Strangers: A Novel(79)
“Who is it?” Joanna whispers from behind me.
“No idea. Maybe it’s those policemen again? Could you take a look and see if you recognize them?”
She comes over to the window, takes a look outside, and shakes her head. “No. I’ve never seen them before.”
“They could be Gabor’s men. Nadine must have blabbed, and now they want to check if you’re still at home.”
“And what are they going to do if I don’t open up?”
I look down again, just in time to glimpse the two men disappearing around the corner. “They’re leaving.”
“Thank goodness.” Joanna slumps down on top of the closed toilet lid. I turn to face her. “But that doesn’t mean they’re really gone. Maybe they’ll be back again later, and maybe this time they won’t settle for just ringing the doorbell. We should definitely hide.”
Joanna looks around the bathroom as though searching for a suitable hideout. “Where, though? If someone does break in, won’t they search the entire house for us … for me? Not to mention…” She looks at me candidly. I can guess what she’s about to say. “Aren’t you scared I might try to harm you again?”
Should I be? I want to ask her in return, but I realize her answer would remain the same: she’d never knowingly try to hurt me, but she can’t vouch for any of her actions at the minute.
“I just said we should try to avoid risks wherever possible,” I tell her instead. “So this is something that can’t be helped.”
Joanna doesn’t reply. But what could she really answer to that, anyway? She wanted to kill me the other night, and neither she nor I know if, or when, she’ll try again.
I can tell that I’m in for a sleepless night.
“OK then, let’s head back downstairs and think about where we’ll spend the next hours.”
The pantry, in contrast to the basement, is warm and dry, and it’s proved successful as a hiding place so far. Of course, someone searching for Joanna would take a look in there as well, but if things were moved around a little, it could still work.
I open the door to the narrow, long room and switch on the light. As I look at the tall freezer standing at the back, an idea comes to mind.
“Do you want us to hide in there?” Joanna asks from behind me. “That’s the first place they’d look.”
“Yes, but if we turn the freezer around so the front is facing the entrance and put one of the shelving units beside it, we can section off a small part of the room. It’s probably not going to be very comfortable, but I think if anyone looks in from the door, they wouldn’t notice that the room goes on a bit farther behind the freezer and the shelves.”
Joanna takes a look around the rear part of the room. “That could work.”
“All right. Let’s move the stuff.”
It takes us about ten minutes to move and position the freezer and the shelving unit to create a space behind it, roughly five feet in length to the back wall. The room is about six and a half feet in width, now all blocked by the shelf and freezer apart from a narrow gap of less than an inch. We stack supplies and boxes onto the shelves to leave as few gaps as possible, then leave things a little askew. Squeezing through the gap on the side is just about manageable. I ask Joanna to give it a try. Then, together, we pull the shelving unit straight again. Once we’re done, I turn off the light and go to stand by the entrance to the room.
Perfect. You’d think the freezer and the shelf were backed up right against the rear wall in the storeroom. It was unnoticeable that, beyond it, the room goes on a bit farther.
“It’s better than I’d expected. And if we put a few blankets on the floor, it might even be halfway comfortable.”
“I hope all of this won’t turn out just to be a pointless exercise,” Joanna says from behind the shelving.
Shortly after midnight, we’re huddled up inside our hideout on top of some wool blankets. At first I was planning to bring some sort of weapon, but then I discarded the idea. I have to share this narrow space with Joanna after all, and there are times when it’s better not to tempt fate.
I’ve left the door to the storeroom wide open, so as not to create any sort of impression that there might be a hiding place here. We’re plunged into total darkness. The blinds on the kitchen and living room windows are fully closed, so not even a glimmer of light can get through, making the storeroom all the more dark.
Although we’re both totally exhausted, neither of us even contemplates going to sleep in the first hour. We don’t talk much. Every now and then, one of us strikes up a conversation, only for it to fizzle out after just a few sentences. The reason why we’re cowering here on the floor, in the farthermost corner of our storeroom, doesn’t get mentioned for quite some time.
After a while, Joanna feels about for my hand and moves closer to me. Ever since she attacked me, her touch has been evoking such contradictory feelings within me that I shrink away from her almost instinctively.
“I can’t take much more of this, Erik.”
I don’t ask exactly what she means by that, deciding instead that her words apply to the entire fear-inducing situation.
“I know. I feel the same way.”
“Just tonight and then less than a day. We can manage that, can’t we? And then we’ll be safe within a few hours. The people coming to pick us up are professionals. My father’s entrusted them with my life several times. Even back when I was still a child.”