“He’d hidden his stash so well you couldn’t find it.”
“After I took care of him and old grandma Elizabeth, the house went on the market andthat’swhen I had the idea. Got myself a junior’s job with the estate agent that was handling the sale. Thought I’d get a set of keys and be able to wander around whenever I liked, turn the place upside down if I had to.”
“And why didn’t you?”
He snorts. “I wassonaive back then. I was the new junior agent and they gave me all the crap jobs, viewings on the low-end properties; they never let me handle the expensive stuff. I never even gotnearthis place while it was on the market in 2002. It sold to that old fart Mr. Hopkins pretty quickly, and all of it was handled by the branch manager because it was top-end value.”
“You missed your chance.”
“Yeah, but then something weird happened. I got a taste for it, the house-selling business. And I wasgoodat it, too. Enjoyed it, seeing how people lived, having access to all of it. And I thought, what better way of keeping an eye on this house, having a reason to drop by, to be in the neighborhood with a full set of copied keys. To have an interest in what was going on. Eric Hopkins was old, and I knew sooner or later it’d be up for sale again, that one day it would be empty again—and that would be my chance to check it thoroughly from top to bottom. To make absolutely sure I was safe. I just had to be patient. Even got some cameras set up in here to keep an eye on everything in case some idiot eventually stumbled across Pete’s stash of souvenirs. Some idiot like you. Tried to make it easy for you, but you wouldn’t listen. I tried to warn you off Webber with a little note about his checkered past, but you didn’t listen to that either.”
Grayness clouds my vision. The gas.
“Please… let my wife go. She doesn’t know anything.”
He notices me fighting to keep my eyes open.
“What you’re feeling now? That’s because carbon monoxide is replacing the oxygen in your red blood cells, preventing it from getting to your tissues and organs. It’s quite painless, not a bad way to go, all things considered. You’ll just slip away. Together.”
“Let Jess go. Please.”
He shakes his head, raising the wooden club.
“Sorry, Adam,” he says. “You really should have left the past alone. If you’d just let it be, none of this would have happened.”
He swings the club down again and the pain knocks me flat, a paralyzing, thundering blow above my ear.
Unconsciousness claws at me and I start to surrender to it, closing my eyes.
Darkness waiting to take me on one last journey.
71
I sense Swann standing over me, staring down like a hunter trying to decide whether to administer the coup de grâce. The noise of my own ragged breathing drifts in and out. Receding, nearing, receding again.
I lie perfectly still.
Playing dead.
Motionless.
Seconds pass, days, months, years…
I hear thesnickof a blade as my wrists are freed, the rope pulled away, and I search my fogging brain to figure out why. Letting my hands flop lifelessly to my sides, trying to work out why he would do that.
So it looks like we came up here of our own free will. So it looks like an accident.
There is a click as the door is closed and we’re plunged into impenetrable darkness. A scraping noise, a thud, as the heavy desk is pushed up against the door. Steps receding as he leaves the room.
I count to ten. Then again. When I can no longer hear footsteps, I lift my head from the floor with a grunt of pain.
It is pitch dark.Perfectlyblack.
Biting back the nausea threatening to rise up my throat, I crawl on my hands and knees toward the noise of the diesel-poweredheater, burning my hand on the edge of the vent before I can find the switch to kill the engine. The air is still thick with fumes, a little voice in my head saying,Lie down, just lie down for a moment and close your eyes, rest a minute, take it easy, and catch your breath, sleep…
But I know if I close my eyes now I will never open them again. With a hand outstretched before me in the darkness, I crawl back to where Jess is lying.
The rope binding my wife’s hands and feet is gone too, I notice. I call her name desperately, pat her cheek with my palm, but there’s no response. A cough sends a hacking jolt of pain through my head. There is another smell creeping through the floorboards, rising through the brickwork to add to the poisonous mixture that has already driven out most of the air in this room.
