At first, she thinks that he’ll be coming back. It’s all a mistake, she thinks. He can’t mean to leave her locked in the dark for ever. And it is dark. She doesn’t have her phone. Where did she leave it? There are blanks in her memory which scare her even more than the locked room.
She tries to pace it out. Eight paces forward, eight paces across. When she reaches a wall, it’s cold and clammy. There’s no window. The door is metal. She heard it clang behind him. She can’t remember entering the room. Did he drug her? She thinks, from the cold and damp, that she must be underground. She imagines earth above her head, fathoms of it. Is she in the basement of a house? Is anyone above her?
What did he say? That he’d be coming back later? Why can’t she remember any more than that?
She sits down on the stone floor. Tries to breathe. In for four, out for eight. ‘My breath is my anchor, my anchor is my breath.’ But her mind keeps skittering away. She can’t keep the rhythm going. Why is she here? What did he mean when he said he would see her later? She gets up again and, in her pacing, barks her shins against metal. What is it? She bends down and touches slippery nylon. There’s something familiar about it, something that takes her back to childhood camping trips. Of course, it’s a sleeping bag. And it’s lying on a camp bed, the old-fashioned metal kind that opens out like a concertina.
For some reason, this discovery makes her more scared than ever. He must have planned this, she thinks. He’s prepared a bed for her.
Does he, in fact, mean to leave her in the dark forever?
When Zoe still isn’t home in the morning, Ruth starts worrying about Derek. She can hear him meowing from the other side of the wall. He hasn’t got a cat flap because Zoe’s worried about him getting lost. Zoe had mentioned giving Ruth a spare key but it never materialised. Is that strange? Ruth wonders. She and Zoe have become friends quickly, by Ruth’s standards, but Ruth hasn’t been inside the next-door house since its new occupant moved in. They’ve shared a bottle of wine; they’ve been for a walk and played tennis on the sand, but they’ve never been inside each other’s houses. Lockdown, of course, is partly to blame but is Zoe actually slightly reluctant to let Ruth into her life?
‘I’m going to try the back door,’ she tells Kate.
‘Can I come?’
Ruth is torn. If there’s something terrible in the house next door, she doesn’t want Kate to see it. But she doesn’t want to leave her daughter alone either.
‘OK,’ she says. ‘But stay with me all the time.’
They walk round the side of the houses. Ruth’s cottage, being in the middle, is the only one without side access. Zoe’s back door, like Ruth’s, is the stable kind with a lower and upper part. Ruth tries the top handle and it opens. She reaches in and opens the lower door.
‘Perhaps it’s an April fool,’ says Kate. Ruth had forgotten that today is the first of April.
Ruth and Kate step inside a kitchen that looks bigger and brighter than Ruth’s, partly because of the new, shiny, white units. Bob put them in, on orders of the agent, when he decided to rent out the house. But Zoe might have added the colourful posters, pot plants and orange kettle and toaster. There’s a key hanging from a peg, helpfully labelled ‘back door’. Ruth pockets it. Derek appears and meows accusingly.
Ruth opens several cupboards before finding cat food, apparently made especially for Maine Coons. Another animal with expensive tastes. She puts a generous portion in an orange bowl marked ‘Derek’.
‘Shall we look for Zoe?’ says Kate.
Ruth hesitates. Zoe’s car isn’t outside but nonetheless there’s still a chance that she’s in the house. And, if she’s there, it’s unlikely to be good news. Nelson recently told her about another case where a woman was found dead on her bed. ‘Verdict was suicide but I’m not so sure.’ Ruth remembers the time she found a man dead behind his desk, the realisation that a human being can turn into an effigy. If there is a corpse upstairs, she does not want to be the one to discover it. But, on the other hand, does she owe it to her neighbour to look?
They go into the sitting room. It’s so strange. Everything is exactly where it is in her house, just the other way around. The weekenders’ place has been so extended and renovated that the resemblance isn’t there any more. This could be Ruth’s cottage, seen through the looking glass. This room, like its twin next door, has wooden floors and exposed beams but there are fewer books here and more ornaments. The sofa and chairs look newer and more comfortable and Zoe’s cushions haven’t been chewed by marauding animals. Ruth sees the chaise longue that she spotted being carried into the house on the day Zoe moved in. You can’t imagine anyone ever sitting on it but there’s no doubt that it does look rather cool. There’s a book, face down, on the coffee table. Atonement by Ian McEwan. The staircase leads directly from the sitting room.
‘Stay downstairs,’ Ruth tells Kate. The stairs even creak in the same way hers do. On the landing, there are three doors. Ruth pushes open the first and sees an immaculate bedroom, bed neatly made, cushions all standing on their points. The next door is the bathroom and the third is a home office. All three rooms are completely empty.
‘Mum!’ calls Kate from downstairs.
Ruth rushes down the stairs to see Kate examining the photographs on a pine dresser. ‘Look!’ she says.
Ruth crosses the room to where Kate is holding a wedding photograph of a very young Zoe in a huge white dress holding onto the arm of a blond young man. But Kate is looking at the passport picture which has been inserted into the frame.
‘Is that Grandma?’ she asks.
Grandma. Mum. Jean Galloway.
Back in her own house, Ruth rings Nelson.
‘You and Katie shouldn’t have gone there on your own,’ is Nelson’s first, predictable, reaction.
‘I was worried about the cat.’
‘That’s not a cat. It’s a bloody leopard.’
‘Anyway, Zoe’s not there. I did find one strange thing though. A picture of my mum.’
‘A picture of your mother?’ Nelson sounds positively outraged. Is he at work? thinks Ruth. Are people listening to this through the thin walls of his office? Leah and whichever member of the skeleton staff is on duty today.
‘Yes,’ says Ruth. ‘Remember that picture I told you about? Dawn 1963? Well, Zoe’s name was once Dawn and she was born in 1963. Now I discover that she’s got a picture of my mum tucked into her wedding portrait.’
‘Don’t do any investigating, Ruth,’ says Nelson. ‘Wait until Zoe gets back. Then you can ask her. But ring me first before you tackle her about any of this.’
‘OK,’ says Ruth although she knows that, if Zoe’s car were to draw up outside, she’d be next door in a flash.
‘And don’t go gadding off into Norwich again,’ says Nelson.
Ruth swallows her annoyance at Nelson’s dictatorial tone. And the word ‘gadding’. It occurs to her that she should tell him about the sighting of Joe McMahon.
This time Nelson seems about to spontaneously combust.
‘She saw McMahon? Two days ago? After I’d visited his room at halls? Why didn’t you tell me this before?’
‘I forgot.’
‘You forgot . . .’ Nelson breathes deeply on the other end of the line. ‘I’ll give Janet a ring. Tell her to keep a watch for him. He might be dangerous.’
‘I don’t think he is,’ says Ruth.
‘His room had an altar to you, for God’s sake.’
‘An altar. You’re still such a Catholic.’
Nelson ignores this. ‘Well, let me know if anything – anything – happens. Promise?’
‘OK,’ says Ruth, crossing her fingers just to be on the safe side.
Nelson puts down the phone feeling deeply frustrated. For all sorts of reasons, this is an emotion that he often associates with Ruth. Now he finds that she’s living next door to a woman once accused of murder. What’s more, that woman seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth. Nelson decides to go in search of Dawn, aka Zoe. He’ll make a visit to Westway surgery. But first he wants to speak to Janet Meadows.
She takes a long time to answer her phone. ‘I keep putting it down,’ she says, ‘and forgetting where I left it. You know the feeling.’
‘I can’t say I do,’ says Nelson. ‘I’m ringing about a man called Joe McMahon. I understand you saw him recently.’
‘Joe? Oh, Ruth’s student. Yes, I saw him a few days ago. He was walking around Tombland Alley looking up at the houses.’
‘Tombland Alley? Is that near the cathedral?’
‘You must know Tombland Alley,’ says Janet. ‘It’s by Augustine Steward’s House. That’s where I’m staying at the moment. I’m a kind of caretaker.’
Nelson doesn’t think he would entrust a house to a woman who forgets where her phone is. He says, aware that he’s sounding stiff and formal, ‘I have reason to believe that Joe McMahon is dangerous. If you see him again, please contact the police immediately.’
‘I’m sure he’s not dangerous,’ says Janet. ‘I’ve spoken to him before and he seems perfectly nice. A bit of a lost soul, if anything.’
Nelson doesn’t believe in lost souls, although his mother is always praying for them.
‘I’ll give you my direct number,’ he says. ‘And let me know if you see or hear anything suspicious.’
‘Oh, I’m always hearing suspicious things,’ says Janet. ‘This is a haunted house, you know. Last night I heard the most tremendous bangings and crashings but I just turned over and went back to sleep.’
Jesus wept. ‘Next time anything goes bump in the night,’ says Nelson, ‘let me know.’ And he rings off before Janet can tell him any more ghost stories.
Nelson googles the address of the surgery. Normally he’d ask Leah but she’s absent again. He hopes that she isn’t sick too. He should ring Judy but he doesn’t want to hassle her. He’ll call after he’s back from Wells.
‘I’m off out,’ he says to Tanya, who is on duty today. She’s on the phone and just waves her hand in acknowledgement. Nelson drives fast on the blessedly empty roads. He wonders if Zoe turned up for work yesterday and if her current employers know about her history. She must have filled in a DBS disclosure, he supposes, although those forms do rather depend on the applicant telling the truth. He thinks of the Soham murders where the school caretaker lied on his form and subsequently killed two little girls. Nelson grinds his teeth at the memory.
The first thing he sees as he steps through the automatic doors is a masked woman coming towards him holding out a small black object. For one crazy second he thinks it’s a gun. Someone fired at him from close range last year and it’s not something you forget.
‘Just taking your temperature,’ says the assailant.
The machine bleeps and the result must be satisfactory because Nelson is ushered in. The waiting room, like the police station, has been rearranged to allow social distancing. There’s just one occupant, an elderly man in a mask. Nelson wonders what illness he has that has forced him to leave the safety of his home.
Nelson introduces himself to the receptionist. Normally he would ask to speak in private but the airy room seems the more Covid-safe option. He hopes that the elderly man is deaf.
‘I’m looking for a Zoe Hilton.’
‘Zoe? She’s one of our nurses but . . .’
‘Is she in today?’
‘No. We were expecting her. I hope she’s not ill.’ That’s the first assumption these days, thinks Nelson. Not skiving off.
‘Was she in yesterday?’
‘Yes, and she left at the usual time. Five thirty.’
‘Is there anyone I can talk to about Zoe?’ says Nelson.
‘You’d better talk to Dr Patel. She’s our senior partner.’ The receptionist looks scared now.
Dr Rita Patel looks too young to be a senior partner, but Nelson is used to that now. She’s a slight woman with black hair pulled back into a severe ponytail. Her eyes, above her mask, are dark and watchful. She’s wearing blue scrubs which makes Nelson think of hospitals.
‘They’re the easiest and most hygienic option,’ says Dr Patel. ‘I don’t think I’ll go back to wearing ordinary clothes even after all this is over.’
‘Must be a tough time for you.’
‘It is,’ says the doctor. ‘We’re doing lots of telephone consultations but there are some patients we really need to see. And I worry about the people at home who need medical help but are too scared to ask.’
‘Scared of coming in?’
‘Scared of wasting our time,’ says Dr Patel. ‘But people still get cancer in a pandemic.’
It’s a very lowering thought. Nelson explains that he’s looking for Zoe.
‘She hasn’t come in today,’ says Dr Patel. ‘We’re a bit worried about her.’
‘How long has she worked here?’
‘Only since February but she’s a very good nurse. We all like her.’
‘I believe Zoe Hilton was once called Dawn Stainton,’ says Nelson.
Dr Patel gives him a very straight look. ‘Yes, she was. A very distressing time for her.’
‘She told you about the case?’
‘She was completely straight with us. She was found not guilty and the real perpetrator was caught and charged. Zoe was cleared to practise by the General Medical Council.’
‘And you’ve no idea where she could be today?’
‘No. As I say, we’re a bit worried.’
When Nelson stands up to go, Dr Patel surprises him by saying, ‘Is there any news of Cathbad?’
‘No,’ says Nelson. ‘I’m going to ring Judy, his partner, in a few minutes.’
‘Tell her we’re all thinking of him,’ says Dr Patel. ‘I do his yogic breathing exercises every night.’