They were seasoned burglars who had good night vision. They crossed a kitchen that had two islands and stools arranged around both without disturbing anything except a cat that shot past them. One man was white, the other dark-skinned. The dark-skinned guy checked the living room while his partner remained at the foot of the stairs. They had learned the hard way that sometimes couples grew apart, where one slept on the sofa downstairs. The dark-skinned guy, still carrying his hammer, returned and gave a thumbs up. All appeared to be good in this couple’s relationship.
Both men climbed the stairs. Four doors led off a tiny landing at the top. Two were open. A bathroom and a small bedroom given over to storage. The dark-skinned guy opened one of the others to disclose a second bedroom, neat, and empty – no sex-starved husband sleeping in there. The white guy opened the other door slowly, exposing the main bedroom. The curtains were closed against the moonlight, but the couple in the bed had fallen asleep with a small lamp on the wall above the bed that gave off a soft orange glow. He could see two shapes under the thick quilt. The woman was on her back, mouth open, long dark hair fanned across the pillow, while the guy was on his side and facing away. Bare shoulders suggested both were naked.
They’d already formulated a plan, so they rushed inside quickly, silently. The white guy threw the cover off the male, exposing his nakedness. His half of the quilt fell over his wife. The dark-skinned man leaped on the woman, forcing the quilt over her face. The couple jerked awake at the same time. The woman started to struggle and yell, but he kept his weight on her, smothering her and forcing a gloved hand over her face, using the thick fabric of the quilt to cover her mouth and dull her cries.
The man tried to sit up, shock imprinted all over his sleepy face, but the white man headbutted him right in the nose, then sat astride him holding a shank made from a piece of wood and three four-inch nails jammed into his cheek. His other hand clamped over his mouth. Blood from the guy’s nose dribbled down his cheeks like war paint.
‘Where’s the woman?’ the white guy whispered right into his ear. ‘Make noise and I bleed you and the wife.’
He released his hand from the man’s mouth. The guy’s expression was of pain and horror.
‘The woman you picked up earlier tonight. Where is she? And what did she say?’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ the man squealed. ‘Please.’
The white burglar twisted the wood back and forth, jamming the nails into the man’s face, scraping them against bone. Despite his hand over the man’s mouth again, a scream of pain emerged that only dead neighbours wouldn’t hear. Blood went everywhere. Two feet away, the dark-skinned man laughed as the woman thrashed beneath him.
‘Where’s the woman?’
The hand was removed from his mouth. The man snatched a chance to scream for help. The white guy headbutted him again, then stabbed him five times in the same spot on his upper arm, fast, like a piston. Now he didn’t care about the guy’s screams. He jammed the lethal weapon under the man’s chin, right into his throat, and pressed in just shy of hard enough to draw blood.
‘Last chance! Where’s the fucking woman you picked up tonight?’
Seventeen
Mick
Last night’s dream, for once, was different, but no less chilling than the one that had been replaying daily for weeks. Grafton survived the attack, his body parts were reattached in the cottage, and that very same night he walked right on out into a garden full of cheering fans. Weirdly, the worst part was that somehow his suit had managed to avoid getting a single drop of blood on it. Pristine and white, as always.
As a man who craved control, Mick couldn’t let even an errant part of his own mind make decisions he didn’t like. So he lay there and imagined Grafton once again in that garden, but now his sea of admirers fell silent and parted, and Mick stepped forward to grab the bastard by the neck. He squeezed and the night darkened, and he squeezed and daylight broke over the cottage, and years might have passed before Mick became satisfied.
I’m sure you hope so.
But the vision flickered out when pain took over. He realised he’d been digging his fingers hard into his thigh.
He grabbed his mobile, which said it was six in the morning. He got as far as loading the Internet before he stopped and laughed. His brain must still be waking up because he’d been about to check the news for Grafton’s superhuman recovery. Idiot.
He stopped laughing when he realised he’d had no missed calls or texts during the night. No word from Król. He got out of bed and padded naked into the bathroom. In the mirror, his face was tired and angry-looking. He couldn’t blame the dream. It was a face he wore a lot these days. He was about to brush his teeth when he caught sight of them. Yellow, getting worse. He hadn’t brushed them ten times in the last year, and thought fuck it now. What good would it do? Who was he trying to impress?
His jaw was hurting. He’d developed a habit of grinding his teeth, even while asleep. He had a Swan Vestas matchbox full of mints, which helped, and popped a couple into his mouth. Then he went into his son’s bedroom, and threw back the covers. ‘Wake up, sleepyhead. Breakfast.’
* * *
He entered the kitchen. A bowl of cornflakes was slid onto the table for Tim. For Mick, it was a fry-up, which was quick and convenient and all he seemed to eat these days, especially when working the streets. He’d stopped caring about cholesterol levels a long time ago. He put the kettle on and moved to the living room. In a corner, out of sight of the window, was a freestanding torso punching bag in realistic pink. It had a rope tied around the badly frayed neck, and a thousand slashes and holes from the knife now sticking out of its shoulder. The ruined picture of Grafton’s face had slid off during the night and lay on the floor. He stamped on it, then tore it up and put it in the bin. He should have covered it in tape to preserve it because he didn’t have many pictures left, and the hunger would be back time and again.
I’m sure you hope so.
He stepped up to the window. The sight of his neat lawn always made him relax. Even after the dream, even after the lack of contact from Król, it still worked.
Silence, though. Silence had the opposite effect. The house had been silent these past three years, and he’d never become comfortable with it. He put the news on TV while he waited for the kettle, just for noise.
His interest was instantly piqued when he saw police cars behind a cordon and a large warehouse. The news ticker scrolling across the bottom of the screen said:
POLICE SEIZE HOARD OF PSYCHEDELIC DRUG ‘BUZZ’ WITH STREET WORTH OF––
And that was as much as he could bear to see before jabbing a finger hard into the remote to change the channel.
He flicked through channels until he heard canned laughter. An American sitcom. He took a breath to calm himself. He sat on the arm of his sofa and tried to concentrate on the TV. This was what Brad meant: his inability to relax, to do normal things. He got his cup of tea and sat on a sofa cushion, not on the arm. Curled his feet under him and cradled the cup. Just like a normal person. But it felt unnatural. He tried not to think about Król. Tried to concentrate on the TV, but it was no good. He couldn’t do it.
Where the fuck was Król?