Free The Lake of Darkness by Ruth Rendell

street, but the snowflakes were now the big clotted kind that melt and disperse as soon as they touch a solid surface. Finn walked along Mansfield Road and under the railway bridge at Gospel Oak and got into the van.
    Immediately, it seemed, that he had closed the door the blizzard began. The wipers on his windscreen weren’t what they had been and Finn decided to stay put until the snow stopped. It flopped on to the roof and windows of the van and streamed as water down its sides.
    After about twenty minutes the snow had almost ceased but there was a big build-up of rush-hour traffic headed for Highgate West Hill. Finn couldn’t stay parked where he was and he couldn’t turn round, so he started the van and drove back the way he had walked. It was dark now but the street lamps were all on, and as he passed the end of Modena Road he saw Anne Blake leaving the house, holding a pagoda-shaped umbrella in one hand and a plastic carrier in the other. She turned in the direction of Hampstead Heath.
    Finn turned right at the next turning into Shirlock Road and came out into Savernake Road by the great porridge-coloured pile of All Hallows’ Church. Anne Blake had just reached the corner of Modena Gardens and Savernake Road and was now crossing the road towards the footbridge. Finn parked the van among all the other parked cars and vans. The snow had changed to a thin sleety rain.
    It was very dark, though not yet half-past five. Finn supposed that Anne Blake had gone to call on some friend who lived on the other side of the railway line in Nassington Road maybe or Parliament Hill. She wouldn’t go shopping that way. Besides, the carrier had looked full. He debated whether to go back into the house in her absence. She would very likely be absent for a couple of hours.
    He wondered if she had had her bath. There had been quite enough time for her to have had it, but would she goout into the cold immediately after having had it? She might intend to have it immediately she got in. It would only take him a few minutes, say ten, to reconnect those plugs. But if she had already had her bath he might find himself stuck up there in the loft all night.
    Perhaps a dozen people, coming singly or in pairs, had appeared from the approach to the footbridge while he sat there. Its only use really was to take one on to the Heath or into those streets to the east of South End Road. No one living here would use Hampstead Heath Station when Gospel Oak was just as near. She hadn’t gone to the station.
    At last Finn got out of the van, crossed the road and let himself once more into the house in Modena Road. The rain had begun lashing down by the time he got there. He went upstairs without turning any lights on, and at the top, he entered Anne Blake’s flat in darkness. A street lamp lit the living room and so, with a richer orange glow, did the gas fire which she had left on. She wouldn’t have done that, Finn thought, if she had intended to be out for long.
    He went into the bathroom and ran his hand along the inside of the bath. It was wet and so was one of the towels that hung on the chromium towel rail. There was no point in his remaining. He padded softly, although there was no one to hear him, across to the bedroom window. The rain was now coming down in the kind of deluge that no one would venture out in unless he had to. Finn had to. He opened one of the doors of Anne Blake’s wardrobe. Inside, among her clothes, were two or three garments still sheathed in the thin polythene covers in which they had come back from the dry-cleaners. Finn selected one of these, slipped it off the hanger and the long black evening dress it covered, and pulled it over his head, splitting its sides open a little way down for his arms to go through. It made a kind of protective tunic, impervious and transparent
    The rain began to let up a little as he came up to Savernake Road. There was no one about. He felt drawn by theHeath, by its wide green emptiness,