But the message was still there. Was it worth the risk of leaving it there, even though it wasn’t likely that anybody would take the necessary steps to access it? What if Merrial had called his own phone for some reason, and knew there was a message or messages there? Or somebody said they’d left a message? What would happen in that case if he came home and saw it said No Messages? Wouldn’t he investigate, take the cassette out, try it in another machine?
Maybe Ceel would still beat him back and be able to say there was nothing on the tape, or only junk calls, but what if he was first back?
Jesus, what was I thinking of? I took off my glove again, got out my mobile and started walking to the door. I’d call the fucking answering machine myself and just leave a soundless call that would last long enough to overwrite my incriminating message from last night. Maybe not soundless; maybe the machine would sense that and switch off. I’d rub my hand over the microphone on the mobile so it would pick up some sound and lay that down on the tape.
First, though, I had to set up my mobile to ban its caller ID on the next outgoing call. I pressed Menu as I opened the door to the first-floor hall. I walked towards the stairs to the ground floor. Phone Book. OK. I got to the top of the stairs.
Oh, Jesus, I hadn’t locked the fucking study. I turned back from the stairs. No, wait a minute; the study’s Yale had locked itself; I didn’t need to actively lock the damn thing. I got to the top of the stairs again. Call Related Features. OK.
Oh, fuck, I had to put the key back in Ceel’s bathroom; I was going the wrong way. I turned round to head for the stairs leading up. Show Battery Meter. No; next. Restrict My Phone Number. OK. I walked upstairs.
This was stupid; I was trying to do two things at once when I was barely capable of doing one with any degree of competence. Restrict ID On Next Call.
At last! OK.
Crossing Ceel’s bedroom, I clicked back until I could make a call then rang the number here. I still jumped when the land-line extension in the bedroom rang. The study key went back in the box of tampons and I listened to Ceel’s voice inviting me to leave a message after the tone. There were no beeps in between, just the tone, immediately. I held the mobile clumsily in my gloved left hand and rubbed it with my thumb while I closed the cabinet and wiped it with the paper hanky again.
I was closing Ceel’s bedroom door and still enthusiastically rubbing the phone’s mike with the glove fabric (and thinking, Hey, this must sound a bit like when I got that unmeant call from Jo’s mobile) when, distantly, down the stairwell, two storeys below, I heard the sound of the front door opening.
I froze. No. Not happen. Not to happen. No happening of such like thing. Just fucking, like, no.
Maybe I’d mistaken the sound. It went quiet. Was that a very quiet clicking I could hear from down there? Then a tiny beeping noise. Of course; the alarm that should have been on when somebody came into the house, the alarm they’d be expecting to be on but then discovered was not. Oh fuck.
‘Celia?’ said a voice. My bowels suddenly felt like they were up to their old tricks again, like there was unfinished business needing attention in there. Oh my God, it was him, back even earlier than we’d been expecting. Oh fucking hell, now what was I supposed to do? I looked down at the mobile phone in my gloved hand. My thumb was over the microphone. Shit, it wouldn’t be picking all this up, would it? Re-transmitting it back to the answering machine in the study?
‘Celia?’ again. Louder. ‘Maria?’
I took a couple of steps back, to Celia’s bedroom door. I’d take sanctuary there. It was right. The natural place, the slim straw it was proper to clutch at, that of my love’s inner sanctum… well, that was a load of bollocks. Assuming that was him, and he was looking for her, where would be the first place he’d try? Well, yes, Kenneth.
I stepped further back, to another door. I could hear footsteps down below. The door led to a shallow cupboard. Not enough room to hide in. That was it. There was his room, hers, and to access any others I’d have to walk past the stairwell and be visible from below for a certain amount of time. The footsteps were hard to make out. Was that somebody walking up the stairs to the floor below, the first floor? Or somebody walking along the hall on the ground floor?
I was quaking. I gripped the mobile so hard I was in danger of breaking it. My jaw was grinding like I’d taken twenty E an hour earlier. It felt like I was right slap bang on the verge of a heart attack. Sweat was trickling from my brows; I could taste it on my upper lip. Jesus Christ; I’d been on the piss from mid-afternoon yesterday, slept in my clothes, got up without changing or washing, suffered at least one full-on panic attack per hour since I woke up and now I was sweating like a paedophile in Mothercare; even if I found the perfect hiding place the fucker was going to smell me.
I walked as fast as possible past the stairwell towards the rooms at the front of the house. I did that walk where you step quickly but put each foot down very gently, trying not to cause any creaks or other noises. I stared wide-eyed down the stairwell. No obvious signs of anybody coming up to this floor or the one below. ‘Maria?’ More distantly this time. He must be through in the kitchen or thereabouts.
Three doors ahead. One to the side. That one led to another, narrower staircase heading steeply for what would have been the servants’ or the children’s rooms when the house was designed. I closed it. So far no comedy door-creaking noises from the well-maintained hinges. Thank fuck. Central door. Another cupboard. Not as shallow as the one along the landing, but nowhere to hide if he did look in.
Right-hand door. Jesus; was this his bedroom? Big enough. Grand enough. Masculine-looking enough (I thought). I’d vaguely assumed they both had their bedrooms at the rear because it would be quieter, but maybe the one opposite hers was somebody else’s – the bodyguard, the big blond guy? – and this was Merrial’s. It looked lived-in, somehow. I closed it. Maybe a little too quickly; there was a distinct click.
The third door revealed a gym. A very well-equipped gym with a polished blond-wood floor and lots of machines, some of which I recognised, a couple I didn’t. Two more tall windows and translucent vertical blinds.
There were footsteps coming up the stairs. I was starting to hyperventilate. What did it feel like when you had a heart attack? Heart thrashing? Pains in chest? Headache? Sore arms? That would be (E) All of the above, then.
I slipped into the gym. Heck, the smell of stale sweat might even be less conspicuous in here. I still needed somewhere to hide. Two more doors; the first led to another en suite. The second belonged to a large, deep cupboard.
Oh shit; I could hear somebody on this floor now, out on the landing. The cupboard held old bits of fitness equipment plus various items of sports gear, including some scuba apparatus. This would have to do. I closed the door and made my way through the darkness as rapidly as I could, banging one shin and barking a hand on something hard and metallic. When I hit the rear wall I got into a corner and squatted down. The place smelled musty. I decided that was good.
A door opened. Was it the door to the gym?
Oh fuck. What the hell had I been thinking? If Merrial had just come back from caving, what was he likely to do? Put the gear away. Where was he likely to put it? Where would he come straight to? Right here. This cupboard, this door. Right here where mister fuckwit was hiding, squatting like a frightened schoolboy at the back of a hidey-hole.
Well done, Kenneth. Top fucking marks, son. Take a good feel of your knees while they still fold the same way as everybody else’s.