Read If I Close My Eyes Now for Free Online

guided them down the corridor and past the bathroom where they had climbed in. Up ahead was a small room lined with tiles. It contained only a dining table, two chairs, a stove and a gas canister.
    In the opposite direction, the corridor led to the front of the house, where the dentist’s consulting-room was. It was separated from the rest of the house by aluminium screens and recently installed milky-coloured plastic tiles. A few feet before this, two closed doors stood opposite each other.
    They tiptoed towards them.
    The left-hand door was ajar. They pushed it and went in. It was filled with X-ray plates and photographic negatives hanging from strings. To one side, on a sink, stood two rectangular metal box trays, half filled with liquid. A sheet of dark plastic was floating in one of them. Eduardo picked it up, examined it in the torchlight, then held it out to Paulo: images of a tooth with a long root. Paulo dropped it back into the liquid.
    At first the door to the room opposite seemed locked, but it yielded when Eduardo turned the porcelain doorknob and pushed hard. The torchlight fell on a dressing-table mirror, and they saw their own reflections: two young boys in a darkened house, searching for they had no idea what.
    Most of the room was taken up with a wide double bed, covered with a green woven bedspread. Against the wall next to it stood an inlaid wooden chiffonier with rounded edges and several drawers. There was nothing on its marble top. No pictures of saints on the walls. Or crucifix above the bed. No pillows either.
    Eduardo went over to the dressing table. He saw cosmetics, boxes of powder, sponges, bottles of nail polish. They were no different from the ones he knew from his mother’s dressing table, except for the colours: all the murdered woman’s lipsticks and polish were as bright red as a rotten guava.
    He opened the four drawers carefully, one by one. He found a comb here, hairpins there, a hairbrush in another one, a manicure set, a couple of buttons, a pincushion with needles and pins sticking in it, a pair of scissors, a few coins. No revealing note, letter or message.
    ‘Shine the light over here, Eduardo.’
    He turned, and pointed the torch. Paulo was holding several identical pieces of clothing he had just taken out of the bottom wardrobe drawer. He put one on his head. It looked like a double bonnet. He smiled, delighted with himself.
    ‘It’s a brassiere, Eduardo!’
    ‘Put it back.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘They’re a dead woman’s clothes.’
    ‘Have you ever seen so many of them?’
    ‘Don’t go messing around.’
    ‘But aren’t we looking for clues?’
    ‘A brassiere isn’t a—’
    He stopped. He raised his finger to his lips, urging Paulo to be quiet.
    ‘What?’
    Eduardo repeated his signal. He pointed towards the corridor. There was a new, irregular-shaped patch of brightness.
    The beam of light crossed the corridor ceiling, then the floor. Another torch. Someone else was in the house. He must be wearing rubber-soled shoes, because all they could hear was a creaking sound as the old floorboards were pressed down at regular intervals. Short, cautious steps.
    ‘Who—?’
    Eduardo clasped his hand round Paulo’s mouth. The sound of footsteps continued along the corridor. The light from the other torch turned towards the room they had left earlier. The corridor was plunged back into darkness.
    They heard the creak of the double wardrobe door, then the sound of coat-hangers being moved. Eduardo pointed his chin to indicate they should get out of there. He took the brassiere from Paulo and put it back in the drawer. As he was doing so, he spotted a rectangular box. He lifted it out, hesitating whether to open it or take it with them. Straightening up, Paulo knocked against it. The contents spilled on to the floor.
    ‘Condoms!’ exclaimed Paulo, recognizing the rubber sheaths his brother used. ‘Look how many there are!’
    He bent down to pick some up, but Eduardo tugged on