the feelings there to be disguised. What feelings, Cal could only vaguely read. Impatience certainly, as though being here sickened her, and stirred some fury Cal had no desire to see unleashed. Contempt – for him most likely – and yet a great focus upon him, as though she saw through to his marrow, and was preparing to congeal it with a thought.
There were no such contradictions in her voice however. It was steel and steel.
‘How long?’ she demanded of him. ‘How long since you saw the Fugue?’
He couldn’t meet her eyes for more than a moment. His gaze fled to the mantelpiece, and the tripod’s shoes.
‘Don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said.
‘You’ve seen it. You saw it again in the jacket. It’s fruitless to deny it.’
‘It’s better you answer,’ Shadwell advised.
Cal looked from mantelpiece to door. They had left it open. ‘You can both go to Hell,’ he said quietly.
Did Shadwell laugh? Cal wasn’t certain.
‘We want the carpet,’ said the woman.
‘It belongs to us, you understand,’ Shadwell said. ‘We have a legitimate claim to it.’
‘So, if you’d be so kind …’ the woman’s lip curled at this courtesy. ‘… tell me where the carpet’s gone, and we can have the matter done with.’
‘Such easy terms.’ the Salesman said. ‘Tell us, and we’re gone.’
Claiming ignorance would be no defence, Cal thought; they knew that he knew, and they wouldn’t be persuaded otherwise. He was trapped. Yet dangerous as things had become, he felt inwardly elated. His tormentors had confirmed the existence of the world he’d glimpsed: the Fugue. The urge to be out of their presence as fast as possible was tempered by the desire to play them along, and hope they’d tell him more about the vision he’d witnessed.
‘Maybe I did see it,’ he said.
‘No maybe,’ the woman replied.
‘It’s hazy …’ he said. ‘I remember something, but I’m not quite sure what.’
‘You don’t know what the Fugue is?’ said Shadwell.
‘Why should he?’ the woman replied. ‘He came on it by luck.’
‘But he saw,’ said Shadwell.
‘A lot of Cuckoos have some sight, it doesn’t mean they understand. He’s lost, like all of them.’
Cal resented her condescension, but in essence she was right. Lost he was.
‘What you saw isn’t your business,’ she said to him. ‘Just tell us where you put the carpet, then forget you ever laid eyes on it.’
‘I don’t have the carpet,’ he said.
The woman’s entire face seemed to darken, the pupils of her eyes like moons barely eclipsing some apocalyptic light.
From the landing, Cal heard again the scuttling sounds he’d previously taken to be rats. Now he wasn’t so sure.
‘I won’t be polite with you much longer,’ she said. ‘You’re a thief.’
‘No –’ he protested.
‘Yes. You came here to raid an old woman’s house and you got a glimpse of something you shouldn’t.’
‘We shouldn’t waste time,’ said Shadwell.
Cal had begun to regret his decision to play the pair along. He should have run while he had half a chance. The noise from the other side of the door was getting louder.
‘Hear that?’ said the woman. ‘Those are some of my sister’s bastards. Her by-blows.’
‘They’re vile,’ said Shadwell.
He could believe it.
‘Once more,’ she said. The carpet.’
And once more he told her. ‘I don’t have it.’ This time his words were more appeal than defence.
‘Then we must make you tell,’ said the woman.
‘Be careful, Immacolata,’ said Shadwell.
If the woman heard him, she didn’t care for his warning. Softly, she rubbed the middle and fourth fingers of her right hand against the palm of her left, and at this all but silent summons her sister’s children came running.
1
‘They turned off the gas and electricity in the house years ago,’ Violet said. ‘She hadn’t paid the bills. Living in squalor, she was, and it weren’t for want of me keeping a neighbourly eye. But she was rude, you know, if you enquired about her health.’ She lowered her voice a little. I know I shouldn’t say it but … your grandmother wasn’t entirely of sound mind.’
Suzanna murmured something in reply, which she knew would go unheard.
‘All she had was candles for light. No television, no refrigerator. God alone knows what she was eating.’
‘Do you know if anyone has a key to the house?’
‘Oh no, she wouldn’t have done that. She had more locks on that house than you’ve had hot dinners. She didn’t trust anybody, you see. Not anybody.’
‘I just wanted to look around.’
‘Well there’s been people in and out since she went; probably find the place wide open by now. Even thought of having a look myself, but I didn’t fancy it. Some houses … they’re not quite natural. You know what I mean?’
She knew. Standing finally on the doorstep of number eighteen Suzanna confessed to herself that she’d welcomed the various duties that had postponed this visit. The episode at the hospital had
