Rob Johnson - Lifting the Lid Read Online Free PDF Page A

only half-heartedly attempted to stifle a belch. ‘Come on. You’ve got work to do.’

 
     
     
    CHAPTER SEVEN
     
    Trevor could hear voices. He was almost certain of it.
    He pressed his ear to the door once again. From somewhere along the corridor, he could just make out the sound. Two women, chatting and laughing. Every so often, the voices disappeared completely and then reappeared again a few minutes later, becoming gradually more audible each time. This was exactly the sound he had been hoping to hear for the past hour, and he prayed he was right about the people the voices belonged to.
    He sucked on the knuckle he’d gashed whilst trying to fix the broken toilet flush. Although he was fully aware of his severely limited plumbing skills, he’d felt morally unable to simply leave the unflushed loo for someone else to find. Nor had it been an option to call reception and get somebody to come and repair it as this would have revealed that he was illegally harbouring a dog in his room. To his relief, however, when he’d removed the porcelain cistern lid and balanced it on the edge of the bath, the problem had seemed fairly straightforward. The bolt which had become dislodged from the lever hinge lay at the bottom of the cistern. It was merely a question of retrieving it and replacing it in its rightful position.
    In hindsight, Trevor couldn’t understand why he had been quite so cavalier about the difficulty of the task in hand. He would normally approach any such job in the sure and certain knowledge that if it appeared simple at first sight, it would be bloody difficult, and if it appeared difficult, it would be totally impossible. In this particular case, it had taken him an inordinate amount of time just to retrieve the fallen bolt due to the narrowness of the gap between the flush mechanism and the side of the cistern. He’d been able to slide his hand through, but his forearm had become trapped when the bolt was only half a centimetre from his fingertips, so he’d searched the room for anything which might resemble a pair of pliers. In the end, he’d had to make do with the nail scissors from his washbag, and after several attempts, he’d managed to get the blades to grip the bolt firmly enough for him to ease it upwards through the water. On three occasions, however, the bolt had slipped from the grasp of the scissors and fallen back to the bottom just as it was almost within reach of his free hand
    When he had finally retrieved the elusive bolt, it had taken him a matter of seconds to insert it through the holes in the two parts of the lever hinge. He had realised that there was a small nut which would have secured the bolt in place, but since this also lay at the bottom of the cistern, he’d decided that he could still get the flush to work as long as he was careful. The first time he’d tested it, he was obviously not careful enough, and he had watched in horror as the bolt slipped from the hinge and sank rapidly down through the water.
    ‘Dammit!’
    Straightening up from his stooping position, he’d brushed against the cistern lid, and it had tottered for a moment and then fallen from the edge of the bath and broken into half a dozen pieces on the tiled floor below.
    ‘Dammit!!!’
    The noise must have woken Milly as she had instantly started barking to warn off the suspected but unseen intruder. Trevor had raced into the bedroom to find her standing on the bed, directing her attentions fixedly at the main door and in exactly the opposite direction to the bathroom.
    He had hissed at her to be quiet, and for once, she had obeyed, turning towards him with a quizzical expression, which might have been interpreted as: So no intruder then?
    After another half an hour of struggling, cursing and fiddling, the job was done. Gingerly pressing down the lever with one hand whilst simultaneously holding the bolt in place with the other, a gush of water had finally dispatched the contents of the toilet bowl