Authors: Mark Billingham

TT13 Time of Death (47 page)

She thought about shouting Alan’s name out; it was so quiet that the sound would probably carry. She was being stupid.

Still out of breath, she picked up her pace again, looking up at the noise of feet falling heavily on the path ahead, and seeing the jogger coming towards her.

Alan rang again, hung up as soon as he heard her voice on the answering machine.

He looked at his watch, leaned his head back against the bark. He could hear the distant drone of the traffic and, closer, the shrill peep of the bats that had begun to emerge from their boxes to feed. Moving above him like scraps of burnt paper on the breeze.

He slowed as he passed her, jogged on a stride or two then backed quickly up to draw level with her again. She froze, and he could see the fear in her face.

‘Rachel?’ he said.

She stared at him, still wary but with curiosity getting the better of her.

‘I met you a few weeks ago in the pub,’ he said. ‘With Alan.’ Her eyes didn’t move from his. ‘Graham. The cardiologist?’

‘Oh, God. Graham … right, of course.’

She laughed and her shoulders sagged as the tension vanished.

He laughed too, and reached around to the belt he wore beneath the jogging bottoms. Felt for the knife.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I think my brain’s going. I’m a bit bloody jumpy to tell you the truth.’

He nodded but he wasn’t really listening. He span slowly around, hand on hip. catching his breath. Checking that there was no-one else around.

‘Well …’ she said.

He’d have her in the bushes in seconds, the knife pressed to her throat before she had a chance to open her mouth.

He saw her check her watch.

It’s time, he thought.

‘Rachel!’

He looked up and saw the shape of a big man moving fast towards them. She looked at the shape, then back to him, her mouth open and something unreadable in her eyes.

He dug out a smile. ‘Nice to see you again,’ he said.

With the blade of the knife flat against his wrist, he turned and jogged away along the path that ran at right-angles to the one they’d been on.

‘Was that him? Was that him?’

‘He was a jogger. He just—’

Lee’s hand squeezed her neck, choked off the end of the sentence. He raised his other hand slowly, held the phone aloft in triumph. ‘I know all about it,’ he said. ‘So don’t try and lie to me.’

There were distant voices coming from somewhere. People leaving. Laughter. Words that were impossible to make out and quickly faded to silence.

Lee tossed the phone to the ground and the free hand reached up to claw at her chest. Thick fingers pushed aside material, found a nipple and squeezed.

She couldn’t make a sound. The tears ran down her face and neck and on to the back of his hand as she beat at it, as she snatched in breaths through her nose. Just as she felt her legs go, he released her neck and breast and raised both hands up to the side of her neck.

‘Lee, nothing happened. Lee …’

He pressed the heels of his hands against her ears and leaned in close as though he might kiss, or bite her.

‘What’s his name?’

She tried to shake her head but he held it hard.

‘Or so help me I’ll dig a hole for you with my bare hands. I’ll leave your carcass here for the foxes.’

So she told him, and he let her go, and he shouted over his shoulder to her as he walked further into the woods.

‘Now, run home …’

Alan had given it one more minute ten minutes ago, but it was clear to him now that she wasn’t coming. She’d sounded like she was really going to try, so he decided that she hadn’t been able to get away.

He hoped it was only fear that had restrained her.

He stood up, pressed the redial button on his phone one last time. Got her message again.

There were no more than a couple of minutes before the exits were sealed. He just had time to retrieve the bracelet, to reach up and unhook it from the branch on which it hung.

He’d give it to her another day.

Standing alone in the dark, wondering how she was, he decided that he might not draw her attention to the newest charm on the bracelet. A pair of dice had seemed so right, so appropriate in light of what had happened, of everything they’d talked about. Suddenly he felt every bit as clumsy as his father. It seemed tasteless.

Luck was something they were pushing.

He stepped out on to the path, turned when he heard a man’s voice say his name …

The footwork and the swing were spot on
.

The first blow smashed Alan’s phone into a dozen or more pieces, the second did much the same to his skull and those that came after were about nothing so much as exercise.

It took half a minute for the growl to die in Lee’s throat.

The blood on the branch, on the grass to either side of the path, on his training shoes, looked black in the near total darkness.

Lee bent down and picked up the dead man’s arm. He wondered if his team had managed to hold on to their one goal lead as he began dragging the body into the undergrowth.

Graham had run until he felt his lungs about to give up the ghost. He was no fitter than many of those he treated. Those whose hearts were marbled with creamy lines of fat, like cheap off-cuts.

He dropped down on to a bench to recover, to reflect on what had happened in the woods. To consider his rotten luck. If that man hadn’t come along when he had …

A young woman with Mediterranean features was waiting to cross the road a few feet from where he was sitting. She was taking keys from her bag, probably heading towards the flats opposite.

She glanced in his direction and he dropped his elbows to his knees almost immediately. Looked at the pavement. Made sure she didn’t get a good look at his face.

The next High Barnet train was still eight minutes away.

Rachel stood on the platform, her legs still shaking, the burning in her breast a little less fierce with every minute that passed. The pain had been good. It had stopped her thinking too much; stopped her wondering. She sought a little more of it, thrusting her hand into her pocket until she found her wedding ring, then driving the edge of it hard against the fingernail until she felt it split.

Alan had thought it odd that she still took the ring off even after she’d told him the truth, but it made perfect sense to her. Its removal had always been more about freedom than deceit.

An old woman standing next to her nudged her arm and nodded toward the electronic display.

Correction. High Barnet. 1 min
…

‘There’s a stroke of luck,’ the woman said.

Rachel looked at the floor. She didn’t raise her head again until she heard the train coming.

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