I glanced casually out of the bathroom window and spent a frozen instant in pure panic.
There was a man in the garden, looking towards the downstairs rooms of the cottage. The light from the sitting-room window fell brightly on his face.
I hadn’t consciously remembered him, but I knew him at once, in one heart-stopping flash of the inner eye. He was the fake St. John’s Ambulance man from Cheltenham races.
Behind him, in the road, stood a car, with gleams of light edging its roof and windows. A second man was levering himself out of the passenger’s seat, carrying what looked like a plastic bag containing cotton wool. A third figure, dimly seen, was heading through the garden to the back of the house.
They couldn’t, I thought: surely they couldn’t think they would trick me again. But with three of them, they hardly needed tricks.
The St. John’s man waved his arm to the man by the car, and pointed, and the two of them took up positions, one on each side of my front door, out of sight of anyone opening it from the inside. The St. John’s man stretched out an arm and rang my bell.
I unfroze.
Wonderful how terror sharpened the wits. There was only one place I could hide, and that was in my bedroom. The speed with which I’d gone over the side of the boat was nothing compared with my disappearance inside the cottage.
Downstairs in the sitting-room the huge old fireplace had at one side incorporated a bread-oven, which the people living there before me had removed, constructing instead a head-high alcove with display shelves. Wanting a safe place in which to keep valuables, they had opened the upper part of the bread-oven space into the bedroom above, where it formed a sort of box below the floor of the built-in wardrobe. Not having much in the way of valuables, I stored my two suitcases in there instead.
I opened the wardrobe door, and pulled up the hinged flap of flooring, and hauled out the cases.
The door bell rang again, insistently.
Lowering myself into the space took seconds, and I had the wardrobe door shut and the flap of floor almost in place when they burst in through the front door.
They rampaged through the place, opening and slamming doors, and shouting, and finally gathering all together downstairs.
‘He must be bloody here.’
‘Britten! Britten, come out, we know you’re here.’
‘The effing bastard’s scarpered.’
I could hear every loud word through the chipboard partition between my hiding place and the sitting room. It felt horribly vulnerable sitting there, level with the picture over the mantelshelf, practically in the room with them, hidden only by a thin piece of wall.
‘He couldn’t have seen us coming.’
‘He never got out of the back, I’ll tell you that for sure.’
‘Then where the bleeding hell is he?’
‘How about those suitcases of his upstairs?’
‘No. He ain’t in them. They’re too small. And I looked.’
‘He must be meaning to bleeding scarper.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Take another butcher’s upstairs. He must be here somewhere.’
They searched the whole house again, crashing about with heavy boots.
One of them opened the wardrobe above me for the second time, and saw nothing but clothes, as before. I sat under their feet and sweated, and felt my pulse shoot up to the hundreds.
‘Look under the bed,’ he said.
‘Can’t. The bed’s right on the floor.’
‘How about the other bedroom, then?’
‘I looked. He ain’t there.’
‘Well, bleeding well look again.’
The wardrobe door closed above me. I wiped the sweat out of my eyes and tried to ease my legs without scraping my shoes on the wall and making a noise. I was half sitting, half lying, in a recess about three feet long by two feet deep, and just wide enough for my shoulders. My knees were bent acutely, with my heels against the backs of my thighs. It was a bad position for every muscle I could think of.
Two of them came into the sitting-room, one after the other.
‘What you got there? Here, let me see.’
‘None of your bleeding business.’
‘It’s his wallet. You’ve got his wallet.’
‘Yeah. Well, it was in his bedroom.’
‘Well, bleeding well put it back.’
‘Not likely, he’s got thirty quid in it.’
‘You’ll effing well do as I say. You know the orders, same as I do. Don’t steal nothink, don’t break nothink. I told you.’
‘You can have half, then.’
‘Give it to me. I’ll put it back. I don’t trust you.’ It was the St. John’s man talking, I thought.
‘It’s bloody stupid, not nicking what we can get.’
‘You want the fuzz on our necks? They didn’t bloody look for him last time, and they won’t bloody look for him this time, either, but they will if they find his place has been turned over. Use your bloody loaf.’
‘We ain’t got him yet.’
‘Matter of time. He’s round here some place. Bound to be.’
‘He won’t come back if he sees us in here.’
‘No, you got a point there. Tell you what, we’ll turn the lights off and wait for him, and jump him, like.’
‘He left all the lights on, himself. He won’t come in if they’re off.’
‘Best if one of us waits in the kitchen, like, and the other two in the garden. Then when he gets here we can jump him from both sides, right, just as he’s coming back through the door.’
‘Yeah.’
Into these plans there suddenly came a fresh voice, female and enquiring.
‘Mr Britten? Mr Britten, are you there?’
I heard her push the front door open and take the step into the sitting-room.
The voice of my next-door-neighbour.
Yes, Mrs Morris, I’m here, I thought. And it would take more than me and a small plump senior citizen to fight off my unwanted guests.
‘Who are you?’ she said.
‘Friends of his. Calling on him, like.’
‘He’s away,’ she said sharply.
‘No he’s not. He’s back. His car’s round the side. And he’s having a drink, see? Whisky.’
‘Then where is he? Mr Britten?’ she called.
‘Ain’t no use, lady. He’s out. We’re waiting for him, like.’
‘I don’t think you should be in here.’ A brave lady, old Mrs Morris.
‘We’re friends of his, see.’
‘You don’t look like his friends,’ she said.
‘Know his friends, then, do yer?’
A certain nervousness crept into her voice, but the resolution was still there.
‘I think you’d better wait outside.’
There was a pause, then the St. John’s man said, ‘Where do you think he could be? We’ve searched all over for him.’
Let her not know about this hiding place, I prayed. Let her not think of it.
‘He might’ve gone to the pub,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you go down there? To the Fox.’
‘Yeah, maybe.’
‘Anyway, I think I’ll just see you out.’
Intrepid little Mrs Morris. I heard them all go out, and shut the front door behind them. The lock clicked decisively. The cottage was suddenly still.
I lay quiet, listening for their car to start.
Nothing happened.
They were still there, I thought. Outside. Round my house. Waiting.
On the mantelshelf, the clock ticked.
I cautiously pushed up the flap over my head, and sat up, straightening knees, back and neck, with relief.
The light in my bedroom was still on, shining in a crack under the wardrobe door. I left the door shut. If they saw so much as a shadow move they would know for sure I was inside the house.
I reflected that I had had a good deal too much practice at passing uncertain hours in small dark places.