Killer Instinct (29 page)

I ran our last conversation round and round like a loop tape. I couldn't get it out of my head. If I hadn't confronted her, we would probably have walked out together. Her attacker might have backed off. If he had got brave then maybe, together, we would have been able to take him down.

Right now we should have been laughing and congratulating each other, boosted by the adrenaline thrill of success. We should have been waiting for the cops to show up and cart off a very surprised and down-trodden mugger. One who wasn't expecting his victims to fight back.

Instead I was waiting for the paramedics to come and tell me with their serious eyes and their sober stance that there was nothing they could do . . .

The sound of running footsteps shook my foggy mind aware. I glanced up and saw Ailsa and one of the other residents hurrying down the drive towards us. The other woman took one look at the scene illuminated in the Mini's headlights, then reeled away and threw up onto the edge of the lawn.

Fortunately, Ailsa had a slightly stronger stomach. She came forwards like someone approaching the loose edge of a chalky cliff, her hand squeezing my shoulder in silent support.

More footsteps made us both turn. Tris came jogging out of the house, pulling on his old parka jacket and carrying a couple of blankets. “Help's on the way,” he said in a hushed voice when he reached us. “Is she . . .?”

I grimaced up at him and shrugged.

Joy's eyes snapped open again at that moment, making the pair of them jerk backwards, cursing. With a sharp movement she gripped tight onto my wrist, desperation lending unearthly strength. She tried to mouth words her destroyed voice box couldn't begin to form.

Blood bubbled between her lips, speckled with saliva, then she went limp. I swear in that moment I watched the light dim in her eyes, like the last flicker of a torch with an exhausted battery.

In the distance, came the faint wail of sirens.

***

It was well after midnight when I wearily climbed the stairs to the flat and let myself in. The half-cleared debris of the interior seemed even more depressing as I flicked on the lights.

I put the kettle on for coffee as a reflex rather than out of any real desire for caffeine. I was too wired to sleep, too tired to do much else. My mind couldn't stop turning things uselessly over and over.

I stripped out of my ruined jogging pants and threw the sweatshirt straight into the rubbish, pulling on fresh clothes. I suppose I could have soaked the blood out of them in a bucket of cold water, but I didn't have much of an inclination to try.

The pants had been pale grey and looked worse than the shirt, which was green. Blood goes black on a green background. I remember my father telling me that was why surgeons wore it. Saves making the relatives faint when they came straight out of the operating theatre splattered with the stuff.

I checked the answering machine for messages. There were a couple of pupils letting me know about classes they couldn't make, and one from Sam, asking me to get in touch. The last message was from Marc.

“Just calling to check you're OK,” said that rich voice, perfectly at ease talking to a machine. “You sounded slightly off-line the other day. Call me, Charlie. Any time – I mean it.”

I half-smiled. People who say things like that on answerphone messages so often don't really expect you to take them up on it. Like the ones who say, “you're always welcome” or “see you soon”. They'd be horrified if you actually turned up on their doorstep at two the following morning.

On an impulse, I picked up the phone and dialled Marc's mobile number. I nearly changed my mind in the time it took to connect, but once it had started ringing out I held my nerve.

“Yeah?” His laconic greeting wasn't quite what I expected. For a moment I couldn't think what to say that didn't sound foolish, or inconsequential. “If that's you, Zachary, you better have a good excuse for ducking out of work tonight! Hello? Talk to me.”

I rushed into speech. “Hi Marc, it's me. You said call any time, so – I'm calling.”

A fractional pause. “Charlie! How lovely.” There was genuine warmth in his voice. “It's late. Are you all right?”

“Er, yes – no. I don't know,” I faltered. There was the heavy beat of music in the background at his end of the line. He must still be at the club. Busy.

“Want to tell me about it?” he suggested without impatience. The gentleness in his voice was nearly my undoing. I'd been fine all through the impersonal information-gathering of the police who'd turned up at the Lodge. Now I was in danger of losing it big time.

Victoria had gone to pieces so badly that a woman constable had driven her home in the battered Mini, after the medics had given her a sedative. It was the only effective thing they'd been able to do. By the time they arrived Joy was past even their best-trained ministrations.

“A friend of mine has just died,” I said. It sounded so lame, such an inadequate way of describing the events of the past few hours.

“Oh Charlie, I'm sorry,” he said politely. “Was it sudden?”

“You could say that. She had her throat cut. I was with her.” The surface tension broke and the tears spilled over. “I watched her die, Marc, and there was nothing I could do.”

There was another pause, longer this time, tense. “Would you like me to come over?”

I pulled myself together. “N-no,” I said. “I'll be OK.” I caught sight of the hand that gripped the phone receiver and stretched the other one out in front of me. They were both ingrained with dried blood, sunk deep into my pores and laced under my nails. I grimaced at the sight of it. “Besides,” I added with the semblance of a smile, “I look a mess.”

He laughed softly. “How very female,” he murmured, then, “Hold on a moment, would you?” I heard him take the phone away from his mouth. There was the mutter of voices in the background.

I took advantage of his absence to sniff loudly and tell myself to get it together. I suppose I should have been grateful that I hadn't gone off the rails quite as badly as Victoria. Maybe I was just getting used to bloodied corpses...

“I'm sorry,” I apologised when he came back on the line. “You're obviously busy and the last thing you want is me blubbering at you.”

“Don't be stupid. You're hardly blubbering,” he said. “It's been a relatively quiet night, but Len's just been having fun and games with a couple of rowdy punters. We're a bit short-handed.”

“I would have thought all you'd have to do is let Angelo off his leash and stand by with a mop and bucket to clear up the aftermath.”

“We probably would have done, but he wasn't in tonight,” Marc said with a hint of annoyance. “He called in sick. In fact, that's who I thought was calling me now. I tried him earlier and couldn't get a reply. He's either too sick to answer the phone, or he's not sick enough and he's gone out somewhere.”

“He's probably too busy beating up his girlfriend,” I muttered, recalling suddenly the way Victoria's eyebrow rings had been torn out of her face. It made me wince to think about it. I didn't even have my ears pierced. Still, that was nothing compared to the level of violence that had been shown towards Joy . . .

“Sorry, Charlie the line just crackled. What did you say?” Marc asked.

“Oh, nothing,” I said, shaking my head to clear it. “Look, I'm sorry Marc, I'm still all mixed up and my brain just seems to be going off at a tangent half the time.”

“Are you sure you don't want me to come round? I can be there in less than twenty minutes.”

“Yes I'm quite sure,” I said more firmly. “Thanks anyway Marc. Maybe I'll see you tomorrow.”

“OK. I'll call you,” he promised. “And if there's anything I can do, Charlie, you know you only have to say.” I heard the sincerity in his voice, knew he meant it.

“Thank you,” I said, grateful for his understanding, “but I think I'll be OK. I'll talk to you tomorrow.”

As he rang off he told me to get some sleep. His tone suggestive enough to almost make me offer him a place in my bed to help me try.

***

Maybe, if I'd gone to bed then, I would have managed more sleep than I did. I sat for a long time on the most solid part of my leaking sofa – I really must finish clearing up the stuffing – cradling another cup of coffee and trying to blank the vision of Joy's desperate struggle to cling to life.

Would I have been able to fight any harder? Would I have held out any longer than she had? I looked down again and saw my bloodstained hands.

With a grimace I set down my cup and went to scrub the traces away. Soap struggled to shift the blood now it was dry. I ended up using washing up liquid, with some gritty brown sugar thrown in as an improvised scouring agent. By the time I'd finished my skin was pink and raw, but at least it was clean.

I had just walked back into the lounge again when the phone rang. I picked it up with a smile on my face, thinking that at this hour it could only be Marc, with some just-remembered remark.

“That was a close one, wasn't it, Charlie? Next time, it could be you.”

I lurched. It wasn't Marc. Instead, I heard a quiet sexless voice with a faint mechanical twang to it that took me a moment to place. Then I realised it was the way you sounded when you were using a voice-changer device, like mine. Correction – like the one I used to have, but hadn't been able to find since the flat had been turned over . . .

“Charlie? I know you can hear me,” the voice went on nastily. Oh shit. I jerked away from the receiver as though it had burned me. “I know you're listening. Not so brave now, are you? Your friend wasn't brave. She hardly even struggled. No sport there, Charlie. Not like you.”

“Try me!” I threw at him. Oh Christ, where had that burst of bravado come from? The fear rippled down me, making my spine twitch. I wanted to run away screaming with my hands over my ears, but I was caught, dazzled, like a rabbit in the headlights of the car that was just about to run it over.

The voice gave a delicate laugh. “Maybe next time, Charlie,” it said. “Maybe I will.”

“There won't be a next time,” I said, amazed at how level my own voice sounded.

“Oh there'll definitely be a next time,” repeated the metallic voice. “You won't know where, and you won't know when, but it'll happen. You can count on it.”

I didn't have the capacity to breathe enough to answer that one, but I didn't have to. There was a click and the monotone whirr of an empty line. I let the receiver drop back onto its cradle slowly, stunned.

My legs suddenly opted out of supporting me. I wasn't close enough to the sofa to make it, and I ended up on the floor. My vision started to tunnel out, the blood thundering in my ears. I didn't know if I was going to pass out, or throw up, or both.

I sat there for some time, eyes staring without seeing. He's coming after me! I couldn't get it out of my head. I wanted to panic, or run, but common sense told me that wasn't the answer. If I didn't stand and fight this, I was never going to be able to stop running.

I shook myself out of my stupor long enough to dial 1471. The frosty-voiced automated lady at BT told me I had been called today and gave me the precise time, then added unsurprisingly that the caller had withheld their number.

“Thanks,” I told her. “That's a great help,” but she didn't respond to the jibe.

***

I didn't move far that night. I dozed fitfully, shivering, wrapped up in what was left of my quilt and still wearing the clothes I'd changed into when I got home. The thought of facing a would-be murderer naked was too much to bear. It was a long cold night, and I'm not just talking about time and temperature.

I kept the light on, and stayed away from the windows. The phone rang another couple of times in the early hours, but I'd put the answering machine back on by then. Both times the caller rang off without waiting for the beep as instructed, and the numbers were withheld.

I could only guess it was my friendly neighbourhood psycho again. It seemed only too likely.

By seven I gave up any idea of sleep and got up, pacing round the flat restlessly, unable to settle to anything. Eventually I gave in and admitted defeat. I picked up the phone, dialling Lancaster police station quickly, before I'd chance to chicken out.

When they answered I asked to be put through to whoever was dealing with Joy's death.

A detective inspector came onto the line and I explained to him who I was. “I don't wish to sound alarmist,” I said carefully, “but I think whoever killed Joy might have decided that it's my turn next.”

By the time the doorbell rang just after nine-thirty, I had managed to keep myself occupied by clearing up more of the rubbish. There was now a row of eight or so plastic bags near the door and I was just tackling the stuffing from the sofa.

I straightened up slowly, my vision narrowing sharply as I did so. Jesus, I was going to have to eat something soon. I hadn't been able to face food when I got in last night, and I'd missed breakfast.