Nightside 11 - A Hard Days Knight

office used to be. The whole area looked even grubbier and seedier than I remembered, though I wouldn’t have thought that was possible. Narrow streets and crumbling tenements, smashed windows and kicked-in doors. Broken people in worn-out clothes, hurrying along with their heads lowered so they wouldn’t have to look anyone in the eye. A cold wind gusting down deserted alleyways, and shadows everywhere because someone had been using the street-lamps for target practice.
    Homeless people sitting bundled up in doorways, drinking forgetfulness straight from the can or the bottle. Soot-stained brickwork, darkened by generations of passing traffic. Posters slapped one on top of the other, messages from the past, advertising things long gone, faded and water-stained. When I finally got to the old building that housed my small office, most of the windows were boarded up. There were a few lights on, in the surrounding buildings. People too stubborn to leave, or with nowhere else to go. Rubbish in the gutters, and worse in the alley mouths. And what street lighting there was seemed faded and stained.
    I was surprised my old office building was still there. I’d been half-convinced, half-hoping, it would have been torn down by then. The place had been officially condemned even while I was still living in it. I stopped on the opposite side of the street and looked it over. No lights, no signs of life. People had given up on it, like rats deserting a sinking ship. The front door was hanging open, hinges creaking loudly on the quiet, as the gusting wind gave the door a shove, now and again, to remind it who was boss. I stood there for a while, studying the gloom beyond the door, but I was putting off the moment, and I knew it.
    I looked round the deserted street one last time, then walked briskly across the road, pushed the front door all the way open, and strode into the dark and empty lobby. It was dark because someone had smashed the single naked light bulb. The place stank of stale piss. And yet, the place couldn’t just be abandoned, or the local homeless would have moved in and claimed it for their own. No light, no heating, no signs of occupation; so why had the front door been left so conveniently open? An invitation—or a trap?
    I smiled despite myself. Looked like this might turn out to be interesting after all.
    I made my way up the narrow wooden stairway to the next floor. The steps complained loudly under my weight, as they always had. The tenants liked it that way, to give warning that visitors were coming. I paused at the top to look about me, my eyes already adjusting to the gloom; but there was no sign anyone had been here in ages. I moved along the landing, checking the open office doors along the way. Old memories of old faces, neighbours who were never anything more than that. Cheap and nasty offices that had been home to a defrocked accountant and a struck-off dentist, dark and empty now, cleaned out long ago, with no sign left to show anyone had ever used them.
    My office was still there, exactly where I’d left it. The door stood quietly ajar, with just enough of the old flaking sign to make out the words TAYLOR INVESTIGATIONS. The bullet-hole in the frosted-glass window was still there, too. I should have had it repaired, but it made such a great conversation piece. Clients like a hint of danger when they hire a private eye. I pushed the door all the way open with the tip of one finger, and the hinges complained loudly in the quiet. I took a deep breath, bracing myself against something I couldn’t quite name; but all I smelled was dust and rot, so I walked right in.
    My old office was completely empty, abandoned—lots of dust and cobwebs, and a few rat droppings in the corner. Amber light fell in through the single barred window, pooling on the floor. All the furniture was gone, but I could still see it with my mind’s eye. The blocky desk and the two functional chairs, the cot I’d pushed up against the far wall when I was sleeping in my office because the landlord had locked me out of my flat, as a gentle hint that he’d like some of the back rent paid. This was the place where I tried to help people even worse off than I was, for whatever money they had. I did my best for them. I really did.
    I looked slowly round me. Hard to believe that I’d spent five long years here, trying to pass for normal. Trying to help real people with real problems, in the real world. Burying myself in their