From Dark Places by Emma Newman Page B

Then he cleaned the sink and the mirror he’d blasted with a fine mist of spittle. As he washed his hands a second time, the doorbell rang.
    He froze. It rang again. He turned off the tap and dried his hands, staring at the front door.
    Could they have found out?
    “Hello?” a woman’s voice called through it. “Is anyone in?”
    He paused at the bathroom door long enough to count to eleven, then made his way silently to the front door and peered through the spy hole. A woman in her twenties, with similar dark circles under her eyes, waited on the other side of the wood. She wasn’t wearing a police officer’s uniform. Maybe she was a plain clothes detective?
    “Who are you?” he asked, deciding that not knowing would be worse.
    “Oh thank, God! Please can you help me? I can’t find the stopcock and the flat’s flooding—the one above yours.”
    The flat above his? An arid breath sucked the moisture from his mouth. That was impossible.
    “I—I’m rather busy right –”
    “Please, it’ll only take you a minute, no-one else is in. The water will come through your ceiling if you don’t help.”
    Her pleading made him cringe. Why was everything going wrong at the same time? He glowered at the clock.
    “This is your fault,” he hissed.
    He had to help her; he couldn’t cope with the thought of filthy workmen coming into his apartment to repair water damage. He unbolted the door, unhooked the chains, took the keys hanging next to the door frame and opened the deadlock. She was already half-way down the hall.
    After counting to eleven he stepped into the hallway. It smelt of cooked cabbage and paint and had done for the last twenty years, despite the fact nobody cooked cabbage anymore and the hallway hadn’t seen fresh paint in all that time.
    “Hurry!” she said, banging her way through the fire doors and leaping onto the stairs. He followed as quickly as he could, but it was like wading through mud. He was in such a state by the time he reached the fire doors he had to restart his count three times before he could be certain it was okay to go through.
    By the time he reached the upstairs corridor, she had unlocked the apartment door and disappeared inside. His head pounded. Blood roared in his ears. The approach to the door had the quality of an awful nightmare, one he’d been expecting every time he went to bed. But it had waited until now, to be faced in the daylight hours.
    “In here,” she called from the kitchen.
    He steeled himself for the onslaught of stale air and the stench of cigarette smoke. It was fainter than he remembered, the ceiling still yellow however and the paintwork grimy with dirt.
    One, two, three, four-
    “What are you doing? There’s water everywhere!”
    Damn! One, two, three, four, five-
    She darted back to the doorway; their eyes met, hers shadowed by a frown. “Come in for God’s sake, the kitchen –”
    He held up a hand. One, two, three-
    She grabbed the raised hand and yanked him into the apartment, swiftly dragging him through to the kitchen. His thoughts tumbled and crashed like waves on a beach.
    “Where’s the stopcock?” she yelled at him.
    His body jerked into action, splashing across the floor to the cupboard beneath the sink, fingers locating the small wheel and turning it.
    “Thank God for that!” she said. “Are you ok?”
    He grabbed for the washing up liquid, no antibacterial hand wash in sight, and concentrated on squirting it over his hands. He lathered them vigorously under the tap, before realising with horror he’d just shut off the water.
    She started to laugh and then he was too. It felt like cobwebs were clearing from his lungs. For a bright moment he saw himself standing in an inch of water, hands covered in green slime in the apartment of the man he’d killed a week ago.
    He managed to rein in the laughter before it became hysterical. “I need to wash this off,” he said and sploshed out of the room.
    “I’ll mop this up before it