The Distant Dead by Lesley Thomson (books for students to read TXT) 📕

round the turn in the stairs, Jack saw a sliver of light. The front door opened then shut. Jack pattered up the corridor into the front parlour in time to see a man, suit jacket flapping, crossing the road. A letter in his hand suggested he wouldn’t be gone long, then, the man turning, Jack saw a shoulder bag strapped over his chest and gave himself up to half an hour.

When he crept back to the hall, Jack caught sight of the telephone and replayed the lodger’s side of the conversation. The caller asked for someone called Harmon. That was Jack’s surname. There was no such thing as coincidence.

Whoever had rung was sending him the message that they knew he was there. They knew his name. Stella had said the killer was at least one step ahead of them. She was right.

Nerves jangling, Jack knew he should leave, but couldn’t with his allotted task incomplete, and now he was alone. Or was he? Had the caller rung from a mobile phone in a room here in the house? Jack dialled 1471. ‘The caller has withheld their number.’ Typical for a salesperson, but Jack’s unease increased.

Outside March’s room, the police tape looked undisturbed. Jack couldn’t tell that Mrs Wren had peeled it off to gain entry, as Lucie and Stella had told him. The woman was a pro. Jack knew Andrea lodged on the floor above.

He knocked on both doors, ready with how he’d found the front door ajar and was checking for intruders. No reply. Unlike when he’d gone to Northcote’s London home, this time Jack had his trusty set of lock picks.

As a surgeon practises needlework on pigs’ skin, Jack had spent many a dull evening – without Stella – picking his collection of locks. He too was a pro and now he had the tumblers in the lock of the door released in moments.

Jack snapped on latex gloves and did a fast but efficient sweep. No business card, nothing to connect Andrea to Geo-Space. In the wardrobe, a couple of dresses and smart women’s shoes and two pairs of pristine denim overalls. Andrea’s disguise.

A crumpled leaflet for the Death Café lay on the nightstand. Next to this, Jack was startled to see a copy of Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell. The novel was a blip in either the profile of the sullen gardener or high-flying tech executive. It warmed Jack to Andrea and he began to hope she wasn’t a budding serial killer.

He homed in on a laptop which shared the veneered dressing table with a mascara stick and a black eye liner, both Jo Malone, likely vestiges of Andrea’s true identity. She hadn’t got to grips with the rigours of being undercover.

Jack wasn’t as deft with computers as he was with locks. With her logical brain, cracking passwords was more Stella’s territory. For the sake of doing something, he tapped in ‘March’. Not having met Andrea he had no idea what else mattered to her. He guessed that, an IT geek, Andrea hadn’t gone for a pet’s name or her street name. Idly he typed in ‘Geo-Space’ and was amazed to see he’d cracked it. Andrea was into double bluff. Was that a clue? Or perhaps she had nothing to hide.

Jack soon found out that this wasn’t true. In a folder marked ‘Homes’ were several files of virtual tours. Each file contained a different property, a couple of flats in West London, an architect plan. Boring, Andrea was more of a workaholic than Zack Hunt had suggested to Jackie. Then Jack froze.

In the file called ‘Cleaning’ was a property he recognized. Not at first, he’d only been there once. But as the image spiralled out of dollhouse mode then zoomed into the sitting room, Jack felt icy sweat trickle down his forehead. It was Stella and Lucie’s flat. With a trembling finger, he clicked along the circular markers, moving around the room where he’d sat hours earlier. He avoided the bedrooms, even entering virtually felt wrong. Not as wrong as Andrea scanning Stella and Lucie’s private space.

Jack fumbled in his wallet and fished out his USB stick. He fitted it into the side of Andrea’s machine and swiped a copy of the folder onto it. As he did so, he heard the front door open. He clicked the laptop to off. More perspiration as it took ages to close. He fought the urge to shut the lid; it would only fire up when Andrea lifted it and she’d know someone had been there. Footsteps on the stairs, the step too light for the lodger with the letter.

Jack had forgotten about the mystery caller who had asked for him by name.

The only hiding place was the wardrobe. Opening the door, Jack eased himself inside and pulled it to. As if it made him invisible, he screwed his eyes shut and held his breath. If you can feel someone watching you, you are unaware of them when they’re not. Jack had to look.

The handle turned slowly, hesitantly. Jack pictured someone outside on the landing. Playing with him. Had he left a drawer open? Had he accidentally pressed restart on the laptop? None of that mattered if they knew he was there.

Footsteps in the room. Jack imagined breathing although there was silence. He hadn’t had time to crouch or hide himself behind Andrea’s overalls. If the wardrobe was opened, that would be it. Would he be number five in the chain? As if to calm himself he recited the names Maple, Northcote, March, Clive the Clockmaker. Jack Harmon. He would never see Stella again. Never hold her…

Jack was about to burst out of the wardrobe, surprise his only weapon, when he heard the door shut and the key turn in the lock. His hearing tuned for a pin dropping, he caught the slightest tread on the stairs. The click of the front door. Could be a trick, but he could not stay where he was.

With feathery fingers, it took him longer