Unless Fane had found the mobile phone, and had returned it. Was it possible that he had slipped quietly into the house, not wanting to wake Michael in case he was zonked out after taking the pills? This did not entirely square with Michael’s impression of Edmund Fane, but it was the only thing he could think of. In that case his phone should be lying somewhere prominent, perhaps with an explanatory note. This would be very good indeed.
But he had barely taken two steps into the hall when a strong suffocating stench met him, sending him instinctively dodging back into the study. For a moment he was unable to identify it, but whatever it was, it was ringing loud alarm bells in his mind. Something on fire? No, not fire—But something as dangerous as fire—
And then he knew what it was. A strong smell of gas. Inside the kitchen, gas was escaping and filling up the house.
Michael did not stop to think. He tore the sling off his hand and crammed it over his mouth as a makeshift mask. Then he ran into the kitchen, banging the door back against the wall.
Even in those few minutes the gas had built up, and it seized his throat and lungs so that he gasped and breathed in the cotton of the sling for a moment. His eyes streamed, but he realized that the old-fashioned gas cooker near the door was hissing out gas, and that all four rings had been turned full on and the oven door propped wide open. That bastard Edmund Fane had come quietly into the house and turned the gas on!
Keeping the sling across his mouth, he wrenched the switches around and slammed the oven door shut. But his mind had already flown ahead to all the various electrical connections in the house, and then had flown back to the surveyor’s head-shaking report on the state of the wiring. Very antiquated, the report had said, in fact downright dangerous, and the whole house needed rewiring. Michael was no electrician but you did not need a PhD to realize that belching gas and faulty electrical wiring were a lethal combination. If the gas fumes were to reach a flawed electrical circuit – or even, dear God, the electric fire that was still blazing in the study—
He wasted several valuable seconds trying to unlatch the garden door before he remembered that Edmund Fane had locked it, and grabbed a large saucepan, flinging it hard at the kitchen window. Several panes of glass shattered at once, and the cold night air streamed in. Michael, still trying to keep the makeshift mask over his nose and mouth, ran back into the study, knocking the switch of the electric fire off, and then dived through the hall, snatching up his jacket on the way. As he half fell through the front door, he was expecting the gas fumes to hit some worn-away section of wiring at any minute and the whole house to blow up.
But it did not. Taking deep shuddering gulps of the cold clean air, he reached his car, and unlocking it, slid thankfully inside. The engine fired at once, and he fumbled for the gears. This was going to be hellishly difficult; his left hand was throbbing with pain, and he would be lucky if he could change gear. He did not care. Adrenaline was flooding his body, and he would drive all the way to the White Hart in first gear with the hazard lights flashing if he had to. He depressed the clutch, knocked the car into first gear with his right hand, and then turned the wheel. It resisted slightly and then turned, but there was a grinding sound from somewhere near the back. Michael tried again, and encountered the same resistance and the same grating noise. Like bare steel on stone. Steel— Oh God.