He hears the front door close, followed by the sound of their heels, kicking and scraping down the weed-choked path. Then there is the grind of the garden gate being opened. Peering back to the front of the property, he can also see the headlights of a car shining over the wall and into the corner of the garden where he first crouched. He draws the knife from the inside of his jacket. It takes a second for the pain to register, and he hisses more from shock than from the slice he has cut, carelessly, against the flesh beside his armpit. Down by the gate, Beth immediately pauses. She turns around and looks back to the cottage.
There is a pale suggestion of her face angled in his direction. As if smelling his blood, she has become still, one hand on the gate, the other lost inside the folds of her coat. Dante stiffens; not even the blink of an eye will he allow himself. For a moment the whitish oval of her head seems to be confronting him from afar. The other woman comes back to where Beth stands, but keeps a respectful distance behind her. Then Beth raises her face, slightly, as if to afford the thin nose an opportunity to sniff at the night air. He thinks of her bony fingers becoming vices on his arms and the sound of his lips being torn once her mouth is upon him. Giddy now, convinced she has sensed him, he wonders in a moment of madness if he should scream, or will it be better to run to them and fall down where he can plead for her to make it quick?
Then, at last, when he feels dizzy from holding in his breath, knowing that even a faint exhalation might give him up, Beth turns her head away from the house and walks, out of sight, to the car. The scarfed woman follows Beth in a haste he thinks obsequious.
Dante exhales. Something heavy and cold drops through his body, to leave a hollow which fills with a sudden tumble of emotion. An overwhelming desire to shout for his friend dies to a whimper in his mouth. Tears fill his eyes and something wet drips from the end of his nose. His fingers tighten on the knife handle. Fear is replaced by anger. Bitter tears are close.
The engine of the car starts and the light from the headlamps arcs over the hedge and wall with white light. Dante wipes his eyes. The car drives past the front of the property. Its roar fades to a distant hum. Unable to dissolve the lump in his throat, he steps from the shadows and wanders onto the front lawn. He listens to the sound of the engine diminish into silence. Seeping through his jeans and against his buttocks comes the damp of the air, and he turns his attention to the cottage. Dante walks to the front door and kicks it. Wood booms; the door shudders in its frame. If it opens, he will rush whoever stands in his way.
The hammering of his fist against the door brings no one to answer him. Stepping back, he looks up at the windows of the house, all blacked out and latched shut and too high up. With the screwdriver from the Land Rover's tool box, he attempts to lever the door from the frame. No good; his hands are cold and shaking with nerves and he can't find purchase for the wedged end of the tool. His efforts succeed in a useless scraping against the wood of the door. Thwarted, he runs back down the side of the cottage to the rear, and begins an inspection of the windows on the ground floor.
The frames are old; he can feel the rough and flaky putty with his fingertips, and the glass windowpanes move when he touches them. Concerned about slashing his wrists on a shard of broken glass, he stabs the screwdriver at the bottom of a pane. The screwdriver tip slips. His knuckles bang against cold glass. He swears under his breath.
Sweating under his clothes, which the night air quickly turns to shivers, he examines the back door. Not as sturdy as the one at the front, and there is a gap at the base. With all his strength, he forces the screwdriver blade against the edge nearest the Yale lock. Wood splinters on the fourth attempt and the blade sinks until it meets stone with a grind. With all his might he leans against the screwdriver handle until it digs into the palm of one hand. 'Open, you fuck,' he swears, panting with frustration. The blade bends and then snaps out of his hand. 'Shit,' he cries out, immediately clutching his chin. His fingers come away from his face wet. The end of the blade has nicked his chin.
Angry at his uselessness, he begins to kick the kitchen door, sole first, again and again. Until something snaps inside the lock. The door swings inward and crashes against a wall in the dark interior. Instinctively he jumps back, and then scrabbles on the grass to find the knife he's dropped there.
Nothing stirs in the unlit house. No one comes out. Silence returns to the hidden place.
Breathing hard from his efforts and nerves, he reaches inside his jacket and removes the penlight torch. The thin beam of light is immediately swallowed up in the darkened doorway. Moved to the sides of the frame, it begins to shine against the edges of wooden cupboards and corners. Approaching the threshold, he makes ready to step inside, but stops.
Quickly, he pulls his scarf up high, over his nose and mouth, coughs, and then blows through his nose to clear his throat and sinuses. Something has gone bad in there. Thick like the stench from a pig farm he once canoed through while exploring the canals in the green belt of Birmingham, a miasma wafts from the doorway: offal tinged, sawdust-fresh, and incongruously mixed with a spice that has a church smell — like incense. He is reminded of butcher's shops, of old tombs with unreadable inscriptions, and of wet dustbin bags in disused allotments, left for too long with meat scraps inside them.
Feeling nauseous, taking shallow breaths, Dante creeps inside, slowly, with the feeble light from his torch illuminating the places his feet tread. Wiping sweat from off his eyebrows and feeling the sting from the cut on his chin, he stands inside the kitchen. 'Jesus,' he mutters. He is reminded of the paper round he used to plod through before he went to school, when he nosed around the inside of a derelict flat in a tower block. Cupboard doors hang open, crockery has been smashed across the tiled floor, black-spore fungus clouds what was once white paintwork. And a smell hangs in the air as if he is about to trip over something recently dead.
Through the kitchen, he walks to the hallway, and watches the house in Arthur's story open around him under thin strobes of torchlight. Things have not changed, unless they have worsened. Dark paper, the colour of a pope's robes on a faded painting, coats the walls, emitting a velvety sheen under his thin beam. Clouds of damp and the wet fustiness of neglect soak uncarpeted floors and stained ceilings. In what must have once been a dining room, curtains the colour of heavy grapes left too long on the vine hang over the window frames. Judging by the thick cobwebs along the metal rails, they have not been opened in years.
Beside the long table, which is covered with cardboard boxes, wet to the touch and brimming with paper, folders and books, there is a clutter of dark furniture. Backing out of the dining room, he inches along to one remaining door on the left side of the ground floor. He turns and shines his torch across the hallway, to light the cellar door, set beneath the staircase. At the top of the frame, he can see a latch, to lock the door from the outside. Although the latch is pulled back, leaving the door unsecured, that is the last place he intends to go looking.
Ahead on the left of the hall, he finds the parlour, cramped and crowded with chairs, upholstered but sagging, and there is a deep couch, set low to the floor. Yellowy newspapers spill from another collection of cardboard boxes. Across the side of one box is a supermarket logo reading SOUTH AFRICAN APPLES. Another advertises bleach. Again there is no carpet, and only a wet rug beneath the legs of a cluttered coffee table. The floorboards feel sticky beneath the soles of his boots.
When he raises his eyes to scan the bookshelves, he immediately notices something odd. Above the blocked fireplace and on two other walls, he can see three paintings set in new frames. Murky-looking paintings, with indistinct subjects. He walks around the table and squints at one, shining his torch at the canvas. After a few seconds, he closes his eyes.