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“Just messing with you. Go on.” He was talking more to me than to Williams, even though it was Williams who had asked. “Scram. But don’t forget you owe me one.”
“Oh, I won’t forget,” I said tightly, with just enough venom in my voice to leave him in doubt as to what exactly I was referring to. I stood up, tugged my jacket straight. “I never forget. You can be sure of that.”
“Don’t I get a thanks?” Jeff said. He didn’t move out of the doorway, his broad body filling the space.
I gritted my teeth.
“Thanks.”
There was a short pause, and then Jeff gave another laugh and moved aside.
“Go on then, get out of here. And stay out of trouble.”
It was only when I came out into the chilly night air of the street that I felt it—the cold, wet patches under my arms, the sweat of pure panic.
I was still afraid of Jeff Leadbetter. And maybe I always would be.
It was nearly four a.m. before I got back home to Salisbury Lane, and I was half-drunk with exhaustion, my eyes scratching with tiredness as I wove mechanically through the near-deserted residential streets of South London. I’d considered leaving the car at Arden Alliance, but it was parked in a restricted zone, and I knew that when I finally did get to bed I would probably sleep for twelve hours. The chances of me waking up in time to rescue it before it got clamped (or worse—towed) were slim.
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.
