Requiem

by Clare Francis

  A strange sound rose from below: a faint scratching. Hurrying now, she zipped up the bag, heaved it onto the lip of the open window then, giving it a firm shove, watched it bump past the sill before disappearing into the darkness and landing almost immediately on the roof below with what seemed to be a grossly amplified thud.

  A dog barked, a sharp furious yapping. The sound was coming from inside the house. A voice yelled for it to shut up. The barking continued. Claws scratched frantically against wood. After a moment a door was opened and she knew instantly which one it was – the door to the stairs. A male voice came floating up the stairwell: ‘Fuck off, Beji.’

  She heard the skittering of the animal’s paws as it scrabbled up the stairs. She made for the door, intending to slam it shut, but even before she stumbled over the bed she realized she had left it too late. The dog was fast; it was already racing across the hallway. Her brain, acting on its own initiative, was making a few simultaneous calculations: if she lunged for the door and pushed hard she might catch the animal against the jamb, while if she held back, the dog would get in and try for a chunk of her leg. Either way someone was going to get hurt. The question was, who would make the least noise?

  She held back. The dog shot in, braked hard and spun round to get a run at her. She kicked out a defensive foot but the animal had seen plenty of those and was past it in a flash and under the cover of semi-darkness was coming in to her leg from the other side. Daisy tried to grab at the mass of fur, but it was surprisingly hard to grip. The animal snarled and wriggled and howled, its snapping teeth grabbing at her legs. Any last self-control she might have felt vanished in the heat of her panic and, letting the teeth get to grips with her jeans, she caught the animal by the scruff of the neck and yanked it screaming into the air and clamped a hand round its throat. She wasn’t sure how much pressure was needed to kill, but she soon found out how much was needed to cut off the noise. When the animal stopped screaming, she eased the pressure, and cocked an ear towards the door, straining to pick up sounds over the dazed gasps of the dog.

  The silence reached out, unsettlingly quiet.

  She dropped the snuffling rasping dog onto the bed and looked longingly towards the window. There might still be time. But even as she assessed the precarious climb onto the sill and the impossibly narrow squeeze through the high opening, she heard the creak of a tread on the stairs.

  She was very still.

  And again, faint but unmistakable.

  I don’t think I can deal with this, she thought; I want to scream.

  A light came on in the hall beyond the open door.

  She moved deeper into the room. The window was out of the question now. Under the bed? She felt an anticipatory lurch of something like claustrophobia. In the wardrobe? It stood to one side of the door, a narrow old-fashioned freestanding wardrobe in dark wood. Too small. To the other side of the window then, in the corner, a door to what could be a walk-in cupboard?

  There had to be a better way.

  Bluff it out? Stand her ground?

  The dog began to whimper. In the light from the hall she could see it clearly – two globular eyes in a squashed face, a mass of pale fur – and then it came to her with sudden certainty: this was his room.

  For a moment she was the child again, fear panting at her heels, limbs dragging in water, unable to move.

  Another sound. Much closer, almost at the door. She moved at last, stealing deeper into the room, towards the far corner and the narrow recessed door. It pulled open soundlessly. She met hanging clothes, a floor covered with shoes and soft unidentifiable bundles. Easing her feet through to the boards beneath, she stepped into the dark sweat- and musk-scented world of Maynard’s shirts.

  The long journey and the time change were finally taking their toll on Dublensky, and his memory was giving trouble. It wasn’t the contents of the memos he’d sent to the MKI management that were failing to come to mind – he remembered them quite clearly – nor even the responses he’d got back – they’d been few enough – but the order and timing of these events, which Calthrop was determined that he should recall. But with each new effort of memory Dublensky’s mind was only becoming more confused.

  Mackenzie suggested a break. Calthrop didn’t look too happy about that, but then matters were brought to a natural halt by a buzz on the internal phone which had Nick Mackenzie leaving the room like a rocket. The girl Jenny followed immediately, then a few minutes later Mackenzie put his head round the door and summoned Simon Calthrop as well, leaving the Dublenskys alone.

  Anne said: ‘There’s something bad going on, I know there is. And they’re not telling us.’

  ‘Why d’you say that? I thought it was going well. I mean, they’ve done everything they said they would.’

  ‘I meant something else.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘How do I know?’ she said impatiently. ‘That’s what they’re not telling us.’

  They sat in silence for a while, aware of the murmur of urgent voices wafting through the partly open door.

  Dublensky got to his feet. ‘I’ll go and make sure Tad’s okay. Should he be in bed?’

  Anne shrugged. ‘He’s half-way through a video.’

  Dublensky decided to go anyway. Reaching the door he pulled it open to see Mackenzie, Calthrop and the girl in the centre of the hall. Calthrop was saying in a fast low-pitched voice: ‘I can’t possibly get involved with this! Christ, you shouldn’t even be telling me. It’s crazy to tell me. If the paper gets a whiff of this, they’ll have hysterics. God.’

  Dublensky would have moved then if he hadn’t heard Mackenzie say: ‘But what about Daisy?’

  Calthrop held up both hands and said with a chilly little laugh: ‘I’m sorry – I’m really not listening to this. I’ve gone totally deaf.’

  ‘She could be in trouble!’

  ‘Daisy’s a resilient girl. She’ll be all right.’

  Calthrop began to retreat, but Mackenzie grabbed him by the shoulder. ‘What do you mean, all right? Suppose she’s been beaten up like Campbell? Suppose she’s lying somewhere, hurt?’

  ‘Listen, Mackenzie, perhaps I’m not making myself clear,’ interrupted Calthrop smoothly, shaking his shoulder free. ‘I won’t – I can’t – have anything to do with this.’

  Even from where Dublensky stood he could see the set of Mackenzie’s jaw, the anger in his face. ‘I see,’ he hissed. ‘So Campbell’s beaten up and Daisy’s missing and you’re not prepared to help?’

  ‘Now wait a minute,’ Calthrop argued virtuously. ‘Don’t let’s forget what they were doing to get into this mess, shall we? A burglary, for God’s sake. What do you expect me to do, find a tame policeman to help out?’

  ‘You must have contacts!’

  ‘Nobody could have contacts that good,’ Calthrop scoffed. ‘They were committing a criminal offence, and my paper can have nothing to do with it. Nothing. And’ – he raised an admonitory finger – ‘nothing to do with the perpetrators, either. Daisy’s finally gone over the edge this time. Killed her chances. If this comes out she’ll be finished, believe me!’

  ‘They were only looking for evidence,’ Jenny chipped in defensively.

  ‘What evidence?’ Calthrop jeered. ‘We could never use that sort of evidence, it’s useless!’

  Mackenzie hunched down into his shoulders. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean we can’t use stuff which has been stolen in a bloody burglary. God, we’d be bombarded with writs and injunctions, not to mention arrest!’

  There was silence. Mackenzie glowered at the floor, then, sensing Dublensky’s presence, swung round to stare at him. Dublensky tried to pretend he’d just that minute come into the hall.

  ‘Fine,’ Mackenzie said to no one in particular. ‘Fine.’

  And with that he strode over to Dublensky. ‘I’ve got to leave,’ he said in a rough undertone. ‘You won’t go away, will you?’

  ‘What’s happening?’ Dublensky asked in agitat
ion.

  ‘Nothing that need bother you.’

  Dublensky protested: ‘But I think I should know.’

  ‘Just don’t go away, that’s all!’

  And he disappeared up the stairs at a run. The next morning the housekeeper told Dublensky that Mr Mackenzie had been driven south the previous night. She thought he had gone to London.

  Chapter 37

  THE SILENCE CLOSED in around Daisy, steady and tantalizing, and at that moment she might have been able to convince herself she was alone in the building if it hadn’t been for the sickly scent of Maynard’s clothing, the blend of hair gel and unidentifiable body scents that were like a presence in the darkness.

  She had eased the hanging clothes away from her face and was standing propped against the wall, her ear close to the door, waiting and listening, though for what she wasn’t sure. More silence? Some sign that it was safe to get out? Even perhaps a sound in the room outside.

  The pipes ticked gently, and a muffled sound, something like the banging of a car door, drifted up from Peregrine Road.

  How long had she been here? Ten minutes? No, longer, much longer – more like twenty. It had taken a good five minutes for her heart to regain its rhythm after she’d stepped into the cupboard and discovered that not only were there no means of pulling the door closed after her, but it was threatening to swing open again. Gripping the edge of the door with her fingers she had run a hand over the inner surface and eventually located a clothes hook which had given her sufficient leverage to pull the door gently into the jamb. Then, just when she thought the worst was over, the spring-loaded ball closure had given a slight click as it went home. The sound, no louder than a breaking matchstick, had seemed to reverberate across the silence, gathering volume in her brain. Her throat dried, her heart squeezed against her chest.

  There had been no sound from the other side of the door.

  It was another five minutes before she convinced herself that it was silence that she was hearing in the room beyond, that the rustlings of her own movements, the sound of her own breathing were not masking some other breathing or the creep of footfalls on the carpet or the soft snorts of the lurking dog.

  There had been no one moment when she had realized the dog had gone, no one moment when the snuffles had stopped; rather the sounds had faded imperceptibly, probably early on, when she was still listening for something much closer, like a touch on the door, a sudden pull on the handle.

  Once the snuffles had faded there had been no other sound. Whoever had come up the stairs had come and gone silently.

  Now the silence was long and seemingly uninhabited. She would have to move sooner or later, and this was as good a time as any. She slid her hand to the edge of the door and began to exert pressure on it by degrees. It resisted her first efforts and, realizing she’d have to push a little harder, she felt for the hook so that she could restrain the door from flying open once it sprang past the catch.

  Finding the hook, she was on the point of giving the door a solid push when a sound came, catching her by surprise.

  Loud, close, just beyond the door. Her hand jerked away from the hook.

  Loud, close. The bitter complaint of wood sliding against wood, the squeal of ancient pulleys: the window.

  But if the loudness was startling, so was the realization that someone had stolen into the room without a sound, had crossed to the window without the creak of a floorboard. Had even – the thought unnerved her – been there all the time.

  Her knee gave way, she jerked it taut. She realized she was holding her breath and exhaled rapidly. She shifted her weight and put her head closer to the door. Had he realized why the window was open? If so, why was he closing it? Then it occurred to her that the frame was complaining so much not because the window was being closed but because the upper sash was being opened further; either that, or somehow he’d managed to prise open the solid lower sash.

  There was only one reason he would be opening the window further: to search the roof below. He must think she’d got out that way. Or maybe he was checking to see if she was trapped there, unable to get down.

  Whatever, he would see the bag. The realization came to her with sickening certainty, and she grimaced in silent frustration. Stupid. Stupid.

  She pressed her ear back to the door. Faint scrabbling sounds, a soft rasping like clothes dragging over the window-sill.

  That was it then, she thought, adjusting to the full weight of her disappointment: he’ll have seen it by now. She pictured him leaning out of the window, torch in hand, casting the light over the roof until the bulky shape of the bag caught in the beam. In a few minutes he would climb out and retrieve it. Then he would discover the bulging files and, knowing she would never have left them behind intentionally, he would realize that she couldn’t have got very far after all.

  She listened for the sound of feet on the sill, for knocks and scrapes as he climbed down onto the roof. She prepared to open the door and run while he was out on the roof, but though she waited, nerves beating at her throat, the pause stretched on and on until, finally, it was broken by an abrupt and unexpected sound: the screaming pulleys again, louder than ever. The window being closed. And not just one sash either: there was the thud of a second sliding home, and the click of a clasp.

  What did it mean? He couldn’t possibly have had time to get out onto the roof and retrieve the bag and climb back in. Maybe he’d decided to leave it till morning. Maybe he didn’t have a torch. Maybe – it seemed too much to hope for – he hadn’t spotted the bag at all.

  But hope comes cheap and she allowed herself a large ration. She almost persuaded herself that he’d given up on her, that he thought she’d escaped. From there it was a short step to an even more promising thought: that he didn’t realize she was there or had ever been there, that he believed Campbell had come on his own. The open window could after all have been Campbell’s doing, while the dog, catching Campbell’s scent, could have become hysterical and run itself into the door.

  Arguments that didn’t bear much examination; but they kept her going while she waited breathlessly in the darkness. The silence was worse this time because she knew he moved soundlessly, and, while he might well have left the room, he could just as easily be inches away, his hand reaching slowly for the door, or, worse, just standing there, waiting.

  The silence stretched out. The sounds in Peregrine Road, now stifled by the closed window, were barely audible: a dog barking, the occasional car, a jet rumbling over on its descent to Heathrow. After a time she persuaded herself that the room was empty again. When ten minutes’ silence had passed she murmured inwardly, This is ridiculous, and reached for the door again, one hand to the hook, the other to the door edge. She pushed gently but the door didn’t shift. She tried harder. It was very stiff. She ran over her memories of the door: the soft click when she had pulled it shut, the operation of the simple spring-ball arrangement, the knob on the outside which had been of the fixed non-turning variety, the impossibility of a latch or anything heart-stopping like that.

  She pushed again, really hard this time. And again.

  And then for an instant her heart really did stop, because as she put her whole weight against the door, she realized it would never open. It had been locked from the outside.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Sure I’m sure. Over the bicycle shop. An’ look, the hire car’s still there. Three down, behind the white one.’

  Nick looked at the Escort, then surveyed the building. It was on the opposite corner, on a junction with a small street called Peregrine Road, whose name, set on a plate on the side wall, was just visible in the streetlights. A single white light glowed dimly in the window of the shop. The windows above were in darkness.

  ‘The door, it’s at the side there.’

  Campbell’s voice tightened oddly, and Nick took a quick look at him. He sat stiffly in the passenger seat, his head pressed back against the rest, his lower lip pushed out fiercely, li
ke a bulldog’s. In the thin light it was hard to tell if he was in pain or just exhausted.

  ‘You all right?’

  ‘Huh? I’m a’right,’ he replied testily. It was the answer he’d given at the hospital when Nick had picked him up from the casualty department an hour before. His only visible signs of injury, then as now, were a puffy left eye and a long cut over the lid which had been fixed with Elastoplast, giving him the look of a boxer after a choppy fight. The nurse had mentioned something about concussion, but Campbell had brushed the idea aside.

  Nick turned off the engine and peered forward to take another look at the building. Was Daisy still there? He tried to imagine her somewhere behind the dark windows. Was she lying unconscious? But no, why would they have attacked her? There wouldn’t have been any need to subdue her, not like with Campbell. Trapped then? But why would they have kept her there, why would they bother?

  He sighed fretfully: ‘We should have gone straight to the police. There’s nothing we can do here!’

  ‘Ha!’ Campbell brayed his contempt. ‘An’ what would they be doin’ that we canna’?’

  ‘Having the law on their side,’ Nick replied.

  ‘Aye, an’ they’d just listen like lambs, would they? They’d just come along an’ do as we asked, would they?’

  Nick, remembering that he was up on drugs charges and Campbell on bail for assault, reluctantly felt himself giving way, though it went against his better judgement.

  ‘But why would she still be here?’ he argued.

  ‘Huh? Well, she didna’ come out, did she?’

  ‘How do you know? You were in the gutter unconscious.’

  ‘But she’d have made a call if she’d have got out, would she not? She’d have taken the car. She’d have called Ashard.’

  There was no denying that and, momentarily silenced, another idea came to Nick: that she’d had an accident, tried to climb out and fallen from a window. The idea, dramatic and unlikely though it was, began to fix itself in his mind.