Chapter 185Windows to View

My mind wound around itself trying to put everything in place, the news and the facts, the position of the police. It certainly didn't sound they were actively looking for the 'caller'. Good for me.

Silently, I laid myself back on the roof. There was no other choice now. If I wanted to know more, and I did, I would have to float down and watch in the windows. But I had to be careful.

Really careful.

The house made it really hard to do so, some lights below lit op the walls in most places, making few shadows I could hide in. The only way I could think of was hanging upside down from the roof.

I started with the top floor windows, looking in with no more than the top of my head showing. Fortunately
for me, nothing covered the windows on the inside, no curtains or anything. Not that surprising on the top floor.

What I saw slightly surprised me.

In a way I wasn't sure what I was expecting exactly, but what I got was just a nice, clean home with nothing special.

Nothing special, that is, if you were used to a large piano standing on the first floor of a house with several other, expensive looking, instruments as well. Why? The room was simply filled with all kinds of instruments, shapes and types I'd never even seen before. Probably from countries all around the world.

Was he a collector?

I moved to another window, the room next to the one filled with instruments. In a way this one was both stranger and more normal.

The room was quite bare with nothing but a blue square, a mat probably, covering most of the floor. The walls were mostly off-white with a darker line about half-way up. The doors were flat, like the wall, and nothing but their outline and the doorknob betrayed their presence.

Odd.

The other three rooms on this side of the mansion weren't as impressive, despite being richly decorated. But to be honest, I never cared much for luxury. I did notice, however, the tendency of foreign objects to be spread around in the rooms. statuettes and the like.

There was a man working in one of the rooms on the other side of the mansion, behind a desk that reminded me all too much of the desk in the farm where...

Let's stay focused.

There wasn't anything special this time, no ink pot with things I could not identify, or paper that might look odd. Just a leather-bound book he was writing in with a metal-like pen. The writing was just calm and precise, noting down rather than writing.

Something about him was very familiar... He was much older than me, perhaps forty or more, it was hard to tell. At least he still had all his hair and besides a silvery gleam, it was still dark of color. Incredibly familiar. As if I'd seen him before. I couldn't quite place it but I was sure I'd seen him often. But where...

Of course seeing someone from behind wasn't the easiest way to recognize someone but I was sure. I'd seen him before, it screamed at my memory, screamed at my past, wanting to be found. If only I could just grasp that one little detail that would make it absolutely clear.

I knew this man.

But worse still...

I was certain I should know him well...