Free Naomi's Room by Jonathan Aycliffe Page A

and again I flicked the switch, but the light would not go on.
    And now I became conscious of something terrible. The sense of menace I had felt before in the attic had returned, this time much stronger. The awful thing was that I experienced it in two different ways at once: I felt that I was the object of a dreadful hatred, of an unappeased anger that was reaching out for me with all its force. And simultaneously I felt it in myself, I felt hate, anger, malice, a gamut of raw emotions that all but choked me. I still found it hard to breathe. The darkness pressed in on me, relentless, tight as a sack, smothering me.
    Suddenly, I heard Laura’s voice on my left.
    ‘What’s happening, Charles? What’s going on?’
    I struggled to answer, but words would not form. I felt as though I were drowning in air.
    ‘What’s wrong, Charles? What’s wrong? Where are you?’
    Her voice seemed to come from a long way away. It was so faint I could hardly hear it. I tried to speak, but nothing happened. I could hear another sound now, a faint rustling like silk.
    Suddenly, a bright light exploded in my eyes. I blinked hard, then opened them again. For an instant, I thought I saw someone standing in front of me, someone tall and dressed in grey. Then I was breathing again and I could feel Laura’s hand on my arm and hear her voice clearly.
    ‘Charles, are you all right?’
    I nodded, gulping in air.
    ‘What happened?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I . . . I must have been dreaming. It was as if I was being smothered. But it’s all right now. I’m fine.’
    But I wasn’t fine. Something had lodged itself deep inside me, something unspeakable. It was not a memory, but a sensation, a lingering awareness of the menace I had felt and a dark knowledge of something else already there, something that had been quiescent until then. The feelings of rage and hatred had not come from outside but had been in me all the time. I felt unclean, as though something filthy had touched me or entered me. When Laura reached out a hand to calm me, I pulled away from her. I had never done that before. She said nothing, but I knew my gesture had hurt her. It didn’t matter.
    In the morning, I rang Lewis. He had been waiting for my call.
    ‘Have you heard?’ he asked.
    ‘Heard? Heard what?’
    ‘It was on the news this morning,’ he said. ‘Ruthven has been found dead. Murdered. In the church where they discovered Naomi’s coat.’

10
    ‘What happened?’
    Lewis and I were sitting in the study, facing one another across a low table on which I had placed a small folder.
    ‘His throat was cut. Savage, according to the report we had at the office. Nobody at Old Jewry knows why he went down to the church. They’d finished there, done all their forensic business, and given up. Seems they haven’t found anything yet. They think the coat got there by chance, nothing more. A vagrant may have come across it, taken it to the church.’
    ‘But why leave it in the crypt? What would be the point?’
    ‘The caretaker says vagrants go down there sometimes, the clever ones that know there’s a boiler. They don’t last long, though. The place spooks them. Nobody’s ever spent a night there, as far as he knows.’
    ‘Could they be related?’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘No, not who: I mean the murders. Naomi’s and Ruthven’s. Could there be a link? Could Ruthven have been on to something? Panicked the murderer into attacking him, perhaps?’
    Lewis shrugged.
    ‘It’s too early to say. There’s no record of a lead. They only shut down their operation at the church yesterday.’
    ‘When was he found?’
    ‘Early this morning. The caretaker went in to check the police had left things tidy. He got a bad fright. There was blood spilled all over one of the tombs. An old French tomb. A funny name: Petitoeil.’
    I corrected his pronunciation as though he were a student. ‘Petitoeil,’ I said. ‘It means “Little eye”. It will be a Huguenot name.