Then—there was no doubt about this now—Irene heard someone walk along the corridor on the other side of the partition wall. A soft tread, not like Angela’s drunken shuffle, and not some muffled, indistinct, imagined noise, but footsteps. Careful and unmistakable.
There was someone next door, and it was not a ghost. It was an intruder. More than most things, Irene dreaded an intruder. She dreaded the moment at which the intruder would realize that there was someone home, a witness they would have to deal with. She dreaded the moment of reckoning, the moment at which she, the frail pensioner alone in bed, would come to understand the sort of intruder this was: an opportunist, out to snatch a wallet or a laptop computer, or something else. Someone in search of a plaything. Those terrible, pitiful stories you heard, of old ladies beaten, assaulted, eyes blackened, nightdresses soiled.
There, again! Another noise, someone moving back and forth, perhaps, along the corridor. Looking for something? Myerson, Irene thought. The man who’d made Angela cry. The man who’d lied about having ever been there at all. She’d not liked the look of him at all, not liked the way his eyes slid over her, underestimating her all the while. Stupid old fool, he’d thought. She could almost hear him muttering. Nosy old cow.
Well. She might as well fulfill her curtain-twitching destiny, then, mightn’t she? She felt in the darkness for the light switch and clicked on the lamp, blinking as her eyes adjusted to the light. Maneuvering herself into a sitting position, she reached for her spectacles. Her mobile phone, inevitably, was not next to her bed. The blasted phone was never where she needed it to be; no matter where she was or what she was doing, it was always in another room.
She crept down the stairs, feeling her way along the stairwell in the dark, not wanting to attract attention by turning on the downstairs lights. Stupid, she muttered to herself. Blundering around in the darkness—never mind twisting an ankle, you’ll break a hip.
As Irene reached the last step, as carefully she tested with one slippered foot that she had quite definitely reached the ground floor, she heard from next door a louder sound, a sudden whump! as though someone had stumbled, and she cried out, “Who is that? I can hear you. I’m calling the police! The police are coming!” She sounded laughably indignant, even to her own ears. “Do you hear me?”
Silence answered.
* * *
Two police officers, one young, stocky, fresh-faced, the other older, a woman in her thirties, weary-looking, stood outside Angela’s house, hands on hips. “The door’s locked,” the stocky one told Irene. He tried the door handle again, just to show her. “No sign of anyone tampering with it. No sign of any damage to the windows.” He shrugged, apologetic. “There’s no sign of a break-in.”
“There’s someone in there,” Irene, shuffling over to join the police officers, insisted. “I heard them. I heard them walking around.”
“And you say the house is empty? You’re sure it hasn’t been rented out?”
“No, it’s definitely empty, they haven’t even finished clearing it, and the thing is, there was a man here today, and he lied about the fact he’d been here before, and I just . . . I just . . .”
The woman pursed her lips. “So, someone’s been hanging around the property, then?”
“Well . . . no, that’s not what I’m saying, but a woman died here. A couple of months ago, a woman died, and you . . . not you, but the police, said it was an accident, only I’m not sure that’s right, because now the son’s died, and doesn’t that seem strange to you?”
The woman blinked, slowly. “Sorry,” she said, “you’re saying there have been two suspicious deaths at the property?”
“No, no, only one, the son died somewhere else. . . . I just . . . I’m not some time waster,” Irene said. “But there’s someone next door, and . . . frankly, I’m frightened.”
The stocky one nodded. “Right you are,” he said, giving Irene a smile. He raised his fist and thumped it firmly against the door. They all waited. He thumped again. And then a light came on.
Irene almost fell over the policewoman in her haste to back away from the door. “There is someone there!” she cried, at once terrified and triumphant. A few moments later, the door swung open, and there stood Carla, her expression thunderous.
* * *
Later, after they’d sorted everything out with the police, after Carla had explained who she was and how she’d every right to be there, she accepted Irene’s offer of a three a.m. cup of tea. “You shouldn’t be crashing around in there,” Irene said to her, aggrieved. “Not in the middle of the night.”