Back entrance.
This was the only thing she could think of as soon as she’d cut off the call.
Emma’s body had switched into flight mode, and now her head felt clear. The fear of being discovered tore through the fog she’d been drifting in thanks to the diazepam.
For the time being at least.
There must be a back entrance here somewhere, she thought.
No way was she going to leave via the front door. Back past the mail, down the steps and straight into the arms of the owner of the wig stand as he was getting out of his car.
Out the back then.
And fast.
If, like most of the houses on the estate, this one was from the 1920s, it would have a similar floor plan with a living room that led onto a terrace.
Emma hurried down the hallway and opened the first door on the right into a large room that was even darker.
Initially she was worried that the external blinds might be down, but she only had to yank the heavy curtains stinking of dust and cold smoke to the side of the French doors.
These did indeed lead into the garden, which stretched out before her like a long, narrow towel.
The doors were old and their wavy glass panes made it seem as if you were looking at the world through a fisheye lens. But Emma wasn’t in the slightest bit interested in the distorted view of a massive weeping willow, several gnarled fruit trees and a scattering of snow-covered boulders.
Hearing footsteps in the doorway, she breathed in the particle-heavy air, suppressed a cough and tried to make as little noise as possible as she slowly turned the handle of the French doors anticlockwise. The piercing sound when she pulled the jammed door tore painfully at her eardrums. Louder than a school bell signalling break time, the noise resonated throughout the entire house.
An alarm system?
Surely Palandt hadn’t left the front door open, but secured the exit to the garden electronically?
It didn’t make any sense, particularly as there was nothing to protect here, going by the squalor of the living room.
The sofa to Emma’s left was half covered in old newspapers. On the other side a spring had worn through the fabric cover. An upturned beer crate served as a coffee table. Unsophisticated drawings of horses’ heads gaped from the walls, there was no dining table, no bookshelves, no rugs or chairs. An ugly statue of a dog stood on a mat right beside the door, a porcelain Labrador that could be used as an umbrella stand. She was reminded of Samson.
What I’d do to have him beside me now!
Otherwise there was just an empty chipboard display case, sitting diagonally in the room, as if it had been hurriedly dumped there by packers.
Certainly nothing that might interest a burglar, and yet an ear-splitting ringing had just shredded the silence.
Emma was sweating and her mouth felt parched, but the diazepam and adrenaline were performing great teamwork. Fear was spurring her on, her tiredness taking a break. It now dawned on her that it had only rung once, which was also unusual for a burglar alarm.
Emma let go of the handle and was just about to shove the door, clearly stuck, with her shoulder when she heard voices.
Foreign voices.
Albanians, Slovenes, Croats?
She couldn’t tell; all she could say was than none of them could be A. Palandt because the two men who must have first rung at the front door and were now coming down the hall, were shouting the house owner’s surname loudly and aggressively over and over again. ‘PAAALANDT? PAAAAALANDT!’
One of them had a hoarse rattle, as if he’d just had surgery on his larynx. The other man’s barking could have been coming straight from the stomach of a bull terrier.
Between the shouting, the two men hissed at each other in their native language, which sounded anything but friendly.
‘AAANTON?’
So now she knew his first name, but not the way out of here.
In vain Emma pushed and pulled at the door to the terrace. It was stuck fast, as if it had been glued or nailed to the floor, unlike the living-room door through which she’d just entered. This was kicked open with a fury that almost threw it off its hinges.
If the first of the two men hadn’t turned back to his accomplice because he couldn’t understand what he was saying, Emma would have been discovered immediately. But now she had a second or two to dart past the empty cabinet, where she’d intended to hide until she suddenly realised that it had been blocking her view of something which was, temporarily at least, her salvation: a connecting door.
It was open and Emma slunk through it while behind her the men seemed to be cursing in their mother tongue.
Did they see me?
She didn’t waste time thinking, nor did she look back, only forwards, where she saw a staircase. It led upstairs along the internal wall of the house.
Up is good…
… Better, at least than down… into the cellar. People in danger only went into the cellar in horror films. But not in a strange house, escaping from strange men looking for a strange neighbour, to do something to him they’d probably rather have no secret witnesses to.
So Emma held onto a narrow banister and tried to climb the old, well-worn wooden stairs as quietly as possible.
Behind her came a crash – had the men pushed over the cabinet? Glass shattered but the loudest sound was her breathing.
On the first floor, equally sombre, Emma felt her way along the ingrain wallpaper on the landing to a door.
Locked. Just like the second one, directly opposite.
That’s not possible.
She kept walking, towards a bright slit at the end of the landing. Another door, from beneath which the light slanted into the otherwise dark corridor that seemed like a tunnel to Emma. But this one wouldn’t open either.
Emma wanted to scream with fury, fear and despair, but the men downstairs were already doing just that.
‘PAAALAAANDT!’
Not just their bellowing, but their footsteps were approaching too. Hard, heavy boots climbing the stairs quicker than she had just done.
She turned to the left, having completely lost her bearings – she didn’t know whether she was facing the street or the garden – and shook another door handle.
Nothing.
With the strength of desperation she finally threw herself against it in one last attempt, and almost flew into the room.
Emma tripped, slipped from the handle, her knees crashed on the floor that was covered with a rug, and she used her elbows to prevent her from hitting her head.
Shit.
She immediately got up again and closed the door from the inside.
Did they hear me?
Overcome by faintness, Emma looked for something to hold onto and came across a small chest of drawers. She kneeled beside it, unaware that she’d hidden in exactly the same position only hours ago.
Her back to the wall, her eyes fixed on a large bed.
It was warmer than in the rest of the house; she could smell sweat and another slightly rotten odour.
Either the curtains here weren’t as thick as in the living room, or the tension had sharpened her senses. At any rate, Emma could see more than just shadows and shapes now.
She was obviously in Palandt’s bedroom, which was dominated by an antique four-poster bed.
It had been freshly made; a patchwork quilt bulged over a thick duvet that peeked out at the foot of the bed.
At the other end, cushions of various sizes were neatly arranged in three rows that took up a third of the bed.
Like in a hotel, Emma thought, detesting the comparison.
‘PAAALAAANDT?’
The men, now upstairs, rattled the same door handles she had only moments ago, except less gingerly.
Wood splintered, hinges creaked.
And Emma didn’t know where to go.
Under the bed?
No, that would be the first place they’d look.
There weren’t any large cupboards, just a clothes rail on wheels, a valet stand and a bedside table, right next to her, holding half a pharmacy’s worth of pillboxes, sprays, tablets in foil packaging and other medicines.
All of a sudden she couldn’t hear anything apart from the constant humming of fear inside her ears, then the proverbial calm before the storm was past. The bedroom door crashed open, knocking into the side of the chest of drawers she was hiding beside, and Emma was blinded.
Bright, glowing. Light.
From the ceiling it shone far too brightly and mercilessly onto the bed and everything else.
Including me.
Emma closed her eyes, not in that sort of childish reflex hoping nobody could see her just because she couldn’t see anything herself, but because she’d been mistaken.
The thing next to the window wasn’t a valet stand, but another wig stand. And it wasn’t as bare as the one in the hall downstairs; this polystyrene head wore a long, blonde, lustreless woman’s wig.
What the hell have I done? What sort of place have I entered?
Caught between two attackers and a pervert?
Hearing a pair of boots enter the room she still didn’t dare open her eyes… and then her mobile rang.
Shit.
A loud, piercing ring. Like the alarm.
Shit, shit, shit!
Sweat was oozing from her pores as if the room had been turned up to sauna temperature.
She knew the game was up. That she wouldn’t have time to grab the phone from her pocket, take the call and scream for help. She tried anyway.
Too late.
She held the telephone and stared at a dark display, cursing the caller who’d only let it ring twice to give her away. Then she heard the man with the bull terrier bass give a filthy laugh.
She opened her eyes, in the certainty that she’d be staring at her own death, but nobody was there.
The laughing grew quieter, moved away from the bedroom and down the landing, along with the sounds that the second man’s boots made on the floorboards.
It was only when the two of them were back downstairs that Emma realised it wasn’t her phone that had rung, but the bull terrier’s.
It had the same standard ringtone as her own. The man had been called by someone who’d made him laugh and had evidently said something to make them abandon their search.
‘Get outta there, we’ve found Palandt.’
or
‘Forget the neighbour, there’s something else for you to do.’
or
‘Hi, it’s me, Anton Palandt. They also call me the Hairdresser. I know we’d arranged for you to come here, but could we meet somewhere else? Right at this moment I’ve got problems with a dying tart.’
Whatever the message, Emma felt as if the caller had saved her life.
For now.
She got to her feet, gripped onto the chest of drawers, and wondered whether to grab one of the pillboxes that, as she could see now in the harsh light of the overhead lamp, all had Cyrillic writing on them. But there was no time to translate her decision into action.
Right in front of her the cushions jerked.
The quilt arched, bulging in some places like a pregnant woman’s belly where the unborn baby kicks.
Then an arm emerged from beneath the exposed duvet and a bald, skinny man sat up.