Six Days, Six Hours, Six Minutes

by Alex Smith

  He lugged the box down the path, fishing the new key out of his pocket. Warm air and bright light reached out and grabbed him, pulling him inside, and he slammed the door shut behind him to keep out the night.

  “Blake?” Julia called from the other room, her voice making his throat close up, making his heart hurt.

  “Yeah,” he shouted back. “Hang on, I’ll be through in a sec.”

  “Mum’s here.”

  Thank god.

  “Oh, hey Hermione,” he called through. “I just need to wash up.”

  “Your son is here too, remember him?”

  Blake rubbed his face, screwing his eyes shut against a shudder of exhaustion. He didn’t answer, just traipsed up the stairs and straight into the shower. He could have stayed in there all night, wished he could stay until the top few layers of skin had burned away. But after a few minutes there was a knock on the bathroom door and he turned off the water.

  “Blake?”

  The handle turned, but he’d locked it. Hopping out, he opened the door. Julia walked in, waving steam out of her face.

  “Christ, how can you stand to have it so hot?” she said.

  He stood there, naked, and she ran her eyes over him as if she’d never really seen him before. He half-covered himself with a hand, still self-conscious after all these years. He wanted to reach out and pull her close, but she wrapped her arms across her chest, a barrier he knew he wouldn’t get through tonight. He wondered if he would ever have another chance.

  “Mum’s gone,” she said.

  “Oh?”

  “I called her, like you asked. She picked Connor up for me. Where the hell were you today, Blake? What’s going on? What do you mean, something bad?”

  He rubbed at the scratches on his face without meaning to and she followed his fingers.

  “This is more than just being ill,” she said. “Something else is going on. Are you seeing someone?”

  He spluttered with the idiocy of it, but it only made him look more guilty. Julia’s expression twisted into a mask of disgust, and for a terrible second he thought she might cry—something she hardly ever did in front of him.

  “No!” he said. “Never, Julia, I love you. I would never cheat on you, ever.”

  He was trying to make himself sound honest, but the effort was having the opposite effect. Every word that spilled from his mouth felt like a lie.

  “So why do you have another phone?”

  “What?”

  “Downstairs, next to all that security stuff. Another phone, Blake, you bought it today, the receipt’s in the bag.”

  He felt too exposed and grabbed a towel from the rail, wrapping it around his waist.

  “I can’t say,” he said. “It’s not safe here. Someone might be listening. Look, just let me—”

  “You’re fucking lying.”

  She almost spat the words at him, her anger like a physical blow.

  “You’ve got bruises all over you, Blake, you’ve got scratches on your face. What? Your new woman gets a little too physical between the sheets? She likes it rough?”

  “Julia, that’s enough,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s not what you think.”

  “Why did you even come back?” she said. “Why not stay with her?”

  “There’s nobody else,” Blake said. “I swear on my life, on Connor’s life.”

  “Don’t you dare,” she said, finally uncoiling her arms so she could jab a finger at him. “Don’t you dare use him.”

  “Julia, please.” He took a step towards her but she retreated so fast that she banged her shoulder against the door. She backed into the corridor like he was a stranger—like he was dangerous.

  “Connor and I are going to bed,” she said as she retreated down the corridor. “If you’re planning on staying here then you can sleep on the sofa.”

  “Julia,” he said again, stalking her. She never took her eyes off him, using one hand to feel her way along the wall. It was heartbreaking. “Julia, please, I love you. This isn’t what you think.”

  We’re in danger, somebody is trying to kill us.

  But he couldn’t say it, not when the house might be bugged.

  “I don’t even know who you are anymore,” she said. Then she turned and practically ran to the stairs, dropping out of sight.

  He worked hard to forget—forget the last hour, forget the last few days. He skulked in the bathroom until he heard Julia walk into the bedroom, Connor burbling something to her. The need to go and cradle his son was unbearable, an itch inside his soul. But he couldn’t stand for Julia to look at him the way she had a moment ago, to look at him like he was a stranger. Had he already lost so much of himself that his wife didn’t recognise him?

  He thought about grabbing a pad of paper and writing down the truth for her to read. But she’d only want to call the police, and then he’d be right back at square one—the devil would know. No, he was home now. He could barricade the doors, he could keep watch. He could keep them safe.

  Only when he heard the bedroom door close did he let himself out of the bathroom. He tiptoed downstairs in his towel, walking into the kitchen. Doof did his best to tackle him, his blunt claws just about grinding his skin off.

  “Hey, buddy,” Blake said, squatting onto his haunches and scratching the dog’s back. “Least you still like me.”

  The dog bit him playfully, trying to haul his fat little body onto Blake’s knees, his pink tongue hanging so far out his mouth it was almost on the floor. Blake patted his meaty flanks then walked to the utility room and picked an old tracksuit from the airing rack. He grabbed his box of tools, too. Doof followed him through the kitchen, watching with bemusement as Blake lugged Connor’s highchair into the hallway again, propping it against the door.

  He doubled back into the kitchen, taking a steak knife from the drawer and slipping it into his pocket. Then he turned his attention to the box with the CCTV in it. Doof was already there, sniffing at it cautiously like there might be a wolf inside.

  “You wanna help?” Blake asked, lifting the box and carrying it into the living room. He sat down on the sofa and put it next to him, using the knife to break the tape. Buried inside a mountain of foam packing were four cameras, mounting brackets, a small hard drive, and about ten miles of wiring. He picked up a camera and turned it over in his hands. It wasn’t as compact as he’d thought—about the size of a pack of cards—but it was white, rather than black, which at least meant it would blend in.

  He didn’t bother with the instruction book—it was the size of a novel. He just carried the camera around the living room, trying to find the best place to secrete it. There was a shelving unit beside the fireplace, books and trinkets and a couple of framed photographs of the three of them. Blake picked up one—him and Julia dressed to the nines for a friend’s wedding, a bug-eyed Connor clenched in Blake’s hands.

  He put it down and picked up the other one, him and Julia this time. No special occasion, just the pair of them pulling stupid faces for a random selfie. Perfect. He rested the camera on the mantelpiece and opened the frame, using a screwdriver to punch a hole in the cardboard backing, then in the photograph. It went through half of his face, like somebody had blown it off with a shotgun. But when he put the frame back together and positioned the camera behind it, you’d have to be Agatha Christie to see that it was there.

  He unspooled the wire, connecting it to the back of the camera and running it around the edge of the room. Then he took the next camera into the hallway and placed it on a stair above head height, between two of the bannister poles, pointing right at the front door. The third he put in the kitchen, on a dusty shelf between a couple of baking dishes he didn’t even have names for. The fourth he carried quietly upstairs, sticking it above the lintel of their bedroom door so that it would cover the hallway and the top of the stairs.

  When it was fixed in place he put his ear to the door, hearing Julia talking softly to somebody. He couldn’t make out the words, but he
was pretty sure she was on the phone.

  Reluctantly, he left her to it, running a wire back downstairs and into the kitchen. Their Wi-Fi hub was in here and he connected the CCTV hard drive to it, plugging it in. It whirred, but there was no monitor. He rigged up wires to the other cameras, locking Doof away because the dog kept getting tangled in them. His new phone wasn’t a smartphone, so he dug out the laptop and opened it on the kitchen counter.

  Here, he paused. If the man could clone a phone, could he clone a laptop too? Blake was pretty sure the answer was yes, but what choice did he have? He installed the software that came with the set, creating a Cloud account to upload the data to, then followed the onscreen instructions. It didn’t take long before a viewing window popped up containing a perfect miniature display of his living room.

  A grin exploded across Blake’s face and he leaned in, amazed at the quality of the shot. Grabbing the laptop, he walked into the hall and saw himself appear in the doorway. He waved a hand, and a fraction of a second later the version of him on-screen waved his.

  He clicked a button marked 2 and he was looking down the upstairs hallway. He shuddered, feeling like it could be a found footage horror movie, half expecting to see something slither across the screen. He clicked 3 and saw the kitchen, watching himself walk back to the counter and set down the laptop. He waved again. The man on screen waved back. He looked exactly like Blake, even with the marks on his face, but Blake still had the feeling that he was watching an imposter. Something in the tightness of the jaw, the alien darkness of the eyes. He flicked himself the bird, then checked that the camera in the hall was working.

  He set all four to record onto the hard drive. The man in the shop had told him it could record continuously for five days, but Blake didn’t need it for that long. He needed it for another three at most. If it came to it, the system wouldn’t save his life, but it might just give him a heads-up the next time the man broke into his house. At the very least it would record anything that happened so that the police would have something to go on—something other than three butchered corpses.

  He carried the laptop through to the living room and crashed on the couch. The exhaustion was like something physical wrapped around him, binding his legs, pressing down on his eyes, muffling his hearing. It was warm down here too, lulling him towards sleep. He glanced at the loose wire that crossed the living room floor, thinking about the others that were strewn around the house.

  Do it in the morning, he told himself. And once upon a time he would have left it, fixed it later—or, more likely, never.

  He got up, grabbing a hammer from the toolbox. He had to search a couple of jars of nails and screws before he found some plastic brackets, forcing himself to secure every foot of cable to the wall. An hour later and the cameras were almost perfectly concealed. He scooped up the packaging and carried it outside, dumping it in the recycling bin and covering it up with cereal boxes and milk cartons.

  He walked back in, locking the door behind him then leaning the highchair against the jamb again. He rested a heavy chair against the back door, then searched every single room in the house—bar the main bedroom, in which he could still hear Julia’s muffled voice.

  On the way back to the sofa he picked up his new phone. He copied Adam’s number from his old phone, then slid that one down the side of the sofa, stuffing a cushion on top just in case.

  Hey, Adam, he texted. This is Blake. I have a new phone. Old one was cloned. This is really serious, somebody died today. Can’t talk at home but need to see you. Please don’t tell anyone, don’t tell the police, not yet. You free tomorrow?

  He read the message through, wondering if Adam’s phone had been compromised too, wondering if the man had got to every one of his friends, his family, his co-workers.

  Only one way to find out.

  He pressed send, then turned the volume up loud—he wouldn’t miss his reply this time. Placing the phone beside him, he looked at the shelf, at the photo of him and Julia, at the camera that sat there, unblinking.

  Please keep us safe.

  Then he closed his eyes, knowing that he wouldn’t sleep tonight, knowing that all he would see was that spray of blood, as bright as beaten copper against the dark sky, Daniel Keller’s legs drumming on the ground, his eyes rolling back in their sockets, ecstatic.

  TUESDAY

  Forty-Three

  “Oh Americans dance on the dancefloor…”

  Blake woke instantly from a dream about drowning in a lake of blood. For a second he couldn’t work out where he was, then the world seemed to slot back around him like a self-assembling jigsaw puzzle. Light oozed through the closed drapes, pearling on the carpet. He was still on the sofa, fully dressed. He sat forward and felt like somebody had slid a blade into the side of his neck. His back ached too, and when he managed to get to his feet he found that he couldn’t stand straight.

  Past the too-wet sound of his pulse, he heard the doorbell. He’d half hoped it was a fragment of his dream, but no such luck.

  “…which they squeeze from one cow or anutta, but the Mexicans dance on their hats. Ole!”

  He shook his head, his thoughts sloshing around in his skull like he was hungover. He grabbed for his phone, momentarily confused when he found the new one he’d bought from the petrol station. He hadn’t got around to setting the clock. He dug his old one out from the side of the sofa to see that it was coming up for six-thirty.

  “Oh they dance on hot coals in Calcutta, In Wisconsin they dance…”

  Who the hell was…?

  Oh fuck.

  He heard footsteps thudding down the stairs and propelled himself across the living room, meeting Julia in the hall. He glanced at her, then at the door, expecting to see a hulking shape there, its darkness leaking through the cracks, dripping in through the letterbox. Julia frowned at the highchair that still leaned there.

  “Leave it!” he snapped, his throat dry, his voice hoarse.

  “What? Why?” Julia said. She was wearing her dressing gown and her eyes were red raw, like she’d spent half the night crying. She wrapped it even tighter around herself, hovering on the second from the bottom stair. In the bedroom, Connor was wailing.

  “… but the Mexicans dance on their hats. Ole!”

  The hall was plunged into an uncanny silence, a standoff between him and Julia and whoever was outside. Blake could see a shadow—too small, surely, to be the devil’s. Was that a uniform they were wearing? A cap? Blake fought to gather his panicking thoughts, herding them like cattle. What day was it? Monday? No, Tuesday. Day four. It wasn’t time, yet. The devil couldn’t come for him.

  But he doesn’t stick to the rules.

  And even if he did, Blake hadn’t.

  A hand reached up and pressed the doorbell again, that artificial chipmunk voice singing with smug satisfaction, like it knew how much pain it had caused. Blake chewed his lip, watching Julia watch him.

  “You know what, just deal with it,” she said, turning around and traipsing back up the stairs. He heard the bedroom door slam shut.

  “…Russians they dance on a sabre, but the…”

  Blake pulled the steak knife from his pocket with one hand, hefting the highchair out of the way with the other. He kept the blade out of sight as he eased the door open.

  A man stood there, wearing a brown UPS uniform, an Arsenal cap, and the biggest shit-eating grin Blake had ever seen. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought it was the same man who had been driving the truck, the one who had nearly run over Doof. The same greasy brown hair peeked out beneath the cap, and he had that same confidence, that arrogant swagger. This guy was nothing like Daniel Keller. He glared at Blake, and didn’t so much as blink. He loomed, too, not waiting for the door to be fully open before pushing up onto the step and leaning inside. It was a direct imitation of what the older man had done, and Blake could almost picture this guy getting his instructions.

  It’s not his house, it’s yours. Own it.

  A
wave of stench rolled in with him and Blake wanted to fall away from it, cover his mouth, but he knew that if he did that then he’d be opening up the house, inviting him in. He stood his ground, his grip iron tight on the knife. He knew that he would use it if he had to. If the guy in front of him took one more step inside then Blake would slide the end of the knife into his throat and just keep pushing.

  He must have sensed it because he rocked back, retreating. For an instant his grin flickered, unsure, almost disappointed. Then it cut his face in half again, even bigger than before. He eyeballed Blake and Blake forced himself to meet the man’s stare, holding it until he felt like something was coming to a boil inside him, until he felt like he was going to scream. He broke first, looking back into the house, blinking the moisture from his vision, furious with himself.

  “Got something for you,” said the guy. Blake looked back to see that he was holding a parcel the size of a large book. “Delivery for Blake Barton.” He popped the B’s the same way the other guy had.

  Blake looked at the package but didn’t move. The guy held it there, that grin never leaving his face.

  “I don’t want it,” said Blake, starting to close the door. The guy jammed a foot in, pushing himself forward and thrusting the package into Blake’s chest.

  “You don’t have a choice,” he said. “You’re gonna want to watch this.”

  Watch it?

  “Why don’t you all just fuck off and leave me alone,” Blake said. He wanted to scream the words at him but they were almost a whisper, so that Julia wouldn’t hear.

  “Aw, but where would the fun be in that?” the guy replied, his smile seeming to stretch off the side of his face, Joker-big. He jabbed the package again, the corner digging into Blake’s sternum. “You want me to call for Julia?” the guy said. “Tell her it’s a package for her? She might have fun with it too.”