Even the Dogs. Jon McGregor

      

      Even the Dogs

      Jon McGregor

       Copyright

      4th Estate

      An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

       www.4thEstate.co.uk

      First published by Bloomsbury in 2010

      This eBook published by 4th Estate in 2017

      Copyright © 2010 by Jon McGregor

      Cover image © Shutterstock

      Jon McGregor asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins

      Source ISBN: 9780008218713

      Ebook Edition © January 2017 ISBN: 9780008218720

      Version: 2016-12-08

      To Alice

      Cut off from hope, we live on in desire.

      – Dante Alighieri, The Inferno

       Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

      Copyright

       Dedication

       Quotation

       One

       Two

       Three

       Four

       Five

       Acknowledgements

      Read an exclusive extract from Jon McGregor’s new novel, Reservoir 13

       By the Same Author

       A Note on the Author

       About the Publisher

       One

      They break down the door at the end of December and carry the body away.

      The air is cold and vice-like, the sky a scouring steel-eyed blue, the trees bleached bone-white in the frosted light of the sun. We stand in a huddle by the bolted door.

      The street looks quiet, from here. Steam billows and sighs from a central-heating flue. A television flickers in a room next door. Someone hammers at a fencing post on the far side of the playing fields behind the flats.

      An overflow pipe with a fat lip of melting ice drips on to the walkway from three floors up, the water pooling and freezing in the shade of a low brick wall.

      Cars drive past, from time to time, their windows fogged and their engines straining against the cold.

      We see someone getting out of a taxi parked further up the hill. She leaves the door open, and we see two carrier bags stuffed full of clothes and books and make-up on the back seat. She comes up the short flight of steps, and bangs on the door. This is Laura. She shouts through the letterbox. She gestures for the taxi-driver to wait, and goes round to the side of the building. We see her climbing on to a garage roof and in through the kitchen window of the flat. She stands in the kitchen for a few moments. She looks like she’s talking to someone. She climbs out again, drops down from the garage roof, and gets back into the taxi.

      Later, in the evening of the same day or the day after that, with the other flats glowing yellow and blue from behind thin curtains and pinned-up sheets, we see Mike scrambling up on to the garage roof. We hear shouting, and something being broken. We see Ben, running down the hill towards town.

      We see Heather, another morning, hauling herself up the steps and banging on the door, an opened can in one hand. She shouts through the letterbox and looks through the glass. The old woman from the flat next door comes out and says something. They argue, and Heather bangs on the door again before walking off down the hill towards town.

      We see Mike, talking on his phone, his long coat flapping around his knees as he strides out into the road.

      The streetlamps come on, slowly, glowing red and then orange and then flickering out again as the dawn unfurls. Frost forms across the playing fields and the grass verges, and is smudged by footprints and tyres and the weak light of the distant sun. Time seems to pass.

      We see Danny, running across the playing fields with Einstein limping along behind him. We peer round the corner of the flats and see him climbing on to the roof of the garages. Einstein looks up, barking and scrabbling at the garage door, and we hear the creak of a window being opened.

      The old man in the wheelchair appears. We know him but we don’t know his name. He’s not even that old but it’s something to call him. He inches along the pavement, gripping the wheels with hands wrapped in rags and unravelling gloves, his face twisting with the effort of each small push. Grunting faintly as he goes. Huh. Hah. Huh. He glances towards us but he doesn’t stop. Huh. Hah. Huh.

      The window opens again, and we see Danny jumping from the roof of the garages, falling, landing awkwardly and stumbling when he tries to get up. He picks up his bag and his blankets and he hurries away down the road towards town, passing the old man in the wheelchair and calling Einstein to follow him, his blankets slung over his shoulder and trailing along the ground and he doesn’t look behind him as he goes.

      It gets dark, and light, and dark again, and we wonder whether anyone else will come. There are more of us now, and we stand in silence by the door, looking up and down the road.

      There’s no siren when the police finally arrive. They drive slowly up the hill, peering out from the window at the numbered street signs. They pull over at the bottom of the steps and sit there for a few moments with the engine running, talking on their radios.

      Someone looks out of a window on the second floor and turns away, pulling the curtains closed.

      The