Authors: Peter James
His mouth felt dry with anxiety. He laid down the rifle, then patted the handgun in his pocket. From his left pocket he pulled the leather pouch containing the tungsten lock-pick tools. His insides were jangling, the red mist of panic he’d experienced earlier was returning and he was having to make an effort to stay calm, to remember his plan.
He should make it look like an accident, like a fire, that was his brief. But that carried too many risks, the thought of being caught, of being incarcerated. No. Not an option. These scum sewer Infidels weren’t worthy of such a risk. He would gun them down like the vermin they were, them and their Spawn. Then he would burn the place. His Master might not be happy with him, but he would never be able to send him out into the field again. There were times in life where you had to make your own decisions.
He climbed over the fence and onto the narrow grass verge on the other side. Stared anxiously up at the house. Put one cautious foot forward on to the gravel as if he were testing water. Then another.
Scccrrunncccccchhhhh.
He froze. Took another step, then another, praying for silent footfalls and each time scrunching just as loudly as the last.
They won’t hear it, not in this storm. Stop worrying.
He reached the porch. He already knew what kind of lock it was, from his previous visit, a sturdy, mortise deadlock, and he had the right pick selected for the task, a full diamond. He had practised a thousand times on an identical lock he had bought earlier in the week.
From his breast pocket he pulled out his tiny torch, twisted it on, and held it in his left hand, pointing the beam on the lock. With his right hand, he inserted the tip of the tungsten diamond pick into the keyway. Navigating the wards, he pushed it firmly through the plug, feeling for the first pin. Then it came to a halt. He tried again. And then he realized, to his dismay, what the problem was.
Someone had left the key in on the other side of the door.
Even as he was registering this, he heard a metallic sound right in front of him. The ratchety clank of brass pins lifting clear of a sheer line. The dull, leaden, unmistakable sound of a key turning in a lock.
Dropping the pick, his hand lunged for his Beretta. It was jammed in his pocket! As he tugged at the weapon in wild panic the door opened. It was so dark inside the house he could barely see the two small figures, in boots and in their winter coats.
The Devil’s Spawn.
Standing in front of him.
Their eyes glinting with such curiosity he felt for a moment they were staring right through him. He stepped back several paces. Much too late, he realized they were in fact looking at the people behind him.
He never heard the gun fire. He sensed just one brief rush of scorching, arid wind, accompanied by an eerie
whoosh
that made his ears pop. He never felt the bullet, either, which entered through the base of his skull, partially severing his spinal cord. It traversed through his left cerebral hemisphere into his right cerebral hemisphere, on through his frontal lobe, exited above his right eye, and ricocheted off the brick facing of the porch, gouging a small hole in the cement pointing.
For an instant, he saw Lara, standing in brilliant, milky light at the end of a long tunnel; then the faces of the Devil’s Spawn stood in front of her, blocking his view with their smirking faces, smirking
Victory!
at him, savage, graceless smiles stretched across their faces, while their eyes burned with hatred. They were moving towards him, or perhaps he was moving toward them. He called out, in desperation, ‘Lara!’
Her name echoed in the hollow darkness, and dissolved into the Spawns’ giggles, ringing, wracking, deafening, childish giggles. The only light now came from the four eyes, four pools of luminescent, colourless dry ice. They were receding. Soft gravel was cradling him.
There were faces above him now, two different faces, silhouettes in the darkness, something familiar about them. Slowly his ravaged neural pathways lightened their features for him, turning them a vivid night-vision green. And then through his addled thoughts and fading consciousness, as his blood drained out onto the gravel, memory began flooding in. Into his confusion entered a fleeting moment of understanding. He knew now why they seemed familiar.
In the fancy sports car in the parking lot behind the school-house. Those profiles through his night-vision glasses as they had turned to kiss. The man and the woman.
It was them.
Halley was in his little battery-powered police jeep. Baseball cap on back to front, huge grin on his face, driving around and around the lawn in the back yard of their house. Roaring around the inflatable rubber paddling pool, swerving to avoid stray toys, flashing his lights, hooting his klaxon. It was his third birthday; he was fine today, he was having a great day.
Naomi grinned, too, as she watched him. She gripped John’s hand with joy beneath a warm Californian sun. It was a day that was as perfect as it was possible for any day to be – when you knew your son had less than a year to live.
The dream was slipping away. She kept her eyes shut, tried to sink back into it. But a cold draught of air was blowing on her face. And she needed to pee. She opened her eyes. The room was pitch dark and her clock said 6.01.
The gale was still raging outside. There were all kinds of creaking noises from the beams above her, rattling noises from the windows; draughts.
John was still deep asleep. She lay for some moments trying to resist that need to pee, pulling the duvet up over her face to shut out the cold air, closing her eyes, trying to return to that Californian summer afternoon. But she was wide awake and all her troubles were pouring back into her mind.
What day was it today? Friday. They were taking Luke and Phoebe to see Dr Michaelides, to talk about special schools. Then in the afternoon they were going to see a couple of dog breeders, one which had a litter of Rhodesian Ridgeback puppies, and another breeder who had a litter of Alsatians sired by a police dog.
Trying not to wake John, she slipped out of bed and padded into the bathroom, wrestled herself into her dressing gown and pushed her feet into her slippers. She peed, then washed her hands and face, brushed her teeth.
Horrible bloody bags under my eyes.
She peered closer into the mirror. More wrinkles. Every day there seemed to be fresh ones. Some were beginning to look like crevasses.
Let’s face it, kiddo, you are ageing. Another decade and you’ll be a wrinkly. A couple more after that and you’ll be a crumbly. Next thing you know, Luke and Phoebe’ll be pushing you along the seafront in a wheelchair with a tartan rug over your knees while you sit there, with mad white hair, drooling.
Except.
Would Luke and Phoebe ever take care of John and herself? Would they ever care enough? Would they want to be bothered? Wasn’t that what kids were supposed to do? Wasn’t that the way life was supposed to work? How did that bumper sticker she’d seen go?
GET
EVEN
!
LIVE
LONG
ENOUGH
TO
BECOME
A
PROBLEM
FOR
YOUR
KIDS
!
She closed the bedroom door behind her and switched the landing light on. Luke and Phoebe’s bedroom door was shut and the box-room door was shut. They were usually up at this hour.
But this morning, silence.
The stair treads creaked like hell, and she went down slowly, mindful of not wanting to wake John. Then, as she reached the hall, she felt a stab of unease. The safety chain on the front door, which they always kept in the locked position when they were indoors, was hanging loose.
Had they forgotten to attach it last night? She supposed they must have done, and made a mental note to tell John. Right now they needed to be more vigilant about safety than ever.
Then something else struck her. She turned and looked at the Victorian coat stand. It seemed emptier than normal. Where were the children’s coats? Her eyes shot down to the ground, to the hollow in the middle of the stand where they all kept their boots. Luke’s blue wellingtons and Phoebe’s red ones were missing.
Her unease deepened. Had they gone for a walk? At this hour, in the pitch darkness, in the filthy weather?
She opened the heavy oak door, pushing hard against the strong, biting wind and flinching against stinging droplets of rain, and peered out into the darkness.
And froze.
Something was lying on the ground right in front of the porch, a sack or an animal, or something.
A slick of fear shot down her spine. She stepped back warily, looked at the panel of light switches, and pressed the red one.
Instantly all the exterior floodlights, except one, came on and she saw it was not a sack or an animal. It was a man, sprawled on his back. A handgun lay in the gravel near him. Barely registering more than that, she slammed the door shut, pulled on the safety chain, and threw herself up the stairs, choking with shock.
‘John!’ She burst into the bedroom and switched on the light. ‘John, for God’s sake, there’s someone downstairs, outside, a man, a man. Unconscious, dead, I don’t know. Gun. There’s a gun!’
She ran out, along to the children’s bedroom, threw open the door; but even before she had hit the light switch she could see the room was empty. The box room was empty, too.
John came out onto the landing in his dressing gown, holding his shotgun. ‘Where? Where outside?’
Staring at him in wild, bug-eyed panic, she blurted, ‘F-f-f-front – f-f-front door. I don’t know where Luke and Phoebe are.’
‘Call the police – no – hit panic button, quicker – by the bed, press the panic button. They’ll come right away.’
‘Be careful, John.’
‘Where is he?’
‘Front door.’ Trembling. ‘I don’t know where Luke and Phoebe are. I don’t know where they are, they may be outside.’
‘Panic button,’ he said. Then he switched the safety catch off, and headed cautiously downstairs.
Naomi ran to the side of the bed, pressed the red panic button and immediately the alarm began sounding inside and outside the house. Then she grabbed the phone and listened for a second. There was a dial tone. Thank God. She tried to stab out 999, but her fingers were shaking so badly that the first time, she misdialled. She dialled again and this time it rang. And rang.
‘Oh Jesus, come on, answer, please, please!’
Then she heard the operator’s voice. She blurted out, ‘Police.’ Then, moments later, she heard herself shouting into the phone, ‘MAN! GUN! OH GOD, PLEASE COME QUICKLY!’
She calmed enough to give their address carefully, then ran down the stairs, passed John who was in the hallway peering out of a window, and into the living room, calling, ‘LUKE! PHOEBE!’
No sign of them.
Back in the hall, Naomi stood behind John and stared fearfully out of the window at the motionless, rain-sodden figure in his anorak, bobble hat and wellingtons. His face was turned away from them so they could not make out his features. And she wondered, just for a fleeting instant, whether she had been overreacting. A tramp? He looked like a tramp?
A tramp with a handgun?
‘I can’t find Luke and Phoebe,’ she said.
John was opening the front door.
‘Oh God, please be careful. Wait. The police will be here—’
‘Hallo!’ John called to the man. ‘Hallo! Excuse me! Hallo!’
‘Wait, John.’
But John was already stepping outside, holding the shotgun out in front of him, finger on the trigger, staring at the brightly lit drive and lawn, and the pre-dawn darkness beyond, swinging the gun from left to right, bringing it back onto the man each time. He took a few more steps, the wind lifting the bottom of his dressing gown like a skirt. Naomi followed.
They were standing right over the figure, right over the man in his black cap and black anorak and black trousers and black boots. He was young, no more than thirty, she guessed. John crouched, snatched up the handgun and gave it to Naomi to hold.
It was heavy and wet and cold and made her shudder. She stared out warily into the darkness beyond the lights, then back at the man.
‘Hallo?’ John said.
Naomi knelt, and it was then that she saw the hole in his forehead above his right eye, the torn flesh, the bruising around it, and the plug of congealed blood inside that the rain hadn’t managed to wash away.
She whimpered. Scrambled on all fours round the other side of his head. Saw the patch of singed hairs at the base of the skull, the torn flesh, more congealed blood here.
‘Shot,’ she said. ‘Shot.’ Trying frantically to remember a First Aid course she did when she was in her teens at school, she grabbed his hand, pushing back the cuff of the leather glove, and pressed her finger against his wrist. Despite being soaking wet, the flesh was warm.
She tried for some moments, but couldn’t tell whether it was a pulse or just her own nerves pulsing. Then his eyes opened.