by Peter James
‘I wanted to ask you something,’ Maurice said, looking at their guests. ‘You’ve been here just on a fortnight, and we’ve been a few weeks longer. Have you noticed anything strange, at all? You know, anything out of the ordinary?’
‘Maurice!’ his wife said, sharply, again.
‘Strange?’ Jason queried.
‘A chap wandering down the street, outside, at night, smoking a cigar?’
‘This is utter rubbish!’ Claudette said, sitting down on the opposite, matching sofa, alongside her husband, and grabbing another mince pie, as if scared they would be gone. ‘This is a complete invention by my husband to explain why he comes home every night after his constitutional – which is meant to be his evening walk on his doctor’s orders – reeking of tobacco smoke.’
‘Utter rubbish, my love? Aren’t you forgetting something? Only a week ago you ran out of the house after thinking you saw someone upstairs – smoking a cigar!’ He looked at Jason and Emily. ‘She was out in the cold, freezing.’
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ Claudette said. ‘Let’s talk about something more cheerful. What are you both doing on New Year’s Eve? Perhaps we could celebrate together?’
Jason shot a warning glance at Emily. ‘I’m afraid we are already committed.’
‘My love, I don’t think we should ignore the issue of something strange going on,’ Maurice said. He looked, quizzically, at Jason, then Emily.
‘The only thing I’ve noticed is some people, from time to time, in the house next door to you. Number thirty-four,’ Jason replied.
‘Oh, we’ve seen them too,’ Claudette said. ‘The sister and brother-in-law of the couple who were so tragically killed. Maurice and I have chatted with them, such a lovely family. They’re executors of the estate, sorting everything out.’
‘Ah, right,’ Jason said, feeling mightily relieved. ‘I’m afraid I’ve not seen Mr Cigar Man close up.’
‘Of course you haven’t.’ She turned and glared at her husband. ‘I’m afraid, my love, your little lie’s been caught out.’
‘He’s there every evening,’ her husband said, defensively.
‘Of course he is. How convenient, he’s there just so you can smoke your cigarette, and don’t tell me you don’t have any; I’ve checked your coat pocket every day, and every day there is one cigarette less in the packet.’
She turned, sweetly, to the Daneses. ‘Oh dear, your glasses look almost empty. Some more bubbles?’
Jason looked down and saw, to his surprise, that both his and Emily’s glasses were drained. Emily was still staring, distracted, at something on the far side of the room. Before they had a chance to refuse, they were topped up to the brim, and Claudette bustled out of the room to fetch another bottle.
‘He is there,’ Maurice said. ‘Every time I go out, I see him across the road, standing beneath a street light. But when I try to chat to him, he buggers off. Are you sure you haven’t seen him?’
Jason shook his head.
‘Claudette is convinced I’m making him up, but I’m not.’ He shrugged. ‘Damned queer fellow, that’s all I can say. Downright rude; I instantly thought he must be from one of those affordable houses somewhere else on the estate, but of course they haven’t been built yet.’
Jason raised his glass, awkwardly. ‘Well, cheers, Happy Christmas!’
‘Happy Christmas to our famous neighbours!’ Claudette said, coming back in with a freshly opened bottle. ‘I think we’re going to be really good friends. Maurice and I were only just saying how lucky we are to have such wonderful neighbours.’
‘I’ll drink to that,’ Jason said, politely, raising his glass, and realizing it was empty. As was Emily’s.
Once again, they were topped up.
Emily pointed across the room. ‘Such a lovely piece, that!’
Jason followed the direction of her hand, as did both their neighbours. She was pointing at a walnut display cabinet. Behind its glass windows were several Capodimonte figurines: a pair of dancers in Regency costumes, a cobbler in a vest mending a pair of shoes and a tramp in a floppy hat seated on a bench with a bottle in his hand. On a separate shelf, as if in pride of place, was a porcelain donkey wearing a straw sombrero, and with a quartz clock set in its belly.
‘Capodimonte!’ Claudette exclaimed. ‘Maurice and I collect it, you know,’ she said proudly.
‘So very tasteful,’ Emily said, with sarcasm so thinly veiled Jason wanted to kick her. She’d clearly drunk too much.
‘So glad you like them!’
‘I particularly love the donkey,’ she went on.
‘Do you know, Maurice and I were watching Antiques Roadshow recently, and there was one, almost identical to that, which was valued at twenty thousand pounds. Can you believe it?’
‘My love,’ her husband corrected her. ‘It was a Victorian racehorse, not a donkey, that was valued so highly.’
‘So? Your point is?’ she rounded on him.
‘They are somewhat different pieces.’
‘My point is, my love, that our donkey is in the same style, exactly.’
‘Perhaps,’ Maurice said, dubiously. ‘But I think if you consult any antiques guide, you will find that quartz clocks had not been invented in the Victorian era.’
‘Where did you get such a lovely piece?’ Emily asked.
‘You won’t believe it!’ Claudette said, proudly. ‘We bought it in a charity shop in Brighton. Quite a find, wouldn’t you say!’
‘Oh yes,’ Emily replied. ‘Quite a find. Clever you!’
‘Tell Maurice! I paid ten pounds for it and he chided me for wasting money. Can you believe it? It was one of my fiftieth birthday presents to myself.’
‘No,’ Emily said. ‘I can’t believe it.’
‘Your fiftieth birthday?’ Jason said, disguising his cynicism well. The woman looked closer to sixty. ‘No way are you fifty!’
‘Hard to believe, isn’t it?’ Claudette said. ‘Maurice tells me I don’t look a day over thirty-five.’
‘You don’t!’ Jason said.
‘I’ll be fifty-five next birthday,’ Maurice boasted.
He looked closer to seventy, Jason thought. ‘I’d never have believed it!’
‘Everything in moderation!’ Maurice said. ‘That’s the secret!’
Two more refills later, Jason and Emily finally made their escape, walking tipsily across the road.
They said nothing to each other until they were back in their house and safely out of earshot.
67
Wednesday 26 December
‘I don’t believe it – do you?’ Emily said, and giggled.
‘Believe what? The shit wine?’
‘It was shit.’
She shook her head, heading into the kitchen. ‘God, I need a drink of something decent.’ She opened the fridge door and took out a bottle that was still a quarter full from last night. She poured the contents into two glasses, handed one to Jason and sat down.
Then she broke into a broad smirk.
‘What?’ Jason asked.
‘The donkey!’
‘The donkey – what about it?’
‘You didn’t recognize it?’
‘Should I have done?’
‘Hello! That wedding present your Aunt Minette gave us that you hated so much?’
It was coming back to him now. ‘Yes.’
‘You agreed we should give it away, along with a bunch of other gifts we didn’t like, so I took the stuff to the charity shop. That was it, in her cabinet – the one she thought was worth twenty thousand pounds because she’d seen Antiques Roadshow!’
‘Probably something similar,’ he suggested.
She shook her head. ‘No, I went over and looked at it carefully. Claudette opened the cabinet and let me pick it up. There’s an L-shaped chip out of the base, about a centimetre long, which happened when I dropped it. I remember – I thought the whole thing was going to shatter.’
‘That is so bizarre!’ he said.
‘Feeling bad now about us giving it away?’
‘Not any more. I’m so happy it went to people who get so much pleasure from it.’
‘And you’ll still be happy when you see it on Antiques Roadshow being valued at twenty grand?’ she asked.
‘Along with a flying pig?’
She laughed. ‘Can you believe the coincidence, though?’
‘Nope, very strange. Also, there’s something very interesting – she’s fifty and he’s nearly fifty-five. So much for the bollocks about no one living beyond forty here!’
‘Maybe they’re ghosts.’
‘Ghosts?’
‘Uh-huh!’ Her eyes twinkled. ‘Maybe they’re dead and we just didn’t realize.’
‘Could any ghosts be as horrible as them?’
‘True. We have a better class of ghost on this side of the street.’
‘I’ll drink to that!’
As they clinked glasses, a loud report, like a gunshot, startled them.
‘What was that?’ she asked, nervously.
Jason hurried out into the hall. He looked around, then fixed his gaze on the mirror lining the stairs, on the right. There was a crack in it. Like a high-voltage warning sign. A single line, with two jagged spikes.
Emily joined him and saw it too.
‘How – how did – how?’
There was another report and an identical crack appeared in the mirror on the left.
Emily grabbed him in fear. ‘Jason?’ she whispered. ‘Jason, how did—?’ She fell silent as there was another crack right behind them.
An identical split had appeared in the window beside the front door.
She screamed.
There was another crack.
Followed by another.
Then another.
‘Jason!’ she yelled.
Another.
Another.
‘Jason!’
Another.
She gripped his arm, hard.
Another. Above them.
Another.
Crack.
Crack.
‘Call the police,’ she whispered.
Crack.
‘Call them!’
Crack.
Then a long silence.
‘Call the police, darling, call the police!’
‘You saw their reaction when they came last week. They’re not going to turn out for a few cracked panes of glass.’
‘Who’s doing it? Maybe it’s kids, with a catapult or airgun?’ Emily said, clearly having little faith in her own suggestion.
Jason, closely followed by his wife, hurried up to his studio. He went in ahead of her, turning on the lights and looking around.
‘Jesus.’
All the windows had an identical crack to the ones downstairs, right across the middle.
‘What is it, Jason?’ Emily said. Her voice was barely a whisper. ‘What is it? What’s happening?’
Without answering, he went back down to the first floor and checked each of the spare rooms in turn, then the master bedroom, before heading on down in numb silence, and checking out the kitchen.
Every mirror and every window in the house had an identical crack. A single line, broken with two jagged spikes, before carrying on again.
‘What is it, what’s done that?’ Emily asked, shaking.
There was another, much louder, splintering crack right above them.
They both looked up, in terror.
Another identical crack had appeared above them, right across the kitchen ceiling. Tiny fragments of plaster, like dust motes, fluttered down.
68
Wednesday 26 December
They ran out into the hall and through into the living room, looking up at the ceiling again. ‘Subsidence,’ he mouthed, almost silently.
‘What?’
‘Subsidence, there’s something wrong with the foundations. The builders have fucked up with the foundations. Something’s seriously not right.’
‘It’s not subsidence, Jason, is it? You know it isn’t. It is not subsidence.’
He continued staring at the ceiling. His voice trembling, he said, ‘I don’t think ghosts break windows or make cracks in ceilings.’
‘Or smoke cigars out in the street? Or turn up disguised as vicars?’
A sharp, malevolent, female voice rang out from the kitchen.
‘Nor speak from a command box that’s been unplugged!’
They froze.
Emily looked at him, her face the colour of ice. ‘Wh-what was that?’
Cautioning her with his hand to stay where she was, he walked back to the kitchen. As he entered, he heard a man say, in a northern accent, ‘It’s not unplugged, Lulu, you daft bitch!’
To his surprise the television was on. A young couple, in a modern kitchen, were both staring at an identical command box to their own.
‘I unplugged the bloody thing, I’m certain I did, Ray, to stop the alarm waking us every morning.’
‘At what time would you like an alarm call?’ the device spoke in a commanding female voice.
‘I don’t want a bloody alarm call.’
‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand your request.’
The man on the screen looked, exasperated, at the woman.
There was a close-up of the device, clearly plugged in.
‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘I unplugged it!’
‘Yeah, right, so it just plugged itself back in?’
Jason felt Emily’s arms around him. ‘At least we have one rational explanation,’ she said.
‘Except I didn’t turn the television on, and nor did you.’
‘Maybe one of us touched the remote?’
‘I’ll take that, for now.’ Jason looked at the very-definitely unplugged device on the table.
‘So will I.’ Emily shot a glance at the ceiling again.
He picked up the remote and turned off the television. ‘I’ll call Paul Jordan first thing – we need to get a surveyor, urgently.’
‘Where are we going to find one in Christmas week? The agency’s probably shut until after the holidays.’
‘I have his mobile number.’
‘You do? Call him now? I don’t think we should risk staying here tonight.’
‘Em, this place was built by one of the UK’s best-known developers. They must know what they’re doing. There’s a bit of subsidence, but it’s not falling down.’
‘Absolutely, they know what they’re doing – like killing one of their site workers?’
‘That was a tragic accident.’
‘I don’t want to be another tragic accident, OK? Call him now.’
Reluctantly, Jason scrolled through his contacts list, then hit the estate agent’s name.
Jordan answered on the fourth ring. He sounded totally pissed. ‘Jason, my friend! Happy Boxing Day! You know – to you and your lovely wife. I trust Santa Claus did you both proud – even though he might have had difficulties finding you on the new estate, unless he has a very up-to-date satnav!’
A baby was screaming in the background.
‘I hope you had a good Christmas, too,’ Jason said politely.
‘Oh, we did, still going on! You have no idea how – how . . .’ His voice tailed off.
‘Hello?’ Jason said, wondering if he had lost the connection.
‘Have you seen it? Bloody brilliant, just brilliant.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Die Hard. Bruce Willis. Incredible film!’
‘Paul, we have a problem – a very serious problem.’
‘Bruce Willis has one too – terrorists, but really they are robbers – it’s just brilliant.’
‘Maybe he can sort out our problem, Paul, if he’s that brilliant?’
‘I’ll send him over, pal! Anything else I can do for you?’
‘Actually, yes. I think our house is falling down.’
‘Can it wait until tomorrow?’
Jason covered the mic on his p
hone and looked, helplessly, at Emily. ‘He’s completely shitfaced.’
‘He has to do something.’
‘He’s going to send Bruce Willis over.’
‘That’s not funny.’
Jason looked up again at the ceiling. ‘Paul, we have a very serious problem, we need urgent help.’
There was no reply.
‘Paul!’ he said, loudly. ‘Paul!’
A faint voice said, ‘I’ve dropped my phone. Anyone see it?’
Angry and frustrated, Jason ended the call. ‘We’re not going to get any sense out of him.’
‘Maybe we should bail out and spend the night in a hotel?’ Emily suggested.
‘We’ve both drunk too much to drive.’
‘We could call a taxi.’
‘It’s Boxing Day night, Em – there won’t be an empty hotel room in the county.’
‘We could go and stay with my parents.’
‘Thank God this didn’t happen yesterday when your parents were here. I can imagine what your dad would have said.’
‘Dad wouldn’t have let us spend another night here until it was all sorted. He’d have insisted we go and stay with them.’
‘And he’d have twisted it all around, so it was somehow my fault for not having the place properly checked out or something. You know how he grabs any chance to get a dig in.’
‘Jason, that is so not fair. We had a very happy day with them.’
He didn’t respond.
‘Come on, we did!’
‘Were you and I in the same house yesterday? Your father criticized the champagne, saying it was too young, and that I should know to keep it at least two years before opening it. Then he had a go at me for not leaving the foil on the neck of the white burgundy because it makes the bottle look more elegant. And then he told me I’d served quite the wrong red with the turkey and I shouldn’t have decanted the bottle because it wasn’t of a quality or an age that needed it. Oh, and when I cut him a piece of Cheddar he yelled at me, “ne coupez le bec”, because I apparently cut it from the pointed end, which must have ruined everyone’s Christmas.’
‘He’s very fussy about his wines, you know that.’
‘I did my bloody best. Next time I’m sodding serving him some of Mrs P-W’s bargain prosecco. Can I actually do anything right for him?’
‘He means well; as I’ve said before, it’s just his blunt way.’