Chapter 37
The scarf lies folded on top of the dresser.
I don’t want to touch it. Not now.
Instead I hold my phone next to it, the image filling the screen, comparing the pattern.
Could it be the scarf in this picture? The colors were faded, the wool frayed with time, the pattern distorted in the picture because of how tightly it had been tied around the wrists…
I shiver.
It looked the same.
Jesus. Who was this person in the picture, with their hands tied behind their back?
For a moment I wonder if it’s Adrian Parish but the wrists look too slender, too feminine.
Almost childlike. If not him, then who—and had they suffered the same fate?
Of course there were probably thousands of scarves just like this one; it was mass-produced and it could just be a coincidence that it looked like the one in the photo.
But things have already gone too far to write this off as a coincidence.
My thoughts spin back to the conversation with Shaun Rutherford, and the instructions he’d been given about the items he was supposed to recover from my house. It was no good just getting a few. They needed all seven. All or nothing.
I send Charlie a message of thanks, adding that the scarf looks like a match.
The photo feels important and the fact that we’d nearly missed it lodges like a splinter under my skin—the knowledge that we had all but dismissed this picture, had not tried to download it or understand what it meant, and it was only through Charlie’s interest and expertise that we could see it for what it was. It had almost passed us by.
Which raises the question: if we had missed this, what else had we missed?
I reach out a hand, find the smooth, solid wooden surface of the dresser.
Let my fingertips trace the front, the small metal handles of each drawer, one below the next.
Was there something else here? Something that I had overlooked on that busy first day when I’d discovered the room, had failed to notice in the days since?
The key to the drawers had been artfully hidden in the back of the dresser itself, laid in a small groove of chiseled-out wood that was invisible until I’d pulled the whole thing away from the wall.
I do the same thing again now, heaving the dresser forward into the middle of the small room, so I can see behind it.
Perhaps there was something else here, another secret that this place had yet to give up.
I use my phone torch to examine the back, hunting for any other flaws or inconsistencies in the frame, any panels or gaps that might hide something else.
But there is only old, dark wood, musty with age.
Next, I move around to the front and pull out all of the drawers individually, examining the undersides of each one and feeling for any gaps or panels that I’d not noticed before.
On my knees, I shine the torch into each of the cavities in the dresser, illuminating every angle, reaching for anything else that might be secreted in the bowels of this thing.
Nothing.
I stand and look around the small space, feeling the walls, the thick felt tacked to the ceiling.
But it’s all secure, nailed tight, as thick and robust as the day it was put up.
The fabric of the old armchair is tired but unbroken, with no holes or openings where something else might be hidden.
The little side table beside it is plain and without drawers or decoration.
No. If there was anything else here, it would be in the dresser like everything else. It had to be.
There are still a handful of tools here from moving-in day, the chisel, the broken screwdriver, and the crowbar lying abandoned under the armchair.
I pick up the crowbar and heft it in my hand, a serious weight of solid steel flattening to a half-inch blade at each end like an oversized screwdriver.
It would be easy enough to work the blade between the wooden joints of the dresser and wrench as hard as I could, pulling the sections apart piece by piece, rending and smashing the whole bloody thing until it surrendered any last secrets it still retained.
I fit the sharp end of the crowbar into a small gap in the frame and get ready to put my weight into it.
The sight of the purple-checked scarf makes me pause.
The image of bound hands is still vivid and it has changed things in a way I don’t yet want to admit—and don’t even understand.
I heft the crowbar again, and stop. I could destroy the dresser, but what else might I destroy in the process?
Might it be important in itself, in the same way as the items I’d found within it?
This was ridiculous. I didn’t even know what I was looking for. I sit back heavily on the armchair and toss the crowbar into a corner in disgust.
It lands on the rug with a strange thud.
A weirdly hollow sound in this noise-deadened room.
I turn my phone torch toward it, toward the corner, where you couldn’t stand up straight because of the slope of the roof. Where you wouldn’t have any reason to stand because you’d be bent over to avoid banging your head.
I scoot over on my hands and knees, then move the crowbar out of the way and feel for the edge of the rug, pulling it up where it tucks into the wall.
Pulling the heavy woven fabric toward me, coughing as a cloud of dust rises into my face.
My phone torch illuminates the old oak floorboards beneath the rug, the wooden planks perfectly flat and straight, tight up against each other.
All except one.
Right in the corner, one six-inch section of the floorboards is not quite flush with the one next to it.
I shine the light closer and the joins are more visible, the wood cut neatly through just before it met the wall.
I grab the broken screwdriver and work the end gently into the join, moving it back and forth until the section of wood starts to lift free of the rest. It comes out cleanly to reveal a small cavity beneath, a few inches deep and lined with thick plastic.
Inside the cavity is a rectangular tobacco tin, the old-fashioned kind with a picture of a bearded sailor on the front.
Player’s Navy Cut Cigarettes. I ease the lid up and it comes off easily, as if untouched by the passing of the years.
Inside is a black Bic lighter, the stub of a pencil, and a half-empty box of Swan Vesta matches.
The lighter sparks but there’s no flame; I guess the fuel evaporated long ago.
Beneath the tin is a bed of fine, dark ash. Something else, too.
A half-burned piece of notepaper.