Due Diligence by Paul Bennett

Author:Paul Bennett [BENNETT, PAUL]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-08-22T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Back at the house I took the phone off the hook. This wasn’t the time for unwelcome callers. My system was drained, its batteries desperately in need of recharging. Sleep was the first priority, if only to clear my mind and approach the rest of the day afresh. And when I woke up Arlene would be winging her way across the Atlantic.

In the bedroom I stripped off my clothes and threw them onto a chair. Jumping into bed, I pulled the duvet tight around my shoulders. It was a cold room. The monochrome theme of the sitting room had been continued here giving an air of starkness to what might otherwise have been cosy and comfortable. There was a surfeit of hard lines to the furnishings and fittings: geometric patterned curtains and bedclothes, more sharp angles picked out in white on the black doors of the wardrobes. And the whole impersonal effect then doubled in size by the reflection in the floor-to-ceiling mirrors along one wall.

I was too tired, too emotional, too tense for sleep to come. My mind refused to switch off. After half an hour of tossing and turning, I dragged myself moodily from the bed and went along the corridor to the study. On the floor was a box filled with the bottles I had cleared from the bathroom cabinet. Inside was John’s bottle of sleeping pills. With a sense of revulsion I saw the contours of his fingerprint plainly etched in white powder on the dark brown surface of the glass.

I made my mind up there and then. I must leave this house. Get away from the macabre memories and the constant reminder of John’s duplicity. Start looking for somewhere else the next day. Do what I could to sort the place out. Get hold of an estate agent. Keep as much of my promise to Sofia as would seem reasonable. Then clear out. Never come back.

I tipped two of the pills into the palm of my hand. Swallowed them with water from the bathroom tap. Crawled back into bed. Prayed for sleep.

I got my wish.

The land of Morpheus can be a cruel place. Even in my dreams there was no respite, no escape from John’s haunting presence.

It was a surrealistic nightmare: stark images forced themselves on the captive audience of my pupils like scenes from Bunuel’s Le Chien Andalou. With that lack of apparent reason one experiences in dreams, I was sitting, John’s stubby fountain pen in hand, diligently writing labels on a mountain of cassettes. The floor was a snowdrift of white powder. Three feet deep, it reached to my knees. Its weight held me prisoner in my seat.

I stared down. From out of the quicksand of heavy cloying dust, in tormentingly slow motion, pale white fingers began to emerge. One by one. Until they formed a claw.

The bony hand darted out. The fingernails were long and pointed: they scraped across my skin before snatching the pen from my grasp and disappearing back into the whiteness.

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