Steps; a tread coming closer, shoes on polished wood. Oh, fucking hell. I wanted to cry. I was going to cry. I put my head down, bowing to the darkness. Hide your face, don’t let the whites of the eyes show. Maybe the footsteps weren’t coming this way. You couldn’t always tell in unfamiliar houses. Maybe he was walking upstairs. Maybe – the door to the cupboard opened. Light sensed through the eyelids. I stopped breathing.
How long? What would happen? Would he smell me? Would he see me? How long? How long before I knew? Would he say something? Would he just look, squint, then shout, or take out a gun? Or go for a gun from his gun safe in the study? Or call the big blond guy? Light! There had to be a light fixture in a cupboard this size! I hadn’t thought to look or feel for one, but there must be a switch. He’d turn on the light and see me hunched here. Fucking imbecile!
No light clicked on. Maybe he could see me without it. Anyway the smell was sure to do it. Animals could smell fear and we’re all just animals, especially in situations like this. The oldest, basest, most deeply wired sense was going to betray me, and the more I panicked about it the more fear pheromones I’d be giving out and so the more likely it was to happen. Oh fuck, I was going to lose control of my bowels again. Something clattered, making the floor under my backside thump. I came very close to both jumping and yelping.
Then the door closed and the light went.
Steps sounded going away again.
I breathed again. Of course, Merrial might still have seen me but thought the best thing to do was to pretend he hadn’t, so he could go and get a gun, or call the cops, or the blond guy.
‘Yes, Celia?’ I heard him say. ‘I’m home… Yes, there was too much rain. But listen. The alarm wasn’t on when I got in.’ I heard a rhythmic metallic tapping noise as he spoke. Then, as I looked at the thin frame of light around the closed door, one edge of that glowing boundary started slowly to widen and enlarge. The fucking door was opening! ‘The house alarm. It wasn’t switched on.’ The door opened silently and very slowly. Bits of gleaming fitness equipment came gradually into view. Then Merrial himself was revealed, standing by one of the polished chrome machines, looking out through the opened blinds of one tall window. He was dressed in jeans and a dark leather bomber jacket. ‘Of course I’m sure,’ he said. ‘Don’t ask stupid questions.’ He was resting one hand on the fitness machine, tapping one of the wire-hung weights against the chrome metal support; that was the tapping noise I’d heard. He hadn’t noticed the cupboard door still slowly opening. ‘I don’t even have Kaj here with me. I-’ Now he must have noticed the door from the corner of his eye; he started and his head shot round as he jumped and made a small involuntary noise. ‘Fucking door,’ he said quietly. He was staring, it seemed, straight at me.
Oh fuck. If I shifted now he’d see the movement but if he kept looking at me he’d surely see my pasty white face in the darkness. I kept still but closed my eyes. Then opened them a touch because I could hear him walking towards me across the wooden floor of the gym.
‘No, just the door to the cupboard in the gym. Swung open there. Gave me a… moment,’ he said, putting one hand to the edge of the door and closing it. The light faded again. I took another breath. ‘So were you last out, or what?’ he said, voice muffled again by the closed door. ‘Well, somebody forgot to set the fucking alarm, Celia.’
Oh, just fucking leave her alone, you fuck. It wasn’t her. She’s Ceel; she would never make a mistake like that. She’s the calm, infallible one. Her only fault is a certain weakness for villains and idiots.
Maybe if I rushed the bastard and smacked him over the head with something heavy. Kill the fucker; murder the man. He was a fucking people-smuggling, life-ruining, knee-snapping crime lord, for fuck’s sake; I’d be doing society a favour. Then Ceel and I could run away together.
Or, better still, say, just hide here in the darkness and hope.
‘Well, I’m calling Kaj, get him to have a look at the alarm… Well, he helped install it. I’m going to take a look round, make sure there’s nobody in here… It’s not being paranoid, Celia. I’m not taking a shower thinking there could be some smack-head on the loose in here looking for your jewels or something. These types are unbalanced, capable of anything… Yes, that sort of remark is amusing around the dinner table, Celia. Standing here right now thinking there could be some junkie hiding behind a door with a knife, irony is the last thing on my mind… I’m not suggesting a junkie could defeat the alarm, I’m suggesting that somebody forgot to turn the alarm on and that therefore there could possibly be somebody in the house who got in without the alarm going off as it would have otherwise… I’m not discussing this with you. You seem in a very strange mood… No, I don’t want to know how your weekend is going… Do what you want.’ There was a soft snapping noise, like a phone being closed, perhaps. Then steps, a pause, more steps, a door opening off the room, then closing, then another door, and then silence.
My hand was getting sore. I was still gripping my mobile; it was still, I guessed, connected to the answering machine in the study on the floor below. I closed the phone then opened it again so that the back light would come on. Duration of calclass="underline" 6:51, 6:52, 6:53… End Call?
That had to cover the message I’d left last night. It must have been recorded over by now. I clicked OK to end the call. The phone vibrated almost immediately, making me panic again. I dropped the phone, grabbed at it while it was still in mid-air and succeeded only in batting it across the dark cupboard, off a wall with a loud thud and against some unidentified piece of metallic equipment with a resounding clang. Then it fell to the floor with another thump.
Fuck! Would he have heard that? And where was the phone? Lying on the floor somewhere. If I was lucky the fucker would have been smashed by the series of impacts, but if I wasn’t then it was about to exhaust the three or four vibrations it went through in the mode I had it in and start ringing normally. I had to get to it before it did. Merrial was probably standing stopped in the hall outside, listening intently and thinking, Did I hear a couple of thuds with a clang in-between there? If he heard the piercing warble of an unfamiliar mobile phone coming from the room he’d just left, he’d be right back in here. Or more likely he’d dash down to his study, grab a gun and then come storming back.
I levered myself forward, feeling along the unseen floor for the little phone. Why did they have to make the damn things so fucking small nowadays? Old mobiles were the size of a brick; I’d have found the thing by now instead of whimpering as my hands fanned out across the wooden floor, banging into bits of gear and failing totally to find the phone, which I couldn’t even hear now. The ringing would start any second. Not that that would matter, because thanks to my panic and subsequent whacking of the phone about the place like it was a fucking squash ball, Merrial had almost certainly realised there was somebody hiding in his gym store and probably already had his shotgun or whatever and was walking calmly upstairs, chambers full and hammers cocked.
Green glow to one side, quietly flicking off. The phone’s screen. I found it, bashing my forehead off something metal as I did so. I closed then opened the phone again. The display looked normal; nothing wrong with the little fucker. So how come it hadn’t gone from vibration to ring? Then I saw the little envelope symbol. Of course; it had registered an incoming text message and so had vibrated once only. I needn’t have panicked; I certainly needn’t have started bouncing it off the walls like a bluebottle in a fucking jam jar.
Still no sounds from outside. Maybe I’d got away with it. I squatted there in the darkness and accessed the message: OK 2 CALL? C.