The Damnation Fresco (ebook)

Argumento de The Damnation Fresco (ebook)

Houses are always the same when you return after a break: Black windows. Cold. Empty. Deserted. Not what I was expecting.

I wandered the empty rooms feeling alarm tickle my skin. Vicky would not leave plates covered in breadcrumbs on the sink unit. She is fastidious.

The foreboding increases as I climb the stairs. The house feels abandoned, soulless. With a shiver I realise it reminds me of Edouard Valery?s art deco house before it was reduced to a burnt-out shell.

In the bedroom the suitcases remain unpacked after our Italy Italian trip. They lie on our bed, clothes tumbling from them with a brochure from the Tower of Pisa planted on top. She had been home for two days and the cases are still half-unpacked. This is not Vicky. This is not right, ; I feel sick.

The sheets are pulled loosely back on her side of the bed. On ut of fear of an impromptu visit from the window cleaner , the beds are always immaculately presented.

I catch sight of myself in the wardrobe mirror. My cheeks have hollowed, the eyes darkened by black rings. The burnt area on my cheek and neck looks more bruised than red. I don?t recognise myself.

Every room is checked. Nothing. I stand in my empty home knowing I should never have deserted her. Back to the kitchen to think.

I pour myself a Scotch, down it in a single head-shaking, throat-burning swallow. Then I pour another.

She had still been in contact a day after she had returned. But that was on the mobile , not the landline. She may have only stayed one night. And then? Where did she go? A gnawing unease. Could they have taken her? By ?they? I mean the man who called himself Claude and his thuggish pal, the disfigured man.

All because some Irish arsehole called John McAteer paints himself a Rubens cartoon and I make a shit job of the attribution. If only I had checked it with a Rubens expert. Too damned arrogant. So I end up sucking up to Tony, Lord of Marr for work no one should touch with a bargepole.

My skin crawls with fear. I know where this is leading; I just don?t want to acknowledge it. Another swig of the Scotch before I replenish the glass with my shaking hand. Now Vicky is missing. I know she is in trouble. She may even be dead.

I need to get a grip on the alcohol. I top up the Scotch with water and stare through the rear kitchen window. Our back garden is less of a garden and more of a narrow courtyard overlooked by the rising nineteenth-century houses around us. Its centrepiece is a lily pad -strewn pond surrounded by a patio that winds around the little garden beds Vicky loves working on so much.

The shed door is open.

Not like her. A woman so neat and precise, everything has its own set position in her universe. Why leave the shed door open?0