Brute Force

90

I climbed the stairs slowly, following the right-hand sweep. A couple of steps below the top, I stopped.

I had heard a mumble. I stopped breathing, moving.

The background noise was still there – but what I had heard had come from inside the house.

Light streamed in through a window at the top of the stairs – starlight topped up by the thin sickle of the new moon: enough to reveal another window at the end of the long corridor and the two doors leading off the top of the stairs, left and right.

I moved into the shadows by the wall and listened, the fingers of my right hand wrapped hard around the knife.

I heard it again: the rasp of a whispered order. It had been close, but wasn't getting closer. I had to go forward and find out, or we'd be standing off all night.

When I reached the top of the stairs I allowed myself to start breathing again. Through a crack in the door to my left – the door that opened onto Mansour's bedroom – I could see the flicker of a TV.

I knelt and let my hand brush the floor. It wasn't stone or marble, but at least it was parquet; better than floorboards.

I straightened and took stock. Mansour's bedroom door was to my left, a couple of metres from the top of the stairs.

The sound of his laboured breathing punctuated the waffle on the TV. Whatever he'd been watching, it was in English, because I could make out the odd word.

I stepped out onto the parquet and put my ear to the crack between the door and the frame. Mansour's breathing hadn't altered. I eased the door open. It swung soundlessly on its hinges.

Mansour's bed was against the wall to my left. Directly ahead of it, to my right, was a built-in wardrobe. One door was open to expose the screen of the TV. Mansour had been watching some eighties American cop show.

The light flickered across the bed. In the middle, propped up by several pillows, was Mansour. His head, which was turned towards me, had dropped onto his chest.

A small box with what looked like a button on top was mounted on the wall near the bedside table. An alarm bell went off inside my head.

Something wasn't right. Mansour. The way he was lying was totally unnatural. Worse, one of his hands was under the sheet where I couldn't see it.

The TV cop yelled a warning and I looked up to see that Mansour's eyes were open, fixed on mine, and as cold as ice.