I made it home again by early evening, and the time seemed to stretch away in front of me. I tried ringing Jacob and Clare, but there was no reply. Even Sam's answering machine was on. I put the phone down without leaving him a message.
Instead, I managed to uncover the local phone directory, and looked up Terry Rothwell's address. It wasn't too far away, one of the new estates, and the weather was uncharacteristically dry. I had quite a few questions for Terry, not least of which was to find out from whom, exactly, he acquired that damn lap-top in the first place.
My next question would probably have concerned the fact that he chose to drop my name into it, when all I'd been doing was a favour for a friend. As I gathered up my leather jacket and helmet, I was in the mood to get stroppy with someone who wasn't in a position to shout back.
***
I found my way to the collection of streets where Terry lived easily enough, but finding his house was another matter. The planners in their infinite wisdom had used the same name for a Street, an Avenue and a Way, all right on top of one another.
The light was gone by the time I got there. I had to park up and dig out the piece of paper I'd scribbled his address down on before I could discover which one Terry actually lived on. By that time it wasn't worth moving again and I left the bike where it was. I didn't chain it up, just set the alarm, and took my helmet with me.
Wilmington Avenue consisted of a featureless sprawl of brick boxes. They were detached, but only just, with an alleyway between each that was so narrow you could have reached out and touched both walls without stretching.
At first I couldn't work out what looked wrong about the way they were laid out, but then I realised there were no pavements along each side of the road. The pocket handkerchief-sized front lawns ran straight down into the gutter with only a line of edging bricks between the two.
I didn't know how long the estate had been built, but little attempt had been made by the occupants to individualise the houses. A few little stunted shrubs in the gardens, the odd neat planting of small clumps of unidentifiable greenery. In the driveways stood two- or three-year-old sensible saloon cars.
As I rounded a curve in the road I spotted Terry's house. There was nothing very different about the exterior, except for the fact it had his damn great green Merc van parked smack outside. I'd bet the residents' association – and there had to be one – loved that.
I toddled up by the side of the van to the front door, wondering how he put up with keeping it next to the house. It must block out half the light from the downstairs area. It was pretty dark down there as I rang the bell. The door was made up of wooden slats, with long thin frosted glass panes between. I peered through the glass and could see a light on, somewhere in the back.
I rang the bell again, listening carefully for the chime indoors to make sure it was working. I tapped on the glass with my keys as well, just to be certain, but there was no movement inside.
I carefully made my way round the side of the house, squeezing through the narrow alleyway between house and garage. There was a window into the garage and, instinctively nosy, I peered in through that as well. I could just make out the front wing of the Merc coupé in the gloom. If the car and the van were here, Terry surely must be, mustn't he?
Bolder now, I carried on round to the back, looking warily round the darkened fence bordering the garden. There were no lights on in the houses overlooking the rear of the property, which made me feel slightly better. If Terry wasn't in, the last thing I wanted to do was get wrestled to the ground by some rabid Neighbourhood Watch brigade as a suspected burglar.
The back garden was as featureless as the front, with a flat slabbed patio and a couple of steps leading up to a big sliding door. There was a bit of light sliding out down the steps from between partly drawn curtains and I cautiously edged my way over to it.
The first thing I saw, when I looked through, was a picture on the far wall oddly tilted to about a forty-five degree angle. The wallpaper was a horrible mixture of red, grey and silver diagonal stripes. Hmm, very eighties, Terry. I moved round slightly to get a different view, and saw a small table tipped over, with the clock and ashtray that had obviously been on its surface strewn across the carpet.
A kind of fear jerked in me then. Even for someone who was as much of a slob as Terry, this didn't look like normal living conditions. I moved further, jigging from side to side like some obscure exotic dancer to try and get a full picture through the narrow gap in the curtains.
A lampshade was awry, throwing strange long oval shadows up one wall. I caught a glimpse of a sofa, in grey velour, which had a hole in the backrest, the yellow foam puffing out of it like a dirty cloud.
I peered more intently. The place was a mess. There were dark patchy stains all over the carpet. Right at the extreme edge of my vision was the doorway leading, I assumed, out into the hall. On the wall by the door frame was a handprint. It looked as though whoever had made it had dipped their hand liberally in brown paint, there were drips running down the wallpaper. Perhaps Terry went in for finger painting. Or perhaps . . .
I shook myself, suddenly feeling cold with an unease that gripped me tightly, making it hard to breathe. Without really knowing why, I reached for the handle of the patio doors. Partly to my surprise, they moved.
I should have turned round then. I should have walked away down the side of the house and not looked back, but I didn't. And it probably wouldn't have made any difference to the final outcome, anyway. The train was already rolling down this line, and the brakes had failed.
With my heart pounding against my ribs, and my mouth dry, I slid the door open a foot and slipped through the gap into Terry's lounge.
From inside, the room looked even worse than it did from the garden. The sofa had been comprehensively slashed, the stuffing bursting out from a dozen slits in the fabric. Books, papers and a broken glass vase were scattered across the floor.
I crouched and looked more closely at one of the rusty brown stains. Was it blood? Frankly, I'd no idea. It was dried in, just a dull mark. Where the water from the vase had run across one patch, it seemed paler, but it could have been anything, including beer, or wine.
Who was I kidding? I just knew it was blood. You don't spill alcohol round the place in such a way that it sprays across a room, up the sides of the sofa, on the coffee table, even across the face of the TV.
I moved carefully over to the door and checked out that handprint. It was so detailed that the hand which made it must have been covered in blood. The lounge door, the usual flimsy internal plywood job, had a splintered fist-shaped hole at about shoulder height.
I moved cautiously through into the hallway, looking very carefully each way before I did so, like a kid on a kerb who's just had the Green Cross Code hammered into them. I felt like a character in one of those films where you sit there clenched on the sofa watching, shouting, “No, don't go in there! Get out of the house!” because you know full well the madman with the axe is lurking behind a curtain in the next room.
Damn it, why do I have to go thinking thoughts like that? I shook myself, annoyed. Just get on with it, Fox. On the other hand, technically I was breaking and entering. Legally, I didn't have a leg to stand on when it came to a right to be there. I knew I should just turn round and high-tail it out of there. I should, but I didn't.
Just plain nosy, I guess.
I edged forwards into the hallway, pausing just inside to let my eyes accustom to the gloom. Right ahead of me was the slant of the stairs. There was another brown stain round one of the bannister rails, which had dripped down onto the wallpaper beneath. A small, three-legged, triangular table was upturned against the skirting board. It was black and modern-looking, like some cast-off from a progressive milkmaid.