Double Blind by Carrie Bedford Page A

that bloomed with lime scale. Maybe Chris was renting the house from a landlady with a penchant for pastels and no money for repairs.
    While I washed my hands, I wondered why he’d been so reluctant to let me in. The house wasn’t exactly Architectural Digest, but it wasn’t anything to be embarrassed about. My curiosity piqued, I tiptoed from the bathroom towards the door that he’d closed, pushing it open a few inches. It was dark inside.
    My brother Leo had been known to call me nosy and meddling, but I preferred to think of what I was about to do as investigating. My curiosity had got me into trouble on more than one occasion. I tried not to think about that right now.
    Light from a street lamp outside illuminated the room enough for me to see a single bed neatly made with a white duvet and matching pillowcase. An old wooden armoire stood against one wall. The room was very neat and revealed nothing particularly interesting, which made me wonder why Chris had bothered to pull the door closed. The headlights of a car passing on the street briefly flooded the room with light and illuminated the far wall. It was covered from floor to ceiling with pieces of paper attached with thumbtacks and tape. I crept in to take a closer look. Not wanting to risk switching on a lamp, I held up my mobile, which shed enough light for me to see that the papers were press clippings and magazine pages, and every one of them featured Simon Scott.
    Chris was truly a supporter, I thought, until I peered more closely at one clipping and saw deep slashes across a photo of Scott’s face. I looked at another and saw similar gouges across Scott’s eyes. Large black Xs criss-crossed some of the photos and there appeared to be yellow highlighter on some of the text, but I didn’t have time to read any of it. My heart was thumping against my ribs and I was finding it hard to breathe. Struggling to make sense of what I was seeing, I also knew I had to move before Chris became suspicious. I crept out to the landing, carefully pulling the door closed. When I reached the top of the stairs, Chris was standing at the bottom looking up at me. Pulse racing and my legs trembling, I made my way down.
    “I feel much better now, I said. “Thanks.”
    He nodded. “I made some coffee. Do you want some?”
    What I really wanted was to get out of the house, but rushing away seemed rude, so I followed him into the kitchen, my hand shaking when I took the cup of coffee he offered me.
    “Are you all right?” he asked.
    “I think I’m coming down with something, actually,” I said. “What with the rain and being in close quarters with all those people, it’s not surprising I suppose.”
    I drank the coffee fast even though it was hot, burning my tongue and throat as I took several big swallows.
    “I’d better go,” I said, handing him the empty cup. “It’s getting late. I hope I’ll see you next week.”
    “Perhaps,” he said, following me to the door. I heard him bolt it behind me before I hurried under relentless rain to the tube station.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
    Jittery and perplexed, I found it hard to sleep, and was wide awake long before dawn, listening to the faint hiss of tires on wet asphalt and the steady beat of rain on the windows. I climbed out of my warm comfortable bed for just long enough to make tea and toast and then hurried back with my breakfast and laptop. Searching online for Chris Melrose brought up half a dozen results, all confirming what he had told me about his postgraduate student status. I couldn’t find anything else on him. General searches on Melrose filled the screen with pages of information, but nothing that was helpful.
    After a while, I got up, put on a robe and went to the living room to look through the photos I’d taken at the campaign events. I printed some of them; a shot of the man with the binoculars, a couple of Chris, and even a decent one of Simon Scott standing on stage with his arms raised in the air.