She was standing outside the house; waiting for him. It was getting dark. Nine o’clock. Most of the commuters had already left the city and were on their way home or already sitting in front of the television watching some soap opera or murder mystery.

She shivered and pulled her dark overcoat tighter around her body.

Working late was part of the job. If someone wanted to view a house for sale then she had to be there, whatever the time or the weather. She’d been doing this job for almost four years now and she enjoyed it. It gave her a lot of freedom. A chance to get out and see some of the city and the surrounding area rather than just sitting in an office all day.

She’d met all sorts of people in the last four years. Some nice and some not so nice. She remembered her very first client. A girl of twenty; single parent; one little boy. The girl was looking for somewhere cheap to rent. A one-room apartment in some high-rise block in the less salubrious part of town.

She felt sorry for the girl. No husband to support her. He’d disappeared shortly after the baby was born. Left her in the lurch – like so many men these days. So the girl had to work all day as a waitress and leave her little lad with a neighbour until the evening.

It wasn’t fair. Why should the woman have to bear all the responsibilities while the man just buggered off?

Across the road, in the gloom of a rainy evening, she saw a man looking in her direction. Was this the prospective buyer? Or just some guy trying to decide if she was offering her services, as they politely call it?

This part of town was known for its prostitutes and junkies. The houses were old and usually run-down, and many of them were owned by pimps and criminals who made a living out of drugs and women.

It wasn’t the safest place for a woman on her own, but it was all part of her job as an estate agent.

The man was still watching her from across the road and she tried to get a better look at him. She’d never met her client before. He’d phoned two days ago in answer to her advertisement offering the house for sale.

‘Perhaps I can show you around the place some time?’ she’d suggested on the phone.

‘It will have to be in the evening,’ the man had said. ‘After work. Say around nine.’

‘That’s okay with me.’

She gave him the address of the house and took details of his name and phone number – both of which might well be false if it wasn’t a genuine enquiry. That had happened a few times in the past when some freak just wanted to meet her on her own.

‘How will I recognise you?’ she had asked.

She sensed the pause before he answered, ‘Tall, dark…and handsome. And very well built, if you get my meaning.’ And he’d laughed; a lewd, suggestive laugh.

But the man now crossing the road towards her was hardly what she’d call tall, and certainly not handsome. He was about two inches taller than her, probably in his mid-fifties, and although he did have dark hair there was very little of it left on his head.

‘Miss Stewart?’ he asked as he reached out to shake her hand.

‘Yes. And you’re..’

‘Mike Peterson…Mad Mike to my friends.’

She immediately recognised the lewd laugh, and felt his thumb rubbing the back of her hand as he stood shaking hands for over a minute.

He was obviously a ‘toucher’; liked the feel of female flesh. Well, she knew how to handle that sort. She’d met plenty of them in her job.

‘Have you had a chance to look round the area?’ she asked.

‘Yeah. Bit rough. Not the type of place your granny would like. And not the sort of area for a pretty young girl all on her own.’ He leered at her. ‘What you need is someone to keep an eye on you. Protect you from the big, bad wolf!’

She smiled. ‘I’ve come across plenty of those in my time. But I think I know how to handle them now.’

Turning away from him she put the key in the lock and opened the dark brown door which led into an equally dark brown interior of a place that smelled of dampness and decay.

The house had obviously been empty for a long time. All the windows were closed. The electricity had been switched off. And the temperature inside was just above freezing.

The man stood right behind her as she took a torch from her large shoulder bag.

‘Sorry about the lack of light, Mr. Peterson. Perhaps we should come back during the daytime when you can get a better look at the place?’

‘No problem. This just makes things a little more…interesting.’ She could feel his breath over her shoulder, smelling of beer. ‘And the name’s Mike. Not Mr. Peterson. And how about you? What do your friends call you?’

She hesitated. ‘Sarah.’

‘Sarah Stewart… Nice. Refined.’ He paused, watching her. ‘Well, Sarah, where do we go from here? …The bedroom?’

It was always the same. Get a man on his own and sooner or later he’d suggest the bedroom. They thought they were being witty, seductive, but actually they were just being predictable.

‘Don’t let’s rush things.’ Her tone was tempting, enticing. ‘We haven’t seen downstairs yet.’

She felt his hand pat her bottom playfully as he said, ‘ Okay. You’re the boss. You lead on and I’ll follow that beautiful rear-end of yours.’

Following right behind her, occasionally putting his hand on her shoulder to steady himself in the dark, he allowed himself to be directed from one dismal room to the next.

‘I guess you could call this the dining area,’ she said as the torch light revealed a room barely large enough to hold a small table and four chairs. ‘And next to it we have the kitchen with a rather old-fashioned gas cooker and –‘

Her explanation was suddenly interrupted by a rat scurrying across the tiled floor, trying to avoid the beam of light from the torch.

‘I see we’ve got guests.’ Peterson spoke in a rather nervous voice, pretending to be unconcerned at the interruption.

‘Sorry about that,’ Sarah apologised. ‘Do you want to go on?’

‘Sure. I’m willing if you are?’

She could sense the nervousness in his reply as he tried to hide his obvious fear.

‘We’ll go upstairs and I’ll show you the bedrooms.’

‘That’s the best offer I’ve had all week,’ he sniggered as he kept close behind her, sensing the swaying movement of her hips in those skin-tight trousers as they mounted the steep, narrow staircase that led to the equally dark rooms upstairs.

‘Don’t you sometimes get worried about showing people around these deserted houses? Just you and some man. All alone. In the dark.’

‘No. Not really,’ she answered. ‘I’ve got used to the dark.’

Her mind wandered back to her childhood in a house not unlike this one, with its dismal rooms and the flickering candle which was the only source of light allowed by her step-father in her bleak, colourless bedroom.

‘But there are so many freaks around these days,’ Peterson said. ‘And you’re a very attractive young lady. You really are taking a chance on your own with some guy you’ve never met before.’

‘Like you?’

She felt his arms curl around her waist from behind. ‘I’m one of the nicer guys. There are plenty of men who’d take advantage of being here right now, in the bedroom of an empty house, with no one to hear you shout for help.’

The words brought back another memory and a voice from the past – the voice that said: “Keep quiet. Don’t make a noise. No one can hear you. No one can help you,Sarah.”

So she’d kept quiet. Not made a noise. For three long, terrifying years. Until she was thirteen.

The light from the torch suddenly went out.

‘What happened?’ asked Peterson . ‘Is the battery dead?’

A soft, seductive voice answered him from the darkness. ‘No. I turned it off…Makes things more interesting, as you said earlier.’

To Peterson it was a sign of surrender; a willingness to submit to his desires. He removed his hands from her waist so she could turn round to face him. But she slipped past him in the darkness, walked silently across the room towards the door; moving like some nocturnal animal that is at home in the dark.

‘This some sort of sexy game?’ Peterson asked uncertainly.

‘Hide and Seek,’ her voice floated towards him. ‘Like when I was a kid. I hide and you find me.’

‘And if I do?’

Her voice giggled sensuously. ‘Then you win.’

He knew exactly what she meant.

Holding out his hands like a blind man, he moved slowly in the direction of her enticing voice. His hands touched a wall and he followed it until he reached the wooden door which had been left open for him. Through the door and along the wall he made his hesitant way, inch by inch, until his right hand slid from the hardness of a brick wall into the emptiness of space.

‘You lose, I’m afraid!’

Her voice was right behind him and her hands touched his back as she pushed with all her strength.

She heard the scream as he fell into the blackness; heard the unmistakable sound of his head crashing against wall as he hit the bottom of the stairs.

After that there was silence.

Just like the first time with her stepfather. Almost twelve years ago. And the second and third times when those lecherous animals had tried to rape her while she showed them around the empty houses.

The police would probably put it down to a mugging, or a gangland killing, or maybe even an accident with some prostitute. It was that sort of area.

Which was why it was difficult to sell houses in this part of town. This lonely, deserted, dangerous part of town.

But she’d still keep on trying.