Vic woke when his chin slipped off his hand. The bread bag had fallen between his knees, and for a moment the smell of cheese and the hard seat beneath him belonged to an ordinary journey home. He reached for a phone that was zipped inside his jacket, remembered the sword behind the bench, and stayed where he was.
Dan had gone back to the court. Beside Vic, Owen sat with his coat open over the sling while Tess turned his fingers towards the lamp and asked whether anything felt different. He considered each question before answering. When she had finished, she helped him settle the coat again and waited while he stood.
"Walking," she said. "Nothing to carry."
Owen looked at the spear and left it against the wall.
Perry came over from the service door, passing the rubber torch from one hand to the other as a woman in a ferry fleece took his chair. Ruth followed with two folded blankets tied inside a sheet, small enough to carry against her back. She had also found a shopping bag for Tess's kit, though Tess made her take the unopened biscuit packet out before putting dressings in.
"That can go in mine," Vic said.
He held his canvas bag open. Ruth added the biscuits beside the water bottles, then borrowed June's pencil to write on the back of their route sheet. Looking over her shoulder, Vic saw two blankets, one sheet above the name Ruth. She pressed the paper against her thigh to keep it flat.
"So they come home again," she said.
At the court door June went through the proposed route with Perry. The path by the water would get them as far as the fishmarket wicket, but the main gate at the other end was still locked, with good reason. That left the street behind the flats and the delivery road beyond it, both marked with questions on their map.
"You saw something at the upper end," Perry said.
"They did. Nearly two hours ago now."
June touched the pencilled time. Perry leaned closer, following the line west towards the Arsenal until it bent away from the street with the blocked bridge.
"We look from the corner first. If it's still there, we come back."
She gave him the pencil. "Write when. Wherever you get to."
Tess had left her red bag behind the café counter with Helen, who came to the doorway carrying a piece of paper folded into quarters. They spoke in low voices while Vic lifted the sword and waited for Perry to decide what to do with the spear.
"I've never used one of these," Perry said.
"Carry it with the head clear of people," Owen told him. "Don't try anything clever."
"I was hoping for more than that."
Owen showed him where the crossbar was missing, taking the shaft briefly in his right hand while Perry kept the torch on it. He explained what had happened when the bar broke. Perry looked from the bare fastening to the sling, then moved his forward hand further down the wood.
They left at 03:47 through the rear court, with Dan holding the street gate and Ruth stopping beside him long enough to hand over the flat key. When Vic turned back from the pavement, she was already coming after them with the bundled bedding high on her shoulders. Dan waited for the gate to close before pulling at it from inside.
The street behind the flats climbed more than Vic had expected. He had imagined it level because the shop roofs made an almost straight line from the harbour, but the pavement rose past half-sunk doors and a row of bins whose lids were held down with bricks. He kept finding another stretch of wall above the reach of the lamp.
At the first corner Perry lowered the spear until its point stopped projecting beyond the brickwork. Owen stood beside him, listening, while the others waited by a locked bakery delivery door. There was a scuff of rubber as Ruth put down the bedding. Vic wished she had kept it on; the sound seemed to travel much further than their feet had.
Perry looked round, came back, and held up his empty hand. Then he remembered the torch in it and turned the beam towards the paving.
"Nothing I can see. Vans both sides."
"Past the white one?" Owen asked.
"Can't see past that."
They went as far as the white van together. From behind its rear wheel Vic could see a passage between two shops, a bin lying on its side and the dark mouth of the next turning. The bin had spilled onion skins into the gutter. Something moved among them, lifting and settling, and Vic had Owen's elbow in his grip before the draught reached his own face.
He let go before Owen had to ask.
Ruth and Tess crossed behind them when Perry called. They stayed close enough to share the light, with Owen in the middle and the weapons at either end; whenever the pavement narrowed, Vic turned his sword along his right leg. His back had stiffened on the bench. Going uphill loosened it a little, but stepping off a kerb pulled at the same place as the chair had.
"Slow down a moment," he said.
Perry stopped beside a shuttered shop. While they waited, Ruth shifted her bundle onto its window ledge and asked Owen whether he needed to sit. He shook his head, then changed his mind and leaned against the sill beside her.
Nobody hurried him. Tess shone her lamp down the street they had just walked, illuminating their separate patches of damp footprints where a leaking downpipe crossed the pavement.
Beyond the last shops the delivery road turned back towards the harbour. Vic recognised it by a steel post he had once reversed a hired van into, though without the car park lights he missed the turn until Perry pointed out the rising wall. They passed a parked delivery van with its rear doors open and cartons lying beneath them. The pavement alongside was clear enough for one person, but Ruth put her bundle down again to try the gap with her arms held out.
"Not carrying the chair like this," she said.
Vic lit the other side with his phone, which he had taken out at the bend. There was room in the road if they moved a fallen carton, though whoever took the front handles would have to walk backwards down the slope on the return. He marked the van on their sheet and left the carton where it was until they knew they could use the road beyond it.
At the top, the road widened into the Arsenal's delivery apron. A low wall separated it from the plaza; a broad opening beside the building let them walk round to the main doors. The stone steps down to the shore road were on the far side, invisible from here until Perry turned his torch along the parapet.
Vic looked up at the workshop window. All the glass he could see was intact, though that gave him very little comfort about what lay behind it. His body wanted to go up and check the bench before they brought anything else in.
Owen held out his good hand for the light.
"Key's caught."
Vic put the sword against the wall and helped free the lanyard from Owen's coat lining. The lock turned as reluctantly as it always had; Owen eased the door towards himself, lifted the handle, and tried again. This time they heard the bolt draw back.
The hall smelt of cold stone and the floor polish used before the Assaying. Across it the Exchange occupied the old ticket desk's place, dark until Tess's lamp caught the edge of its counter. Vic left it alone and looked beneath the cloakroom tables while Perry checked behind the leaflet rack.
When all five were inside, Ruth helped Perry lift the night bar into its brackets. Owen tested the closed doors with his shoulder, keeping the sling clear of the wood, then sat on the guard's stool. Vic checked the time and wrote 04:31 beside the Arsenal on June's sheet.
"Now show me the room," Tess said.
The boxes under the cloakroom table contained souvenir mugs.
Vic pulled the nearest carton out far enough to see the picture of the Arsenal repeated along its side, remembering the argument about whether the handles would survive the post. They had ordered too many. Beneath the other table lay leaflets for an exhibition that had closed before he started working here.
"Can those go?" Ruth asked.
"They're stock."
"Can the stock go somewhere else?"
He looked towards the stair, then through the little gap behind the counter where staff reached the tap. There was a passage there, with the toilets off it and a side exit used by people who smoked. Beyond a turn and a fire door it continued into the loading bay. Deliveries went upstairs from the bay stair; he normally came through the front and had forgotten how much of the ground floor he scarcely used.
"There's storage at the back."
"We haven't looked at the back," Tess said. "Here first."
Ruth carried the bedding to the counter while Vic and Perry moved the mug cartons into the hall, where Owen could see them. They were too heavy for Vic to lift comfortably from the floor, so he opened each and passed smaller trays up to Perry. Ruth brought the empty cartons after them. A box that had seemed a minor nuisance occupied most of ten minutes before they had it stacked again.
Tess watched the folding tables wobble as Perry tried their legs. Neither was fit to lie someone on. They collapsed the legs and leaned the tables against the hall wall instead, leaving the cloakroom's fixed wooden bench exposed beneath the coat hooks.
"That stays," Tess said. "Somebody who can sit will want it."
She put her shopping bag at one end, knelt, and lay down on her back on the bare floor, surprising Vic into asking if she was all right.
"Come beside me. Where would you kneel?"
He lowered himself carefully into the space between her and the counter. His shoulder met its overhang before both knees were down.
"Right."
"Turn me the other way."
Once she lay with her head towards the hooks, he could reach her from either side. Ruth walked from the door to the tap without stepping over her feet. Tess remained there while they shifted the empty cartons out of the doorway, then held out a hand to Perry to help her up.
"One here. Someone sitting on the bench. Keep the route through open. We can see about more floor in the hall when we have people to watch it."
Vic was still picturing the three patients downstairs at the terminal when she took the lamp behind the counter. The tap coughed, threw a short brown spurt into the mop bucket and began to run clear. He watched the bucket fill. It was slow.
"Do you drink from this?" Tess asked.
"I use the one upstairs. Owen?"
From the hall, Owen said they came off the same incoming pipe, as far as he knew. Tess let the first bucket run, then asked Ruth to find something clean for the next water. There were no clean containers in the cupboard, only a mop head and two bottles of floor cleaner with hardened rims beneath their caps.
"We have bottles," Vic said.
"Keep those for drinking for now. I want this for washing."
They rinsed the bucket and put it back under the tap. In the staff toilet the cistern refilled after a test flush, much more slowly than Vic remembered, and he stayed beside it until the sound stopped. There was soap in the dispenser and one unopened pack of paper towels beneath the sink. He called both facts through to Ruth, who wrote them below her bedding.
Perry came back from the hall to look at the side door. Its push bar released without a key, opening onto the delivery apron they had crossed. He stepped outside while Vic held the door, then knocked to be let in; the exterior handle did nothing when Vic allowed it to latch.
"Someone stays here if we use it," Perry said. "Unless we've got another key."
Owen called out that they did, but Tess wanted the door shut and the key found before anyone relied on it. Perry brought Owen's bunch back and tried the side-door key from outside, returning it once they had seen it work. Ruth then walked the route herself, from the cleared floor past the toilet to the exit. Five metres or so, one turn round the end of the counter, no stairs.
"That I can use," Tess said. "What's beyond the next door?"
Vic fetched his sword.
The fire door stood across the passage just beyond the side exit, with a wired-glass pane too small to tell them much about the loading bay. Perry directed his torch through it while Vic watched the base of the frame. Both men stayed there long enough for Owen to ask whether they had heard something.
"No," Vic said. "We're looking."
Tess remained with Owen in the hall, her lamp lighting the route back. Ruth stood at the side exit, holding Vic's phone so they could keep Perry's beam ahead. When they opened the inner door, she kept her foot clear of its swing and told them she would let it close as soon as they were through.
Vic heard the latch catch behind him. The sound was welcome until he thought of having to reach it quickly.
The loading bay held an empty pallet truck and two wheeled cages, one full of display fittings. Beyond them the broad goods doors were shut, their inside bolts driven into the floor and lintel. Perry followed the lower edges with his torch before lifting it to the steel grille in the wall beside them.
One corner had come away from its screws. The mesh bowed into the room, leaving a dark opening above a scatter of plaster on the sill. A grey-black feather hung from a broken wire.
"Was that like that?" Perry asked.
"No."
Vic had signed for a parcel here yesterday. The courier had leaned against that wall while searching for the signature box on his handheld machine. Vic remembered being annoyed at the dirty sleeve near a newly painted surface.
Below the grille, dusty marks led across the concrete towards the cages. Perry lowered the torch until the shadows showed long toes and, on one print, a short mark behind them. At the corner of a cardboard sleeve something had rubbed a smear through the dust, low enough that Vic could have reached it without bending his knees.
The beam passed over a darker gap beneath a shelving unit. Vic brought his point up. They waited, barely breathing, until Perry took one careful step sideways and lit the wall behind it.
Empty. As far as the light reached.
"We're going back," Perry said.
Vic looked towards the shelves. Spare fittings were stored there, along with the screws they needed for the tables and lengths of clean timber kept off the damp floor. If they left all of it beyond this door, every simple job would begin with coming back in.
"That blue crate. We could bring—"
"I'm going back."
Perry withdrew towards the door, keeping the torch on the gap beneath the shelf. Vic followed him, turning only when Ruth opened to their knock. She let them through and pulled the door shut, then kept her hand on the handle while Perry explained what they had seen.
Owen came as far as the side exit to inspect the frame. The fire door opened away from the hall, into the bay, and its closer pulled it onto a stout latch, but the lock above the handle needed a key. He sorted his bunch against the wall while Ruth held the phone for him.
"This keeps people out of the stores," he said. "It hasn't been tested against those things."
The second key turned. Perry pushed, then pulled, and the door stayed shut. They cleared everything from its swing and left the corridor empty back to the side exit.
"The bay stair goes up to the armoury," Owen said. "So we shut the main stair as well."
He showed them the glazed door at its foot, normally held back against the wall by an electric magnet. With the power gone it had swung shut; Owen turned its lock and checked the handle, then pointed out that anyone going upstairs would have to secure it again on returning.
"If this moves, we leave through there," Owen said. "Nobody goes to fetch a box."
Ruth tied a strip torn from the rag cupboard around the inner door handle, leaving the side exit bare. Vic went to retrieve the mug cartons from the hall before she could ask him to. There was nowhere else cleared to put them, so he stacked them along the far wall, away from both the front doors and the cloakroom opening.
Tess made him move the second stack further along. It narrowed her turning space with the shopping bag in her hand, which was quite enough to demonstrate what it would do to a chair.
By the time they had finished, the hall contained an untidy row of mugs, folded tables and obsolete leaflets. From the front doors Vic could see all the way to the cloakroom bench. He would have hated this arrangement during opening hours.
Ruth was already sweeping the floor where Tess had lain.
There was a small clamp vice in the workshop, with a handle that always worked loose in its socket. Vic described it to Perry before suggesting they fetch it, along with his hand-tool roll and the box of mild-steel rivets.
Perry looked at the spear leaning beside Owen's stool.
"How long?"
"To fetch them? Ten minutes, if the armoury's as we left it. Longer to do the job."
"And if it isn't?"
"We come down."
Tess checked her watch. She and Perry would leave at half past five, whether he had finished or not. Until then she would help Ruth set out the room, with Owen watching the front doors and listening along the passage. Vic gave Ruth his phone for light before they went up; Perry had the rubber torch, and the lamp stayed downstairs.
Owen unlocked the stair door for them, warning that the loading-bay stair still gave anything upstairs a way to reach the armoury. At the top Perry stopped so abruptly that Vic almost walked into the butt of the spear. In the beam ahead, one of the dead hounds lay beside the broken case. Its legs had stiffened in a position that made Vic look twice.
"Those two are dead," he said. "There could be others."
They checked the nearest aisles, then moved along the side they had used before, keeping clear of the glass. Perry placed each foot cautiously, which gave Vic time to see the fallen scabbard beneath the case. He left it there.
The workshop door was still open. Inside, the torch picked out the armour on the bench and the white cotton gloves beside it, folded exactly as Vic had left them. The gorget's roped edge shone for a moment before Perry turned the beam towards the lockers.
Vic wanted to put a cover over the pieces. It would take seconds, and there was cloth in the drawer beneath them. Then he remembered how many other things he could find to do once he opened that drawer. He took the tool roll from its peg and asked Perry to light the lower shelf.
The vice was awkward to carry with the sword, so he put both tools and rivet box into a shallow wooden tray and let Perry lift it. That left nobody for the spear. Perry leaned it inside the door while he settled the tray against his chest, and Vic took it up in his left hand, butt forward and the head trailing behind him. They made their way back with Perry's torch resting inside the tray, Vic going first with a weapon in each hand and stopping at the stair to give Perry room to turn.
Owen closed and locked the stair door behind them, and Ruth met them at the cloakroom doorway to hand Vic back his phone. Vic returned the spear to Perry as soon as the tray was down. In the cloakroom, Ruth had spread the sheet beneath one of the blankets and folded the other at its head. A chair from the cloakroom office stood beside the bench. Tess had put the clean paper towels on the counter beyond the damp cloth she was using to wipe it.
"Other end," she told Vic as he approached with the vice.
He chose the thick end of the oak counter, away from her supplies, and put a scrap of leather under the clamp. When he tightened it, the counter did not flex. Ruth moved the blanket further from the working end anyway.
Owen took the crossbar from his coat pocket. Bits of lint clung to the broken rivet, and Vic brushed them into the tray before turning it beneath Perry's torch.
He could see where the bar had bent against the case: a bright scraped patch at one end, the old black finish puckered near the fastening. The rivet had sheared across its shank, leaving a short piece still lodged in the flat seat below the spear socket. Its hole looked round. He would know more once the broken piece was out.
"Can you put it back?" Owen asked.
"I can replace the rivet. I need to check the seat first."
Vic unrolled the tools. The little hammer lay beside two punches and his files, their wooden handles dark where his fingers usually rested. He moved the items he needed into the lamp's spill, reluctant to put the rest away while there was a whole building that might need them.
Perry brought the spear over and supported the long shaft while Vic padded and clamped the metal seat. Before he struck the first punch, he looked towards the barred front doors.
"This will make a noise."
"We know," Ruth said from beside Owen. "We'll listen between."
The hammer sounded much louder here than it did upstairs. Vic stopped after the first few taps while the others listened, then drove the broken shank out onto the leather below. With the hole clear, he turned the seat to the light and checked its edge with the point of a scribe. There was a small raised lip, but no crack he could see and no long slot where a round hole should have been.
The crossbar needed its bend eased before it would sit flat. He did that in the padded vice, a little at a time, taking it out to try against the seat rather than pulling until it looked straight. Perry held the torch close enough that Vic could see the contact along both edges.
"That's better," Perry said.
"Nearly."
Another adjustment brought the holes into line without force. Vic selected a rivet that fitted closely, compared its length against the thickness it had to pass through, and reached for the hacksaw. The first cut skated. His dressed finger would not close comfortably around the frame's grip, so he stopped and changed his hold before trying again.
Perry watched the short end fall into the tray.
"Would a bolt have done?"
"If we'd had one that fitted. And a nut that stayed put."
"Blue crate?"
Vic looked at him, then back at the bright cut end. "Possibly."
Perry returned the beam to his hands without saying anything else.
With the cut end filed square, Vic fitted the bar and supported the rivet's original head against the steel block from his tool roll. Perry held the shaft level while he began spreading the other end with small blows. He worked round it, checking that the new head grew evenly and the bar stayed seated. When the metal had closed down against it, he stopped to let his fingers unclench.
The bar no longer rocked. He tried each end and the seated head, then asked Perry to take the spear into the hall where there was room to test it.
They used an old cloakroom mat, rolled against the foot of the wall, keeping the point clear and loading the crossbar against the roll. Perry pressed while Vic watched the fastening. They changed sides, tried again, and brought it back to the light. The bar had stayed against its seat; the rivet showed no fresh line around the head.
"I'd check it after any hard use," Vic said. "It can still catch sideways. That's what broke it."
Owen reached for the shaft with his right hand. Tess intercepted it before it reached him.
"Perry carries it. We've had this conversation."
Owen looked annoyed for a moment, then asked Perry to bring it close enough for him to see. He inspected the new head without touching it, his left hand still tucked inside the sling.
"Good," he said. "Show him where to hold it."
Perry had already moved his grip away from the socket. Vic showed him how much room to leave for the crossbar and let him try the balance, keeping both of them clear of Ruth's bedding.
Tess left the room ready for use, then took most of the medical supplies away again.
Vic watched her put the small kit back into the shopping bag. He had been thinking of the cleared floor as hers already, and had to remind himself where her patients were. She left one wrapped dressing on the dry end of the counter for Owen, asking Ruth to send for her if it was needed.
"What do I tell June?" Perry asked.
Ruth gave him the sheet. Between them they had recorded the running tap and slow toilet, the side exit, both locked inner doors and the route past the van. Beneath that Tess wrote how much room there actually was, then crossed out ready and replaced it with inspected.
"One place to lie down with access both sides," she said. "Sitting room. We need more blankets and enough rested people to bring a chair up that slope. Nobody starts because they've heard there's a building."
"We should move the carton by the van," Vic said.
"We will," Perry replied. "And see what's changed."
Tess crouched beside Owen once more, asking to see his fingers and checking how the sling lay beneath his coat. He answered her without suggesting that anything was better than it was. When she stood, Ruth handed back the battery lamp, which had to go with the medical kit.
Vic felt its absence before they left. Owen's phone had to come out to light the hall, propped on the counter while he and Ruth lowered the front bar, Ruth taking most of its weight. Vic stood beside them with his sword and lit the plaza through the opening.
At 05:32 Tess and Perry went out, Perry carrying the repaired spear and his torch, Tess the lamp and kit. They would use the same delivery road if it remained clear. Perry intended to come back after reporting, with help if anyone rested was willing; Tess made no promise beyond returning to the patients waiting for her.
Ruth and Vic put the bar back once the door was shut. After that, the three of them listened to the small noises of the building until Owen asked Vic to put the hammer away.
He had been turning it between his fingers.
"Sorry."
"Keep the vice. Your sword."
Vic laid the blade along the counter, cleaning it with one of the rags Ruth had set aside. Under the phone light he could distinguish the edge rolled out of line by the first hound from the little dark hollow behind it. There was metal missing there. He had kept imagining a few strokes of a stone, a quick correction between other jobs, but no stone would put the missing part back.
At the point, where he had struck the gate upright, a sliver had folded over sideways. He showed Owen before touching it with a file.
"Can you mend that as well?"
"I can take the bit that's sticking out off. Properly reshaping it means losing more steel. The notch too."
"Will it work?"
Vic looked at the plain cross and the dark grip, familiar enough that he could pick them out from the other end of the armoury. He had practised with this sword for six years without ever wanting the answer to that question so badly.
"It'll still thrust. I wouldn't choose that part of the edge for a cut."
"Then do what you can. I'm staying here."
With Owen on the stool facing the front doors and Ruth seated where she could see the side passage, Vic padded the blade in the vice. He filed the raised sliver at the tip away, then dressed the projecting burr beside the rolled edge without trying to chase out the hollow. A snag in a cloth could show him a sharp projection his tired eyes had missed; it could not tell him whether the blade would survive another bad strike.
Wiped down, the damage looked smaller but was still there. He recorded both jobs on the back of a discarded leaflet, adding the new rivet and the limits of the sword repair. There was no condition-report clipboard at this end of the counter. He used his tool tray to bear on.
The word Profession came back to him as he wrote, where he had seen it on his sheet beneath the class he had chosen. He had been fixing things since before he was paid to do it. Tonight, when he had needed a weapon repaired, the Assay had left him to find his hacksaw.
Could he ask about the other track now?
He put the pencil down. The answer remained above the scratched counter until he let it go. He could make that choice after some sleep, with his work laid out and time to read what was being offered.
"More numbers?" Owen asked.
"I can ask about a Profession. Haven't asked for the offers."
"Good time not to."
Vic wrapped the files in their roll and left the sword within Owen's reach, then took over Ruth's chair while she drank from one of their bottles. She had pencilled his name beside the tools without asking him how long he intended to lend them.
He read the inventory from that side of the counter. Two blankets and a sheet belonged to Ruth; a bucket, soap, paper towels and three usable cleaning rags belonged to the museum. Two partly filled bottles and the unopened biscuits had come in his bag. The single dressing was Tess's. Both phones were marked no spare battery, with space beside each for the next reading.
"There's more upstairs," he said. "Some things. I haven't counted."
"Then we haven't got them down here."
He left the list as it was.
Perry knocked at 06:19, giving his name and June's before asking them to open. Vic lit his face through the narrow side window while Owen spoke to him, and only then did he help Ruth lift the bar.
Perry came in alone with the spear, his torch and a bag of folded blankets over one shoulder. Vic took the bag so he could lower the point, setting it on the floor before his back began to object.
"Tess is back with Helen," Perry said. "I've brought June's paper."
The route sheet had acquired another time and a note in June's cramped writing. The patients were staying where they were until a rested carrying team could make the walk with the empty chair. Perry and Tess had moved the fallen carton by the van; there had been no animal in sight on the road during their return. Colin would come later with the chair party if the route trial went ahead.
"These are ferry blankets," Perry said as Ruth opened the bag. "Four. June wants them counted. She said you'll understand that."
Ruth reached for the pencil.
Perry had drunk something at the terminal, and Helen had made him eat while Tess saw the patients. He could sit a watch now, he said, but he would need to sleep after it. Owen put Perry beside his own name on the back of the leaflet, then wrote 07:30 beside Ruth and Vic for the next turn.
"Wake both of us," Ruth said. "Don't decide we're better left."
"At the time on there," Perry agreed. "I'm tired too."
They settled him in the chair facing the side passage, where a turn of his head brought the stair door into view. The spear lay along the wall with its head away from the cloakroom door, and his torch rested across his knees. Owen kept the stool by the main entrance, with Vic's sword propped within reach and his own phone lighting the counter.
Vic checked his screen before turning its torch off: thirty-one per cent, 06:24. He wrote the battery figure where Ruth had left a space, then put the phone beside the folded corner of the sheet.
"I want that back," she told him.
"The phone?"
"The sheet. Don't put your boots on it."
He sat on the edge and worked his heels out carefully, keeping them on the swept tiles. Ruth took the fixed bench with one of June's blankets, drawing it over her shoulders while Perry adjusted his chair to see further along the passage.
Lying down pulled at Vic's back until he turned onto his side. From there he could see a row of mug handles through a gap in a badly closed carton, and above them Owen's good hand resting beside the new watch list. Perry asked which sound the side door made when it latched. Owen answered him, then asked him to try it while there was still someone awake to hold it open.
Vic listened to the door open and shut. When Perry came back, he moved his chair a little further from the wall, leaving room for someone to pass behind it.
