‘We have to move, Liz.’
He got her on her feet, unsteady as a day-old fawn. Her eyes were open but he had to lead her, and it was like drawing a large kite against heavy wind. Free arm loose and flapping, feet ungainly, but she came. Dead weight at first, but moving. Her grip on his hand was weak, but there.
They had exited the kitchen and it was behind them for good. But not for Liz. It was where she had seen the newspaper headline: BEXLEY COTTAGE CARNAGE – THREE SLAUGHTERED – COPS CONFUSED
And it would exist in HD behind her eyelids for ever. Now, they were under a bridge on wasteland, cramped together, shoulders kissing, heads touching wood. Minutes seemed to have passed. Maybe the guy was out on the street, a mile away and heading the wrong way. Maybe he was still in the cellar, howling like a lunatic in a bedlam. Maybe he had worked out exactly where— The latter of the three, Karl realised, as he heard the slop of feet in mud, dangerously close. He held his breath, and wanted to clamp a hand over Liz’s mouth because she was breathing heavily. But she seemed oblivious to his worry. Her knees were up to her chest, forehead bent forward to rest on her forearms, hair all over the place. Still in shock.
Karl froze as, barely six feet to his right, he saw a pair of feet appear on the sloped bank, level with his head. This was it. The guy was going to check under the bridge. He would bend, and look, and smile like it was Christmas. No darkness this time to allow Liz to ambush him. No fight left in Liz anyway. He would kill them both, and slip their bodies into the river’s current. It was just seconds away.
‘Jesus!’ the guy yelled. A slip. He landed on his arse, and now all but his head was visible.
Karl saw a red Varsity jacket with white arms smeared with blood. He put a hand on his chest, an attempt to shield the sound of his thudding heart which he was sure the guy would hear. Beside him, Liz wasn’t even looking, oblivious to the world and their final few seconds in it.
He had a horrible thought: she was closest to the guy in the Varsity jacket. He would grab her first, because she was the target, and Karl could escape the other way. The idea made him feel like a weak little boy, and he hated himself for it.
But the guy didn’t come any further. Didn’t slide five inches lower down the bank, or even lean forward, which was all he needed to do. Instead, he dragged himself to his feet, and turned. One step, then another. Until Karl couldn’t see him any more.
Karl let out the breath he’d been holding, slowly, and took an even slower breath back in.
Wood creaked inches above him. The guy was on the bridge. Karl looked up. The gaps between the deck boards were large, an inch or more, and he saw two black shapes above his head: the guy’s feet.
Silence. No movement. Was he reconsidering coming down?
‘On top of a pile of gold, sure,’ the guy said a few seconds later. It took Karl a moment to realise that he was on the phone.
Thirty-Six
Brad
Typical Mick, straight to the point. No hello, no Hi Brad, my old pal, just: This is where you tell me they’re tied up and waiting for me, right? So he got Brad’s sarcastic response. Then Mick said: ‘Pray tell me, how did you fuck this one up?’
He had lied about how she’d escaped the first time because he hadn’t wanted to admit that someone half his size had fought him off. He lied again now for the same reason. ‘Because someone told me they were underground and sent me on a wild goose chase. They weren’t where you said, Mick. Fucking underground train station. I found the bar, but they weren’t there.’
‘Where are you?’
‘The bar. The station. Where you sent me. Where else?’
‘They’ve gotta be there, Brad. I checked maps. That bar blocks the tunnel. It’s all collapsed beyond that station. There’s no way past.’
‘Well, they weren’t there. Maybe there’s a fork or something they took.’
‘There’s a fork, sure, but it’s a dead end. You took too long, Brad. They must have got out. But don’t go worrying your little head about it. I have a plan. I just killed Król.’
That hit Brad like a smack around the head. ‘So Król was next. Who’s after him? Are you doing this alphabetically? Can’t wait until you reach S for Smithfield.’
‘Oh, now I get it. You think I’m on some killing rampage? He had surveillance tapes on us, Brad. All three of us. And he was going to spread them around. Well, that just wouldn’t do, would it? So, I just killed him in Seabury’s shop. But it’s part of a great plan. The cottage thing is in all the papers, Brad, and now that you’ve let her escape again, it’s only a matter of time before she knows her guy’s dead. Then she goes to the police, her and Seabury together. But first he makes a stop. If you can’t find them in the next hour or so, I get to them my way.’
Brad didn’t mention the newspaper in the kitchen with its big, glossy picture of her dead husband on the cover. She must have seen it. He focused on something else Mick had said. ‘What stop?’
‘If I was Seabury, on the run, I’d want to talk to my wife. He probably left home this morning thinking he was going to have a normal day. Now look. So, he’ll need to see her again. That’s where he’ll go before he goes to a cop shop. Home. So, we get to Seabury by getting to his wife. Want to hear my great plan?’
Now Mick was going to put other innocents in the blast zone? Brad knew he wasn’t going to like what Mick said next, and what he heard made him shake his head. ‘That’s nuts, Mick.’
‘Yeah? How? Point out a flaw, if you can.’
‘It won’t stack up to a police investigation, Mick, you know that.’
‘Doesn’t have to, Brad. Same as Ramirez. It doesn’t have to stop the traffic, just detour it. It just has to buy time. Enough time to get me close to Seabury and the bitch.’
‘How about the afterwards part, Mick? You can’t get away with it.’
‘Brad, my friend, you think I care about that? I’ll be in Germany. So, don’t you worry about me. You’ll have your name on a ladyboy bar for the world to trace, but not me. I’ll be a ghost. If you want to worry, do it about that fool Dave who thinks he can just live here as normal for the rest of his life. But if you think I need help get out there and find that pair. You’ve got an hour or so. Call me.’
He hung up and stared into the trees. An hour? To search the woods? Futile, even if they hadn’t already got out the other side and found help. He wasn’t going to waste his time.
He slotted the phone away and wiped blood off his face. It had sounded a lot like Mick was saying he didn’t care if he got out of this safely. As if getting to Grafton’s wife was all that mattered.
It wasn’t all that mattered to Brad, though.
Thirty-Seven
Karl
Karl heard Varsity’s footsteps leaving but didn’t dare move. He looked at Liz. She still had her head resting on her forearms, but she seemed more energised now, as if coming back to reality. Her upper body inflated and deflated with each massive breath she took.
‘He’s gone,’ he whispered. ‘But we should wait ten minutes, in case he’s still nearby.’
She didn’t look up.
‘Then we’ll get to a phone. We need the police now.’ And Katie. Katie first, always. But he wasn’t about to say that.
Thirty-Eight
Katie
Katie promised herself fifteen minutes, and didn’t want to panic, so fifteen it was. Exactly. As the second hand hit the ten, she hit redial. Fifteen minutes ago, no answer. Now, no answer again. Karl had been ten minutes away from the shop almost an hour and a half ago. She hung up and looked out of the window in case Karl was pulling up outside. But she wasn’t just looking for Karl out there.