Her heart started thudding so loudly that she thought it must be like a beacon pinpointing her position in the dark. A man had been beaten to death in Merchiston this morning-who was to say that the murderer hadn’t moved on to another suburb on the south side? She wished she had a weapon. She made a mental inventory of what was available. The garden shed provided the biggest arsenal-weed-killer sprays, an ax, the electric hedge trimmer, the strimmer-she imagined you could probably do quite a bit of damage to someone’s ankles with a strimmer. Unfortunately there was no way she could get to the garden shed without passing whoever was in the house. Did they have eyes of diamond and jet, were they as tall as a bear?

She suddenly remembered Maggie Louden’s words: “Is it done yet, is it over? Have you got rid of Gloria?” What if she wasn’t talking about divorce, what if she was talking about murder?

Of course, that was exactly what Graham would do! If he di-vorced Gloria, he would lose half of everything he had, and no way in the world would Graham be prepared to do that, but if Gloria died he could keep everything. It was as melodramatic a concept as anything in Emmerdale yet somehow perfectly credible. He would hire someone-Graham had a way of never getting his own hands dirty. He would pay someone to get rid of her. Or he would use Terry. Yes, that was what he would do, he would use Terry.

Gloria held her hand over her heart in an attempt to muffle its telltale thumping. Another floorboard creaked, much closer this time, and Gloria realized that there was someone standing at the top of the basement stairs, a figure outlined faintly with an aura of moonlight from the atrium skylight in the hall.

The figure started to descend the stairs. Gloria took a deep breath and said stoutly, “I think you should know before you come any farther that I am armed.” A lie, of course, but in these circumstances the truth was hardly a weapon. The figure hesitated, it bent down to get a better view of the basement, and then a fa-miliar voice said, “Hello, Gloria.”

Gloria gave a little scream of horror and said, “I thought you were dead.”

35

When Martin returned to the Four Clans, he found the prison-governor receptionist had been replaced by the night porter from last night. Hadn’t Sutherland said he was on holiday? He handed Martin his key, barely looking up from the Evening News that was spread out on the cheap veneer of the reception counter. A cigarette teetered precariously from the edge of his lip.

“Do you remember me?” Martin asked. “Do you know who I am?”

The night porter tore himself away from the newspaper, an inch of ash dropped from his cigarette. He glanced up at Martin and then, as if seeing nothing of interest, returned to his paper. “Yeah,” he said, turning over a page, “you’re that dead guy, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Martin agreed, “I’m that dead guy.”

THURSDAY

36

Arooster crowed. There was no better alarm clock. He remembered it was Sunday, his favorite day of the week, and he stretched all four limbs luxuriously in the bed. No need to get up and go to work. He was no longer writing, thank God, he had found an odd kind of liberation in donning a suit and tie every weekday morning and commuting up to London to toil in a con-servative office with high ceilings and big old-fashioned desks, a place where the juniors and the secretaries called him “Mr. Canning” and the chairman clapped him on the back and said, “How’s that wonderful woman you married, old chap?” He didn’t know what he did in the office all day, but at lunchtime he went out to a restaurant where the waitresses wore white broidery anglaise aprons and little caps on their heads and brought him oxtail soup and steamed puddings with custard. And in the afternoon, at three on the dot, his secretary (June, or perhaps Angela), a cheerful young woman with crisp shorthand and soft twinsets, brought him a cup of tea and a plate of biscuits.

The rooster didn’t know it was a day of rest. He was soon joined by the other birds, Martin could pick out the thread of the joyful warble of a blackbird from the tapestry of birdsong, but the identity of the other birds in the pattern was a mystery. His (wonderful) wife would know, she was a country girl, born and bred. A farm girl. A wholesome, milk-fed farm girl. He propped himself up on an elbow and studied her wholesome farm-girl face. In repose, she was even more lovely, although it was the kind of loveliness that inspired respectful admiration in other men rather than lust. Even the idea of lust would have sullied her. She was beyond reproach. A strand of her soft brown hair lay across her face. He moved it gently away and kissed the priceless ruby bow of her lips.

He would make her breakfast in bed. A proper breakfast, eggs and bacon, fried bread. For lunch today they would roast a piece of good English beef, meat was still on the ration but the village butcher was a friend. Everyone was their friend. He wondered why he was so frequently a carnivore in this other life.

The morning would follow its usual happy Sunday pattern. When lunch was nearly ready-the gravy thickening, the beef resting-he would laugh (because it was their little joke) and say to her, “A little preprandial, darling?” and bring out the Waterford sherry decanter that had belonged to her parents. Then they would sip their amontillado and sit on the armchairs covered in “StrawberryThief ”and listen to Schubert’s Trout Quintet.

He could hear a tap running in the bathroom and the tread of feet along the hallway and down the stairs. Peter/David was making airplane noises, fighting the Luftwaffe single-handed. Martin heard him say, “Take that, you filthy Nazi!” before making the ack-ack sounds of a machine gun. He was a good boy, he would grow up like his father, not like Martin. Yesterday evening when they had been sitting in their cozy living room (roaring fire, etc.), Martin toasting crumpets, his wife knitting yet another Fair Isle pullover, after Peter/David had kissed them both good night and gone up to bed, his wife paused over her needles and said with a smile, “I think he deserves to have a little brother or sister, don’t you?”A moment to treasure in a life of treasures.

He stretched again and put his arms round his wife and smelled her lily-of-the-valley hair. She wriggled a little, a sign that she was awake and willing. He put a hand inside the folds of her night-gown and found the apple roundness of a breast and pressed his body against hers. He should say something loving at this point, something tender. He always had trouble with the intimacies of conversation with her for some reason, perhaps if he gave her a name it would help. She rolled over and returned his embrace. “Marty,” she said.

He woke with a start. The cheap digital clock radio on the bed-side table informed him that it was six o’clock in the morning. He wondered if he should check under the covers to make sure he hadn’t turned into a giant insect.

Daylight had already overtaken the streetlamp outside and fil-tered through the thin orange curtains, bathing the room in the glow of a postnuclear sunrise. The lurid Lucozade light washed over Martin’s face. He couldn’t imagine how he would get back to sleep again. The walls of the room were tissue thin. Every toi-let flushed, every hawking phlegmy cough, every sexual act attempted or achieved, all seemed to be finding a direct conduit to Martin’s room.

What if somehow he was stuck here, if he had entered some surreal loop where he must wake up every morning in a different room at the Four Clans? How many rooms were there in the hotel? What if it was an infinite number, what if it was one of those Twilight Zone places with a nonexistent thirteenth floor and a staff who were really the ghosts of previous guests? A hotel you could never check out from.