It was a shoe.
Nora could see a shoe where the edge of the cover had fallen back. A man's shoe, dark leather, the sole turned partly toward her. It was not in a box or hanging from a peg. Something filled it, and the shape above it continued beneath the tarpaulin.
She put a hand against the cupboard. The wood was rough where a hinge had been removed. She felt that roughness so distinctly that for a moment the shoe seemed less real than the splinter near her palm.
Then she saw the other one.
She backed away. The heel of her boot struck a box, and she stumbled, pain catching the injured arm when she jerked it to balance. Her stomach rose. She turned toward the door, took two steps and bent over, unable to keep anything down.
There was nothing graceful about it. She retched until her throat hurt and the tears which came from it blurred the light. She wanted someone to arrive, an ordinary worker who would be angry about the mess and turn the room back into a place in which things could be cleaned.
No one came.
Nora stood in the open doorway, drawing cold air into her mouth. Beyond the yard, a vehicle passed. The sound moved away. The man in the yard had complained about a smell. He had not known what it was. Or Nora hoped he had not.
Her phone was still in her hand. The beam shone on the concrete by her feet. She could call Cal. It was the first name which came, not because she thought he was innocent but because fear had reached for him all her life.
She did not call.
The unit was his. The boards were his arrangement. He had returned for money, then refused to say exactly what happened. Dominic was missing. Nora could not make those things a complete account, but she could not let them remain separate now.
She needed to see enough to tell someone what she had found.
Going back in was harder than opening the door. She walked slowly, keeping the light steady with an effort which made her hand ache. The smell was already in her coat, or she imagined it was. She held her breath, then had to breathe anyway.
The boards did not completely cover the gap. Nora crouched as far as she could, supporting herself with a hand on the cupboard, and looked along the side. The tarpaulin lay loose over the middle. Near the top an old moving blanket had slipped, showing part of a head and a shoulder.
She knew the coat. Dominic had worn it in London, thrown it across the chair she told him not to use for clothes because the leather was already marked. He'd said everything was made to be used, then complained when a cup ring appeared on something he wanted to sell.
The face was altered. Nora could not look at it for long. She knew it anyway, the line of the nose, the grey near the temple, the shape which had been a man leaning back and asking why she needed so much money to make a room simple.
“Dominic,” she said.
The name sounded too loud. It did nothing.
She rose, trembling. She had not lifted the cover, touched him or moved the boards. She did not know how he had died. She knew enough that pretending she had found something else would be another lie she could never make small.
Hannah's coffee cup came into her mind. Her hands around it, the patience she'd tried to preserve, the folio she'd bought because she wanted her father to take her work seriously. Nora remembered her saying You don't know where he is.
Hannah had come to the showroom asking about a man who lay among Cal's materials. Nora had told her he was probably away.
The phone rang in Nora's hand. She almost dropped it. The light jerked over the boards, over the coat, then she turned it toward herself.
The driver.
She answered, drawing a breath which didn't seem to reach far enough.
“I'm just outside,” he said. “Ready when you are.”
“Yes.”
Her voice frightened her. She cleared her throat.
“I'm coming.”
She stepped back, took the bench photograph off the screen and closed the note she'd been making. She opened Cal's messages and typed Come and get me.
Her thumb stopped above send. She deleted the words, one at a time.
She knew she should call the police. She was standing in a rented unit with what she recognized as a dead man, and the man who had saved her was the person whose key had opened it.
The police already had her theft, her denials, the money she'd offered Iris. She could not keep those by waiting. But they didn't have this room. Cal could still ring her tonight, still complain she'd missed a meal, still be somewhere she could reach him without asking permission.
He had the other key. He might come here before morning and move Dominic. There was no safe night she could keep for herself.
She still wanted one before she made calling her brother impossible. The thought sickened her almost as much as the smell.
Nora went out and closed the door. The latch did not catch first time. She pulled it again and turned the key. Across the yard the trade-counter door was still open. She bought a padlock, refused an offer to fit it and went back to the unit. With her good hand she passed its shackle through the outside hasp and clicked it shut. Cal's key would no longer be enough.
He had tools. He could cut it. She knew that while she put the new keys in her bag, and knew she was buying herself an excuse to leave, not making the room safe. Nothing had changed for the man behind it.
She walked to the car. The driver got out when he saw her and opened the rear door.
“Everything all right?”
“I feel sick.”
“Want some water?”
She nodded. He gave her a small unopened bottle from the front. She tried to twist the cap, couldn't manage the pressure with the injured hand, and handed it back without speaking. He opened it for her.
She took one swallow. It tasted of nothing, which almost made her cry.
“Hospital?” he asked.
“No. Home.”
He looked at her arm, then at her face, and waited. Nora repeated the address. It was the place she'd slept while Iris thought she'd been buried. The room where she'd offered money. Somewhere she could sit and write an account with her own name in it before giving it away.
The driver put her seat belt within reach. She fastened it slowly, pulled the coat around herself and watched the unit disappear as he turned out of the yard.
Her phone lit up with the delivery firm's reply. They could collect the bench in the morning.
Nora stared at the message. The bench was still there, a thing she had wanted before the night at Wren House, waiting among the boards near Hannah's father. She couldn't have it taken out while asking nobody to look behind the cupboard.
She wrote back that the collection would not go ahead. She did not give another reason which might turn the place into a job someone could complete.
Cal called before they reached London. Nora watched his name until the call ended. A message followed.
You all right?
She did not answer. He didn't know she'd gone to the unit. He didn't know what she had seen. For the first time, knowing something he didn't was not a small piece of independence she could enjoy.
Outside the window the lights came on in other people's buildings. Nora held the bottle in her good hand and tried to breathe without smelling the room she'd left. She couldn't. Even when the car was full of fresh air, it remained with her.