Instead I’d taken an Uber back to where the security guard had picked me up, and driven slowly home, windows down, hoping that the bad instant coffee the police had offered me before I left would keep me awake for at least another hour. But as the streets unfurled hypnotically in front of me, I was forced to admit that this might have been the wrong decision—first I took a false turn, finding myself in residential streets I didn’t recognize for a surprisingly long time before I managed to make my way back to a road I knew. My sleep-fuddled navigation was only an inconvenience, though. The real problem was that I was in very real danger of falling asleep at the wheel—the absolute last thing this night needed. Somehow, though, the combination of the chill night air in my face, the coffee, and the angry screeching of the Runaways on the car stereo kept my eyes open, and finally, finally, after one of the longest, shittest nights I could remember, I was pulling up outside our little two-up, two-down.
On the doorstep I fumbled in the backpack for my keys, stifling a yawn, and almost dropping them when I finally found them. I caught them just before they hit the tiled front path, and then spoiled my dexterity by knocking over a milk bottle. A far-off dog began barking hysterically. I cursed my own clumsiness and stood, half expecting to see the hallway light click on and Gabe’s sleepy figure come down the stairs, but nothing happened. He must be deep asleep.
It took me two or three tries to get the key in the lock. I was so tired, I felt almost dizzy with it. But as soon as the door swung open, I knew something was wrong.
It was the smell that hit me first—and for a minute I couldn’t understand what it meant. All I knew was that the normal, comforting scents of cooking and laundry and that particular ineffable smell of home weren’t there. Or rather, they were, but they were drowned out by something else. Something completely unexpected, and so out of context that for a moment I couldn’t place it. It was a strange, fetid, iron-rich, almost sweet smell that reminded me of… of… what was it?
And then I placed it. It was the smell of the butcher shops along the high street.
It was the smell of blood.
Even then I didn’t understand. How could I?
I didn’t understand when I saw the smears of red on the hallway floor.
I didn’t understand when the living room door handle was slick and sticky under my hand.
I didn’t understand when I walked inside and saw him—Gabe—slumped over his computer, in the largest pool of blood I had ever seen.
Because—because it couldn’t be his, could it? There was no way one single human being could hold all that blood. There must be some explanation—some awful, twisted, crazy explanation.
“Gabe?” I whimpered. He didn’t move. The computer screen in front of him was black, only the lights from the big PC tower flickering in the dark puddle that spilled from the desk, across his lap, and onto the floor.
I didn’t want to step in it, but there was no other way.
“Gabe,” I called, more desperately, but still he didn’t move, and at last I put one foot into the sick, slickish slime, feeling its thickness clutch at my shoes as I moved across the carpet.
There was a sob stuck in my throat, and as I reached him and touched his shoulder, it escaped, a mewling howl of distress that sounded like an animal in pain.
“Gabe, Gabe, wake up, wake up!”
He didn’t say anything, didn’t lift his head or show any signs of having heard me, and now I put my shoulder to his, forcing him to sit up, sit back in his chair.
He was unbearably heavy—fourteen stone of bone and muscle—and I wasn’t sure if I could move him, but then, all of a sudden, he shifted, his weight flopping back in his chair, and I saw what they had done to him.
It was his throat. It had been cut, horribly, brutally, in a way I couldn’t make sense of—it wasn’t the neat surgical slash I would have imagined, but a fleshy mess protruding from a ragged hole, as if someone, something had ripped his windpipe out through the front of his neck, leaving a wound like a great scarlet laughing mouth.
A huge wave of sickness came over me and I lurched back, stumbling through the lake of blood, my hand over my mouth, my breath coming fast and erratic and a nausea building inside that threatened to overwhelm me.
Gabe.
I couldn’t take my eyes off him, off his head, lolling backwards at a sick, unnatural angle that looked so profoundly dead, there was no way I could try to deny the reality of what had happened.
And yet. And yet his face was still Gabe. That strong, curved nose, like a Roman senator. Those cheekbones. The shape of his lips. The roughness of his beard, and the softness of the skin at the base of his neck. All of that was still Gabe, still the man I loved. But it was his dead body that I was looking at.
My legs were about to give out, and I groped my way to the sofa and pulled myself onto it, holding my knees to my chest and rocking, rocking. I was making a strange sound, I realized. Something halfway between a wail and a whimper and formed of Gabe’s name.
This couldn’t be true. It couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t. Not to Gabe—sweet, funny, capable Gabe, whose large, strong hands could pry off a stuck lid or splint a blackbird’s wing with equal dexterity. My Gabe, who could fix anything, mend anything, make even the most terrible day okay with one of his huge, all-encompassing hugs.
But there was no way even he could fix this.
I don’t know how long I sat there, staring at Gabe’s body, at the flickering computer lights reflecting back from the dark pool of blood. Ten minutes? Twenty? I was shaking uncontrollably, and horribly, unbearably cold.
But at last I got ahold of myself. I knew what I had to do—what I should have done the moment I walked in the door.
My hands were stiff and trembling as I felt in my backpack for my phone. I had it, I knew I did. I had booked the Uber on it, but it still took me a long time to find, and when I drew it out the screen was blank and dark.
I had to hold on to the wall as I made my way through to our little kitchen, where there was a phone charger. It took me three tries to get the USB lead into the socket, my hands were still shaking so much. Metal ground against metal, leaving reddish smears across the screen as I tried and failed and tried again. But at last it was in.
The start-up took a painfully long time, cycling through its various animations and logos, the brightness hurting my eyes.
And then my lock screen. I opened it up and pressed the phone icon.
I dialed 999.
And I waited.
When the operator came on the line, I wasn’t sure at first if I would be able to speak, but my voice, when it came out, was surprisingly steady.
“Police,” I said in answer to her questions. I swallowed. I had to keep it together. I had to keep it together. I had already left it too long. “And please hurry. My husband—he’s been murdered.”
The next few hours had the surreal, bright cadence of a waking nightmare. First came the sound of the sirens, screaming closer and closer. Then the emergency lights, saturating everything with a strange pulsing blue glow. Then the hammering on the door and the officers storming in. They asked questions that hadn’t even occurred to me. Was the house secure? Could anyone still be on the premises? Did Gabe have any enemies?
It seems strange to say it, but I hadn’t even considered that. Now, at the thought of someone hiding upstairs while I keened over Gabe’s body, I felt cold all over again. But whoever it was, they were long gone.
And as for the rest—of course Gabe didn’t have any enemies. Of course he didn’t. The idea was absurd. Everybody loved him—his friends, his clients, his family. Oh God, I had a sharp flashing image of trying to tell Gabe’s parents the news, and the realization of what had just happened rose up again, threatening to overwhelm me.
They took me upstairs, where a kind female officer helped me step out of my stiffening, blood-stained clothes and into clean, dry sweatpants, and then finally that same officer led me downstairs, shivering helplessly to where a police car was waiting.
As we passed through the hall—my hall—I turned my head and caught a glimpse of white-overalled forensics officers through the living room doorway. They had laid down mats across the floor and were setting up bright lights that illuminated everything with a horrible white glare.
For a brief moment the room seemed to spin on its axis. I looked away. I tried to breathe. I concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other until I reached the door of the police car.
I don’t know how long I sat there in the back seat. I was shaking, in spite of the blanket someone had wrapped around me and the hot, dry air from the car heaters. Eventually someone came out and beckoned to the officer sitting beside me. She got out, and they had a low conversation, and then she climbed back in, this time into the driver’s seat, and twisted to speak to me.
“Jack, are you okay to come with us to the station? We won’t keep you too long, we just want to get everything clear while it’s fresh in your head.”
I nodded mutely. In truth it wasn’t okay. I couldn’t imagine anything I wanted to do less than go down there and live through the hideousness again and again and again. I wanted to crawl away into the darkness and scream into the night. I wanted to push past the officers in the hallway and cradle Gabe’s body in my arms and tell everyone to fuck off and leave us, leave us alone.
I wanted to drink until I passed out.
But I had to do this—for Gabe, if no one else. I knew the officer was right; there was a window of time for tracking down whoever had done this, and I’d already wasted precious minutes, maybe even hours, by going into shock in the living room.