‘If you say so, Hugh. OK, I’ll see you when I see you in the morning. Then we can talk.’
‘A pleasure in store.’ For a moment, he remained unmoving in the doorway, and she thought that he might block her way. Then he eased himself back and gestured her past, with the air of someone holding open an imaginary door. But he remained half across the doorway, close enough to cause her some unease as she passed. Game-playing, she thought. Macho fucking game-playing.
‘Sleep well, sis.’
‘I plan to.’ She didn’t look back. ‘You do the same, Hugh.’ She closed and bolted the bedroom door behind her, then took the hard-backed chair from the dressing table and wedged it under the door handle. Hardly Fort Knox, but the best she could do.
She climbed back under the duvet and switched off the bedside lamp. The curtains on the bedroom window were cheap and flimsy, but there were no street lights on this side of the house and the darkness was complete. She lay listening to the tiny noises of the night – the click of a contracting radiator, settling woodwork, the faint skittering and cry of some animal outside. She had a sense, probably unfounded, that Salter was still out in the hallway, perhaps even listening at her door.
A word had lodged in her mind during her last exchange with Salter, and now it refused to be dispelled.
She lay staring blankly into the darkness, and it was a long time before sleep finally overtook her.
In the end, she slept fitfully, disturbed by fragments of dreams that melted into one another without ever gaining coherence – somebody pursuing her, something she had to do, something she’d left undone. Jake in the background, never quite glimpsed. She stirred two or three times in the darkness, each time half-convinced that someone else was in the room. She woke finally as the first grey light began to filter through the thin curtains.
She felt better than she had the previous night, but her body was still telling her it had consumed something more potent than a few glasses of Scotch. There was a dull ache behind her eyes, a sense of dislocation from the world.
She checked the plastic alarm clock on the bedside table. Seven twenty. Outside, there was a flurry of birdsong, somewhere the burr of a passing car. She pulled herself upright and listened.
There was movement inside the house, easily audible through the flimsy internal walls. Someone moving about in the kitchen. The thump of a cupboard door, the rumble of a boiling kettle, the metallic twang of a pop-up toaster. Salter preparing for the day, getting ready for whatever business he had planned.
She considered whether to go out and speak to him, but thought it best to wait. She wasn’t clear whether he was intending to conduct his business, whatever it might be, from the house or whether he’d be going out. If he went out, she’d have the opportunity to look round the place, look for any clues as to what his game might be. Try to get some idea what the hell was going on.
Her first question was soon answered. She heard the sounds of Salter rinsing a plate in the kitchen sink, footsteps padding along the hallway. She moved quietly across the room and slipped back beneath the duvet.
Salter had paused outside her door, and she heard him gently pressing down on the door handle. She held her breath, wondering if he would try to force his way in but, having silently tried the door, he released the handle. She heard his footsteps retreating down the hall, a brief pause, and then the dull thud as the front door closed. Some distance away, she heard the gentle roar of a car engine starting.
Grabbing a selection of the clothes Salter had provided, she removed the chair and unbolted the bedroom door. As she stepped into the hallway she froze, startled by a murmur of voices from the living room. It took her a moment to realize that it was nothing more than the television news. Did that mean Salter would be returning soon?
There was no way of knowing, and she was pretty much past caring. She took a rapid and tepid shower in the poky bathroom and dressed quickly. The clothes were not a bad fit – testament either to Salter’s precision or his over-intent observation of her figure. She ended up in a pair of jeans and a baggy T-shirt that were hardly flattering, but suitably functional.
There was instant coffee in the kitchen cupboard and milk in the fridge. She prepared herself a drink to help clear her head and then, with the steaming mug in her hands, began to explore the bungalow more thoroughly.
It didn’t take long. The bungalow comprised nothing more than the five rooms she’d noted the previous evening. The place looked as if it had been recently but cheaply redecorated and refurnished. There was a free- standing cupboard in the sitting room, but it contained only a pile of old newspapers – from about six months before, she noted – and a couple of board games. There was a second cupboard under the television containing a handful of DVDs, most of them freebies from some Sunday newspaper or other.
The kitchen was no more fruitful. There were plenty of cupboards in the kitchen units, but they contained nothing more interesting than the usual range of kitchen utensils, crockery and glasses. Everything bought as a job lot from some discount homeware store. The fridge, freezer and cupboards were well-stocked with food. As Salter had implied, it was all instant meals and staples, most of it tinned, dried or frozen. Stuff designed to have a long shelf life.
Salter had left her a scribbled note on the kitchen table.
She soon discovered that the last instruction was un necessary. She tried the back door, hoping for a breath of air. It was firmly deadlocked, with no sign of a key. She made her way through the hall and tried the front door. Deadlocked too.
It had already begun to occur to her that the building was remarkably secure. Heavy-duty deadlocks on the front and back doors, all the windows similarly secured. As far as she could judge, the windows themselves were toughened glass.
Not so much a safe house, then. More a sodding prison. Superficially, the bungalow resembled a badly appointed holiday home. Below the surface, it was something odder. It wasn’t just the locks that were seriously solid. The front and back doors themselves had apparently been reinforced, with metal plating and strengthened hinges.
The Agency’s safe houses were anonymous places, normally tucked quietly away in some suburban estate. They had a degree of electronic protection – high quality but discreet alarms, CCTV, links to local police – and reasonable domestic-style security. But not stuff like this – industrial locks, reinforced panels. Nothing that would attract attention.
This felt more like private enterprise. The centre of operations for a big-time dealer, maybe. The sort of place you might need to keep safe, not just from the police, but from your immediate competitors. She couldn’t imagine this house being run by the officious busies who populated Professional Standards. Was Salter telling the truth about Welsby? Could she trust Salter at all? The truth was that there was no one she could rely on. Not down here. Not away from Liam.
God. Liam. True to form, she’d managed again to forget all about him. He’d still be wondering what the hell had happened to her. She glanced around, but there was no phone in the bungalow. Her own mobiles were inoperable after she’d destroyed the SIM cards. She couldn’t imagine that Salter would have left a mobile handily hanging around for her use.
Shit. There was nothing she could do right now. All she could do was get in touch with him as soon as she got out of this – whatever that might mean. She’d have a lifetime of apologies ahead of her.
Her frustration growing, she returned to the front door, wondering if there was any possibility that the key might be concealed somewhere in its vicinity. Her eyes wandered upwards and she noticed, for the first time, a small trapdoor set into the ceiling, positioned to provide access to the loft space above.
What would be up there? Probably not much. Some dust and a few spiders. The usual detritus that accumulates in an old house over the years. Bits of discarded junk, old papers, forgotten toys.
There was no rational reason for her to explore it. Except that she had nothing else to do and was being driven slowly crazy by the well-secured walls around her. She hesitated for only a moment longer, and then fetched one of the high-backed chairs from the kitchen.
Standing on the chair, she was able to pull open the trap-door. Like the rest of the bungalow, its initial appearance was deceptive. It was a much more sophisticated affair than it looked, the trapdoor counter-weighted so that it opened smoothly, an aluminium folding ladder tucked neatly behind it. She pulled down the ladder, noting
