The Woman At The Door, Daniel Hurst [world best books to read TXT] 📗

me, and I’m almost fearing that I might have to strike up an inane conversation with one of my neighbours just to speed time up a little when I hear the fire engine coming towards us.

I appreciate that some women get a kick out of seeing a man in uniform and especially one wielding such a phallic symbol as a hosepipe, but I’ve never been one of those women. To me, a fireman is just that. A fireman. A guy doing a job. Nothing sexual about it.

They certainly don’t have a patch on Devon, my hunky personal trainer who would be keeping me warm if he was here with me now.

I’m better off not thinking about the man I lost, so I just watch the firefighters going into the building to make their checks, and it’s a good sign that they aren’t taking their hosepipes inside with them. I like to think that means that there is no fire and this is all just one misunderstanding, and sure enough, that much is confirmed twenty minutes later. A bald chap who looks far too chubby to be a fireman takes off his helmet and tells us all that we are okay to go back inside. There is a stampede for the entrance doors as one might expect, and I join the hordes heading back into the warmth, trudging my way up the staircase before reaching the door to my flat and going inside.

It’s a relief to close the door and hear the silence that comes from the alarm no longer being activated. It’s also a relief to go into my bedroom and start getting ready for bed. Unlike some of my neighbours, I’m not in my pyjamas already, but it doesn’t take me long to change that, and it’s only seconds later when I’m under the duvet preparing to turn out the light. But just before I do, I notice something wrong in my bedroom. It’s only a minor thing, but I know when something is out of place. That is why I get out of bed again and go over to investigate.

Reaching the wardrobe door, I look closely at it and see that it is open slightly, just as I suspected. That’s no big deal if I had left it open myself, but I know that I didn’t. I always ensure that the wardrobe is closed completely, and when it is, the edge of the door is flush with the rest of the unit. But the door now is ajar slightly, and that’s how I know that somebody has been in here. That would be disconcerting at the best of times for somebody who lives by themselves, but it’s made even worse by the fact that I keep important things in my wardrobe.

That’s why I always ensure the wardrobe is closed.

It’s because I know what could be found if somebody other than me was to open it.

Opening the wardrobe door fully, I frantically go inside it and start moving the strategically placed boxes that I keep on the top shelf. As I do, I silently curse myself for never getting a better security system for some of my paperwork than this makeshift system that I came up with. I should have got a safe or at least some kind of locked box, but I didn’t. I just naively assumed that these things would be safe as long as they were out of view because why would anybody ever break in here anyway?

The items I am looking for now are a series of documents that relate to my clients. I get each of them to sign an agreement before I go into business with them, and while there’s nothing particularly incriminating itself in the wording of the documents, it’s the names within them that could be used against me. The names of every single client I have ever had are on these papers, and while they might not mean much by themselves, together they could be used to piece together my sordid business if somebody knew the significance of what they were looking at.

That’s why I am frantically looking for the documents now.

And that’s why I am extremely relieved when I find them.

Taking out the wedge of papers from beneath one of the empty shoeboxes that they were buried beneath, I quickly count them to make sure that not a single document is missing. I’ve had thirty-one clients in my time, so there should be exactly thirty-one pieces of paper here. Thankfully, that is the number I reach after counting them, so that at least means that nothing is missing. But that still doesn’t explain why my wardrobe door was open.

The door I am always so careful to keep closed.

I wonder if a firefighter might have accessed my flat during their checks to make sure that the building was secure, but I find that unlikely because surely they would have had to tell me if they had entered my home. But if it wasn’t them then who? One thing is for sure. Somebody has been in here. But why? And how did they get in? The front door was not damaged in any way. The more I think about it, the more I am convinced it has to be the firefighters. They were looking for all potential sources of fire. They were just being thorough. The owner of the building must have given them a key, and that was how they accessed my home.

That makes sense, or at least it makes me feel better than the alternative does. It’s the alternative that somebody came in here because they know who I am and what I am up to, and they are looking for evidence to bring me down. But I’m just being paranoid. Nobody knows who I am, and nobody knows about my business other than the people who hire me to carry it out.

I’m safe.

Nothing is missing, and that means that nothing is wrong.

So why do I feel so