Old Haunts by Susan Hill

Author:Susan Hill
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2018-08-16T04:00:00+00:00

He went back to the kitchen, made supper and ate it. Waited. But nothing else happened for the rest of the evening, and just after midnight he went to bed.

He was wakened early by a banging at the door. The postman handed him two letters for Cat and one registered envelope addressed in type to ‘Mr J. Guthrie’ which he had to sign for. He hesitated but the postman was flipping through the rest of his delivery pile and did not notice that he almost began his signature with ‘S’ before changing quickly to a scribble that half resembled J. Guthrie.

The pager beeped. ‘Steve’s SwiftMoves. BD39 SMR. 7.45 a.m. Oak. Do not leave forwarding address.’

He was up and ready by quarter to seven, a small holdall packed with personal stuff, already getting used to instructions coming bite-sized and apparently at random. Trust, he thought. That was what it amounted to and it was coming to him. The operation bore plenty of resemblance to the cloak-and-dagger stuff wishful small boys believed in and the small boy in Serrailler felt a twinge in his gut. John and Nick had not only failed to stress danger – Simon didn’t think the word had even been spoken – or ‘risk’ or ‘Secret’, but somehow all of them had been implied throughout the briefing in Interview Room 19.

He wondered if he should go down to wait for the removals van or stay here. 7.44 and the pager buzzed.

‘Hapsley Street.’

It ran along the side of the block.

Steve’s SwiftMoves. The van was dirty, barely within the range of acceptable. Simon walked round it.

‘Also available in WHITE’ was fingered on the doors.

Youngish man. Three-day growth of beard. Open-necked check shirt. Smoking. But the driver’s look, as Serrailler stopped, was brief and intense. He didn’t know whether to speak or not.

‘Sycamore?’

His mind floundered. Then, apparently of its own accord, produced ‘Oak’.

The man leaned over and unlocked the passenger door.

‘Steve?’

Only a nod of the head, indicating that he should get in.

Serrailler waited to see if the man, who was probably not called Steve and might not even be a cop, would start talking, before he himself said anything at all, let alone asked any questions.

After a couple of miles through traffic-clotted streets, he said only, ‘There’s nothing too heavy, we can do it in three trips up. No lift.’

‘You’ve been there?’

Another brief nod.

‘You know what this is all about?’

No nod, no shake of the head.

It was rush hour and what might have taken twenty minutes cost them well over an hour, much of it at a standstill or crawling. The inside of the van was anonymous, but if they had been stopped for any reason, it would have passed as ‘Small removals’ without questions. Chewing-gum packets in the well. School photo of two kids, boy and girl, in uniform, big grins, the boy missing two front teeth. Sticker with a couple of phone numbers and dates scrawled on. Two-days-old copy of the Sun stuffed into the side pocket, along with some loose sherbet lemons and biros.

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