Текст книги "The House on Cold Hill"
Автор книги: Peter James
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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 19 страниц)
44
Saturday, 19 September
Ollie sat, stunned, staring at the email. He was utterly bewildered and feeling sick deep inside. And close to tears. Just what the hell was happening? He had imagined the vicar; he had imagined Jade and her friend in the garden. Was he now sending emails that he had no recollection of? Should he go and see a doctor?
Another email pinged in, and his spirits sank even lower still when he saw it was from Bhattacharya.
He could scarcely bring himself to open it. His hands hovered over the keypad, his fingers trembling. His whole body was shaking. Normally when he was stressed he’d go for a run or a bike ride. But he felt too sapped right now to do anything other than sit and think and stare.
Chris Webb would be able to find out where the emails had really come from, wouldn’t he? That would be the solution. Get him to show they were being sent from someone outside, who was using this address, and then he could go back to Cholmondley and Bhattacharya.
Unless.
But he didn’t want to go there. Not down that line of thought.
He did not want to entertain the possibility that he might have been the sender.
Or someone or something here in his office with him.
He looked up at the ceiling with a start, as if he again sensed something there, looking down, mocking him.
Then he opened the Indian restaurateur’s email. It was every bit as bad as he expected. A litany of food hygiene regulations each of his restaurants had allegedly broken. And a livid reply from Bhattacharya.
For a moment he thought he was going to throw up at his desk. He closed his eyes and took several deep breaths, trying to think clearly. Then he dialled Chris Webb.
‘Chris, I have an absolute emergency here. There have been more emails to those same two clients, and they’ve been copied to other potential clients. You’ve got to help me, we have to do something – my business is being destroyed.’
‘More emails?’
Ollie could hear a roar in the background, as if Webb was watching a football or perhaps rugby match on television. ‘Yes, in the past hour – while I’ve been sitting in front of my bloody computer. I just don’t know what’s going on. You’ve got to help me, please, could you come over?’
‘OK.’
‘I’d really appreciate that. How soon can you come?’
‘I’ll be with you in about forty-five minutes. Meantime, what I suggest you do is disconnect from the internet – or, even better, switch it off completely until I get there. Can you do that?’
‘Yes, right away, thank you.’
Ollie stared at the keyboard, then at the screen, as if scared something new might have appeared while he’d been talking to the computer guru. He did as instructed, selected Shut Down from the Apple menu and clicked on it.
He waited until the screen was dark and the machine was silent, then stood up, went downstairs and out into the garden, feeling desperately in need of some fresh air to try to clear his head. The sun in the clear blue sky barely registered, nor the warmth of the air, or anything around him as he walked down towards the lake, his heart like a massive weight inside his chest. He felt as if all the energy had been sucked out of him and he was just a dark, discarded husk.
He stood and stared bleakly at two mallards, a male and female, paddling seemingly aimlessly across the water. Just what the hell was happening to them all? Had they made a terrible mistake moving here – not just taking on more than they could cope with financially, but coming into some unfathomable darkness?
Should they just move out and put the place on the market? It was something he had considered several times in the past few days. And yet, it seemed absurd to give in, and give all this up, just because of – if Bruce Kaplan was right – some energy at large in the place. Both Bob Manthorpe and Caro’s strange client who had died, had advised requesting the diocesan exorcist – Minister of Deliverance – to come and clear the house. Maybe that was all it needed. And everything would be OK after that. The vicar had said this morning he would put in a request to the Sussex Minister of Deliverance and get back to him as quickly as he could.
His phone vibrated in his trouser pocket and began ringing. He pulled it out and saw a mobile number on the display he did not recognize.
‘Hello?’ he answered.
‘Ah, Oliver, is this a good moment?’
It was Roland Fortinbrass.
‘Yes, it is, thank you.’
‘Well,’ he said. ‘I’ve got some good news and some bad news.’
45
Saturday, 19 September
An hour and a half later Chris Webb was seated in Ollie’s office, in front of his computer. Ollie hovered anxiously behind him, peering over his shoulder at the screen. It was filled with a maze of rows and columns of numbers and letters that were meaningless to Ollie, but Webb was studying them with fierce concentration, emitting a string of comments out loud as he did so.
‘What the—? Oh, I see . . . But how the hell did you get there? What? What’s this?’
‘What’s what?’ Ollie asked.
‘I mean, that just shouldn’t be there!’
‘What shouldn’t be?’
‘Have you been in here changing any settings?’
‘No, why would I?’
‘Someone has,’ Webb said.
‘Someone? That’s not possible, Chris – I’m the only person who would ever touch this computer.’
Webb grimaced. ‘Could just be a Mac glitch – I’ve got a few clients where something similar’s happened recently on the latest operating system – settings changing of their own accord.’
‘Or could this be evidence of the hacker?’
Webb lifted the large mug of coffee Ollie had brought him, and drank some. ‘Well, this wouldn’t give anyone a pathway in. I think it’s more of an operating system glitch. Jade wouldn’t have been on this?’
‘Absolutely not. I’m certain.’
‘You see, I can’t find any footprints at all. I can see the tracks I left earlier, when I connected through TeamViewer, but there’s no sign at all of any unauthorized user having been here.’
Distracted by movement through the window to his right, Ollie saw Caro coming up the drive in her Golf, with Jade beside her and a figure, presumably Phoebe, on the back seat.
‘It’s a mystery,’ Webb said. ‘I’m sorry, I’m baffled. I don’t know what to suggest. We could put in an extra firewall and see if that stops it.’
‘Chris, I’ve got to do something to salvage the situation. I can’t afford to lose these clients.’
‘Of course.’
‘OK, I’ve had an idea,’ Ollie said, suddenly brightening up a little. ‘Cholmondley and Bhattacharya aren’t aware of each other. So, how about you write an email to each of them, explaining that you are my IT manager and that these emails have been sent from some malicious hacker who must have a grudge against them?’
Webb looked dubious.
‘I’ll compose it and give you the wording. All you have to do is just sign as yourself, as my IT manager. Then I can follow it up by phoning them, when hopefully they’ve calmed down.’
‘OK, sure. But—’
‘But?’
‘I’ll write it, sign it, whatever, but I’m not sure it’s going to be the end of it.’
‘What do you mean?’ Ollie asked.
‘What I mean is I don’t think you’ve been hacked, mate.’ He stared at Ollie.
‘So who do you think wrote these?’
‘Someone in this house.’ Webb raised his arms. ‘Look, I know that sounds crazy to you, but I really don’t think you’ve been hacked. Unless it’s by someone a lot cleverer than me – and that, of course, is always a possibility!’
‘Chris,’ said Ollie, becoming impatient with the man’s intransigence about hacking, ‘those last two were sent while I was sitting here at my desk. Jade was out at a riding lesson and Caro sure as hell didn’t come in and start typing under my nose without my seeing her.’
‘All right, email scan be programmed to be sent at a scheduled time. Perhaps someone typed these during the night, when you were asleep, scheduling them to go at a specific time. Either by accessing this computer or by hacking it.’
Ollie shook his head. ‘Who the hell would do that, Chris?’
‘I don’t know. Have you made any enemies?’
‘No.’
Could it possibly be Jade, Ollie wondered, lapsing into thought? Sleepwalking and now sleep-typing? She was pretty computer savvy, it wasn’t impossible. Yet the language in those emails, the technical information about the Ferrari, the information about the restaurants, she couldn’t possibly have known all that. But who had? And equally importantly, why had these emails been sent? By someone out to destroy him, that was evident. But who, he thought again? Who the hell could it be – and why?
‘I honestly can’t think of anyone I’ve upset. This is just a complete mystery.’
Webb gave him a sideways look. ‘Maybe it’s that pesky ghost of yours again!’
Ollie did not smile.
46
Saturday, 19 September
‘So what did the vicar say, Ols?’ Caro asked, perching on the edge of the battered leather armchair in which Ollie liked to sit and read. At the moment, like almost every other inch of space in his office, it was covered in files he’d not yet put away into the cabinets, and framed pictures he’d not had the time to hang.
Chris Webb had just left, and the fresh emails to Cholmondley and Bhattacharya, bearing his signature as IT Manager, had been sent. Hopefully, when Ollie followed them up, perhaps later today – or maybe leaving it until tomorrow – they would listen and accept his explanation. It was credible. If he used all his powers of persuasion and charm, they would surely believe him.
They must.
‘The vicar’s spoken with the Minister of Deliverance for Sussex, and they’re both going to come here Monday around six, after you’re back from work, darling,’ he replied.
‘Good,’ she said, and seemed a little relieved. ‘What’s this Minister of Deliverance – exorcist – man going to do? Walk around the house swinging a smoking censer full of incense, muttering incantations?’
Ollie smiled, glad that despite everything she’d not lost her sense of humour. ‘I didn’t get the impression it would be quite that dramatic. He wants to come and have a talk to us so he can get an idea of what’s going on, and how to deal with it. From what the vicar told me, he sounds a bright and very grounded guy. And not in any way a sanctimonious “Holy Joe” type. Apparently he’s highly educated, an Oxbridge double first, with a background in psychology before becoming ordained.’
‘How did the vicar – what’s his name – Rosencrantz?’
‘Fortinbrass. Roland Fortinbrass.’
‘I knew it was something out of Hamlet. How did he sound? Is he confident this minister will be able to deal with everything here?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did Fortinbrass say – I mean, did he have a view himself?’
Ollie did not reply immediately. Fortinbrass had said quite a lot on the phone earlier. Delivering the good news and the bad. The good news was that the Minister of Deliverance had agreed to come. The bad was how much Fortinbrass had found out about this house’s very long history of disturbances. Ollie remembered the former vicar, Bob Manthorpe, mentioning it, but quite dismissively.
‘Yes. I’m afraid the house has had a few tragedies. But don’t be put off. Some of the older folk in the village used to talk a lot of rubbish about the place being cursed or damned. But the reality is any house of that historic age is more than likely to have had its fair share of deaths.’
Had Manthorpe just been trying to reassure him, and hide what he really knew? Fortinbrass had certainly not minced his words earlier, as he related the salient points of his conversation with the Minister of Deliverance to Ollie.
There had been exorcisms carried out here by the church in the distant past, with records from the Bishop of Chichester’s office, under which diocese it fell, going back to the late eighteenth century. Back in Victorian times, it seemed, Cold Hill House was known to locals as the Death House. Many believed it was cursed and many would not go near the place. It was also rumoured that some clergymen during the previous two centuries had refused to go and help when requests for assistance had been made. Of course, the small rural community rumour mill was bound to have exaggerated everything.
But, Ollie knew, rumours always began from some foundation, some grain of truth, however small. And at this moment he didn’t need a rumour mill to tell him things were not right in this house.
Still, there was nothing to be gained from telling Caro what Fortinbrass had said. That would just worry her even more over the weekend. The visit from the two clergymen on Monday evening would, hopefully, be the turning point here. But what disturbed him most was that there had been such a history of past exorcisms. Why? What had happened to set all this off?
He felt a fool for not having found out any of this history before going ahead with the purchase of the house. It had never occurred to him. Yet even if it had, how could he have found out any of this dark past? He’d tried googling Cold Hill House before their first viewing, but nothing significant came up. There were several entries for the house, giving its postcode, the last purchase price paid for it, a listing under Zoopla and one under Rightmove, but nothing of significance about its past. No history of any gruesome events.
‘No,’ Ollie replied, finally. ‘Fortinbrass didn’t have a view. But he said he was confident this man – minister – would sort the house out for us. Whatever that means.’
Caro shrugged. ‘What about contacting a medium? Perhaps a psychic, like my client, Kingsley Parkin, could tell us what’s going on?’
‘I’ve thought about that too, but I’m not sure it’s a good idea to – I don’t know – dabble ourselves. Not until we’ve talked to this clergyman.’
‘What’s his name – this Super-Cleric Ghostbuster?’
He grinned. ‘Benedict Cutler.’
‘Benedict. Sounds the perfect name for a man of the cloth,’ she said. ‘I’ll go down and cook the pizza for the girls. I’ve bought a load of Yolande’s yummy cupcakes at Jade’s request to put on a nice display for Ruari tomorrow. Want me to bring anything up?’
‘I’m fine, thanks, I had some tea earlier when Chris Webb was here.’ He pointed at the two empty mugs.
She scooped them up, then kissed him. ‘We’re going to be all right, Ols, aren’t we?’
‘Of course we are.’
He watched her leave the room. Then, ass he closed the door behind her, he heard the ping of an incoming text, and looked at his iPhone. And froze as he stared at the words.
OH NO YOU’RE NOT!
47
Saturday, 19 September
Instantly the words disappeared. Ollie checked his phone, but there was no new message. There was no trace of the words.
Where had it come from?
He glanced, warily, up at the ceiling, his eyes jumping around. How much else had he imagined today?
He wondered whether to call Chris Webb and tell him what had happened and to see if he could find the source of the words. But he felt that Webb’s patience was wearing thin. He could tell from the man’s attitude that he was starting to have doubts about what was going on. Doubts about Ollie’s sanity? Yet Webb had seen the photograph of the old man, before it had disappeared, hadn’t he?
Hopefully, on Monday evening, Fortinbrass and the Minister of Deliverance would be able to help them.
To try to distract himself he turned his attention back to his task of working through the deeds, sometimes having to use a magnifying glass to decipher the handwriting, which was badly faded on some documents, listing each of the previous owners of the property.
What he was coming up with was not looking good. And over the course of the next hour, it looked even worse.
He doggedly continued typing each past owner’s name into Google, but there were no matches of any significance – just several links to various relatives, and one to an arts foundation in The Gambia. It surprised him a little, as this was such a substantial property and several of the owners had grand names.
An hour later he reached the final name on the list: the first owner of this house, Sir Brangwyn De Glossope. The name that the old vicar, Bob Manthorpe, had struggled to remember.
He entered that into Google, and moments later he was staring at a small sepia photograph of the front of Cold Hill House. It was beneath a listing on a website of a book titled Sussex Mysteries, which had been published by a small press in 1931 and was written by an author called Martin Pemberton. Ollie read the two brief paragraphs beneath.
Cold Hill House built to the order of Sir Brangwyn De Glossope, on the site of monastic ruins, during the 1750s. His first wife, Matilda, daughter and heiress from the rich Sussex landowning family the Warre-Spences, disappeared, childless, a year after they moved into the property. It was her money that had funded the building of the house – De Glossope being near penniless at the time of their marriage.
It was rumoured that De Glossope murdered her and disposed of her body, to free him to travel abroad with his mistress, Evelyne Tyler, a former housemaid in their previous home, who subsequently bore him three children, each of whom died in infancy. Evelyne subsequently fell to her death from the roof of the house. Did she fall or was she pushed? We’ll never know. De Glossope was trampled to death by his own horse only weeks after.
Ollie found himself looking up at the ceiling again, uneasily. Evelyne Tyler. Was it her ghost that was causing all this mischief? Angry at what had happened? Or Matilda De Glossope – formerly Warre-Spence?
He googled the names further. There were several entries about the Warre-Spence family, but all of them referring to relatively recent events. Nothing more on the history.
Next on the internet he searched for the lifespan of human beings in the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the eighteenth century, he read, although life expectancy was only forty years old, if people survived childhood and their teens, they had a good chance of living into their fifties or sixties, or even older. For his purposes at the moment, that was not good news. Life expectancy steadily increased through the twentieth century, to the current level in the UK of seventy-seven for a man and eighty-one for a woman.
Then he looked back down at his desk. At the stack of deeds, and the list of names he had written on the A4 pad beside them. And the dates he had obtained from DeadArchives.com/uk. The dates of their births and their deaths.
Sir Brangwyn De Glossope had died at the age of thirty-nine. Not one of the past owners of this house, subsequently, had ever reached their fortieth birthday, except for the Rothbergs, neither of whose lives had been much worth living past it.
Shit. He felt cold suddenly, and shivered. He would be forty himself, in just over a week’s time.
He stared out of the window. All the warmth and colour seemed to have faded from this glorious afternoon, like a photograph that had been left in direct sunlight for too many years. Then, as he looked down towards the lake, he saw Jade and Phoebe standing at the edge of the water, looking playful and happy, throwing something – bread perhaps – to the ducks.
Exactly as he had seen them earlier, when Jade had been out having her riding lesson and Phoebe had been at home with her parents.
48
Sunday, 20 September
‘I found some interesting stuff on the internet about ley lines, Ols,’ Caro said, out of the blue. Having put the roast in the oven, they were strolling around the lake, watching two ducks waddling across the little island, through the fronds of the willow tree. A solitary coot, with its shiny black body, white beak and ungainly legs like hinged stilts, hurried urgently through the long grass in front of them and into the murky water, as if it was late for a meeting.
Ollie’s arm was round her waist. It was late Sunday morning and the weather was on the turn. The sky was overcast and heavy rain was forecast for the afternoon; gales were expected over-night. The Indian summer had come to an abrupt end and there was a chill in the air. Autumn was arriving today. A flock of migrating birds winged by, high overhead.
‘Ley lines?’ Ollie replied, distractedly. He was finding it hard to think clearly about anything. He’d barely slept during the night, fretting about Cholmondley and Bhattacharya, his mental state and the mounting costs of making this place habitable. He’d gambled on building his new business sufficiently during the course of the next twelve months to be able to cope with the bills.
Another thing was worrying him, too. He’d gone for an early-morning run up to the top of the hill again, and this time he’d only got a very short distance up it before having to sit down to get his breath back. What the hell had happened to his fitness and stamina – had the house sapped that, too? It had taken every ounce of his strength and determination to get to the summit, where he’d had to sit down again, gasping, struggling to find the energy to make it back to the house.
‘A client a few weeks ago asked me about them,’ Caro replied. ‘I just remembered last night. He was buying a cottage and I had to do a search to make sure it wasn’t on any ley lines.’
‘Remind me what they are?’
‘Historic lines of alignment – dead straight lines crisscrossing the whole country. A lot of ancient monuments, like churches, are built along them. No one knows exactly what they are – there are theories about them being underground water passages or metal seams. There’s been a ton of stuff written about them – and apparently where there are two intersecting ley lines you can get all kinds of electro-magnetic disturbances. In what I’ve read so far, quite a few supposedly haunted houses have been built on these intersections.’
‘What about this place?’ Ollie asked.
‘I’ve been googling maps of Sussex. It looks like we might be, but I can’t be sure, I’d need to do some more research.’
‘And if it turns out we are, what do we do – jack the house up on wheels and move it?’
She smiled, thinly. ‘Apparently there are ways of dispersing the energy by lancing the ley lines, literally sticking some rods along them – a bit like acupuncture on a huge scale.’
Ollie shrugged. ‘Sounds weird, but I’m happy to try anything.’
‘Have a read up about them.’
‘I will.’
As they walked back towards the house, music was pounding out of Jade’s bedroom window. They could see figures jumping up and down. Jade, Phoebe and Ruari.
‘What are they doing?’ Ollie said. ‘Aerobics?’
‘She’s making another music video – she wants to project it on the wall at her party next week. But . . .’ Caro hesitated.
‘But?’ he quizzed.
‘I don’t know, Ols. Should we risk having a party with all that’s happening at the moment? I’ve been feeling uneasy as it is about having had Phoebe staying overnight, and even Ruari coming today. I’m not sure we should have any visitors until we sort out whatever’s going on here. I think we ought to go out to dinner on your fortieth rather than invite people to the house.’
He fell silent for some moments at the mention of his fortieth. Remembering what he had read and discovered yesterday.
‘We can’t start living in fear, darling, w—’
‘We can’t start living in fear? I’ve got news for you – I am living in bloody fear. I used to love leaving work because that meant I’d soon be seeing you, seeing your face, spending the evening with you. Now I’m scared. Every mile I cover in the car takes me nearer this house and sometimes I just want to turn round and go straight back into Brighton.’
‘Tomorrow night it’s going to get sorted, darling. Whatever stuff is going on here, we’ll get it cleared.’
‘By ghostbuster Benedict Cutler. Bell, book and candle, eh? Just so long as he doesn’t make Jade’s head rotate three hundred and sixty degrees like in The Exorcist. Because that’s what he is really, isn’t he? An exorcist?’
Ollie smiled. ‘From the sound of him that’s not a title he’d want to use.’
‘But it’s what we need here, in reality, isn’t it? To make this place safe, normal. A ghostbuster.’
The two of them had always had an open and frank relationship. No secrets. They always told each other everything. Ollie felt bad, now, keeping back what he’d found out about the past history of Cold Hill House. The exorcisms that had failed to work. The clergymen who’d refused to come to the house.
Almost none of the past occupants reaching their fortieth birthdays.
A sudden movement caught his eye in an upstairs window.
Caro looked at him in panic. ‘Did you see that?’
‘Not clearly – what was it?’ He stared at the window. ‘What did you see?’
‘People – people up there looking at us.’ She pointed up at the tiny window just below the eaves that he’d hardly noticed before, above which was a strip of rusted, broken guttering.
‘Probably the kids.’
Her face a mask of unease, Caro pointed up at Jade’s bedroom. All three children were jumping up, arms crossed in the air, doing a crazy dance to some music. ‘They’re all in there, Ols. There’s people in the house.’
‘Stay here,’ he said. ‘Keep watching.’ He sprinted to the house, went in through the atrium without removing his wellingtons, then clumped up the stairs to the landing, looking wildly up and down it. He went into the blue bedroom, but it was empty, and then into the yellow bedroom and through into the bathroom.
No one.
And, he realized, the windows in both the yellow and blue room were much bigger than the one Caro had been pointing at.
So which was it?
He could see her down on the lawn, still looking up, and hurried back down to her.
‘Did you see anyone?’ she asked.
‘No. Where exactly was it you saw them?’
She pointed again at the tiny window. ‘There,’ she said. ‘I saw them there.’
‘Can you describe them?’
‘I could see faces, but not clearly, and I only saw them for a second.’
‘What faces? Male, female?’
She was still staring up, as if transfixed. Her voice sounded remote, almost trance-like. ‘It looked like a male and a female and a child. They were sort of there but not there.’
She continued to stare.
Her words resonated through him, chilling him. He looked up again at the tiny window, higher up than the sash windows on either side of it, right beneath the eaves of the roof, trying to get his bearings on where exactly it was. ‘Which room is that?’ he said. ‘I can’t work it out.’
‘Isn’t it the one next to our bathroom?’
‘No.’ He pointed with his finger, moving from left to right on the first floor. ‘That’s Jade’s room; next is the yellow room and next is the window of its en suite. Then next to that is the blue room.’ They’d named these two spare rooms, as well as Jade’s room, after the colour of their wallpaper. ‘Those two at the end are our bathroom window and then our bedroom.’
She followed his finger, concentrating hard. Then she looked back at the one below the broken guttering, where she had just seen the figures. ‘So what’s that window? Which room is that?’
‘I really don’t know. I’m not sure but—’
He froze in mid-sentence.
Both of them saw them now. It looked like a whole family, parents and a child in silhouette, peering out in turn, one after the other, through the small square of glass, before they disappeared.
‘It could be Jade, darling,’ he said. ‘Trying to spook us again.’
Her voice trembling, Caro said, ‘No, Ollie, I don’t think so. They’re all still in her room.’
‘They’ve rigged something up, the little bastards!’ He ran back to the atrium door, opened it, went inside again and sprinted up the stairs, followed by Caro. He turned left when he reached the landing, then opened the door to the room where he thought they had seen the faces. But there was no sign of anyone having been in here. Just the large, empty spare bedroom, with ancient, peeling, blue and white floral wallpaper, and a sash window. It had an old, stained washbasin, several floorboards missing and clusters of black mould on one wall. An empty light fitting dangled at the end of a brown cord from a ceiling rose. The room felt cold and smelled musty.
He shut the door then opened the next one along and peered in. It was another empty room, with yellow wallpaper curling at the edges in places. The bathroom was in a similar state of neglect, with a large sash window that did not look as if it had been opened in years.
Followed by Caro, he strode down to Jade’s room and opened the door, to be greeted by a blast of music and the sight of Jade, Ruari – with his pop-star hair and big smile – and Phoebe, each swivelling round in turn, holding up a placard on which the word YES! was written on one side, and NO! on the other.
Seeing her father, Jade stepped forward and stopped the music, then looked at him. ‘Dad!’ she said, reproachfully.
‘Were any of you just in the room next to this one?’ he asked.
‘You’re interrupting, Dad, this is really important!’ Jade said.
‘Have you been in either of the empty bedrooms in the past few minutes, Jade, Phoebe, Ruari?’ he asked, ignoring her protest.
‘Dad, this is soooo awkward. We’re busy, OK? We’ve not been anywhere.’ Phoebe and Ruari nodded in concurrence.
Ollie stared hard at the window. As he closed the door he was so preoccupied he barely heard the music start up again. Caro gave him a quizzical look.
‘It’s not them,’ he said. ‘But there’s something I can’t work out. We’ve got Jade’s room, then there’s this spare room.’ He opened the door, entered the yellow room, pointed at the window then went through into the decrepit adjacent bathroom. ‘Here’s the next window.’
Back out on the landing they opened the next door along, and peered into the blue room. ‘OK, there’s this window. Then next door along to the left is our bathroom, and on our right is the yellow bathroom, correct?’
She nodded, doing her own calculations.
‘Which mean’s we’ve got an extra window.’
‘An extra window? That’s not possible,’ she said.
He walked slowly along between the doors to the blue and yellow rooms, tapping the wall all the way, but there was no change in the sound. They both went back outside into the rear garden. Ollie took a photograph with his phone, told Caro to stay where she was, then strode back into the house and upstairs. He went through into the blue room, walked over to the window and tried to open it. But the sash cords were broken on either side and he struggled to lift it more than a few inches. He kneeled and called down to Caro through the gap. ‘OK, darling, I’m in the blue room and I’m now going into the yellow room’s bathroom, which should be the next window along.’
