Once he thought he heard something. Sensed a body pressed against the door, another man’s breathing the other side of a thin wall. His eyes opened watching the door handle, waiting for it to turn, but there was no adrenalin surge. His muscles stayed heavy, his body torpid in the hollow of the damp bed. He wasn’t ready to move. Didn’t care. Life or death. It was all the same to him.
The floorboard creaked. Once. Stillness again. Silence. North imagined the bulky shadow, the crepe-soled shoes. He closed his eyes against the light and the sight of the door opening, the barrel of a gun, till he knew somewhere in the most instinctive part of himself that the shadow had gone. Whore? Punter? Chambermaid? Killer? Whoever had been there listening for him wasn’t any more, and he was alone again. How it should be.