The Neighbour’s Game

“People like to think truth hides in silence. It doesn’t. It hides in the pauses between what someone says and what they choose not to.”

The dawn light crept further into the car, soft golden tendrils pushing past the condensation to illuminate the dashboard in warm hues that made the interior feel almost cosy despite the cold. My knuckles were white around the steering wheel, knuckles I hadn't realised I was gripping so tightly until I noticed the ache in my hands. Breath still fogging the air in front of me, each exhalation a ghostly reminder that I was here, alive, witness to something significant even if I didn't yet understand its full meaning.

The adrenaline hadn't faded. If anything, it was building—an itch beneath my skin, a mounting certainty that to delay even a minute longer would cost me something I couldn't yet name. The window of opportunity was narrowing. Whoever was inside might be preparing to leave. Might be destroying evidence. Might be doing any number of things that would become impossible to prove if I waited for official channels to grind through their bureaucratic processes.

I'm not on duty. No badge. No gun. No backup.

The litany of problems recited itself in my head with the persistence of a warning klaxon. Everything about this was wrong from a procedural standpoint. I had no warrant, no probable cause that would satisfy a magistrate, no legal authority to enter the property.

But that didn't matter. Not now. Not after what I'd seen.

The face in the window had changed everything. It had transformed speculation into certainty, suspicion into fact. Someone was in there. Someone who shouldn't be, or who was hiding that they were. Someone who watched me watching them, who now knew they'd been seen.

I shoved the car door open and climbed out into the brittle cold of morning, the metal handle shocking my palm with its frigid temperature. The frost-bitten air bit at my exposed skin, finding the gaps in my clothing, tugging at the edges of my coat with invisible fingers.

A dog barked somewhere further down the valley, sharp and urgent, the sound carrying cleanly through the still air. Perhaps the same dog that had responded to my horn blast, still agitated by the disturbance. The only other sound was the crunch of gravel beneath my boots as I crossed the road, taking long strides towards the split-level house I had watched through the hours of night, my shadow stretching long behind me in the low morning sun.

Each step felt significant, weighted with purpose and consequence. This was the moment. The line I'd been approaching all night, dancing around without quite crossing. And now I was crossing it with full awareness of what it meant, what it would cost, what it would reveal about who I'd become in the pursuit of answers I might not want to find.

It looked... different now. In daylight, stripped of the shadows and darkness that had made it sinister, the house was almost welcoming—its pale brickwork glowing softly in the morning light like something blessed, the curved eaves and timber deck giving it a hint of mid-century charm that spoke of architectural trends and modest ambitions. A home designed for a young family, perhaps, back in the eighties or nineties when this subdivision was new and Berriedale was considered the edge of suburban expansion.

The shadows that had made it seem predatory in darkness were gone, replaced by something ordinary. Familiar. Deceptively benign. It could have been any house on any street in any suburb—unremarkable, forgettable, the kind of place you'd drive past without a second glance if you weren't looking for it.

Years of experience, decades of walking into situations that looked safe but weren't, had trained me to trust those instincts. They'd kept me alive through domestic violence calls that turned suddenly violent, through drug raids where things went sideways, through confrontations where the wrong word at the wrong time could escalate into something fatal.

And those instincts were screaming now.

Up close, the air held the dense stillness I associated with abandoned crime scenes. That particular quality of silence that wasn't just absence of sound but presence of something else—aftermath. That same sense of something having happened—a subtle dissonance between setting and atmosphere that made your skin crawl even when you couldn't articulate why.

Like a photograph where everything looks right but feels wrong. Where the composition is perfect but the subjects' eyes are looking in directions that don't quite make sense. Where shadows fall at angles that defy the visible light sources.

Approaching the porch, I mounted the steps. My hand rose almost of its own accord, operating on training and habit rather than conscious decision, knuckles rapping firmly against the door. Three sharp knocks, crisp and professional, the kind that announced official business without being aggressive.

Then nothing.

No shuffle of footsteps approaching. No creak of floorboards under someone's weight. No voice calling out "Just a minute!" or "Who is it?" Just silence, dense and complete, as if the house itself was holding its breath.

I listened, hand still raised and hovering near the door, ready to knock again, heart hammering in my chest with a rhythm that seemed too fast, too insistent. The wood was cool beneath my palm when I pressed it flat against the surface, trying to sense vibration, movement, any sign of occupancy beyond the visual.

What am I doing?

The question arrived with uncomfortable clarity. I was unarmed—my service weapon locked in the gun safe at home. My warrant card sat uselessly on my bedside table, forgotten in the rush to return here after leaving Jargus with food and water. If someone opened the door and I needed to assert any kind of authority, all I had was my voice—and the fact I still remembered how to project it with the kind of command that made people comply before they'd consciously decided to.

But that felt thin. Inadequate. Based entirely on performance rather than legitimate authority.

"Shit," I whispered under my breath, the word barely audible even to myself.

What had seemed like clarity in the quiet, charged stillness of pre-dawn now wavered in the full light of day, showing itself for what it truly was: desperation masquerading as determination. I was a man standing on someone else's doorstep, alone, without legal standing, making decisions I couldn't explain to anyone without dragging my past into full view. Without revealing the fifteen-year-old fracture that drove this obsession.

Still.

Still I stayed. Still I didn't turn away. Still the certainty held that this was necessary, that whatever consequences followed would be worth bearing if it led to answers.

I adjusted my stance, shifting my weight slightly to the right, so I wasn't directly in front of the door, positioning myself at an angle that would give me a fraction of a second's advantage if the door opened and threat emerged. One foot back, hands loose and ready at my sides, eyes scanning the visible portions of the house's facade. It was a subtle change in positioning, barely noticeable to anyone watching, but it mattered.

I knocked again. Louder this time, more insistent, less polite. My fist echoed through the hollow frame of the house like a challenge, announcing that I wasn't going away, that this wasn't a casual inquiry that could be ignored until it went away on its own.

Silence.

Complete and unbroken. Not even the settling sounds that old houses made, not the creak of cooling timber or the tick of pipes or the rustle of air through vents.

Then I listened. Really listened.

I held my breath, tuned myself to every creak and hum, every micro-sound that might indicate presence or movement. Closed my eyes to sharpen my hearing, filtering out the ambient noise of the street behind me—the distant traffic, the wind in trees, the fading echo of the dog's barking—to focus entirely on sounds that might be coming from within the house.

Nothing.

But there was something... off. Not in the house itself—no visible damage, no obvious threat, no signs of forced entry or violence. But in the way the silence sat. It wasn't passive. It wasn't the neutral quiet of an unoccupied building. It was expectant. Active somehow, despite being defined by absence of sound.

It pressed against my ears like pressure under water, building gradually, creating a sensation of depth and weight. As if the house was waiting to see what I'd do next, observing my response, measuring my determination before deciding how to respond.

Had I imagined the face in the window?

The thought slithered into my mind like a serpent, coiling around my certainty with seductive logic. I'd been exhausted. Cold. Running on caffeine and obsession for close to twenty-four hours with minimal food and no real rest. The brain plays tricks when it's sleep-deprived. Medical fact, proven countless times. It crafts meaning from shadows. It whispers ghosts into empty rooms. It sees patterns where none exist, imposes order on chaos, creates narratives to explain the inexplicable.

Sleep deprivation was a known factor in false confessions, in hallucinations, in perceptual errors that could completely undermine testimony. I'd used that fact in interrogations, had questioned witnesses whose accounts fell apart under the revelation of how little they'd slept before witnessing whatever they claimed to have seen.

But no. That had been a face.

I was sure of it. As sure as I'd ever been of anything. The memory was too clear, too specific. Not the vague suggestion of features that characterised imagination, but concrete details: the pale oval of skin, the darkness of hair against it, the suggestion of an eye socket, the way the blinds had moved to accommodate the presence before settling back.

Was it Jamie? Or Luke? Or someone else entirely?

The questions wouldn't leave me alone, wouldn't stop cycling through my mind in endless permutation. Each possible answer led to more questions, more complications, more implications that I couldn't fully process.

Were they inside now, frozen behind a curtain somewhere I couldn't see, holding their breath and praying I'd give up and leave? Bodies pressed against walls, counting seconds, waiting for the sound of my car starting and driving away?

Or were they watching from another window I hadn't checked, unseen and calculating, studying me as intently as I'd studied the house? Planning their next move based on mine, engaged in a silent chess game where neither player fully understood the rules?

The wind stirred a tree behind me, sending a loose branch scratching against the fence with a rasp that made my skin crawl, made me turn quickly to check the source before recognising it as benign. The sound reminded me how exposed I was standing here, how visible, how many windows in neighbouring houses might be framing me at this moment.

Still I waited. Minutes passed, though I couldn't have said how many. Time had become elastic, stretching and contracting in ways that made my internal sense of duration unreliable. Nothing moved. No sounds emerged from within. The house maintained its silence with the discipline of a trained operative refusing to break under interrogation.

I felt ridiculous. Worse than that—exposed. Vulnerable in ways that went beyond physical safety, though that was concerning enough. But professionally exposed, personally exposed, standing here without justification or authority or anything beyond the driving certainty that I was right even if I couldn't prove it.

I swallowed hard and stepped back from the door, letting my hand fall to my side, fingers flexing as if trying to dispel the frustration that was building with each passing second. The silence behind it felt intentional, curated—as though the house itself had chosen to remain mute, had made a decision not to respond regardless of how long I stood here or how insistently I knocked.

Convinced I hadn't hallucinated it, that my exhausted brain hadn't conjured phantoms from desperate hope and stubborn refusal to accept defeat, I moved cautiously along the side of the house. My breath formed white plumes in the frigid air, visible evidence of my presence that dissipated almost as quickly as it appeared. I tightened my jaw to keep my teeth from chattering, forcing my body into something resembling composure despite the cold that was working its way through my coat and into my bones.

The cold was biting now, sharper than it had been even an hour ago, but it helped sharpen my senses. Made me more alert, more aware of every detail, every small sound or movement that might be significant. Cold was clarifying in its own way, stripping away the mental clutter and forcing focus on immediate physical reality.

I reached the kitchen window and paused, pressing close to the wall, feeling the cold brick against my shoulder through my coat. The interior was still, pristine. The same eerie perfection I'd seen the night before, unchanged and somehow even more disturbing in daylight. Stainless steel appliances gleamed like surgical instruments in an operating theatre, catching the morning light and throwing it back with mirror-like precision. Not a mug, not a crumb, not a speck of grease or fingerprint anywhere in sight.

This wasn't just clean—it was curated. Staged. A display home presented for viewing rather than a kitchen that had ever been used for the messy business of preparing food and living life.

And that was what troubled me most.

There was no mess because there had been no life here recently. No warmth. No signs of someone making toast in a hurry, burning it slightly and scraping off the black bits over the sink. No half-finished washing up left to soak whilst someone rushed off to work. No forgotten grocery bags on the counter waiting to be unpacked. No cluster of coffee cups accumulated over several days because someone kept forgetting to load the dishwasher.

Everything in its place, and too perfectly so. It was the kind of cleanliness people left behind when they didn't expect to return, when they'd erased their presence deliberately and completely. Or the kind of cleanliness someone imposes when they want to erase the traces of something unspeakable, when they need the space to look innocent even though terrible things happened there.

I'd seen both versions. The first in houses where people had fled—domestic violence victims who'd packed the essentials and run, leaving behind cleaned spaces as if to make one final good impression before disappearing. The second in crime scenes, where perpetrators had attempted to sanitise evidence, had scrubbed and bleached and wiped in futile attempts to make murder look like nothing at all.

This felt like the second.

I edged further along the exterior wall, tracing the house's curve towards the back garden, boots crunching softly on frost-brittle grass. The side gate was padlocked.

I climbed it in a single, fluid motion, landing harder than I'd intended. My knees protested the impact with sharp reminders that I wasn't as young as I used to be.

There it was again. The line. And I'd crossed it.

The awareness arrived with perfect clarity, undeniable and immediate. I'd just trespassed on private property without warrant or invitation or any legitimate legal standing. There'd be no explaining this if someone called it in, no excuse that didn't unravel everything I was trying to protect—my rank, my reputation, and the paper-thin illusion that this was still a professional investigation and not a reckoning with a ghost that had haunted me for fifteen years.

But the truth was somewhere inside this house. I could feel it with the same certainty that I'd felt the face in the window. Somewhere beyond these walls, in rooms I couldn't see, was the answer to where Jamie had gone and why. Whether he'd gone willingly or been taken. Whether he was alive or—

I couldn't finish the thought. Wouldn't let myself complete it. Not yet.

The morning air stung against the back of my neck as I crept along the rear wall of the house, keeping low, moving with the caution. Each step calculated, each pause deliberate, trying to present the smallest profile possible.

Then I reached the back-bedroom window.

The one I'd seen during my initial reconnaissance. The one where the black bags had been stacked against the wall like silent accusations.

I stopped just short, placing my palm against the rendered brick to steady myself, feeling the cold roughness of it against my skin. My pulse had quickened. Not from exertion—the movement hadn't been strenuous enough for that. From proximity. To truth. To danger. To Jamie.

I didn't look inside immediately. Couldn't. Needed a moment to prepare for whatever I might see, whatever confirmation or denial waited beyond that glass.

I stood still, eyes closed, and summoned the beach.

It was a technique I'd developed years ago, a mental refuge I could retreat to when cases became overwhelming, when the accumulated weight of human darkness threatened to crush something essential inside me. A psychological circuit-breaker.

It was always the same place: white sand cove on Tasmania's east coast, somewhere near Bicheno perhaps, though the specific location mattered less than the feeling it evoked. Sun-warmed granite boulders smooth under my palms. The smell of salt and tea-tree oil, that distinctive Tasmanian coastal scent that existed nowhere else. A mental refuge carved from a summer morning far removed from any case, any crime scene, any memory of Queensland that might intrude.

The waves rolled gently in my mind, their rhythm soothing, predictable, eternal. The wind pulled the tension from my shoulders, invisible hands working out knots that had formed over hours and days and years. The air smelled of lemon myrtle, clean and sharp and free from the taint of human malice.

Three breaths. Inhale slowly through the nose, hold for a count of four, exhale through the mouth. A meditation technique learned in a stress management workshop I'd been required to attend after a particularly difficult case years ago.

Once more. Feeling my heart rate slow, my muscles relax fractionally, the tight coil of anxiety in my chest loosening just enough to be manageable.

And again. The beach solidifying in my mind's eye, becoming more real than the cold brick against my palm, more present than the house behind me.

But that tranquillity was shattered abruptly, violently torn away before I could fully settle into it.

"Who the hell are you?"

The voice cut through the early morning stillness like a gunshot—sharp, unflinching, and utterly uninvited. It tore me from the quiet beach in my mind, scattering the imagined waves and wind like ash in a gale. My eyes flew open, disoriented for the briefest moment, as reality slammed back into me.

Adrenaline surged through my system with such intensity it felt chemical, artificial, as if someone had injected it directly into my bloodstream. My heart pounded against my ribs like it wanted out, each beat so forceful I could feel it in my throat, in my temples, in my fingertips. Heat flooded my face—the sudden shame of being caught, mingling with the fight-or-flight response that surged through my limbs, making them feel simultaneously heavy and weightless, ready to run or fight without conscious decision.

I turned slowly towards the sound, schooling my features into something that might pass for calm, for professional composure, for the kind of neutral expression that suggested I had every right to be exactly where I was. But inside, I was already calculating risk with the desperate speed of someone who'd just realised they'd made a catastrophic error in judgement.

Did they see me climb the fence? Did they recognise me? Did they already have their phone in hand, triple zero dialled, waiting only to hit the call button once they'd assessed the threat level? Were they calling the police right now?

And then I saw him.

The voice belonged to a man—elderly, yes, but with the kind of posture that belied his years, that suggested a lifetime of discipline and rigid standards maintained long past the point when most people let such things slide. He stood on the other side of the boundary fence, framed against the morning light like a sentinel posted to guard against exactly this sort of intrusion. His dressing gown was tartan—the traditional pattern that spoke of Scottish heritage or simply old-fashioned taste—pulled tight across a barrel chest that had probably been impressive decades ago and still retained enough substance to command respect.

White hair combed, not a strand out of place despite the early hour. Hands tucked beneath crossed arms in a posture that conveyed both judgment and readiness. His face was a topographic map of age—creases carved deep from decades of weather, worry, and watchfulness. Lines that suggested a life lived outdoors, or at least a life that hadn't been soft, that hadn't avoided the hard edges of experience.

But it was his eyes that did it. Cold. Sharp. Assessing. The kind of eyes that weren't just looking at me, but reading me. Parsing my stance, my hesitation, the sweat blooming at my temple despite the cold that should have kept such physical manifestations of nerves at bay. Eyes that had learned to evaluate threat, to categorise strangers into types, to make rapid assessments based on tiny details most people would never notice.

A former serviceman. I'd bet my badge on it—if I had my badge with me, which I didn't, which was part of the problem. Army, most likely. Could've been a sergeant, the kind who'd spent years training younger men, breaking them down and rebuilding them according to military standards. Maybe even higher rank. The kind of neighbour who still woke at 0500 hours without an alarm, who swept his porch daily regardless of whether it needed it, who recorded number plates of unfamiliar cars on his block in a notebook he kept by the window.

The kind of neighbour who noticed everything, forgot nothing, and would absolutely call it in if he thought something wasn't right.

Brilliant.

My mind tripped through options like a card dealer showing me hands too fast to properly assess, each scenario stumbling before it reached my lips, each potential explanation revealing its inadequacy before I could fully form it. An official statement? But I had no warrant, no authorisation, no legitimate reason to be here at this hour. A personal visit gone wrong? To a house where I'd never been officially invited, at dawn, climbing fences? A welfare check? Without having announced myself, without wearing anything that identified me as police?

Each scenario stumbled before it reached my lips, collapsing under the weight of its own implausibility. I needed something that sounded real enough, official enough, to stop him from making a call that could see me frogmarched off my own bloody case, suspended pending investigation, explaining to Internal Affairs why I thought trespassing was appropriate behaviour for a Senior Detective.

"I'm Karl Jenkins. Detective Karl Jenkins," I said quickly, reaching for my wallet before my nerves could catch up with me, before the full implications of what I was about to do could register and stop me.

The words left my mouth with more conviction than I felt, projection making up for what authenticity lacked. They were true—just not in any way that actually mattered right now, not in any way that gave me legitimate authority to be where I was, doing what I was doing. My warrant card wasn't in that wallet, left behind in the morning's rush. My badge certainly wasn't. Just a few crumpled receipts from various service stations, a petrol station loyalty card that was probably expired, and an expired library card from before the department moved everything digital and my reading life had become entirely comprised of case files and forensic reports.

I flipped it open anyway and held it up in his direction—just long enough to let the leather catch the light, to let him register the gesture of authority without being able to examine its actual contents. Not long enough for him to see the lack of official identification, to notice that what I was showing him was essentially meaningless. It was a gamble. Pure theatre. But it was all I had.

"And who are you?" I added, layering my voice with a mild edge, a subtle challenge that shifted the dynamic. A tactical move learned in countless interrogation rooms—put him on the back foot, force him to justify his presence, his questions. Basic interview psychology. Don't let them linger too long on the details that don't help you. Don't give them time to think too carefully about what they're actually seeing.

Make them answer your questions instead of asking their own.

"Oh, I'm terribly sorry to have interrupted you," he said, his posture loosening just enough to indicate retreat, to signal that he'd accepted my implicit claim to authority.

Relief surged through me like a drug, flooding my system with warmth that had nothing to do with the ambient temperature. Not all the way to comfort—never that, not when I was still standing in someone's garden without legal justification. But far enough to let the pressure in my chest ease, to let me breathe properly again instead of the shallow, panicked breaths I hadn't even realised I'd been taking.

The bluff had landed. His apology wasn't entirely genuine—I could hear the reservation in it, the lingering uncertainty. But it confirmed what I needed: he believed I had a right to be here, or at least enough authority that he didn't want to challenge it further, didn't want to risk making trouble for himself by questioning someone who might be conducting official police business.

"I'm Terry," he added, straightening a little, reasserting some of his dignity even as he acknowledged my supposed authority. The edge had dulled but hadn't entirely disappeared. "I live across the street."

And there it was. An unexpected gift, wrapped in suspicion and delivered by accident.

Terry, the neighbour. The observer. The civilian CCTV system in a dressing gown. The exact kind of person detectives dream about when they need information about a neighbourhood—someone who paid attention, who noticed patterns, who would know if something was off even if they couldn't articulate exactly what or why.

He'd be the one who noticed bin days missed, who registered when porch lights were left on too long, who clocked visitors who didn't belong and remembered their faces weeks or months later. If anyone on this street had seen Luke, Jamie, or Kain in the past week—if anyone had witnessed comings and goings that might explain the mysteries piling up around this house—it would be him.

This encounter had just gone from nuisance to opportunity. From threat to asset. And I wasn't going to waste it.

"I'm looking for Luke Smith or Jamie Greyson," I continued, pressing for information whilst I had the chance, whilst he was still in that compliant mindset that came from believing he was talking to authority. "Have you seen either of them?"

I watched Terry's eyes with the focus of a man trained to extract truth from silence, to read the micro-expressions that people couldn't fully control even when they were trying to dissemble or hide information. The way his brow knit ever so slightly—not quite a frown, not quite squinting—could've been a reaction to the low morning sun that was now striking his face at an angle, or something more instinctive. A flicker of recognition? Suppressed thought? Some internal calculation about what he should say versus what he knew?

"Not in the last few days," he said at last, after a pause that lasted just slightly too long to be entirely natural.

I let the silence breathe for a moment, just long enough to invite elaboration without asking for it outright, employing the oldest interrogation technique in the book: uncomfortable silence that makes people want to fill it, to explain, to offer more information than was requested simply to make the awkwardness go away.

When none came, when Terry proved more disciplined than most civilians in resisting that urge, I fished inside my wallet. The search was more chaotic than I'd have liked, fingers clumsy with cold and nerves, pawing through the accumulated detritus of modern life. Receipts from the servo, crumpled and fading. A folded reminder from my physio about a missed appointment. Another forgotten coffee card, holes punched in a pattern I'd never complete.

Eventually, I found one of my bent, abused business cards—the ones I'd had printed years ago when I still thought carrying business cards was something detectives did. The corner was stained with something unidentifiable, possibly coffee, possibly something worse from a crime scene. The crease through my surname split it in two like a fracture line, making my name look like it belonged to two different people.

I ran it between my fingers, tried to smooth the worst of the damage, knowing it was futile but doing it anyway. And passed it to him over the fence, the gesture carrying more hope than confidence.

He studied it longer than I'd expected, holding it up to catch the morning light, examining it with the kind of scrutiny that made my pulse quicken again. I braced myself for a raised eyebrow, a question, anything that might puncture the thin veil of my authority. Is this official? Are you here in an official capacity? Where's your warrant? Your badge?

But none came. The questions remained unasked. He simply nodded, folded the card, and slipped it into the pocket of his dressing gown.

"But," Terry said.

The single word sharpened my attention instantly, snapping my focus back from the relief I'd been starting to feel.

He shifted his weight, settling into a different stance, lowering his voice as if the dew-coated fence between us might harbour ears, as if the morning air itself might carry words to listeners we couldn't see.

"Their friend has been here a lot recently. She's made a few trips in a small truck."

The air changed. Shifted. The entire dynamic of the conversation pivoted on that single statement.

My mind pivoted with it, recalibrated in real time, spinning through implications and questions faster than I could properly process them. A woman. A truck. Not Jamie. Not Kain. Not Luke. None of the names currently in play, none of the people accounted for in the official investigation.

Someone else.

An unknown entity in an already shifting landscape. A variable I hadn't anticipated, a piece on the board I hadn't known existed.

"A small truck?" I echoed, barely masking the note of surprise that threatened to colour my voice with more emotion than was professional. "How odd. Do you have any idea what for? Are they moving?"

A loaded question, phrased casually, as if I was making conversation rather than fishing for intelligence. The kind of question that seemed innocuous on the surface but could yield significant information depending on how it was answered and what details were included or omitted.

But Terry didn't seem to notice the bait, didn't register my heightened interest as anything more than natural curiosity. Or if he did, he played it cooler than expected, maintained his calm demeanour without giving away whether he understood the significance of what he was telling me.

"Not sure. I don't think so. I think she's been making deliveries of some kind. I've not noticed anything leaving the house."

Deliveries. Not removals.

That mattered. That was significant.

People fleeing don't take delivery of goods. They pack what they can carry and abandon the rest. They don't arrange for things to be brought to them when they're trying to disappear.

People settling in do. People preparing for something do. A long stay. A hideout. Establishing a base of operations. Or people staging a scene, creating an appearance of normality where none existed, building a facade of ongoing domestic life to mask whatever was really happening.

Terry's eyes didn't drift as he spoke. He wasn't speculating. He wasn't embellishing or imagining or filling gaps in his knowledge with guesswork. He was simply relaying what he'd observed, with the matter-of-fact tone of a man who watched the world as it was, not as he imagined it to be.

"Very odd indeed," I said, forcing my voice to remain neutral, to not betray the significance this information held. "Well, do call me if you see or hear anything else, sir."

The honorific was deliberate, a small gesture of respect that cost me nothing and might buy future cooperation. That might make him more likely to pick up the phone if he noticed something else unusual, if this mystery woman returned, if anything else happened that struck him as wrong.

"Of course," Terry replied, and then added, "I'll make sure you're the first person I call."

The first person I call.

Something about his emphasis snagged at the back of my mind like a hook catching fabric. The phrasing was off—just slightly, just enough. A subtle tilt in tone that implied a second person might also be waiting for news, that I wasn't the only one who'd expressed interest in the comings and goings at this address.

Was someone else asking questions? Had someone else already been asking them? Had Claiborne sent someone else to watch the house without telling me? Or was someone else—someone outside the investigation, someone with their own agenda—also keeping tabs on Luke and Jamie?

The question opened up uncomfortable possibilities I didn't have time to explore right now.

"Brilliant!" I said too quickly, my smile stretched tighter than intended, betraying more eagerness than I'd meant to show. The word came out with false brightness, the kind of forced enthusiasm that anyone paying attention would recognise as performance rather than genuine pleasure.

We stood in a mutual pause—the kind of silence you fall into when the transaction is technically over, but something intangible still hangs in the air. When both parties know the conversation should end but neither quite knows how to gracefully exit it. I didn't shift my feet, didn't scratch my neck or check my watch or do any of the things people normally do to signal they're ready to move on. I let him make the next move, let him be the one to break the stalemate.

Eventually, he did.

"Well, I'll leave you to it then," Terry said, with the formal civility of a man closing a door politely but firmly, marking the boundary between his willingness to help and his need to return to his own morning routine.

He turned, the tartan hem of his dressing gown catching briefly on the wooden gate latch before pulling free, a moment of minor indignity that humanised him, made him less sentinel and more elderly man in slippers navigating the early morning.

And then, just as he stepped clear, just as he was about to disappear back towards his own house and leave me alone again—

"Terry?"

He paused. Stopped mid-stride and turned back, his expression patient but questioning.

I couldn't let him walk away without one more question. Couldn't let this opportunity slip past without mining it for every scrap of information it might yield.

"Have you seen anyone else around here? Last night or this morning?"

The vagueness was deliberate, calculated. If he thought I meant neighbours, he might answer one way—might tell me about dog walkers or early risers or the postman's schedule. If he thought I meant suspects, people who shouldn't be here, he might answer another way entirely. Either way, the interpretation itself might offer insight into what he'd noticed, what had struck him as unusual.

The question was a test as much as an inquiry.

Terry didn't hesitate. Didn't pause to think or consider or calculate his response.

"No, sir. Only you."

The answer came too quickly. Too smoothly. With too much certainty for someone who'd just been asked a vague question about an unspecified timeframe.

The grin returned—broad, toothy, but hollow. Like an actor leaning too far into character, overplaying the role of helpful neighbour until it became obviously false. His eye contact never wavered, unblinking in a way that should have been reassuring but instead left a hairline crack of discomfort running down my spine.

That stare held just a fraction too long. The smile maintained just slightly past the point of natural warmth. Everything about his expression and posture seemed calculated, performed, managed.

He knew something. Or suspected something. Or simply enjoyed the idea that he might be more informed than me, might be holding information he could choose to share or withhold based on his own inscrutable criteria.

Whatever the truth, he was playing a game I didn't fully understand, operating according to rules he hadn't shared.

I nodded as he turned away, retreating across the street with the slow deliberation of a man who had all the time in the world, who wasn't hurried or worried or concerned about anything more urgent than getting back inside before his tea got cold.

I stayed rooted to the spot for a moment longer, my mind spiralling through possibilities like water circling a drain. A woman in a truck. Deliveries of unknown contents. A watchful neighbour too precise in his vagueness, too careful in his answers. And a house that refused to reveal its truths, that sat before me with its blank windows and perfect facade like a locked box I couldn't open.

This wasn't just a disappearance anymore. This was something more complex, more deliberate, more orchestrated.

It was a construction.

Of something.

And someone had gone to considerable lengths to make sure it stayed undisturbed, to ensure that whatever was happening here remained hidden behind the veneer of suburban normality.