was for sure: how he’d become unaccountably afraid while walking the dog.
No … ‘afraid’ was the wrong word. He’d been nervous, that was all. A tad nervous. And why wouldn’t he be? Like it or not, he wasn’t a young bucko any more. And there were bad things going on. It might be a thought to take their evening stroll a little earlier from now on.
Harry closed the door, threw the bolt and applied the safety-chain. He unfastened the dog’s lead, and she trotted down the hall, turning into the living room, where the lights were still on and the television playing to itself.
Harry pulled his gloves off and took off his hat and coat, draping them over the newel post at the bottom of the banister. Milly meanwhile re-emerged from the living room and went through to the kitchen, which lay in darkness.
‘What’s up, lass … need a drink?’ Harry followed her in, switching the light on.
As always, the kitchen was impeccably clean, everything put away, the linoleum floor swept, the worktops sparkling. The mug Harry had left beside the kettle before he’d gone out still waited for him. It contained a teabag, one and a half spoonfuls of sugar and the spoon itself, and only required him to flip the kettle on, which he now did.
Then he noticed that Milly hadn’t touched her water-bowl. Instead, she stood with rigid spine, staring at the back door.
‘Something bothering you, lass?’ he asked.
He leaned over the sink and looked out through the kitchen window. He had a light in the back garden, but it was motion-sensitive, and at present was off. That was a positive thing, because it meant there was no one trespassing. But it also meant that he couldn’t see anything. Milly whimpered and pawed at the door.
‘Nothing out there, lass … what is it, a cat?’
It couldn’t have been that. If it had been, the light would have come on.
Harry leaned closer to the window, straining his eyes.
Gradually, the streetlighting seeping over the tops of the houses revealed the garden’s basic dimensions. It wasn’t large, about fifteen yards by ten, and mostly turfed, with the exception of a crazy-paved path running down the middle. To the right, where the coal-bunker had once stood, there was a brick-built dais – all Harry’s own work – with stone vases on top, containing plants. He could see that much. He could also see the potting shed standing to the left of his back gate, which, painted canary-yellow like the front door, was also clearly visible.
But now that he was looking hard, there was something else.
The top of a tall vehicle stood on the other side of his gate.
Harry felt a stab of confusion – that thing hadn’t been here when he’d left.
And then he got annoyed.
The Backs, as they called it, was a straight passage running along the rear of the terraced houses on Atkinson Row. It was little more than an access road; though narrow and unevenly cobbled, it was barely wide enough for vehicles, which meant that whoever had left this one here would be causing a massive obstruction – and right on the other side of the gate to No. 8. Harry wasn’t even sure if he’d be able to get out there. He had no clue who the vehicle might belong to, though he had a notion that the Rodwells, the young couple next door, were a bit rum. Okay, they weren’t lowlifes – they were teachers, apparently – but they’d had more than a few noisy barbecues in their garden during the summer months, which had gone on until late, and which they’d never offered apologies for. Even when they weren’t having barbecues, their friends tended to come and go loudly. A couple of times, he’d heard the Rodwells themselves squabbling through the dividing wall between his bedroom and theirs. So it wouldn’t be unlike them, or someone they knew, to have thoughtlessly left a vehicle in such an inconvenient place.
Grumpily, all previous concerns forgotten – because one thing you could never do was challenge Harry Hopkins in his own home – he unlocked the back door and stepped out. The garden light came on, and there was no mistake: a large, dark vehicle was parked just the other side of his back wall. He stumped along the path, Milly trotting inquisitively behind him, undid the bolts and yanked the gate open – to find a vehicle there so large that it literally filled the alley. Though its rear end was close to his gate, perhaps a yard to his left, there was minimal room to manoeuvre; less than a foot’s clearance separated its offside flank from his wall, which meant that he could only move along it if he slithered sideways.
But none of that mattered as much as the kind of vehicle it was.
A van.
A black transit van.
Fleeting pinpricks of sweat appeared on Harry’s brow; it was several seconds before he could even engage his voice.
‘Okay … okay,’ he grunted to himself.
This was a challenge, and no mistake – but there was no need to get jumpy. He’d already worked out what the problem was here: the Rodwells and their inconsiderate friends.
Thankfully, he hadn’t changed his shoes for slippers yet, so the fact there’d likely be lots of dirty puddles out there wasn’t a problem. He stepped from his gate and, as the rear of the van was nearest, edged in that direction first. For some reason, Milly hung back in the gateway. But Harry barely noticed, his temper continuing to fray as he thought more and more about the Rodwells and their loutish, snot-nosed pals. He noticed that the van wasn’t parked across their gate. When he reached the back of it, its rear doors were both closed, doubtless locked.
Moving to the vehicle’s nearside and finding that the passage on that side was wider by several inches, he sidled along it more quickly, though his feet sloshed through inches of mucky water. When he got to the front, there was nobody inside the cab. Both the front doors were also probably locked, but when Harry put his hand down to the radiator grille, warmth exuded from it. As he’d suspected, the damn thing had only recently arrived.
The more he looked at it now, the more he thought it was dark-blue rather than black, which was a relief in a silly kind of way. But that didn’t stop it being any less of a nuisance.
He was now well positioned to view the rear of the Rodwells’ house. There were no lights on at the back, but there could be at the front. Harry would need to go back through his house to check.
His slid along the vehicle’s nearside, circling its rear end towards his own gate – and there stopped in surprise. The left of the van’s two rear doors now stood open.
Harry was stumped.
Could it have been the wind? No, that was preposterous. There was the odd gust tonight, but nothing like sufficient to open a vehicle door, even if that door had been left ajar, which he was damn sure this one hadn’t.
So – had someone inside this van just climbed out?
He glanced over his shoulder, but the alley dwindled away in a straight line until it joined with the next street. There was no one there.
‘What the bloody hell?’ he muttered.
He leaned forward, poking his nose into the van’s interior. It was too dark to see anything, but now he wondered if that was a faint rustle of cloth he was hearing.
‘Is someone … someone in here …?’
