Chapter Twenty-Seven
in which Tufty does a Good Deed and has a
poke about in a Very Messy Place
Tufty propped Mr Murray against the wall. Holding him there with one hand while the other went a-rummaging for house keys.
And yes, it would’ve been a lot easier if Sergeant Rennie, or the Sarge, or Officer Kent had offered to help – because assisting Mr Murray across the road from his burnt-out hotel was a bit like wrestling drunken jelly – but Tufty did has an initiative. So he could totally do this.
Aha! Keys.
The name on the fob was the same as the faded sign above the door: ‘DUNRENOVATIN’, so this had to be the place.
He unlocked the door and shoved it open, then turned to give the Sarge a wave, but he was busy talking to PC Kent.
Droop.
Ah well.
‘Come on, let’s get you inside.’
Tufty took a firm hold of Mr Murray’s arm and hauled him upright – wibble-wobble – then steered him over the threshold and into a dark and dusty hallway.
Oooh, atmospheric.
Envelopes and flyers spilled out from the edges of a sisal mat, like they’d been kicked onto the black-and-white tiles.
Or at least the tiles looked black-and-white, it was hard to tell under all that dirt.
A fancy staircase swooped upwards, discarded books and empty bottles lining the steps. Spooky high ceilings.
Cobwebs colonised every corner, blurring the edges as they sagged under ancient layers of dust.
This must’ve been a big fancy house at one time, abandoned long ago to the mice, spiders, and ghosts . . .
Ah well.
Tufty folded his new friend over the newel post at the foot of the stairs, then scurried back to close the front door with a clunk.
Doo, doo doo-doo. Click, click.
Keeping an eye out for disembodied hands or Cousin Itts, Tufty tiptoed to the bottom step. ‘Hello? Anyone home?’
The house swallowed his words before they could echo.
‘HELLO-OH?’
No reply.
‘Mr Murray, is there someone here who can look after you?’
Being draped over like that, made his words all muffled and breathy: ‘’Lone . . . Aaaaaaaall ’lone.’
In which case Tufty would just have to save the day.
He pulled Mr Murray upright again. ‘Right: bed.’
‘No. No, no, no, no, no . . .’ Mr Murray waved his hands like a fly was trying to scoot up his nose. ‘Whisky.’ And off he lurched, stiff-legged as a wind-up penguin, to a door at the back of the hall.
‘Mr Murray?’ Tufty followed him into a kitchen that was even dustier.
No fancy gadgets, no R2-D2 cookie jars or Dalek tea cosies, not even a cooker – just a hole where it used to be.
Going by the fust-and-dust outline on the wall, a big American-style fridge freezer once lived here – now replaced by a battered under-the-counter job that buzzed like it was full of wasps.
But what the kitchen did have were a cheap kettle, a cheap toaster, and a cheap microwave, perched on the grubby worktops; a crispy layer of dead flies on the windowsill, and a bunch of chubby bluebottles banging their heads against the grubby glass.
Oh, and bottles. Lots and lots and lots of bottles. An army of them, all empty and lined up on parade. Most of Mr Murray’s squaddies looked like the kind of wine supermarkets flogged for under a fiver, with the odd bottle of Old Sporran McRotgut acting as captains and generals.
Clearly, in the battle against sobriety, Mr Murray believed quantity triumphed over quality.
He grabbed a bottle from the ranks, staggering slightly as he held it up to the thin grey light. Empty. So was the next one. And the one after that.
Tufty put on his best helpful voice: ‘I really think you’d be better off having a nice lie down, Mr Murray.’
‘Got to . . . got to have something . . . somewhere . . .’ He inspected the troops again.
A mound of letters was heaped up by the toaster. And though it was a little nosey to look, they all seemed to be stamped ‘FINAL DEMAND!’
Tufty peered out through a slightly less dirty bit of the window at a back garden smothered in weeds and bushes and things.
Three doors led off the kitchen – one back into the hall, one out into the jungle, while the third lay slightly ajar.
And as the Horror-Haired Queen of Grumbling Doom was always telling them: ‘It’s no’ snooping if you’re a police officer, it’s investigating.’
So he left Mr Murray clinking his way through the soldiers, and slipped through the beckoning doorway. Having an investigate.
It might’ve been a drawing room back in the Long-ago, but now it was a storage place for spiderhouses and mouse droppings, slowly suffocating under a blanket of fuzzy grey.
Shadows on the wall remembered paintings and maybe a large flatscreen TV?
Bet there’d been heaps of fancy furniture in here: bookcases and writing desks and chesterfield couches.
Now though, there was just a saggy brown corduroy couch and a coffee table made from old milk crates, with a teeny portable CRT telly on top. Indoor aerial. Not even a DVD player.
A bouquet of long-dead flowers wilted in a vase on the mantelpiece, all papery grey-and-brown, next to a photo frame – lying facedown in the dust.
In this haunted house, even the ghosts were sad . . .
Tufty stepped back into the kitchen, where Mr Murray was still hunting for a non-empty warrior to ride into battle with him.
‘Hey, come on. Why don’t we get you upstairs, OK?’ Tufty plucked a hollow general from Mr Murray’s hand, took his arm, and steered him towards the door. ‘There we go. You’ll feel much better after a snooze.’
Or hungover as a Klingon’s bumhole.
But it was the thought that counted.
The main bedroom was every bit as miserable-and-fusty as the rest of the house: shadowed walls; discarded clothes in the corner; and a bed cobbled together from pallets and old panel doors, with a droopy mattress on top.
Breathing hard, after half-carrying him all the way up the stairs, Tufty flopped Mr Murray onto the bed. Setting the pallets creaking.
Lying there, flat on his back, he stared up at the ceiling. Which had to be rotating pretty fast, given how blootered he was.
Then Mr Murray popped out a wet burp, that sounded like it contained lumps. He smacked his lips and grimaced.
Hmmm . . .
Maybe not the best of ideas?
Luckily though, the room had an en suite, and when Tufty pushed the door open it was totes fancy and stuff, with a claw-foot bath, and a swanky shower cabinet, and a bidet for washing your bum. Ooh-la-la! Très swish.
Shame it was all so grubby.
But it would do.
He hauled Mr Murray up again and waddle-walked him into the echoing room.
Another lumpy burp. ‘Sleeeeeeeeep.’
‘Why don’t we put you in the recovery position in here instead? That’ll be fun, won’t it?’ Helping him down onto the cool tiles. ‘This way, if you vom, it’ll be easier for you to clean up in the morning. And you probably won’t choke on any chunks.’
Probably.
It took a bit of pulling and shoving to get all of Mr Murray’s limbs and body in the right place so his airways would be clear – cos people-origami was tougher than it looked – but finally Tufty wrangled him into place, then stood back to admire the results.
Now that was some fine recovery-positioning.
By the time he’d fetched the duvet from the bedroom, Mr Murray was already snoozing it up, snorks and grunts echoing off the uncleaned tiles.
Like a sleepy warthog.
Tufty draped the duvet over him, then tiptoed away.
Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to do a little more investigating, you know, while he was here?
There was another bedroom on the first floor, but it was even more empty than Mr Murray’s – no bed or mattress, just dust and arachnids.
Then a single bedroom – but the only way to tell was a tatty Kylie Minogue poster curling away from the ancient zoo-animal wallpaper; not a single bit of furniture.
Then a sewing room – going by the bobbins and grey-furred reels scattered about the untreated floorboards, because even the carpet was missing.
Then a big family bathroom – just as swanky as Mr Murray’s en suite, but it clearly hadn’t been used or cleaned in years. A thick drift of flies littered the grimy windowsill, and a weird, meaty-sewagey stink slithered out of the drains and toilet pan.
Moving on . . .
Tufty climbed up to the top floor, with its sloped ceilings and dormer windows.
First up: a box room. You could tell, because that’s what it was full of. Cardboard ones of all shapes and sizes, looking tired and brittle. Like Mr Murray.
Then the home gym. Or, at least, it had a rusty exercise bike sitting in the middle of the empty space. Being slowly consumed by cobwebs and teeny-weeny flakes of neglect.
Tufty opened the last door.
Blinked at the contents.
Then closed it again.
Nah.
OK: one more go.
It was a child’s bedroom, and unlike every other room in the house, it was still fully furnished.
A bed, a wardrobe, a toy box, a Mr Men duvet, an orange teddy bear, a rocking horse, a desk and chair, a bookcase full of well-thumbed paperbacks.
Winnie-the-Pooh and Narnia, Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz . . . All the classics.
But Mr Murray complained about being ‘Aaaaaaaall ’lone.’
And there was no way Social Services would let a kid live here. Mr Murray was probably a lovely bloke, but he could barely look after himself, never mind a wee boy or girl.
Tufty ran a finger along the windowsill.
Clean.
Not so much as a spiff of dirt.
Now that was weird. And sort of creepy. But mostly sad.
From up here, you could see right into the burnt-out skeleton of Balmain House Hotel. Hard not to imagine flames screaming up into the sky as the poor sods staying there coughed and spluttered for the exits . . .
Back downstairs, Tufty wandered into the drawing room again, making for the mantelpiece with its dead flowers and facedown frame.
He turned the picture over.
A much younger Mr Murray grinned up at him, hugging a cheery, slightly chubby blonde woman. She had a fair-haired toddler on her hip, an orange teddy clutched in his wee sausage fingers.
Tufty frowned at the photo for a bit. Then up at the ceiling.
Then put the frame back on the mantelpiece, upright, so the happy family smiled out into the graveyard room.
Poor Mr Murray.
Tufty scuffed out into the hall, stopping at the end of the stairs. ‘OK, MR MURRAY: YOU TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF. TRY NOT TO DROWN IN YOUR OWN SICK!’
He stood there for a minute, one foot on the bottom step.
A rasping snore rattled through the building – amplified by the en suite’s tiled walls. Then another. And another. Getting louder and louder as Mr Murray really let rip.
Tufty shrugged and let himself out.
Standing on the sun-drenched doorstep, he locked the door again, then posted the keys through the letterbox.
There we go.
At least that was one good deed done today . . .