Chapter 17

Priest unlocked the front door and led the way into the cheerless hallway. Georgie followed him in. He’d managed to ring and divert her to Bristol Road before she got to the office. Elinor Fox came in behind, seemingly unperturbed at having been caught trying to flirt her way into the flat.

‘What were you doing?’ Georgie fired at her.

‘Doing what an investigative journalist does: investigating.’

‘They call it snooping elsewhere.’ Georgie turned her back on the reporter and sidled up to Priest with her arms folded.

He stared at the back wall. ‘How many rooms do you see?’

Georgie scanned the end of the hallway. ‘Lounge, kitchen, bathroom and a bedroom. Four.’

‘Right,’ Priest murmured, making his way to the rear of the flat where he started to run his fingers across the back wall. ‘Whereas Sarah distinctly told me there were two bedrooms.’

‘The geek downstairs told me that Simeon used the rear entrance to come and go, too. Yet there isn’t one,’ offered Fox, mimicking Priest’s inspection of the wall.

‘Not one that we can see, anyway,’ said Priest and, with that, put his fist through the wall.

He felt Georgie jump in alarm as his hand went right through the plasterboard to the other side. He withdrew it and felt a draught of cold air escape the new opening. He peered through; could see only darkness but there was definitely a space behind the wall.

‘Stand back,’ Priest grunted. ‘This might get rough.’ He raised his foot. The idea was to take the wall out bit by bit if he had to. Turned out he didn’t. There was the sound of a latch mechanism operating somewhere in the wall and suddenly a hitherto unseen door on the far side of the wall fell open. Priest looked over at Fox, who was standing next to it.

‘Ingenious,’ she mused, closing the door again, whereupon Priest saw the outline seal shut. A minuscule overhang the same colour as the wall lined the edge of the door so, when it was shut, it was completely invisible, until pressure was applied to a particular spot which Fox showed them and the door rematerialised before swinging open.

‘Lucky guess,’ Georgie mumbled.

Priest said nothing before entering the secret room beyond the hallway and finding himself in a dark, enclosed space. He used the light from his phone to find a switch on the wall and suddenly the second bedroom manifested itself, complete with back door leading to the street below.

‘Simeon must have installed this himself,’ Priest concluded. ‘A secret room only he knew about.’