Peter James - The House on Cold Hill

He looked balefully at Ollie and shrugged. ‘The action of the expansion and contraction tends to have one of two effects — either it causes a catastrophic failure of piping joints, or it loosens the blockages in the pipes and you get a surge of water. Get that surge and the taps, with their disintegrated washers, can’t hold it back. The problem is compounded by the whole antiquated water system in this house being interlinked. You’ve got a galvanized service tank in the loft space between the attics, directly above your bedroom. When tanks like that age, they start getting blisters, and there’s a danger if pressure builds up too much that the sides can just blow — collapse.’

‘That’s what happened, you think, Mike?’ Ollie sipped his coffee; it tasted good. The aroma gave a momentary respite from the smell of damp that had been pervading the house during the past few hours.

‘I can’t tell you for certain, Ollie.’ The plumber pursed his lips and shook his head from side to side. ‘But if you add everything up — the ancient pipework, no lagging anywhere against the ravages of past winters, the vermin infestation, the complete absence of any plumbing maintenance, a service tank fifty years past its sell-by date — you’ve got all the ingredients for a perfect storm.’ He shook his head. ‘I think it’s criminal anyone allowed such a beautiful house to get into this condition. I’ll tell you one thing, you’re lucky all the washers are corroded — if the taps had held, then several of the piping joints might have failed and you’d have had flooding in rooms all over the house.’

Ollie listened carefully, drank some more coffee, then thought for some moments. ‘OK, what you’re saying does make sense, but if all the tap washers were useless, how come I was able to turn the taps off and stop the water? The taps were all opened — surely they couldn’t have opened by themselves?’

‘Well, they could, Ollie, if there was enough vibration in the pipes. Like the nuts on the wheel of a car can work loose if there’s enough vibration for long enough.’

Ollie’s phone pinged with an incoming text. He saw it was from Cholmondley but didn’t read it. He looked back at the plumber. ‘Nearly every tap in the house — and the outside one as well?’

‘As I said, Ollie, I can’t tell you categorically that this is what happened. There is, of course, another possibility.’

‘Which is?’

‘Someone causing mischief. Some intruder, vandal?’

‘Mike, I can’t see anyone breaking into a house at three in the morning and then running around turning all the taps on. That doesn’t make any sense.’

‘I’m just speculating — couldn’t have been your daughter and some of her friends having a bit of a laugh?’

‘A bit of a laugh?’

He raised his hands. ‘Kids today. Mine are constant mischief.’

‘We’re lucky with Jade, she’s pretty sensible — she—’ He stopped and frowned, as a thought occurred to him.

When Jade was younger she had sleepwalked regularly. Could it have been her who had done this? Could she have gone around the entire house, in her sleep, turning on taps? Why? And yet, he did remember one incident, some years back when she was about seven, when she’d gone out into the garden shed, lifted several items out and put them on the lawn. In the morning she’d had absolutely no recollection of doing it. And another occasion, around that same time, when she had gone into the kitchen and emptied everything out of the fridge and freezer and stacked it all neatly on the floor, again with no recollection in the morning.

‘My daughter had a sleepwalking problem when she was younger. I wonder — I–I’m just — could she have done this?’ Ollie said. ‘Just—’ He fell silent for some moments, then turned his palms upwards in despair. ‘I’m just speculating.’

‘That’s all I’m doing, too,’ Michael Maguire said. ‘I’m just speculating.’

Ollie went back up to his office. The plumber’s explanation for the running taps might account for some of them. But surely not for every damned tap in the entire bloody house? He just couldn’t buy that. Although he wished he could.

He’d not yet told Caro about the running taps; until the ceiling had caved in she’d only stirred and not really been aware of the drama around the house. How many taps were there? He started to count in his head. The bathroom in the attic — two in the sink there and a mixer shower — three. But they hadn’t been running. On the first floor there were the en-suite ones in their bedroom, Jade’s and the yellow room, plus the family bathroom for the other four spare rooms — and the washbasin in the blue room. Downstairs there were two toilets with basins off the hall, and then the kitchen, the scullery and the outside tap.

He noted them down, trying hard to think with his tired brain if he’d missed any out. The sink in the disused kitchen in the cellar, he suddenly remembered, and noted that down also. The more he thought about it, the less convincing the plumber’s explanation seemed. Not every tap on the main system, every single one. No way.

Jade?

The possibility that it was Jade doing it in her sleep did make uncomfortable sense.

He thought back again to some of those previous episodes, then he sat at his desk, logged on and googled sleepwalking. As he had imagined, there were hundreds and hundreds of sites. He went back and entered some key words to narrow the search parameters. Then he scanned through the shorter list of sites, selected and began to read. The third site he came to interested him the most. He bookmarked it and read through it several times, taking particular note of the list of possible symptoms.

Little or no memory of the event — that had been true. She always had no memory.

Difficulty arousing the sleepwalker during an episode — also true of Jade.

Screaming when sleepwalking occurs in conjunction with sleep terrors.

Jade had screamed last night. He’d run into her room, turned off the taps on the overflowing bathtub and pulled the plug out. She had terror in her eyes, and now, thinking about that more clearly, he could remember that look of frozen fear on her face from years back. It was the same way she used to look straight after waking from a sleepwalking episode when she was seven.

She’d been quiet in the car on the school run this morning, Instagramming all her friends with a dramatic picture of the hole in her parents’ bedroom ceiling. He had no idea what she was saying but could see several rows of smiley, scowly, frowny and other emoticons.

Then a thought struck him hard. They’d taken Jade to a child psychologist back then. The woman had put her night terrors and sleepwalking down to her fears at starting at her new school, and predicted they would stop when she settled in and started making friends. The psychologist had been right, that was exactly what happened.

Now Jade was in her early days at another school.

Was the pattern repeating itself?

It made sense.

A flash alert for an incoming email from Chris Webb caught his eye, distracting him, and he opened it.

No luck with that old boy with the pipe, I’m afraid. I went on a Photos forum to see what I could find there — it seems that what usually happens is that photographs get misfiled — but they don’t disappear completely. Not like your chap has. Don’t know what to suggest. You sure he wasn’t a ghost?

‘Dad, can I invite Charlie as well as Niamh to my birthday party? We will still have it, won’t we?’