twenty-four

Andy Vaslik stepped inside the rear of No. 38 and closed the French doors behind him. He stood quite still, listening for the slightest sound, the smallest shuffle of movement in the atmosphere that would signal the presence of another. He’d checked the outside of the building first, and only when he felt fairly sure nobody was in, he’d made his way down the side path and gained access the same way as before.

He waited, tuning in. This time he wanted to get a feel for the place. Last time had been quick and dirty, snatching a clutch of fleeting observations before anyone came back and found them. Now he was certain the place had been abandoned as an observation post, he wanted to take a closer look.

He started upstairs, going through every room, sniffing the air, absorbing the sense of the building, looking behind doors. Then he checked every inch of the carpets and fixtures. He was looking for any minute traces that might show who had been here, and what they had done. Every visitor leaves something, unless clothed in a forensics suit, and he was guessing the woman calling herself Clarisse would have been no different. She would have kept movement in the house to a minimum to avoid alerting the neighbours, but she would have been unable to remain totally still for hours at a time.

And when people move, they sometimes leave things behind.

He didn’t want to jump the gun and call in Cruxys’s own experts; instead he had confidence in his own abilities to tell him what he needed to know.

The two rear bedrooms gave him nothing. If Clarisse had been in here, she’d been careful to leave no obvious trace. Facing away from the focus of her attention—the Hardman House—would have been pointless and time-wasting, and he had a feeling Clarisse was too professional for that.

He checked the front rooms, giving a clear view each way along the road. This was where he figured Clarisse or her colleagues—and he was fairly sure there would have been others—would have spent most of their time. It gave a commanding view of their target, while avoiding the likelihood of anybody looking up from the road. People don’t always look up at houses, but centre their attention on the ground floor where they expect to see movement. From here, the watchers could observe the Hardman’s house in relative safety, while keeping an eye on the comings and goings of neighbours and alert to the possibility of random callers to this house itself.

He scoured the carpets, eyeing the flattened area he’d seen before, but finding nothing. He wasn’t surprised; the empty room would have shown at a glance if they had left anything behind.

What he did see was three rounded indentations in the carpet. They had used a stool of some kind. He was willing to bet it was a folding camp stool, easy to conceal and carry, and putting the watcher at a comfortable level to see through the window with minimum exposure.

It pointed to expertise and planning; amateurs wouldn’t think of comfort, and they would have left more in the way of traces.

He checked the bathroom again, noting the unflushed bowl, and stooped to look behind the seat, peering into the corners. Nothing.

The rest of the house was the same, devoid of debris, the way professionals leave a place because they know what the risks can be if they get careless.

He let himself out the back and walked down the side of the house, pausing to check the wheelie bins. You just never knew. But they were empty. As he passed through the side gate, he saw the neighbour’s bin on the other side of the low fence, less than a foot away. On impulse, he made sure he wasn’t being watched, then leaned over and took a look.

And smiled.

It was full with pre-filled white bin liners, knotted in the kind of neat, eco-friendly, responsible way people liked to live. But down the side was something that didn’t match: it was a small paper carrier bag with a garish logo, the twin handles tied roughly together—the way people did after a picnic with their food waste and wrappers, when they were going to flip it into a garbage can on their way home.

He plucked it out and walked away, keen to see if his trash raid had been worthwhile.

Ruth was waiting for him by the back gate. She had a good idea where he’d been and eyed the bag in his hand. “Is that loot or did you stop for lunch on the way?”

He explained where he’d been and held up the bag he’d liberated, but refused to say anything until they were back in the kitchen. He spread an old newspaper on the working surface, then carefully tipped out the bag’s contents and used a fork from the drawer to sort through the scraps.

It yielded the remnants of a working meal for one to go: a litter of orange peel, a paper coffee mug with a smear of dried foam around the rim, a plastic spoon, a scrunched-up paper napkin and an empty yogurt pot. A healthy eater, evidently.

They stood and stared at the evidence for what it was, each running the possibilities through their mind. This was either the neighbour’s last lunch wrappings, casually tossed in the wheelie bin as they got home, or something else entirely.

“What do you think?” said Ruth.

Vaslik shook his head. “I don’t think anything. It’s nothing, is what it is.” He excused himself and went to the bathroom, squeezing by in front of her. When she looked back at the debris on the work surface, something about it was different.

The paper napkin was gone.

She wondered why Vaslik had removed it, and was about to follow him to ask, when a shout echoed from upstairs. It was Gina.

“Ruth! Andy! Get an ambulance!”