by David Cohen
We showed up at the facility one evening, around eight as usual, Bruce having informed me the day before that Unit 52C was ripe for the picking. Cheops seemed to be the most popular pyramid for stolen goods, maybe because it was the largest. As we made our way there, I said, ‘Remember when you said you were sacked from your job at Dooley’s Irish Bar because you went too far? What exactly did you mean by that?’
Bruce seemed reluctant to go into it, but eventually he said, ‘It was just an issue with a co-worker. There was this lady who I liked a lot, but she didn’t really … reciprocate my feelings, and that made me very depressed. I guess I didn’t want to take no for an answer. You could say I went too far in trying to change her mind, and then when she didn’t change her mind I went too far again.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I was overzealous, I suppose. I really don’t think I did anything that bad, Ken, but she obviously didn’t see things that way. So there was a bit of a … she made some complaints to management. But you’ve got to put these things into perspective – I mean, it’s not as if I killed anyone.’
We entered the building and stepped into the lift. I pressed the button for Level 5 and the lift glided up the central column.
‘I was very intense about things back then,’ Bruce said. ‘Maybe I still am. The other thing was, I had issues with my medication. I really didn’t like taking that stuff.’
‘Medication? For what?’
Bruce studied the bright lights on the lift ceiling.
‘To stop me from going too far.’
I waited for him to explain what he meant, but apparently he thought that was explanation enough.
‘So they told me it would be best if I looked for work elsewhere. You see, I’d been involved in a couple of similar escapades before that and I guess they had kind of warned me. I’m more in control these days, but I still sometimes feel like I have to … force things to a conclusion. I’m one of those people who needs closure, Ken, especially if I perceive that someone’s wronged me in some way. I have to even the score. Do you know what I mean?’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I think so.’
We got out of the lift and walked down a corridor until we came to Unit 52C. I kept watch while Bruce picked the lock. We always took the precaution of wearing our Pharaoh’s Tomb uniforms, so if anyone came by we’d look like we had every right to be doing what we were doing.
We exchanged a grin when we saw the padlock: a Master Lock, 50 millimetre, solid brass. Some people just didn’t even bother trying.
‘Your turn,’ Bruce said.
I selected a pick from the set of tools he’d given me, and inserted it, along with the tension wrench, into the barrel of the lock, slowly raking the hook back and forth over the pins.
‘Remember: gently does it. All you want to do is persuade the lock to open, gently coerce it. Feel what’s going on. Listen to the lock.’
I liked to think of the barrel in the centre of a padlock as a teeny-tiny version of the cylinder at the centre of the pyramid, with the lift sliding up and down inside. It took me a little while, but before long I could feel that all the pins had been set. I twisted the wrench and the shackle popped up with the click that never failed to satisfy.
Bruce nodded. ‘I have taught you well, young grasshopper.’
The unit contained an electronic keyboard, an electric guitar, an acoustic guitar and some amplifiers, all covered with blankets to protect them from dust, or conceal them, or both. There were various non-music-related things, too: clothes, books, files. Like most of the units we’d invaded over the last couple of months, the contents didn’t look overtly stolen. Bruce explained that this was deliberate: a unit full of nothing but shiny, pristine things was too much of a giveaway. That sounded logical enough to me.
‘Let’s take something bigger this time,’ Bruce said. ‘Bags the keyboard.’
‘Bit obvious, isn’t it?’ I said.
‘Let’s live on the edge, Ken.’
So we took the keyboard, wrapping it in one of the blankets. I also took the acoustic guitar, which was enclosed in a hard travel case. I couldn’t play one, but I’d always wanted to learn.
‘It’s funny,’ Bruce said as we emerged from 52C, ‘but have you noticed that we look a bit similar, you and me?’
‘Us?’ I said. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Don’t deny it. I mean, I know that everyone likes to believe they have a unique face, but I think that’s erroneous. I believe that there are only so many faces to go around.’
I closed the roller door. ‘Can you expand on that theory?’
Bruce didn’t reply. He put his finger to his lips. ‘I hear someone.’
‘What?’
I looked along the corridor in both directions, but I couldn’t see anyone. When I looked back, Bruce had either vanished into thin air or was hiding around a corner. He’d left the keyboard behind though. Before I could follow suit, the person Bruce had heard coming was now visibly coming. I remained there in front of the unlocked roller door, watching a man walk along the corridor towards me. Keep walking, I said, in my mind. But he didn’t keep walking. He stopped just a couple of metres away, regarding me with intense interest.
‘Evening,’ I said. ‘And who might you be?’
He took a step closer. He had on a pristine pair of Nike runners. Bet he stole those too, I thought.
‘My name’s Anthony,’ he said. ‘This is my unit. Who the fuck are you?’
Sixteen
There was definitely something going on with Bruce.
Sitting at my desk a few days after the Michael Tan conversation, listening to Tales of Topographic Oceans (I was revisiting Yes after a long separation), I recalled Bruce’s evasiveness when I’d brought up the question of the identical padlocks. I recalled his advising me against going to the construction site (‘Someone might get the wrong idea’). It sounded like friendly advice, but at the same time, it didn’t. It hovered somewhere between friendly advice and … what? A veiled threat? I couldn’t say for certain. But I got the feeling he was trying to make me doubt myself.
The thing about Bruce was, 95 per cent of the time he came across as a relatively harmless, if annoying, person, but there were moments when I sensed something else behind it all. Bruce was like an iceberg: a relatively harmless, if annoying, iceberg. Actually, no – Bruce was like an inverted iceberg: the visible 95 per cent was annoying but relatively harmless, but it was the tip of that iceberg, the concealed 5 per cent, that I had to worry about. I thought I’d seen that 5 per cent back in the Pharaoh’s Tomb days, but as I was to discover, I’d only seen perhaps 95 per cent of that 5 per cent.
For now, there was no need for me to revisit the site anyway. Nothing was happening; it remained as static as … well, the inside of a tomb.
I was also perturbed by our conversation about the Heckler & Koch. So at some point I’d told Bruce the combination to the safe. Did it really matter? Maybe not, but it was another slip, another gap in my memory; that’s what really bothered me.
But of far greater concern was Bruce’s revelation that he visited tenants’ homes. I didn’t doubt that he visited these people for altruistic reasons, as he claimed, but it was still out of order. Michael Tan may well have done away with himself. Maybe he’d been contemplating it for ages. But maybe that was all he was doing. There’s a big difference between picturing yourself taking the final step, and taking the final step – a whole universe of difference. Maybe Michael Tan was merely standing at the border, leaning forward but keeping his feet planted on the ground. Had Bruce given him a little nudge?
I recalled Bruce’s speech about going to a better place and being reunited with loved ones. It sounded compassionate but a tad callous, too. He’d also visited Leonard Stelzer and Jane McMath, by the sounds of it. Had he had the same little chat with them? Did he go around encouraging lonely and isolated people to end it all? I told myself that he’d probably visited a good many tenants who hadn’t ended it all, or had disappea
red for some other reason, but that wasn’t very comforting.
I didn’t know exactly where Bruce was at that moment. I’d sent him to a distant corridor on Level 1, having instructed him to put any faltering lights out of their misery. Despite Bruce’s tendency to suddenly appear unannounced, I was usually able to keep him occupied. He liked adhering to a strict schedule; it satisfied his need for order. Problems only really arose when he was idle and bored.
Looking at the noticeboard across from my desk, I saw that the picture of the mysterious white building had been pinned up there, a single coloured pin through the top of the page. It had appeared out of nowhere, just as it had found its way into my jacket pocket. I rubbed my eyes and looked again, waiting in vain for some gap in my memory to be filled. I wondered: can a man do things behind his own back?
Again, I thought about the padlocks on the last three abandoned units and on the construction site gates. I kept my collection of Sargent and Greenleaf padlocks in the bottom drawer of my office desk. These days I didn’t actively add to my collection; Kelvin did that for me, but he hadn’t come across any good ones for a while, so it had been some time since I’d opened the drawer.
I decided to count them. The problem was that I could no longer remember the exact number of padlocks in the drawer, although I estimated it was around fifty. The drawer itself was secured with a key, which I carried on a key ring attached to my belt. I slid the drawer open, removed the padlocks by the handful, and piled them all up on my desk. Then I separated the padlocks into the different types, from the vintage US military-issue model from way back in 1973, to the Environmental series with powdered-steel body and case-hardened shackles. Every now and then I sat there just holding one of the padlocks in my hand, feeling its weight and thickness and texture. If you really want to experience the pleasure of holding a compact, heavy object in your hand, a Sargent and Greenleaf fits the bill perfectly.
Having arranged the padlocks in neat little rows on my desk, I sat back and admired my collection; I hadn’t done that in a while, either. Then I counted them. There were forty-six in all. I re-counted them and arrived at the same number. I’d thought there were fifty, but again I wasn’t 100 per cent certain. But I was sure I’d had more than forty-six. I could hear Bruce’s voice in my head, making some remark along the lines of how ironic it would be if someone broke into your locked padlock drawer and stole some padlocks.
Thinking of Bruce made me self-conscious. I didn’t want him to see me checking the padlocks. I returned them to the drawer and sat back in my swivel chair, trying to make sense of things: Leonard Stelzer, Jane McMath and Michael Tan, all disappearing off the face of the earth and leaving valuables behind; Bruce visiting tenants; the Sargent and Greenleaf padlocks; Bruce and the trolleys.
My thoughts drifted. As usual, they drifted in the direction of Ellen. She hadn’t yet come to remove the contents of her unit. Maybe it was an idle threat. But our situation remained the same. She wanted nothing more to do with me, and yet I was no closer to understanding why. But there were only so many times I could call her; only so many times I could show up at her house or the shop. There was such a thing as dignity, and at this point I only had a few crumbs left. But I couldn’t bear the thought of losing her, of never being close to her again. It wasn’t just the sex, although that was great. No, Ellen was a decent person, a warm and lovely person. So what if she was dealing with some emotional issues? Aren’t we all?
I looked around but there was no sign of Bruce. I checked the CCTV footage again. This time I was more systematic. I intended to check every single night since the second appearance of Bruce and the trolleys. I went back to the night in question and watched Bruce’s appearance once more, from the point where the white van pulled in to the central loading bay. Again I watched him climb out of the van, open the rear doors, remove the flat-bed trolley, return the trolley to the row of other trolleys, and go through the aligning procedure.
If he’s bringing back the trolley, I thought, there must be some earlier point when he takes away the trolley.
Presumably the earlier point was some time that same evening, because we always counted the trolleys before closing each day, and there’d been no trolleys missing when we did the count. So I returned to the point in the CCTV footage just after six o’clock when we’d locked up and left the premises. Slowly, I moved time forward. The bay remained empty until just after midnight. Then the roller door of the central loading bay ascended. It opened slowly, seemingly protesting against being awakened at such an uncivilised hour. The fact was, the motor was badly in need of repair or replacement; I could practically hear it creaking as I watched the footage. The door finally up, a white van rolled in. I saw Bruce get out of the van and walk towards the office where I now sat. He disappeared from view. I switched to the camera in the office. I saw Bruce enter the office and walk towards the camera itself. Then the screen went blank. Five minutes later, it came on again, to reveal Bruce leaving the office.
I switched back to the loading bay. Now Bruce was walking across the concrete floor in the direction of the trolleys. He retrieved the trolley at the end of the row, wheeled it towards the white van, opened the doors and pushed the trolley inside using a portable ramp. Once he’d closed the doors again, he walked around to the driver’s side and climbed in, preparing to drive off to wherever it was he was going.
The van looked like a Toyota HiAce, very similar to my own Toyota HiAce, which always reminded me of a big white loaf of bread on wheels. The poor resolution made it hard to read the name on the rear of the vehicle, but I could make out the numberplate. I realised that Bruce’s van didn’t just look like my van: it was my van.
Seventeen
The occupancy rate at Hideaway had dropped to around 30 per cent, an all-time low. When tenants weren’t disappearing off the face of the earth, they were moving their things out. And the tenants who were disappearing or moving out weren’t being replaced by new tenants.
This was all making me very depressed. Then, a week or so after I saw my van on the CCTV footage – I still had to have a word to Bruce about that – Ellen called to inform me that she was coming on Friday to empty her unit.
‘My stepbrother’s coming with me,’ she said. ‘He won’t take any shit, so … be warned.’
‘As if I’m going to do anything.’
She ignored that. ‘I didn’t even have to notify you about this at all; it’s just a courtesy since you gave me a discount, and because … because I’m a nice person, that’s why.’
‘But you still haven’t told me what’s going on.’
‘Jesus, Ken. The least you could do is take responsibility. I could have gone to the cops, you know. I still can.’
‘This again? Please tell me, Ellen – tell me what it is you think I did?’
My question was met with a silence, during which I could hear the light above me start to go click … click … click. I’d been meaning to replace the fluoro lights in the office with halogen lights – one more item on the long list of jobs I knew I’d never get around to. I noticed that the plastic covering was cracked and coated with a film of dust. The light would begin flickering before long, mumbling its usual gibberish.
Ellen replied at last. ‘All right. Cast your mind back to last month, which was the last time I came to access my unit. I showed up around 10 p.m., thinking you might be gone by then, but – surprise, surprise – you were still there. Anyway, you saw me come in and you insisted on coming up with me to help out, even though I asked you not to. Any of this ring a bell so far, Ken?’
‘I remember coming up to help you, yeah.’
‘And as usual, we got into an argument.’
‘About what?’
‘About you refusing to accept what most people call reality – meaning that it’s over between us.’
‘Just on that topic, can I say —’
‘I don’t want to hear it, Ken. Just listen for once. So we got to my unit. The light outside was
flickering so you went running off to get a ladder.’
I glanced up at the office light again. I massaged my forehead, pressing hard.
‘Yeah, I had to replace it,’ I said.
‘Okay. While you were getting the ladder, I went in. About ten minutes or so later, you came back.’
‘I did?’
‘Yeah. I could hear you out there, climbing up the ladder. I could hear it creaking.’
‘Funny – I don’t remember that bit, but it was some time ago.’ I laughed. ‘If you knew how many lights I have to change! Well, it’s a health and safety issue, isn’t it?’
‘Health and safety – that’s bloody funny considering what you did next.’
‘Which was what?’
She laughed – or sniffed; it was hard to tell. ‘And here we go again.’
‘I remember going down to get the ladder, but I don’t remember coming back up. I don’t even remember seeing you again that day.’
‘So it was a ghost who shut the door, then?’
‘Shut the door?’
‘Shut the door and then locked the door.’
Have you ever had the sense of not being invited to participate in your own life? You think you’re living your life, but then something happens to suggest that you’re not. It’s as if a voice is whispering in your ear: You’re dreaming, mate. Wake up to yourself.
‘I left the door half open,’ Ellen said. ‘I’m in there going about my business, and the next thing I know, the door closes. I’m like, “Ken? Hello?” No answer. I went to open the door again because it was, you know, dark, but it wouldn’t open. I realised you’d locked it. I’m no expert, Ken, but I think one of the secrets of good self-storage-facility management is that you don’t lock the clients in with their stuff. I was banging on the door, calling out, but you’d either walked off or you were standing out there listening. With you anything’s possible.’
‘And then?’
‘And then? And then, after sitting there in the dark for Christ knows how long, waiting for you to open the door, I took matters into my own hands.’
