached for the woman's hands as the car pulled out. The woman pulled them away.
"I'm trying to untie you."
The returns driver slowed. "Not in the car."
"Keep driving," Viveca told him.
Mabry worked a fingernail into the wet knot. Through the windscreen she saw another car turn across traffic and follow them. A radio crackled under the dashboard.
"Red's on. All returns to the house. No deliveries."
"Why are they bringing everyone in?" Mabry asked.
The returns driver glanced into the mirror. "For her to inspect. That's what she had the sign put up for."
Viveca watched the road.
"You made me call his men in," Mabry said.
"Let them hear him answer me. They used to take my orders."
The knot was too tight. Mabry's nails were splitting. Her father had never used Viveca's name on the accounts she'd copied. He called her the upstairs problem. Viveca had told her she'd worked for him before Arvid's death, that she'd hurt people trying to find him. Mabry had not asked which people.
"You used to make them do this?"
"I needed someone found. Renwick charged me for every night his men went out. I couldn't keep paying. He was only selling addresses then. I offered to bring people back. The clients paid twice as much."
The woman beside Mabry began to rock against the door.
"You said I could have a week," she said. "Last time. A week before I went back. You said a week."
"Your week isn't my concern tonight."
Mabry took her nail out of the knot. A little piece stayed behind.
"Pull over," she told the driver.
He didn't answer. Viveca said, "We're nearly there."
They passed a cheap hotel with a dead strip of blue light over its entrance. Viveca leaned forward to look up at a window.
"That's where Arvid stayed. Six nights. I was going door to door with his photograph, and he was here."
"Hiding?"
"Waiting. Your father sold him a way out of the city. Then he sold me the address. The room was empty when I got there."
Mabry remembered the suitcase in Viveca's cupboard. Inside had been a man's yellow shirt, shaving things, slippers. Nothing of hers. She had assumed Renwick's men had packed it after his death, but there had been a train timetable folded into the shirt.
"Was he leaving you?"
Viveca's fingers tightened over the handle.
"He left the house. I was bringing him home."
Mabry pressed her shoulder against the car door. There was no handle on the inside. She had paid the garage bill when her father had them removed.
At the holding house, she would get this woman out. She could think that far.
Renwick waited in the front parlour of the old boardinghouse. Mabry knew the house from delivering wages: a narrow hall from the front door to the foot of the stairs, the parlour opening off it through a wide doorway on the left, the old dining room opposite, and the same flowered carpet running through all of it. The rooms upstairs were kept off her accounts; her father paid those expenses himself.
Drivers were bringing people into the former dining room across the hall. Viveca told them to wait outside. One looked to Renwick, who nodded. The woman from the car clung to Mabry's sleeve until a driver pushed her through the dining-room door. He shut it and slid a bolt home.
"Mabry," her father said. "Go and wait in the kitchen."
She stayed beside the front door. It had a thumb latch, no keyhole on this side. She put a finger under the latch without lifting it.
Viveca crossed the parlour. Renwick retreated until the edge of a table struck the backs of his legs.
"You want the money? It's there. You can have it."
"Where is he?"
"Upstairs."
Viveca stopped.
"Alive," he said. "Sit down, please. I'll bring him."
She caught his jacket and drove him back onto the table. The knife cut through his sleeve. He cried out, holding his arm crookedly against himself, blood running down his fingers.
"Call him," she said.
Renwick shouted Arvid's name. A chair scraped overhead. Mabry looked up the stairs and saw an older man on the landing, one hand cuffed to a guard's wrist. His beard had been cut very close, badly. He stopped when he saw the red dress.
Viveca let go of Renwick. For a moment she bent forward with both hands on her knees, as if she'd been hit in the stomach. The blade touched the carpet.
"You took his ring," she said.
Renwick was winding a tablecloth round his forearm. "I brought it to you myself. You'll remember that. I didn't send a boy."
"The certificate."
"I paid for it."
She made a sound Mabry had never heard through the hatch. It rose until she saw Arvid, on the landing, put his free hand over his own mouth. Then she stopped.
Renwick sent the guard down with him. "Take those off him and give them here. Then you can wait outside with the others. Thank you."
The guard unlocked the cuffs. Arvid rubbed his wrist but remained on the bottom step. Renwick put the cuffs in his pocket.
"He's been here all this time?" Mabry asked.
Her father looked at her. "He's been fed. He's had a bed, and I had a doctor look at his chest in March. Nobody's been unkind to him. I needed something she'd listen to, that's all."
"You were going to kill her tonight."
"Afterwards he could have gone wherever he liked. I'd have bought his ticket myself."
Viveca went slowly out into the hall toward her husband. "They told me you were burned. That there wasn't anything to see. I kept thinking you must have been calling for me."
Arvid looked at Renwick. "You said she was dead."
"Things can be put right," Renwick said. "The two of you could have a house. I have work again, if you want it, Viveca. Good work."
Mabry opened the front door. Wind forced rain across the tiles. Beyond the steps, the drivers stood smoking beneath the shallow porch roof. She couldn't send Arvid into them. She closed the door and turned back to her father.
"Tell them to go."
"Sweetheart, this has nothing to do with you."
"You gave me the money. You gave me the fucking keys."
Viveca was smoothing the front of Arvid's shirt. He held himself very still.
"Tell them," she said to Renwick. "So he can see nobody's keeping him here."
Renwick went to the parlour window and signalled. Viveca brought Arvid in to watch. Two cars drove away. The guard joined the remaining driver, who moved his car round the corner, out of view. Mabry waited until she heard its engine stop. They could get Arvid out the other way, if they were quick.
Viveca's hand settled at the back of Arvid's neck.
"I'll cut your hair," she said. "When we get home."
He ducked his head away from her hand. "Please don't touch me yet."
She let him move away. "All right."
Mabry had expected tears, an embrace, some private thing she would have to look away from. Arvid kept watching the front door. She recognized that look. She had checked the office clock in the same way all week, measuring the hours until her train.
"You can go," she told him. "I'll come with you."
Viveca turned toward her. "He doesn't have a coat."
"He can have mine."
Mabry took it off and carried it into the parlour. The ticket fell from its pocket. Her father bent for it, then winced and left it on the floor.
Arvid accepted the coat, and Mabry went back to the front door. As he pushed his arms into the sleeves, Viveca went to the parlour doorway, between him and Mabry.
"I waited eighteen months," she said. "I thought you were in the ground."
"I know."
"We can leave. Right now. You said you wanted to get away from this city."
He worked at the top button of Mabry's coat. His fingers wouldn't manage it.
"I said I wanted to leave you."
Viveca didn't answer, and her husband kept talking.
"Before any of this. At the kitchen table. I told you."
"You were upset."
"I bought a ticket. I packed my things."
Mabry opened the door again. The porch was empty. No one moved to stop her. Across the hall, the bolt on the dining-room door was two steps away.
Arvid looked at the gap between his wife and the doorframe.
"Will you move, please?"
Viveca's bare foot slid back. He hesitated, then stepped past her into the hall. Mabry caught his elbow and guided him toward the open door.
"Arvid."
He turned. Viveca stood several paces away, with the knife down by her leg.
"If you go now, I won't know where you are."
He rubbed his newly freed wrist. "That's what I want."
Viveca stood still long enough for Mabry to hear a car door slam round the corner. Arvid took another step toward the street. Mabry went with him.
Viveca came up behind them and pushed the front door shut over Mabry's shoulder.
Mabry reached for the latch. The blade struck her forearm. At first it seemed like a hard slap. Then her sleeve opened and blood ran over her hand.
Arvid said his wife's name. She turned him by the shoulder, almost tenderly, and drove the knife into him below the ribs.
Mabry seized her wrist. Viveca wrenched free. The torn sleeve dragged across the wound; Mabry's knees struck the floor. Above her, Arvid caught at the red dress. He wasn't holding Viveca. He was trying to keep himself upright.
She pulled the blade out and put it into him again.
When they fell, she went down beneath him, cradling his head against her shoulder. His breath rattled close to Mabry's ear. He had lost a slipper. One thin foot scraped the flowered carpet and stopped.
Renwick said, "Oh, Jesus Christ."
Mabry crawled to the front door. Viveca was whispering into Arvid's hair. Mabry couldn't hear the words and didn't try.
She got the door open with her good hand.
"Mabry. Stay here."
Viveca was looking at her over the dead man's shoulder. Mabry turned away and lifted the bolt across the hall.
There were seven people in the dining room. They stared at Mabry's bleeding arm.
"Go," she said.
The woman from the car pushed forward. Mabry held her bound hands against the doorframe and worried the loosened knot apart. This time, when the woman tried to pull away, she let her. The cord fell at their feet.
"The front," Mabry said. "They're round the corner. Run the other way."
The woman went. Three others followed, knocking against one another in the narrow hall. Renwick caught Mabry's shoulder as she turned back for the rest.
"Come away from there."
She hit him in the cut arm. He let go with a shout. For once she didn't look to see how badly he was hurt.
The last prisoner was an old man with his ankles tied together. Mabry knelt, pulling at the wet cord. He kept saying sorry for making her wait. She could hear her father behind her, breathing through his teeth.
"Get the cars," Viveca said.
Mabry looked back. Arvid lay alone on the carpet. Viveca stood beside Renwick with her blade against his throat and his shirt gripped below the collar.
"Call them off," Mabry said to him. "Please. Let us go."
Her father's eyes dropped to the old man, then returned to her face.
"She's my daughter," he told Viveca.
"Then bring her back. I want her here."
"If they bring her, you leave her alone."
Viveca moved the knife enough to let him swallow. "You can look after her yourself."
Mabry tore the cord over the old man's heel. He kicked his other foot loose. Together they lurched through the front door, her arm under his, into rain so thick the parked cars looked empty.
Behind them her father shouted for the drivers.
"Mabry! Bring my daughter back. Nobody hurts her. Do you hear me?"
She took the old man to the corner. The woman from the car was waiting there, bent over with her hands on her knees. She straightened when she saw them and took his arm.
For a moment Mabry reached toward her. The woman backed away.
"You work there," she said.
"Yes."
The woman turned with the old man and went down the narrow passage beside the hotel. He was dragging one foot. They couldn't outrun the two men coming round the corner. Mabry stayed at the passage mouth, and the first man to reach her ran into her outstretched arms. She clawed his face with her good hand and screamed hard enough to hurt her throat.
His companion caught her from behind. They carried her to the car and took the office keys from her pocket. Through the open door she could see the passage. No one else came out.
The car took her back to the office, and they put her in Viveca's room. Her father brought a doctor upstairs. The doctor stitched her arm and accepted an envelope without looking inside. Then Renwick washed the blood from her fingers. He had done the same thing when she cut her hand on a broken glass at nine. This time he had to hold her wrist.
Outside, the rain was easing. The red sign showed through the wired glass. Viveca stood in the corridor wearing a man's overcoat over her dress. There were dirty crescents under her bare toenails. Mabry could see them from the bed.
"The others got away," Mabry said.
Renwick wrung out the cloth. "We'll talk when you've had some sleep."
"I want to leave."
He laid the cloth in the basin. For several seconds neither of them moved. The room was open, and her father's hand was empty.
"Dad."
He got up. Viveca held out her palm for the keys. He put them into it and stepped into the corridor beside her.
Mabry was still looking at him when Viveca shut the door.