But it would be better not to think about Don tonight. She went upstairs to pull on a tracksuit which would be comfortable if she did fall asleep but practical if the killer came back. The bedroom was cold, and glancing out of the window Antonia was aware again of the dark isolation that surrounded Charity Cottage. The Inspector had said his men would be around for some time, but Antonia thought it would not hurt to check the barricades again. She went round the rooms, making sure that everywhere was locked and bolted and that the stools and chairs–in one case a clothes-airer–were all firmly in position. If Sergeant Blackburn could see her, he would file her under N for Neurotic, or even M for Mad, and Oliver Remus would probably agree. Antonia did not care what the professor thought. She did not care what any of them thought.
The sitting-room was warm, and the mobile phone was comfortingly within reach. The only sound in the room was the steady ticking of the clock on the mantel. It ought to have been a soothing sound, that rhythmic ticking, but somehow it was not. Antonia was dizzy with exhaustion but she was too frightened to give in to the need for sleep. Every creak of the cottage’s timbers sounded like a furtive footstep, and twice she sat bolt upright, the first time thinking she had heard a door being stealthily pushed open, the second time that someone had walked across the bedroom floor overhead.
She lay down on the sofa again, and finally began to relax. Sleep was starting to drag her eyelids down–dare she give in to it? The table lamp was on, so anyone prowling around would assume she was awake and think twice about breaking in. In any case, he’d fall over the clothes airer, thought Antonia, and aware how absurd this sounded finally allowed herself to sink into a sleep.
It was not a very peaceful sleep. It pulled her down into a disturbing world of bleak asylums with harsh treatments and venal matrons in charge, where an unknown, un-named patient pressed down into a cold stone floor, as if trying to escape the light. And from there into a world where a madman played music that trickled menacingly through the night, and where a hangman’s noose swung slowly back and forth, ready to strangle a murderer. Where the ticking of clocks somehow changed pace and became soft footsteps that sounded exactly like the stealthy sounds of someone creeping down a darkened staircase…At this point Antonia woke with a gasp, abruptly aware that the sounds were not in her dream: there really was someone coming down the stairs.
There was no chance to snatch up any kind of weapon or to reach for the phone or even to make a dash for the front door. The intruder was here, he was inside the cottage–I locked him in with me, thought Antonia in horror. He’s been in here all the time.
The door opened and the figure was there–dark, quite slenderly-built, wearing some kind of mask over its face. Antonia leapt up, but before she could do anything the intruder was upon her. Eyes, glittering and filled with hatred, framed by blackness, glared down at her.
A voice–an unmistakably female voice, said, ‘This is all for Don, you bitch. It’s to punish you for killing Don.’
Before Antonia could even cry out an arm was lifted and something came crashing down on the top of her head. There was an explosion of pain and a brief blinding flash of light behind her eyes. She spun straight down into a black gaping void where there was nothing at all.
From the dark attic Donna had heard Antonia return around eleven, and she had heard the murmur of a man’s voice. Then the police had come back with her! She lay down under the travelling rug at once, willing herself not to move, hearing the sounds of doors opening and closing and then of footsteps on the stairs. Oh God, oh God, the man was searching the cottage. Looking in the bedrooms–checking cupboards and wardrobes. Would he come up here? Would he even see the trapdoor over the landing? It seemed to Donna that hours crawled by while she waited, and that the whole world shrank to this dark stuffy attic where she crouched.