Neverwhere

"Ah. Hello," said Richard.

"We are conducting a personal enquiry of a delicate nature as it were, door to door. Do you mind if we come in?"

"Well, it's not very convenient right now," said Richard. Then he asked, "Are you with the police?" The second of the visitors, a tall man, the one he had thought of as a wolf, his gray and black hair cut bristle-short, stood a little behind his friend, holding a stack of photocopies to his chest. He had said nothing until this moment—just waited, huge and impassive. Now he laughed, once, low and dirtily. There was something unhealthy about that laugh.

"The police? Alas," said the smaller man, "we ca

They did not look like brothers. They did not look like anything Richard had seen before. "Your brother?" asked Richard. "Shouldn't you have the same name?"

"I am impressed. What a brain, Mister Vandemar. Keen and incisive isn't the half of it. Some of us are so sharp," he said as he leaned in closer to Richard, went up on tiptoes into Richard's face, "we could just cut ourselves." Richard took an involuntary step backwards. "Can we come inside?" asked Mr. Croup.

"What do you want?"

Mr. Croup sighed, in what he obviously imagined was a rather wistful ma

"Ran away," explained Mr. Vandemar, quietly. He thrust a photocopied sheet into Richard's hands. "She's a little . . . fu

Richard looked down at the paper. It said:

HAVE YOU SEEN THIS GIRL?

Beneath that was a photocopy-gray photograph of a girl who looked to Richard like a cleaner, longer-haired version of the young lady he had left in his bathroom.

Under that it said:

ANSWERS TO THE NAME OF DOREEN. BITES AND KICKS. RUN AWAY. TELL US IF YOU SAW HER. WANT HER BACK. REWARD PAYED.

And below that, a telephone number. Richard looked back at the photograph. It was definitely the girl in his bathroom. "No," he said. "I haven't seen her, I'm afraid. I'm sorry."

Mr. Vandemar, however, was not listening. He had raised his head and was sniffing the air, like a man smelling something odd or unpleasant. Richard reached out to give him back his piece of paper, but the big man simply pushed past him and walked into the apartment, a wolf on the prowl. Richard ran after him. "What do you think you are doing? Will you stop that? Get out. Look, you can't go in there—" Mr. Vandemar was headed straight for the bathroom. Richard hoped that the girl—Doreen?—had had the presence of mind to lock the bathroom door. But no; it swung open at Mr. Vandemar's push. He walked in, and Richard, feeling like a small and ineffectual dog yapping at the heels of a postman, followed him in.

It was not a large bathroom. It contained a bathtub, a toilet, a sink, several bottles of shampoo, a bar of soap, and a towel. When Richard had left it, a couple of minutes before, it had also contained a dirty, bloody girl, a very bloody sink, and an open first aid kit. Now, it was gleamingly clean.

There was nowhere the girl could have been hiding. Mr. Vandemar stepped out of the bathroom and pushed open Richard's bedroom door, walked in, looked around. "I don't know what you think you're doing," said Richard. "But if you two don't get out of my apartment this minute, I'm phoning the police."

Then Mr. Vandemar, who had been in the process of examining Richard's living room, turned back toward Richard, and Richard suddenly realized that he had never been so scared of another human being in his life.

And then foxy Mr. Croup said, "Why yes, whatever can have come over you, Mister Vandemar? It's grief for our dear sweet sibling, I'll wager, has turned his head. Now apologize to the gentleman, Mister Vandemar."

Mr. Vandemar nodded, and pondered for a moment. "Thought I needed to use the toilet," he said. "Didn't. Sorry."

Mr. Croup began to walk down the hall, pushing Mr. Vandemar in front of him. "There. Now, you'll forgive my errant brother his lack of social graces, I trust. Worry over our poor dear widowed mother, and over our sister, whom even as we speak is wandering the streets of London unloved and uncared-for, has nigh unhinged him, I'll be bound. But for all that, he's a good fellow to have at your side. Is't not so, stout fellow?" They were out of Richard's apartment now, into the stairwell. Mr. Vandemar said nothing. He did not look unhinged with grief. Croup turned back to Richard and essayed another foxy smile. "You will tell us if you see her," he said.

"Good-bye," said Richard. Then he closed the door and locked it. And, for the first time since he had lived there, he attached the security chain.

Mr. Croup, who had cut Richard's phone line at the first mention of calling the police, was starting to wonder whether he had cut the right cord or not. Twentieth-century telecommunications technology not being his strongest point. He took one of the photocopies from Vandemar, and positioned it on the wall of the stairwell. "Spit!" he said to Vandemar.

Mr. Vandemar hawked a mouthful of phlegm from the back of his throat and spat it neatly onto the back of the handbill. Mr. Croup slapped the handbill hard onto the wall, next to Richard's door. It stuck immediately and stuck hard.

HAVE YOU SEEN THIS GIRL? it asked.

Mr. Croup turned to Mr. Vandemar. "Do you believe him?"

They turned back down the stairs. "Do I Hell," said Mr. Vandemar. "I could smell her."

Richard waited by his front door until he heard the main door slam, several floors below. He started to walk down the hall, back toward the bathroom, when the phone rang loudly, startling him. He sprinted back down the hall and picked up the receiver. "Hello?" said Richard. "Hello?"

No sound came out of the receiver. Instead, there was a click, and Jessica's voice came out of the answering machine on the table next to the phone. Her voice said, "Richard? This is Jessica. I'm sorry you're not there, because this would have been our last conversation, and I did so want to tell you this to your face." The phone, he realized, was completely dead. The receiver trailed a foot or so of cord, and was then neatly cut off.

"You embarrassed me very deeply last night, Richard," the voice continued. "As far as I'm concerned our engagement is at an end. I have no intention of returning the ring, nor indeed of ever seeing you again. Bye."

The tape stopped turning, there was another click, and the little red light began to flash.

"Bad news?" asked the girl. She was standing just behind him, in the kitchen part of the apartment, with her arm neatly bandaged. She was getting out tea bags, putting them in mugs. The kettle was boiling.

"Yes," said Richard. "Very bad." He walked over to her, handed her the HAVE YOU SEEN THIS GIRL? poster. "That's you, isn't it?"

She raised an eyebrow. "The photograph's me."

"And you are . . . Doreen?"

She shook her head. "I'm Door, Richardrichard-mayhewdick. Milk and sugar?"

Richard was feeling utterly out of his league by now. And he said, "Richard. Just Richard. No sugar." Then he said, "Look, if it isn't a personal question, what happened to you?"

Door poured the boiling water into the mugs. "You don't want to know," she said, simply.

"Oh, well, I'm sorry if I—"

"No. Richard. Honestly, you don't want to know. It wouldn't do you any good. You've done more than you should have already."