“I hate this,” Leon said—it was almost a wail. “Can we stop this? Please?”
“You started it. All that shite about I didn’t take good enough care of you, like the whole thing was my problem, like you had no responsibility to look after your fucking self—” This wasn’t what I had planned at all, I had meant to coax and charm it out of him, browbeating had never crossed my mind but it felt good and I wasn’t sure I could stop even if I wanted to— “At least I’ve finally found the one person who’s got a grudge against me—”
“Toby,” Susanna said sharply. “Stop it.”
“The only person who—look at me you little shit—the only person who hates me enough to send in a pair of scumbags to beat me half to death. Was that supposed to be, to, to be karma? Because I didn’t stop Dominic beating you up?”
“I didn’t! Toby, what are you talking about, I don’t hate you, stop—”
“And now you’re telling Rafferty this bullshit—” I got him by a clumsy fistful of jumper, jerking at him, trying to make him look at me but my hand was weak as a kid’s and he wouldn’t, he just curled tighter. “You didn’t fuck up my life enough the first time, now you’re trying to get me arrested? What are you, what have you, what the hell have you done to me—”
I was about to hit him. I was pulling back my fist, I could already feel the ecstatic smack of it into his face, when Susanna caught my arm. She said, close to my ear, “Where were you?”
I spun round ready to shout her off, but the sight of her stopped me. Her hair was straggling in her face, clips hanging loose; her eyes were dark and dilated, unfocused.
“What?” I said.
“That night. Toby. Where did you go?”
That night. I thought she meant the gap, the hole in my mind between the pub and my living room. “I don’t know,” I said. My head felt like it was rocking dangerously on my neck. “I’ve been trying and trying. It’s gone.”
She stared at me, swaying a little, gripping my arm for balance.
“Why?” The paranoia was rising again. “Do you know? How do you—”
“I went to your room.”
This made no sense at all. “What?”
“When I got that text from Dominic. It freaked me out. I didn’t understand what was going on. I wanted someone else. I went to Leon’s room, but he was out cold; when I tried to wake him up he just went ‘Fuck off’ and pulled the sheet over his head. So I went to your room. And you weren’t there.”
“No,” I said. I had let go of Leon; he was snuffling somewhere. “What? That’s not what I meant.”
“I sat on my bed for ages, listening for you to come back. Hours. I was scared, I thought maybe Dominic had done something to you and that was what the text was about . . . In the end I fell asleep. In the morning you were back.”
“But,” I said. Her fingers were hurting me. “You said you just ignored that text. That’s what you said.”
“I didn’t want to tell anyone. I didn’t want to sound like . . . I haven’t said it to the detectives. But where were you? How do you not remember?”
“That’s not,” I said. “I meant the night I got hit. In my apartment. The night with Dominic, when Dominic, I was in bed.”
“No.”
“I was.”
“No. I looked.”
I stared at her. She stared back. Somewhere deep in the house, faint and faraway enough that it came to me more as a sensation than as a sound, a door closed.
It seeped in slowly, drop by drop, through all the multiple layers of mess in my brain. Leon and Susanna IDing my hoodie, telling Rafferty I’d had problems with Dominic, giving him the photo: that wasn’t some Machiavellian plan to frame me. If they had been out to fuck me up, they could have done a lot better than that. They could have said anything they wanted—the story Susanna had just told, a made-up confession replete with lurid details; I with my smashed memory would have had no comeback. They had pointed Rafferty in my direction because they were scared that he was going to come after them, and—all those little jabs about me getting away with everything—they had no intention of taking the heat for me. They actually thought I had done it.
Which was ludicrous, batshit insane. Me, cheerful oblivious Labrador of a guy, lolloping happily along with the flow: I hadn’t been a killer. Beating Dominic up, sure, if I had known the whole story I would have been on for teaming up with Sean to dish out a few smacks. But a garrote: not just no but oh hell no, nothing in me could ever have come up with that, and they should have known, they of all people should have known me better than to think that of me for a single instant—
“Wait,” I said. “You think I . . . what?”
“I don’t think anything. I don’t, Toby. I just want to know.”
“Come on,” I said, quietly enough, I thought. “All this, this, this dancing around, fuck that. You two have something you want to say to me, you want to accuse me of something, then do it.”
“We’re not,” Leon said, his voice high and wobbly. “Honestly, Toby, we’re—”
“You little shit. You haven’t done enough to me?”
I was reaching to grab him again, he was flinching back, when I heard it. A noise up on the roof: wild volley of scrabbling, something big on the slates, claws? talons?
“What the hell?” I was off the terrace and backing into the garden before I knew it. Soft earth giving and slip-sliding under my feet, my voice almost a shout: “The hell was that?”
“What?” Leon hurrying after me, flailing as his ankle turned on a rock— “Jesus, what?”
“That noise. It’s on the roof.”
“Bird,” Susanna said, catching up with us and turning to look. “Or a bat.”
“No. Look. Look.”
High on the roof peak, black, crouched against the chimney stack. It was shaped like nothing, feathery flicks like wings sprouting from its head, it was shifting, gathering itself, and from the deliberate focus of its movements I would have sworn it was human. Rafferty, spying on us, clinging and listening, anywhere and everywhere— “That’s not a fucking bird, look at the size of it—”
“That’s its shadow, Jesus, Toby, calm down—”
“Those, on its head, what are those? What kind of bird—”
“Oh God,” Leon moaned, pitch rising. “Oh God—”
The thing raised itself and spread against the sky, out and out, beyond any bounds of possibility. Then it flung itself into thin air, straight towards us.
Leon and I were both yelling, hoarse strangled screams. I heard the rush of the thing coming at me as I ducked and stumbled, onto my hands and knees in the dirt. I felt the wind of it lift my hair, I smelled it wild and earthy and piney, I flinched from its talons swooping with perfect, merciless accuracy for the back of my neck—
I don’t know how long it took me to realize that it was gone. I had stopped screaming; Leon had subsided to a wild, choked panting. Beyond that, the garden was immensely silent.
I pulled myself up to sitting—not easy, I was shaking. The roofline was bare, nothing in the trees— Susanna was on her knees beside me, doubled over and gasping, and I grabbed at her in a panic, looking for blood. “Su. Look at me. Are you OK?”
“I’m fine.” It was a second before I figured out she was laughing.
“What the fuck—”
“Oh my God—” Leon was crouched in the dirt, a hand pressed to his chest. “I can’t breathe—”
“Jesus Christ. What was that?”
“That,” Susanna gasped, “that was a long-eared owl. You pair of fools.”
“No,” I said. “No way. The size of it, the—”
“Have you never seen one before? They’re big bastards.”
“It went for us.”
“It must’ve thought you were starting. All that noise you made—”
“Leon. That wasn’t an owl. Right?”
The whites of Leon’s eyes, in the moonlight. “My chest. I think I’m having a heart attack—guys, please, it hurts—”
“You’re having a panic attack,” Susanna said, wiping her eyes with a knuckle and getting her giggles under control. “Take long slow breaths.”
“I can’t breathe.”