REGINALD HILL
DEATH OF A DORMOUSE

Copyright

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Harper HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by

Methuen London Ltd 1987

under the author’s psuedonym Patrick Ruell

Copyright © Patrick Ruell 1987

Reginald Hill asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780586205464

Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2015 ISBN 9780007394739

Version: 2015-09-15

Dedication

This one for Billy and Choc – who else?

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Prologue

Part One

1

2

3

4

Part Two

1

2

3

4

Part Three

1

2

3

4

5

Part Four

1

2

3

4

Part Five

1

2

3

4

Part Six

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

Part Seven

1

2

3

Part Eight

1

2

Part Nine

1

2

Part Ten

1

Keep Reading

About the Author

By Reginald Hill

About the Publisher

Epigraph

When one subtracts from life infancy

(which is vegetation) – sleep, eating, and swilling

– buttoning and unbuttoning – how much remains of

downright existence? The summer of a dormouse…

BYRON: Journal (December 7th 1813)

Prologue

She was lying on a bare mattress in a darkened room. Her wrists and ankles were bound, but this was an unnecessary refinement. In her mind she had been here many times before and knew there was no escape. One strip of light there was which could not be blinked away. It lay on the floor, seeping in beneath the door, and beyond that door on bare stone flags she could hear the sound of footsteps getting nearer.

She lay as still as the mouse which huddles in its cornfield nest, and hears the approach of the coulter, and knows what it means, but does not know how to fly.

Nothing remained in her life, no spur to action, no prick of hope. Nothing of past, present or future touched her life, only that crack of light beneath the door and the footsteps which were approaching it.

She had been waiting for them all her life. They belonged to the secret police who strike with the dawn; to the cruel rapist who lurks in the shadows; to the man she had loved, come here to kill her.

Now they were close. Now the line of light beneath the door was broken by a growing shadow.

Now the footsteps halted.

Slowly the door handle began to turn. Slowly the door swung open. In the threshold loomed a figure, bulky, still, menacing.

Now it was in the room and advancing.

Her mouth gaped wide as her desperate lungs drew in one last, long, ragged breath …

Part One

Wee sleekit, cowrin, tim’rous beastie,

O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!

BURNS: To a Mouse

1

‘Trudi? Trudi Adamson? My God! Trudi, is that really you?’

‘Well, it’s me anyway,’ said Trudi.

‘Where’re you ringing from? Vienna? You’re so clear!’

‘No. Not Vienna. Sheffield.’

‘Sheffield. You mean Sheffield Yorkshire?’

The note of Celtic incredulity made Trudi laugh. Perhaps this had been a good idea after all.

‘If there’s another, please tell me. I’d probably prefer it.’

‘But what are you doing in Sheffield?’

‘Living here, Jan. I’ve been living here for three whole days.’

A silence at the other end as though this were too much to take in; then in a perceptibly casual tone, ‘And Trent?’

Trudi laughed. The second time in a minute. Perhaps in a decade? She said, ‘No. I’ve not run away or anything. Trent’s here too of course. That’s why I’m here. He’s been moved again. I thought when we got to the centre of things three years back, that would be the end of it. But evidently not. And this time, I got two days’ notice, would you believe it?’

‘From what I know of Trent, yes. But at least this time, he’s brought you back to England.’

‘That’s right. And naturally I thought, now I’m here and so close, first thing I’ve got to do is ring Jan and fix to see her.’

It was a lie.

The last time the two had talked had felt like the last time ever. Friends since school, they had seen little of each other over the past quarter century as Trudi drifted across the face of Europe in her husband’s wake. But they had kept in touch with fairly regular letters and cards. Then a year ago Janet’s husband, Alan Cummings, had died. They should have returned to the UK for the funeral, but Trent had pleaded a vital business trip. Trudi had fully intended to travel alone, but night after night she had started waking full of terror at the thought of going all that distance without Trent. Agoraphobia was what they had called it all those years ago when she had refused to leave the house after her father’s death. Twice in her marriage the terror had returned. Drugs and psychotherapy had got it under control. But here it was again and Trent had seemed callously indifferent both to her fears and Janet’s grief.

‘Don’t go then. Ring Jan. Tell her you’re sick. She’ll understand.’

She hadn’t. Grief, tension, drink perhaps, had combined explosively. ‘Neither of you coming, is it? Trent was one of his oldest friends! And you, you cow! Who looked after you at school? Me! Who got you your job? Me! Who got you your sodding husband? Me! And now you can’t stir yourself when I need you! Useless sodding bitch!’

The phone had gone down hard. Trudi had written an apologetic letter. There was no reply, nor had her Christmas card been reciprocated that year.

Trudi had resigned herself to feeling this chill on her one old friendship thicken into permafrost. She regretted it, but lacked the energy or the will to resist it. Had Trent urged her to action she might have made a move. But he hadn’t, becoming more and more distant and self-absorbed in the past twelve months.

But it had been Trent who, in the three days since their return to England, had become a passionate advocate of reconciliation. Ring Jan, he urged. You don’t make new friends so easily you can afford to dump old ones.

This was cruel, but he had compensated by adding with a rare smile, Fix up to meet her one day soon. Tomorrow if she’s free. I’ll drive you over. It’s only thirty miles over the hills. Then I’ll come and pick you up at night.

And again as he had left, he had said, Ring Jan. Arrange to meet. It’ll do you good, you’ll see.

Then he had driven away in his rented car, leaving her in their rented house. What had made Trent pick this place she did not know, but she admitted she was biased against it from the start. The move had been so rapid that her own furniture was still in store in Vienna, and the lack of the familiar sights and smells of her comfortable apartment there was a constant irritation, keeping her from that pleasant supineness which was her normal waking state.

In the end, untypically restless, she had gone to the phone and dialled Jan’s number.

And it had been worthwhile! Trent as usual had been right.

But now her naturally fearful view of life, her sense that cups are generally raised only to be dashed, set out to prove that it was as right as Trent.

Janet was speaking again. Putting her off.

‘Trudi, I’m sorry. But I can’t talk now. I’m sorry, but oh, crazy it is, and I should maybe have written, but it’s all happened pretty quickly, like your move, well, not so quickly as that, but quick enough!’

Janet’s Welshness still broke loose at moments of high excitement and hearing it now took Trudi back thirty years.

‘Calm down and tell me what you’re talking about,’ she said.

‘Well, I’m getting married again, aren’t I? Yes, today! Now! This very minute almost. It’s just a registry office job this time, of course. When I heard the phone ring I thought it’s Frank (that’s the unlucky fellow), the bastard’s ringing to call it off. But if I don’t rush, we’ll lose our place in the queue and then it’ll be off whether I like it or not. Oh Trudi, I’m sorry. No guests you see, but if I’d known you were going to be so handy, you could’ve been matron-of-honour or something!’

Here was a reasonable explanation for any oddity of reaction. A year ago she had been abusing her friend on the phone for not attending her first husband’s funeral; now she was having to apologize for not inviting her to her second wedding!

‘Jan, that’s marvellous,’ said Trudi, straining for conviction. ‘Many congratulations.’

‘Thanks. Look, I really must go. Then straight after the ceremony we’re off to the Costa del somewhere for a week. Ring me then, promise? Oh shit. I won’t be here, we’re moving into Frank’s house in Oldham and I can’t recall the number. Here, give me your address and number. I’ll ring you.’

‘Hope House, Linden Lane,’ said Trudi, adding the telephone number.

‘That sounds posh.’

‘It might have been fifty years ago. Now it’s an ancient monument. Thank heaven it’s just on a short lease,’ said Trudi.

‘Oh, we have become choosy in our old age,’ said Janet. ‘Look, I really must go, girl. I’ll be in touch, I promise.’

After she had replaced the receiver, Trudi stood in a confusion of feeling. Trent had been right. It really had felt good to talk to Janet again. But counterbalancing this was a feeling of illogical resentment at her re-marriage. All that hysteria a year ago, and here she was getting married again! No, it wasn’t some awful moral self-righteousness which was bothering her, Trudi assured herself. It was more like simple jealousy. She could hardly expect to get her friend back when she was just starting to share her life with a new husband.

She made a resentful face in the old pier glass hanging behind the phone. Its chipped and peeling gilt frame was symptomatic of this dark suburban villa Trent had brought her to, but perhaps it was too well suited to the picture it now contained. Viennese cooking had turned her dumpy, forty-five years had turned her grey. Only her eyes, clear and brown, belonged to the girl who’d married Trent Adamson a quarter of a century ago. She almost wished they too had turned dull and old and could no longer see so clearly.

The doorbell rang, distracting her from the displeasing image.

The door opened into a glass-sided storm porch. Through the rippled glass she could see a man, flanked by the two ghastly stone gnomes which guarded the main door of Hope House. The man seemed to be in uniform. She opened the outer door and saw he was a young policeman, with his cap in his hand.

That should have warned her. When policemen remove their hats they don’t bring good news. But his accent was so broad and his face so unrearrangeably jolly that it took a little time to realize he wasn’t simply collecting for something.

Slowly she made sense of him.

There had been an accident.

She knew at once that Trent was dead.

She knew it as she sat in the police car on their way to the hospital.

She knew it as she listened to a staff nurse explaining that someone would be along shortly.

She knew it when a soft-spoken man in a blue suit showed her Trent’s tempered steel identification bracelet.

At last, as if worn down by her silent certainty, they too admitted it.

‘I’m sorry Mrs Adamson. I’m afraid that your husband is dead.’

2

A week in Sheffield had been long enough for Trudi to take a strong dislike to the place.

She found it cold, drab and ugly, and the people were not much better. The north of England was almost more foreign to her than anywhere else in Europe. She disliked in particular the way everyone addressed her as ‘love’ or rather ‘luv.’ It felt like an invasion of privacy.

It was only now that she began to realize just how little in truth her privacy was likely to be invaded.

She knew no one. No one knew her. She went home and sat and waited for tears to come. When they didn’t she tried to induce them by going back over her life with Trent, like a video run in reverse. But nothing happened till she went beyond their wedding day and found herself suddenly three months earlier at her father’s funeral.

Now the tears came close. How regressive a thing was grief, she thought. Then the moment was past and her cheeks were still dry.

She took a strong sleeping pill and went to bed.

She awoke to instant remembrance but when she cautiously explored her feelings she discovered a barrier, thin as cellophane round a packet of biscuits, but irremovable without the risk of damage.

So she turned away from feelings and concentrated her thoughts on the bureaucracy of death.

Another policeman came, a sergeant, older, more solemn.

‘Just a formality, luv,’ he said. ‘Just a few details.’

He noted Trent’s full name, his age, his business.

‘This firm he works for. Silver Rider …’

‘Schiller-Reise of Vienna.’ Trudi spelt it out. ‘It’s a travel company. Reise means “journey”. And Schiller is the name of the man who runs it.’

‘Oh aye? German, is it?’

‘Austrian.’

‘And they’ve got an office here.’

‘Well no, I don’t think so,’ said Trudi hesitantly. She felt the officer regarding her dubiously and she pressed on. ‘They’re in most big European cities, of course. But I’m not sure about the UK. Probably that’s what my husband was doing, setting something up. He travelled a lot in his work, looking at hotels, locations, amenities. He used to be an airline pilot himself.’

She produced this last statement as if somehow it justified the preceding vagueness about Trent’s work. The sergeant looked unimpressed.

‘Is that right?’ he said. ‘Well, I reckon Sheffield’d be as good a centre as anywhere.’

He did not say for what.

There would, he told her, be a post-mortem; routine after any sudden death.

The facts of the accident were tragically simple.

It had happened a few miles south of the city in the Derbyshire Peak District. The car had been parked at the side of a narrow undulating country road. A fertilizer truck moving at speed had come over a rise some fifty yards behind it. It had been raining earlier in the day. There was muck on the road surface which was long overdue for repair after the previous bitter winter. The driver had braked, the truck had skidded, caught the parked car from behind and driven it a hundred yards before slamming it into a telegraph pole. The truck driver had been flung out of his cab.

‘Lucky for him,’ said the sergeant, perhaps in search of some consoling circumstance. ‘Old farmer working in the fields saw it all. Said the car went up like a bomb. Fractured the tank likely. And he seems to have been carrying some spare fuel in a jerry can in the boot. Probably for his scooter.’

‘Scooter?’

‘Aye. We found the remains of one of them foldaway motor-scooters in the boot. Didn’t you know he had one?’

‘No,’ said Trudi. ‘I didn’t know. Perhaps he hired it with the car.’

‘Aye. Mebbe. Well, one thing, Mrs Adamson, it must’ve been quick.’

In support of this assertion he educed the fact that identification had only been effectable through the number of the hired car and the name on the fireproof bracelet.

Realizing too late that these considerations were as likely to aggravate as to ease pain, the well-meaning sergeant hopped from the past to the future, pointing out that the police would be swift to establish the extent of the truck driver’s responsibility as soon as the man came out of hospital.

‘Shock; broke his collarbone and a few ribs falling out of his cab; and he got pretty badly scorched too. Well, he would. Like an inferno. Burnt the telegraph pole like a Yule log, brought all the wires down, you know. Sorry, luv. All I mean is, you’ll want to get your insurance company working on this. And your solicitor too, I shouldn’t wonder. You’ve got someone to help you with all this, have you? Someone to talk to? Friends?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Trudi, with dismissive certainty.

She thought of Janet in distant Spain. There was no one else to think of, but there was no way of contacting her even if she wanted to. It was bad enough working out who to contact in Vienna. Friends? She couldn’t think of anyone close enough to require a personal notification. Shyness, agoraphobia, call it what you will, but a woman who gives the impression that the end of any social occasion can’t come soon enough doesn’t attract friendship. Consciously or unconsciously, Trent had encouraged her isolation, rarely bringing people home, rarely involving her even in business entertainment. Herr Schiller, the head of the firm, was the only one of Trent’s senior colleagues she had met more than a couple of times socially. She had not much liked the old man, but he had seemed to take a benevolent interest in Trent’s career and for the sake of her husband she had put on her best social face. It seemed to have worked, for Trent had risen close to the top. But Schiller was old now, semi-retired and invalid, and it would be no kindness to contact him direct. In the end, she sent a telegram to Schiller-Reise’s head office and left it to them to pass on the news where and how they saw fit.

By the day of the funeral, there had been no response, and the vicar in the cemetery chapel was clearly disturbed to be faced by a congregation which, bearers apart, was divided evenly between the quick and the dead.

But before the service started, the door opened and a man came in. He had a narrow intelligent face which was hard to put an age on, particularly as the eye was diverted by his hair which in a woman would have been called beautiful, worn rather longer than was fashionable, and swept back in powerful waves of rich black, becomingly tinged with grey. His elegance was underlined by his clothes which were of such immaculate manufacture that the professional bearers shifted uneasily in their shabby mourning.

He came straight to Trudi, stooped over, took her hand and said in German, ‘My dear Mrs Adamson, what a tragedy! What a loss! Believe me, I am truly devastated.’

It was only at this point that Trudi recognized Franz Werner, her husband’s, though not her own, Viennese doctor. She hardly knew the man, certainly did not know his relationship with Trent went beyond the professional to the extent of flying eight hundred miles to catch his funeral.

This was explained to some extent as they followed the coffin out of the chapel. Perhaps aiming at a therapeutic distraction, he told her in a reverential whisper that he had been on the point of departing from Vienna to attend a conference in London when he had heard the news.

‘I admired your husband greatly. I am proud to think I was his friend as well as his physician. So I rearranged my schedule in order to be here.’

‘That was kind,’ said Trudi.

They were approaching the open grave.

‘We will talk later,’ said Werner.

What about? wondered Trudi, who was finding it very hard to believe that this brass-handled box contained her husband. Her husband. Who was he? What had he been? She concentrated hard upon his image but found that somehow her knowledge seemed to stop round about their wedding day. Up till then, there were plenty of people willing to fill in on Trent’s origins. East-ender, orphan, Barnardo boy who had grabbed with both hands the opportunity offered by the war to advance himself. He had made per ardua ad astra his own personal motto, his best man, an old RAF chum, had said at the reception. And he had finished his drunkenly risqué speech by saying, ‘One thing the boys always said about Trent, you might not trust him with your wallet or your wife, but by Christ, old Trent was the chap you wanted to fly with. He always came back!’

Well, old Trent wasn’t coming back this time.

As though in confirmation of her irreverent thought, the vicar was scattering earth on the coffin. She was not listening to his words and it took a slight pressure from Werner’s hand to tell her it was all over.

But not quite. As she turned away, she saw a bright red Fiat Panda, with a long pennant bearing the name of a hire firm streaming from its aerial, come rocketing through the cemetery gates. It halted on the narrow driveway and a long, slim, blonde woman in her thirties got out and came running towards Trudi.

She reached her, embraced her.

There were tears streaming down her face.

‘Oh Trudi, mein’ liebe Trudi! Es ist schrecklich, ganz schrecklich.’

‘Hello, Astrid,’ said Trudi Adamson.

3

Astrid Fischer had been Trent’s personal assistant during the whole of his time in Vienna. She was a striking woman, full of nervous energy. Her bright blonde hair was matched with smoky-blue eyes and the kind of skin which would stick at twenty-nine for at least another decade.

She was the only one of Trent’s colleagues Trudi knew at all well, apart from Manfred Schiller, the head of the firm, and even this closeness was only relative. But a couple of years earlier, perhaps in an attempt to rekindle her own almost extinct emotional fires, Trudi had gone through a period of intense jealousy concerning Astrid. There had been no material cause of it, she had never said anything to Trent, and the flame had died as rapidly as it ignited, dowsed by trust, indifference, or fear, she didn’t care to find out which. But jealousy’s the next best thing to friendship and for a moment she felt genuinely moved by the woman’s appearance.

Werner was shaking her hand.

‘I must go. Already I’m late,’ he said. ‘Again, my deepest sympathy.’

Astrid whispered, ‘Who’s he?’

‘Trent’s doctor. It was nice of him to come. I thought he would stay longer though.’

Astrid seemed to take this as an invitation and accompanied Trudi back to Hope House. Trudi did not mind. In fact she found herself almost pleased at last to have a partner in mourning.

They sat in the kitchen whose gaudy surfaces best reflected the brittle blank of Trudi’s feelings, and drank whisky.

‘I wasn’t really awake when he left that morning, you know. He kissed me goodbye. He didn’t always, sometimes but not always. He said he’d try not to be late. Then he was gone. I heard the car. I didn’t go out to wave or anything. We were past all that. And that was the last I saw of him, alive or dead.’

‘Alive or …’ Astrid hesitated delicately.

‘I never saw him. He was burnt …’

She felt her voice tremble like a rail at the approach of a train. But it was a long way away. She took a deep breath and described the accident as it had been described to her.

‘I don’t even know what he was doing there!’ she concluded.

‘Why he stopped, you mean?’

‘Presumably he stopped to read his map, stretch his legs, something. No, I mean I don’t know why he was driving around Derbyshire. I don’t even know what we were doing in Sheffield. Why did Schiller-Reise send him here, Astrid?’

The girl was regarding her uneasily and Trudi, guessing at the cause of her unease, said, ‘It’s all right. I can talk about him. Really.’

‘It’s not that. No. Trudi, you clearly do not know, but Schiller-Reise did not send Trent here. No. He had handed in his resignation only a week before he left the country. Trudi, he was no longer working for the company!’

Trudi was dumbfounded.

Astrid said, ‘You knew nothing of this?’

She shook her head slowly and the movement brought back her voice. ‘No. We rarely talked about his job. He didn’t want to … or perhaps I didn’t want … but we didn’t talk … The move was sudden, but then we’d made sudden moves before. When we came to Vienna from Milan, that was quick. Well, this was even quicker, but not so quick that … though it’s true when I saw where he’d brought me, I thought of the other places we’d lived, the apartments, the cities, and compared with this …’

Her gesture took in the room, the house, the suburb, the city.

Oh God! she suddenly thought. I’m a widow and I’m complaining about the domestic arrangements.

She said quite sharply, ‘Astrid, if Trent had left Schiller-Reise, what are you doing here?’

Astrid said, ‘I was on holiday in London. I had to ring the firm on a personal matter. When I heard of Trent’s death, I was dumbstruck! I asked about the funeral. They knew when it was, but didn’t seem to know if anyone was going from the company. This made me very angry. It was not a proper way to act. If Herr Schiller had still been in charge … but I’m sure you must have worked out that if Herr Schiller had still been in charge, probably Trent would not have left.’

Trudi shook her head.

‘I didn’t realize Herr Schiller was no longer in charge,’ she said.

‘It’s not official. Technically while he’s still alive … but he’s a very sick man, you knew that?’

‘I know he had a stroke just after we came to Vienna and spent a lot of time at his house in the Wachau. The last time I saw him was there, about six months ago. He looked ill, yes, but still alert.’

‘He’s deteriorated greatly in the last couple of months,’ said Astrid. ‘A second stroke. You didn’t know?’

‘No,’ said Trudi, with an indifference not caused solely by her circumstances. Even if her own troubles didn’t exist, she would probably have felt little sympathy for the old man. She had never liked him, despite the many kindnesses he showered on her as Trent’s wife. Something about the dry voice, the coldness of his skin when he took her hand, the way in which the rarely blinking pale blue eyes never left her face, as though searching for something there that she did not have to give; in short, a sense of a cruelty mingled with his kindness had always repelled her, and she sometimes thought he sensed it though she did her best to keep it hidden.

‘No. I did not know. Trent and I agreed that it was best if he could relax at home and not talk of office matters.’

That was one way of explaining one area of non-communication.

‘Yes. I see,’ said Astrid unconvincingly. ‘In that case, well it’s none of my business, so forgive me for asking, but have you any idea how you stand financially?’

Trudi said in surprise, ‘I don’t know. I’ve not thought. I’ve no idea how much or little there may be.’

‘What I mean is, well, since you do not know about Trent leaving his job, you may be relying on a pension from Schiller-Reise. If Herr Schiller had still been in charge … well, he always seemed very fond of you, Trudi, and I’m sure he wouldn’t have … but it’s the accountants in control now, and I don’t think there will be anything coming …’

She tailed away, embarrassed.

Trudi said brightly, ‘I’m sure Trent made other arrangements. I haven’t looked through his papers yet. Everything will be sorted out eventually, you’ll see. Have some more whisky. You’ll stay the night, of course?’

She tried to make it sound like a casual invitation rather than a plea. This talk of money, or the lack of it, had sent a chill of unease through her which she hadn’t felt before.

‘Of course. You mustn’t be alone …’

‘Don’t let that bother you,’ said Trudi coldly. ‘Please yourself whether you go or stay. It’s not as if we were ever friends or anything … you needn’t feel …’

To her horror she realized she was weeping unrestrainedly, and there were tears too on the perfect skin of Astrid’s cheeks. Now the younger woman took the older in her arms and they wept together. Then they drank some more whisky and wept some more.

When Trudi at last went to bed, she was slightly drunk and the springs of grief felt dried up. She felt as if she had undergone some cleansing, cathartic experience and she would wake in the morning light, calm and resolved and able to cope boldly with the new life that stretched before her.

Instead she woke into a drowning darkness. Gasping for breath, she scrabbled for the bedside lamp, missed it, caught it, knocked it to the floor. Sobbing in panic, she half fell, half crawled out of bed and staggered across the suddenly alien room, crashing into pieces of furniture she could not identify, towards the thick-draped window.

Light! She had to have light! She reached the curtains, flung them apart. Light filtered in, turgid, grey, scarcely able to put an edge on the luxuriant foliage of the neglected garden, but for a moment refreshing and soothing to her desperate soul.

Then she saw him, halfway down the garden, concealed at first by stillness but, once spotted, unmistakable, a solid living presence amidst this rampant vegetation, his face raised towards her window, pale, death-pale in the cloud-strained luminescence from a wild night sky.

She screamed: ‘Trent!’

She tried to raise the window. It was locked. Her strengthless fingers wrestled with the catch. All the time she could hear her voice as though emanating from some separate electronic source in the ceiling screaming, ‘Trent! Trent! Trent!’

The catch moved. But suddenly there was light in the room, bouncing back off the glass and turning the light beyond the window into perfect darkness.

She turned. Astrid stood in the doorway, her hand on the light switch, her face amazed.

‘Trudi, was gibt’s? What are you doing?’

‘It’s Trent: he’s there in the garden. I can see him! I can see him!’

The other woman moved swiftly across the room. Even at this juncture her slim athleticism seemed a reproach to Trudi’s neglected dumpiness. Grasping the window frame, she thrust it upwards and leaned out into the dark night air.

‘See Trudi, there is nothing. There is nobody. See!’

Trudi looked. The trees moved in a gusty breeze, the shrubbery rustled and the long grass on the uncut lawn rippled like the sea. But of any human figure there was no sign.

‘I saw him!’ she insisted. ‘I saw him!’

‘Keep looking, Trudi,’ said Astrid peremptorily. ‘Strain your eyes. Soon you will see anything your mind wants you to see!’

It was true. As she looked the shifting trees and shrubs began to take strange shapes, living, threatening, but none of them human.

Shaken, she turned away from the window.

‘Oh, Astrid,’ she said. ‘I was so certain. I was so certain.’

‘Yes, I know, I know,’ said the Austrian gently. ‘Now you must sleep. Come to bed, come to bed. No, liebchen, do not be afraid. I will not leave you.’

She helped Trudi into bed, then started to slip off her own clothes. She was still fully dressed.

‘I too have been restless, not able to sleep,’ she said. ‘I sat downstairs, listening to the radio. Perhaps it is I who disturbed you. I’m sorry, but now you will sleep. Now you will be safe.’

Stripped to bra and pants, she switched off the light and got into bed beside Trudi whose body tensed at the thought of contact. But Astrid lay quietly on her own side of the bed with a safe space between them. And eventually Trudi fell asleep.

4

Trudi woke the next day to broad daylight and the certainty that something inside her was dead. She must have given an impression of normality for she observed Astrid slowly relax as the morning wore on. The Austrian woman said she would have to go that evening, but meanwhile she offered her services in getting things sorted out. Trudi agreed, for it was easier than not agreeing.

Swiftly and efficiently, Astrid went through Trent’s papers, discovered the name of the solicitor who had arranged the lease on the house, rang him up, made an appointment for that afternoon. Trudi gave thanks, but felt no gratitude. It all seemed to her mere charade, shadow activities in a shadow world.

The solicitor, who was called Ashburton, was almost a parody of his profession. Small, sharp-nosed, birdlike of movement and voice, he wore a disproportionately large pair of spectacles whose round blanks reflected light like Perseus’s shield. He looked to be close to retiring age, but he seemed efficient enough, taking charge of the papers Astrid gave him and assuring Trudi he would put everything in train instantly.

Trudi thanked him indifferently, shook his hand indifferently, and later kissed and thanked Astrid with the same massive indifference. Only for a brief moment, as the little red car turned out of the drive and Astrid raised her arm beside the fluttering pennant in a gesture of farewell, did Trudi feel something stir in that vast ocean of indifference. Then it was still again.

She went back into the house, sat unmoving for four hours, then rose and went to bed.

Up to the funeral her nights had been dreamless, or at least when she woke up from her unrefreshing sleep she could remember no dreams.

Now instantly she was in the living room of their luxurious flat in Vienna. Trent was standing by the window, gazing out towards the distant view of the great plant-house in the Schönbrunn gardens. She knew he was dead. He slowly turned and reached out his hands to her and she knew if she took them they would be chill and stiff and clammy. He began to move forward with slow dragging steps and she fled to their bedroom, slamming the heavy oak door and turning the key. But she knew it could be no barrier to that relentless pursuer and she crouched helpless on the bed as the slow footsteps approached and the handle began to turn.

She awoke in terror, lay in a straining silence, then slowly wrapped the pain-dulling gauze of her waking indifference around her once more.

This rapidly became the pattern of her existence. Waking, she was safe, but dead. She stayed in or went out as the fancy took her. Outside she felt invisible, anonymous. Inside she sat and watched flickering images on the television screen, drank whisky, ate next to nothing, then went to bed to the only real experience left to her.

One day, Mr Ashburton’s secretary rang and asked her if she could come to see him that afternoon at three o’clock. She said yes, but didn’t go. Ashburton himself rang. She listened to him twittering about wills, pensions, insurance policies – or rather the lack of these things. ‘… just over four thousand in your husband’s current account … nine months’ lease on the house but when this runs out … case for compensation …’

She said thank you and put the phone down.

She could have told him Trent was rich, had always been rich, was not the kind of man to be anything but rich. Everything she had wanted she had had, except that there was not really anything she wanted, except to be safe …

Next day a letter came with the firm’s name on its envelope. She let it lie unopened with all the other mail, mainly junk, which had dropped through the letter box. That day the phone rang at regular intervals from morning to night. In the end, she picked it up and let it dangle over the edge of the table without putting it anywhere near her ear.

That night the dream came as usual. Trent turned, she fled, he followed. She crouched on the bed and watched the door handle slowly turn.

She awoke, and lay bathed in sweat, waiting for the terror to recede and the dull, deadening silence to rise around her.

But this time there was a noise, a real noise. Like a door opening below. Still savouring the relief of escape from her dream, her first reaction was to treat it like all the noises of this so-called real world – people talking, cars passing, wind and weather – which to her were an empty buzz.

But now there was another sound, a sound all too familiar to her straining ears, the sound of the slow tread of feet coming nearer and nearer. She knew in that instant that the ultimate horror had been born and the walking corpse of her husband had at last broken through from her sleeping world to her waking.

She lay quite still, not unable to move but unable to think of anywhere to move to. There was only the window and what help lay there? Her cries into the night air would only reach the ears of her unknown neighbours like the high wail of some restless night creature. And in any case she knew with a certainty beyond faith that when she opened the window, Trent would be there already, standing on the unkempt lawn, his pale face raised towards her.

Now the footsteps were at her door. The handle moved fractionally. She put her hands to her ears and closed her eyes and opened her mouth in a silent cry of terror.

When she opened her eyes, it was broad daylight. She had no recollection of fainting, less of falling asleep, but did anyone ever have such recollections? Anyway, it meant nothing. The crisis had come as she had known it must. Her defences had been breached, the barrier of her indifference lay in ruins. Trent had broken through into her waking life, and the consequences were unthinkable. She was not yet mad, but she could go mad. Grief, terror, guilt, she did not know how to itemize her emotions; all she knew was that she was ready now to give anything for peace. Including life itself.

She sat in the lounge and like a little girl with her birthday sweets she considered her tablets. So she had sat at her father’s feet with a teatray before her on which she counted and classified dolly-mixtures, jelly-babies and chocolate buttons.

The supply of sleeping pills she had brought from Vienna was sadly depleted, but there was a good number of Valium and an assortment of other tranquillizers from her old agoraphobia treatments. A mixture of these washed down with whisky, which she had heard intensified the effect, must surely do the trick.

She started off very slowly, thinking for some reason that she ought to savour the experience. Then a sudden fear struck her that this leisurely approach would give the tablets time to put her to sleep long before she had taken a fatal dose. Panic-stricken she began to take them in twos and threes, gulping them down with mouthfuls of raw whisky. Eventually, with most of the tablets gone, she found she could manage no more. Surely she had done enough. Now there would come that delicious, easy, drifting off into oblivion she longed for.

Time passed, perhaps a little, perhaps a lot, she couldn’t tell. Where she was, it was timeless. Something was definitely happening, some great change was about to take place. But it was not going to be easy, it was not going to be delicious! Her body felt as if it were being racked apart. She was leaving not in peace and quiet but in turbulence and agony. But she had to go. She could hear somewhere last night’s noises again: the door opening, the footsteps approaching, a voice calling her name. She looked up and saw the door handle turning and she willed herself to die.

The door opened; a last spasm convulsed her body. In the doorway stood a woman, middle-aged, strikingly good-looking with a full, sensuous figure and shoulder-length black hair framing a heart-shaped face which was wearing an expression of incredulous horror.

‘Trudi?’ she said. ‘Trudi! For God’s sake.’

‘Janet?’ gasped Trudi. The word brought relief. She double up and vomited over the carpet. Her stomach which had received practically no food for days gladly gave up its mixture of bile and whisky in which lay scattered like daisies on a summer lawn a myriad of little white pills and tablets.

Part Two

Thy wee bit housie, too in ruin; Its silly wa’s the win’s are strewin’! An’ naething, now, to big a new ane. O’ foggage green! An’ bleak December’s winds ensuin’, Baith snell and keen!

BURNS: To a Mouse

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