Where Everything Seems Double by Penny Freedman (popular romance novels .txt) 📕

and there is no sign of occupation. Summer holidays. Presumably the students have all cleared out of their rooms. Perhaps the building offers itself for conferences. But Freda could be in any one of these, so I go back to my starting point and go down opening each door in turn. At the end I turn round and return, opening the doors on the other side. Nothing. All are neat and bare.

I have noticed an entrance to a staircase about halfway along – narrow back stairs, I think, designed for the servants who originally slept in these rooms. The staircase has a door at the end of it and when I go through it I am startled to find that these were not back stairs; in fact, I have not ended up in the kitchens but on an elegant gallery with fine polished oak spindles overlooking an impressive tiled entrance hall. At one end of the hall I can see the inside of the massive front door that was locked against me. I am about to look for a route to further bedrooms that may be on this floor when my eye is caught by something. The marble tiles of the entrance hall floor are classic black and white, but on the white tiles on the far side there are splashes of what I think can only be blood.

Chapter Sixteen TAKING BREATH

Tuesday

Were they going to run out of air? It was so dark in here that though she had waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkness it hadn’t happened, and that meant that there were no gaps, didn’t it? And no gaps meant no fresh air. She could hear the other two breathing, and she had hold of someone’s hand, but they hadn’t dared even to whisper. He knew they were in there, of course. He had stopped calling out to them quite early on and now he was just outside, she felt sure. Just occasionally when their breathing was very quiet, she had heard a small squeak, like someone shifting in a chair. He was waiting for them. Was he listening to their breathing? Was he waiting for the sound of them gasping for air, and would he then come in and haul them out? She thought about those stories on the news – immigrants in container lorries suffocating to death. That would be them. The thought itself made her start gasping for air. Was this what a panic attack was? Pull yourself together. The others weren’t panicking, were they? She could hear them breathing steadily – a bit fast maybe, but steady, and the hand she was holding was firm and strong. Come on, she urged herself, you’re not going to be the weak one. And he would get them out before they actually died, because he would want them alive, wouldn’t he? Except what did he plan to do with them? He had come for the other two, not for her. He could decide to get rid of her because she was inconvenient. After all, he must be mad, mustn’t he?

Really, she thought, with three of them, couldn’t they overpower him? The trouble was that they couldn’t make a plan. Even if he couldn’t hear what they were whispering he would know they were planning something and he would be ready for them. And the real problem was that he had a weapon. She had only had a moment’s glimpse of it out in the hall – such an odd thing, glittering and pointed, like an icicle – and then they had turned and run.

How was it possible for them to be so cut off in this world where people could contact each other 24/7? She thought about their phones. Three of them and not a phone between them: one in Dumitru’s car, one in Carnmere and one on the table a few feet away from them – or more likely in his pocket by now and switched off. And – the thought that she had been pushing away – the only person in the world who knew where they were was probably dead.

Chapter Seventeen WHEN SOME VILE THING IS NEAR

Tuesday

The sight of the blood produces a sort of fizzing in my head and I have to hold on hard to the banister to avoid tumbling into the void that opens up below me. I breathe hard and make myself listen for sounds of life below before I move on rubbery legs down the broad curved staircase and across the hall.

It feels unreal to be tracking the blood spots, smeared in places, along the hall, and the panicky lightness in my head has not altogether cleared. When the blood trail suddenly stops, I stop too, and see that I am standing beside a closed door. Fighting down terror and nausea, I turn the handle and push the door ajar. Looking in, I can see nothing at first but a small, neat office with a desk and a computer, and then I see what is almost at my feet. Just inside the door, on the floor, propped against the wall, lies Dumitru. He is not dead. His eyes open as I move into the room but they are unfocussed and his face is a greenish-white. He is bare-chested and he is holding a blood-soaked t-shirt against his shoulder.

‘Dumitru,’ I say. ‘What happened?’

His lips open but no sound comes out. I crouch down beside him.

‘Where is Freda?’ I demand. And I want to shake an answer out of him. ‘Come on, Dumitru,’ I urge, staring into his blank eyes, ‘where is she?’

I get no answer and I know I have to summon help. I stand up, get out my phone and dial 999. When asked which service I say, ‘Ambulance and Police. A man has been stabbed,’ and then I answer their questions – the where, when, how of it all – in a frenzy of impatience because I have to find Freda and I have no