Page 23 of Not That Complicated

I let myself in, closed the door, and stood there with my back pressed to it, clutching my bag to my chest.

It smelled like other people in here. Like forensics specialists and policemen. Like the Law.

I also detected a faint mustiness that I told myself was definitely my imagination and absolutely was not what a mummy smelled like.

Even if it was horrifyingly similar to the air in the Egyptian gallery in the Ashmolean Museum.

Becausethatwas the smell of a specially filtered and temperature-controlled environment, not old dead people.

It was my imagination, I told myself, again, and lit every single scented candle I possessed. Which was a lot. I’m a nightmare to buy presents for. Everyone always seems to default to candles. And handmade journals. Usually from Italy, for some reason.

I puttered around in the kitchen for a bit. After supper I did a little work to make up for my lack of focus (nap) earlier in the day. I was feeling stout and brave all the way up to nine p.m., at which point I glumly concluded that I couldn’t avoid it any longer.

One way or another, I had to go upstairs.

I couldn’t spend the night sleeping on the sofa. Not if I wanted to walk upright the next day.

I switched on all the lights and stomped up the stairs. Before I could chicken out, I hung a left into my bedroom and stopped abruptly.

“You bastards,” I said blankly.

Was itsooutrageous of me to have expected them to put things back in order? Was it?

They didn’t have to finish laying the carpet, or shove the bed back into place and make it for me, but come on. Could they not have at least put the floorboards back?

Two long narrow planks were all that had been levered up when Craig and Kevin and I found the body.

Now, practically the whole damn room had been pulled up. The majority of my bedroom floor was a ragged hole.

I hoped they had a complaint form or a suggestion box at the station, because I planned on being down there first thing in the morning.

The air was sour with old dust and chilled damp creeping up from the exposed underfloor. Craig’s tools and toolbox were still there, along with the tea tray with empty mugs and a crumb-strewn plate. Floorboards had been shoved to the edges of the room, piled up any old how. It was a wreck.

I left my cosy eighty-bloody-quid-a-night room at the Premier Lodge for this?

I flung around, slapped the light off as I went, then thought better of it and smacked it back on again. Leaving it burning, I took myself and my overnight bag into the small guest room next door.

I got into my pjs, did the usual in the bathroom, changed the sheets on the bed because I couldn’t remember when I last had, and slid under the covers with a sigh. I clasped my hands over my stomach and stared up at the ceiling.

I’d left the Velux blind open for the ambient light, not wanting to lie there in complete darkness. Soft silver moonlight filtered through the trees outside and dappled my bed.

So calm.Socalm. Is what I was.

There was no need to be anything other than calm, really. He’d been there under the boards the whole time I’d lived here, hadn’t he? The dead man? Nothing bad had happened before. There was no reason to think anything bad would happen now.

I pondered writing a strongly worded letter to the surveyor who had inspected the property before I closed on it. He’d given a hearty thumbs up. Okay, checking for dead bodies probably wasn’t part of the process.

But it should be.

I couldn’t help but wonder what else he’d missed. Woodworm? Black mould?

A portal to Hell?

A board creaked in the room next door.

Every hair on my body prickled to quivering attention. My clasped hands spasmed, my heart pounded, and my head whipped to face the closed door.

My eyes locked onto the door handle.

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