Maureen climbed the stairs with trepidation, slowing down as she neared the top floor. The sight of Jim's door reminded her that she had left his Celtic shirt sitting in the bottom of Benny's wardrobe. She wished he hadn't told her about watching through the spy hole, not that she was ungrateful for the information about Benny, but she'd never stand on the landing again without imagining Jim, with his worrying hairdo, pressed up behind his door, peering out at her with his jumper tucked tightly into his denims. She took out her keys, unlocked the front door and let it swing open.
The house smelled stale and oppressively sweet. She stepped in and shut the door behind her, leaving Jim with nothing to see. She dropped the bag in the hall, took a deep breath and turned the handle on the living-room door.
The blood had turned brown in the direct sunlight. It was hard to spot a bit of the carpet that wasn't brown. Deep puddles of Douglas's precious blood had dried into it; action streaks from jugular spurts radiated out from the four circular indents marking the position of the chair. The blue chair had been cleaned by some kind officer; it was by the window, facing it at an angle, as if someone had been sitting there, enjoying the view.
She stepped carefully across the crunchy floor, using the clear spaces as stepping stones to the window, which she opened, pulling it right back against the wall, letting the harsh wind into the room. She sat down in Douglas's blue chair because she was afraid to and smoked a cigarette by the blustery open window, waiting until the horror of it had passed. She stubbed the end of the cigarette out on the windowsill, lifted the chair by the back and carried it out into the hall.
She stacked the contents of the bookcase into piles on the floor and carried them out one at a time, resting them precariously against the wall by the kitchen door. She took the coffee table into the bedroom, then humped the portable television through, banging her legs with it. Back in the living room she folded the bookcase flat, leaving it near the bathroom door. She wheeled out the old horsehair armchair, recklessly rolling its wooden castors over the crusty brown blood.
She walked back into the empty living room and stood on the spot marked out by the indentations from the chair, looking around and breathing in the dry, bloody dust. Only the settee with the stripe of blood across the arm was left in the room. It wouldn't clean up; she didn't know what to do with it. She could throw it away but then she wouldn't have anything to sit on except the horsehair and that was uncomfortable. She didn't need to decide right away; she could work around it today. She found the hammer in the kitchen cupboard and, starting below the open window, used the forked end to lever up the carpet tacks around the edge.
WHEN THE DOORBELL RANG she had lifted a third of the carpet around the skirting board. She shut the door to the living room before looking out of the spy hole. A young man, tanned like a tea bag, was standing at the door holding a small metal box with a handle. He was wearing a T-shirt with "Armani" written across the chest, jeans and a yellow suede jacket. His hair was striped with ill-suited blond streaks that looked green in the close light. He was two hours late and looked badly hung over. He probably hadn't been home yet. She opened the door. "Locksmith?"
"Mm," he said, stepping into the cluttered hallway and fingering the locks on the door.
"Want a cup of tea?"
"Naw."
She left him to it and went off to hide in the kitchen. She wanted to finish the living room but she couldn't get in there without him seeing the mess and she didn't feel like explaining. She put the kettle on and opened the door to the cups cupboard. The cups had all been moved around. Rarely used ones had been put to the front of the shelf and several were upside down, the way cups are meant to be stored. She opened the food cupboard and the cutlery drawer: same thing in all of them. The police had been through them and moved everything. They must have been very thorough. Flushed with a sudden shamed panic she went into the bedroom and opened the door to the bedside cabinet. Three broken vibrators had been tidied away in a little triangular pile. The one with the acid burns from the leaky batteries was on the bottom with the red screw-top lid placed neatly beside it. She kept meaning to throw it away but was too embarrassed to put it in a bin, as if all of her neighbors would find it and come to the door en masse demanding an explanation. Both of her Nancy Friday politically correct wank books had been leafed through. She sat down on the bed and tried to minimize it but couldn't. She slumped on the bed, looking at the floor. The Selecter CD was gone, right enough.
She went back to the kitchen, trying to convince herself that once she told Leslie it would become a funny story, and made herself a coffee.
After a long pause in the drilling the locksmith came to the kitchen door. He looked downcast and green.
"Want a cup of tea now?" she said.
"Naw." His voice was wobbly, as if he was about to spew his ring. "Finished."
She paid him in cash and he gave her two copies of the key for the new Yale lock and one for the bolt. When he left she used the new bolt and locked herself firmly in.
Back in the living room she lit a fag, holding it between her teeth as she levered up the rest of the carpet tacks with the hammer. She lifted the edge under the window and dragged it over itself halfway across the room. It was heavy. She let go of the carpet and took hold of the settee arm, pulling it over the fold in the carpet and onto the bare floorboards. The last castor stuck on the fold. She tugged the settee and the carpet started to unfurl. She was kneeling down, trying to lift the castor over the fold, when she happened to glance across the room. A tear-shaped drop of blood had dried on the skirting board, red and glassy against the white paint. She crawled over on all fours and sat down next to it, her head resting on the wall, stroking it with her fingertips, over and over, until it got dark.
She turned on the hall light and opened the cupboard door. The shoe box had been lifted and placed on the high shelf at eye level, leaving the floor of the cupboard empty. In the right-hand corner of the carpeted floor was a bloody oval stain the size of her palm. She crouched down and put her hand on it. It wasn't powdery and thin like the stains around the edge of the living room: it was solid like the space under the chair. The pile on the carpet was completely flattened because the blood spill had been so heavy. It was too heavy to be a splash and the mark was too small to have come from her slippers. Something bloody had been put there.
She stood up, letting her eyes linger on the spot as she tried to imagine what sort of thing could have caused a stain that shape. A bloody rag would have left a stain with uneven edges, so that wasn't it. She tried supposing that the Northern rapist and Douglas's murderer were the same person to see if that would shed any light on the cause of the mark. It could have come from bloody ropes being dumped there but they'd have had to be dripping with blood and, anyway, Douglas had still been tied up when she had found him. She couldn't think what could have caused it.
In the kitchen she opened the door to the boiler and checked the timer for the heating: it was set to go on at five-thirty a.m. and off again at eight. The evening times had been changed too. The little arrows on the dial had been pushed together so that the heating would be off all evening. She changed them back to the previous setting, off in the morning and on from six p.m. until eleven, and shut the door.