Chapter 4: Three in the Morning

On the third night I went looking for the kitchen.

I was not hungry.

I had been in a room with a bolt for two days, and I wanted to know how far the floor went.

The hall carpet was soft under my socks.

At the far end a door stood half open with yellow light in it, and I stopped where the boards began.

It was an old mill kitchen, long and bare, with steel counters, a deep sink and a table that could have seated twenty.

Valentine Corvino sat at the end of it with his sleeves rolled to the elbow and his white shirt open at the throat.

A pistol lay on the table in front of him, in pieces, and he was cleaning each piece with a cloth.

He did not look up.

"The light's on a switch by your hand," he said. "If you'd rather it were dark."

"I'd rather it were light," I said.

"Then it's light."

I stayed in the doorway.

I had seen a gun like that in a drawer in Marek's office.

The difference was that this man was not showing it to me.

He wiped each piece and laid it on the cloth in a row, and his hands were slow and exact.

They were big hands with old white nicks along the knuckles, and he used them with great care.

He looked like a man who was not sleeping and did not expect to.

"You haven't eaten tonight," he said.

"You counted," I said.

"The tray comes back. It's my floor."

"I'm not hungry."

"That's a different thing from not eating," he said.

I came in.

The room was warmer than the hall, and I went to the cupboard over the sink for a cup, because I wanted something in my hands.