Page 120 of Worse Than Murder

‘Sally told me they’d been moved again. These new ones won’t be easily tampered with,’ he says as he passes me a cup of strong black coffee.

I inhale and feel myself instantly relax at the hit.

A thought enters my mind. I sit back and frown as I mull over what it could possibly mean. I look around me, taking in the door leading out into the car park, the door to the kitchen and stairs going to the flat above, and the door the intruder came out of the night before and attacked us both.

‘What is it?’ Philip asks.

‘The burglar came through the back door, right?’

‘Right.’

‘He came in here and he came out of that door over there, when we entered this part of the restaurant, right?’

‘Yes. So?’

‘Well, to get this far, he had to pass the storage room where you keep your booze, the bar, here, where you’ve got those bottles of wine and whisky lined up, and the till where you keep the cash and card machines. He left all that and went through that door. Why?’

‘I’ve no idea. He didn’t hang around for me to ask him.’

‘Apart from leading to the basement, what else is through that door?’

‘Nothing.’

‘So, only the stairs down into the cellar you’re going to renovate?’

‘Yes.’

‘Huh.’

‘What?’

‘What else is down there apart from an empty room with damp?’

‘Nothing. It’s a shell of a room. And it doesn’t have damp. It just smells like it does.’

‘In that case, why did the intruder go down there? He didn’t have a bag with him, so he wasn’t planning on stealing anything. Why did he pass all this expensive stuff and go down into an empty room?’

Philip’s eyes widen. ‘Do you think he took something down there?’

‘I’m not sure. It’s possible.’

‘Like what?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Something that would stop my renovations, that could possibly get me closed down?’ He places his own cup on the bar and heads for the door to the basement.

‘Where are you going?’

‘To have a look. What if he’s put a dead rat down there? Or worse, a live one. I don’t want Carl going down there and finding it. I don’t want bloody health and safety going down there.’

‘Jesus!’ I exclaim as I follow.

Philip leads the way, pushes open the door and begins to descend the stone steps. There’s an underlying smell of damp, though it’s possibly due to the fact this room hasn’t been used much over the past couple of decades. There’s no lighting so Philip pulls his phone out of his back pocket, turns on the torch and points it to the ground so we can see where we step.

At the bottom of the steps, he points the phone all around the floor. There is nothing there. A few plastic crates stacked in the corner, but no rotting rodents, nothing anyone from the health and safety department could object to should they wish to make a snap inspection.

I remain still at the bottom of the stairs. I’m not a fan of basements. I’ve developed claustrophobia since being kidnapped. I always need to be able to see a way out of a room and, as the cellar only has one exit, I remain where I can look up the stairs and see the door leading to daylight. My breathing has become shallow.