He doesn’t know that he is ready. His consciousness has abandoned him and handed the fight to the rest of his brain. He doesn’t know that his readiness comes in the form of a craft knife that he has slipped from his pocket. He doesn’t know that his thumb has fully extended the razor-sharp blade.
McVitie knows none of this either. He would run otherwise. He would look at that blade and accept that he cannot win this fight, that he must surrender to such overwhelming odds.
But he sees nothing. His rage, his incredulity are total. He is immersed in the act of removing this unwelcome stain on his home. He is not aware that Malcolm holds his life in his hand.
He realises only when it is too late. He realises only when he sees the intense red warning signals. And when he staggers back, away from Malcolm, it is because he senses that the redness is his, and it should not be visible. It should be inside him, coursing through his vessels, keeping him alive. But there it is, yes, there it is, everywhere, on the walls, the floor and even the ceiling, slashes of crimson that he continues to paint, because it still sprays and gushes from his body.
And as he looks down at himself and tries to fathom what is happening, he finds that a curious detachment begins to settle in him. He finds that he cannot respond adequately to the vision of this attacker who has now turned his attention to Eva, his wife, his beloved wife, who is still in bed, still holding the phone while she shakes and screams and pleads. He cannot help her now, cannot save her, even though he would give everything he has to do so.
He can only watch, while his breathing becomes ragged and his pulse flutters and his heart struggles to find something substantial with which to work. He can only watch as Eva is dispatched to join him on the other side, and he prays that such is the case, prays that anything bad he has done in this life will not prevent him from being reunited with her in the next.
I’m sorry, Eva. Forgive me.
*
Malcolm doesn’t cry. Doesn’t yell. Doesn’t run.
When his faculties eventually come back to him, he reacts only with puzzlement. His confused brain takes some time to make the connection between the carnage before him and the knife still tightly clutched in his blood-slicked fingers.
It’s all their fault. He hadn’t wanted this. They shouldn’t have interfered. They shouldn’t have got in his way.
That’s a lot of blood.
He doesn’t remember spilling it. He doesn’t recall the intense violence that must have gone into creating this scene. Which is probably a good thing. It will make it easier to live with what he must have done here.
He reaches up and fingers the deformed area of his skull. Marvels at the effect such an injury can have on one’s whole personality and behaviour. He tries to think back to what kind of man he was before the accident. Would he have been capable of something like this?
It’s time to go.
He doesn’t know how long he has been here, but it’s time to leave.
It’s only as he turns that he remembers what he came here for.
And that’s because she’s standing in the doorway.
She’s tiny, and she’s silent. Her eyes appear hugely magnified against the chalky whiteness of her face. Her whole body is trembling, and she is standing in a pool of her own urine.
Malcolm smiles down at her.
‘Hi, honeybunch,’ he says. ‘Let’s go home.’
23
After he has backed the van onto their secluded driveway, Malcolm remains behind the wheel.
Harriet is quick to appear. Watching her in his mirror, Malcolm reads the excitement in her bustling form. He cracks the vehicle’s window open an inch as she approaches.
‘How did it go?’ she asks.
‘Fine,’ he says. ‘She’s in the back. Do you want to take her in?’
Harriet looks doubtful.
‘By myself?’
‘It’s okay,’ says Malcolm. He spots the syringe in her hand. ‘You won’t need that. Just take her inside. Put her in the kitchen, see if she’ll have a glass of milk or something.’
Harriet hesitates. ‘What about you? Aren’t you coming in?’
‘Yes. In a minute. Take the girl in first.’
She nods. Slips the hypodermic into her pocket. Goes around to the rear of the van.
When she opens the doors, Malcolm knows instantly that any concerns she has immediately dissipate. He hears how she coos, how she melts.
‘Hello, gorgeous one,’ she says. ‘Come to Mummy. That’s it. Come on, darling. Let’s get you inside in the warm. Would you like a biscuit?’
He doesn’t hear a peep from the girl. Hasn’t heard a sound from her since he first encountered her in the house. He didn’t even need to knock her out. Just picked her up, light as a feather, and carried her out to the van.
She goes quietly with her new mother now, good as gold. Harriet leads her along the driveway and takes her inside. Malcolm gives them a couple of minutes to get settled, then climbs out of the van and heads indoors.
Walking into the living room, he catches sight of himself in the mirror. He gets the curious sense of knowing his image should shock him, and yet not finding it alarming at all. It’s just . . . weird. Like being one of the walking dead.
But now he doesn’t know what to do. He can’t sit down for fear of marking the furniture. He worries that he is already leaving marks on the carpet.
He can hear Harriet’s chatter. The encouragement to eat, drink and . . . well, maybe not be merry just yet. Give her time.
And then Harriet’s questions directed at him, growing in volume as she emerges from the kitchen.
‘Malcolm, what are those marks on Ellie’s—?’
She cuts off her sentence with a hand clamped to her mouth as she sees him in the light. He lifts his arms slightly, lets them fall again. As if to say, I’m home. What do you think?
‘Malcolm!’ She rushes towards him, eyes scanning him urgently for injury. ‘Oh my God! What’s happened? Are you hurt? What happened?’
‘I’m okay. I’m fine. It’s not my . . . it’s not mine.’
‘Not yours? You’re not hurt?’
‘No. Honestly. I’m not hurt at all. There was . . . there was a fight.’
She brings her hand to her mouth again, lowers it. Tears are in her eyes.
‘A fight with who? The parents?’ She drops her voice to a whisper, fearful that Ellie may hear. ‘Ellie’s mum and dad?’
‘Yes. They tried to stop me. I had to . . . I had to get forceful with them.’
‘Forceful? Was it bad? I mean, are they badly hurt? Won’t they tell the police about you? Oh, Malcolm! Are we in trouble?’
Malcolm reaches out towards her. He wants to touch Harriet, to reassure her, but he’s afraid of staining her.
‘Shush now. We’re not in trouble. They . . . they won’t be going to the police.’
Harriet opens her mouth, closes it again. Malcolm can almost hear her mind working as she analyses his words, looking for any implication other than the obvious one.
She could come right out and ask. She could say, ‘Are they dead?’ But she won’t do that. She understands his meaning all right, but she will prefer to leave it unsaid. That’s how Harriet gets through life: stepping around things she’d rather not know for certain.
She says, ‘So . . . So we’re safe?’
‘We’re safe.’
‘Because Ellie is a beautiful child.’
‘She is.’
‘She needs us. She needs to be looked after.’
‘Yes. Yes, she does. And we can do that now.’
Harriet nods. She waves a hand, indicating the bloodstains splashed across her husband.
‘You should get out of those clothes, Daddy. You need to look respectable for your new daughter.’
24
For a few moments, Cody thinks he’s having another of the panic attacks that used to plague him. He’s finding it difficult to
get enough oxygen into his lungs, and his legs are beginning to tremble, as though they’re preparing to get him out of here as fast as they can.
He takes a few deep breaths, then pinches himself hard through his Tyvek suit to keep himself grounded in this room of horrors.
When he is calm enough to take in his surroundings in a more objective way, he sees that Webley is staring at him, concern filling her eyes. He gives her a brief smile to tell her he’s okay.
It’s difficult for anyone to be okay at a scene like this. It seems worse, somehow, that this isn’t a dump of a house. There are no drug needles littering the floor, no empty bottles of booze, no overflowing ashtrays, no dirt and decay. A dead body or two might not seem out of place in a setting like that.
But this is a beautiful, clean, modern house. This house shines.
Except in here. This room doesn’t belong. This is the odd one out. This is where all the depravity and rot in the world has been gathered and left to fester. The smell of death here is so strong it leaves an aftertaste.
Cody always feels a little ineffectual at a scene like this. He knows it’s important to see it, to get a proper idea of what he’s investigating. But he also knows that the real work here is being done by the CSIs and the pathologist and the photographers and the sketch artists. He’s just a bystander, waiting to have it all explained to him.
Not that there’s much explanation needed. There’s a ladder against the outside wall, an open window, and two sliced-up bodies in the bedroom. He’s an experienced enough detective to put the story together from that evidence.
He has also worked out a motive. And that’s what’s really worrying him.
A six-year-old child lives here. And now she’s missing.
It has all the hallmarks of the abduction of Poppy Devlin, only now with deadly force thrown in for good measure. That’s not good. That’s not good at all.
There’s only one positive fragment of information to come from all this mayhem, which is that the detectives are now fairly certain that the attacker was male. If the strength and sheer violence needed to overcome two people determined to protect themselves and their child from harm were not enough of a clue, then the size-twelve bloody footprints are more of a giveaway.
When he feels he’s lingered long enough, Cody makes his escape. After he has stripped off and bagged up his protective clothing, Webley joins him outside.
‘Cody, what the hell is this guy playing at? What kind of maniac are we dealing with here?’
Cody looks back into the house. ‘I haven’t the foggiest. Hard-faced bastard, isn’t he? Did you see how he got into the house? Put a ladder up against the fucking wall and climbed it, for Christ’s sake. While the whole family were sleeping inside! Who does that?’
Webley shakes her head. ‘To be honest, this case is really starting to freak me out. I know I haven’t got kids, but . . . Jesus, this is fucked up. Snatching them in the middle of the night like that.’ She shakes her head and then looks at Cody hard. ‘You know she probably saw it, don’t you?’
‘What?’
‘The child. Ellie McVitie. They’re saying the signs are she saw her own parents being slaughtered. She left a puddle of urine in their bedroom.’
‘Shit.’ Cody looks to the heavens. ‘Could it get any worse?’
A female uniformed officer approaches them along the path. ‘Sarge, there’s someone you should speak to. A woman says she saw something last night.’
Cody races out to the street, Webley close behind. A witness! Could be the first real break they’ve had. A tad late, mind, but he’ll take anything right now.
The woman is probably in her late fifties. Her hair is dyed a curious purple colour. She shifts her weight from foot to foot, and keeps peering along the street as though she’s expecting someone.
Cody introduces himself, invites the woman to reciprocate.
‘Helen Morley. My husband is Trevor Morley. He’s an accountant.’
Cody isn’t sure why she’s telling him this. He wonders if he’s supposed to have heard of Trevor Morley, but his list of famous accountants doesn’t stretch very far.
She says, ‘Is it right, what they’re saying? About what went on in there?’ She tilts her head to the left, indicating the McVities’ house, but keeps her eyes focused on a point at the end of the road. Cody follows her gaze, but sees nothing.
‘I’m afraid I can’t give out any details at the moment,’ he says. ‘I hear you’ve got some information that could help us, though.’
‘Well, that seems a little unfair. I mean, if I tell you stuff but you don’t give me anything back, doesn’t that seem a little unfair to you?’
Cody glances at the uniformed officer, who looks apologetic but offers no help.
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Morley, but it doesn’t work like that. All I can tell you is that a very serious crime has been committed, and we’d appreciate any information you can give us to catch whoever did it.’
‘When you say serious, you mean murder, don’t you?’
‘I’m afraid I can’t confirm or deny that.’
‘Other people, they’re saying murder. Mrs Robertson at number nine, she’s always spot on about such things, and she’s got an artificial hip.’
‘Well . . .’ says Cody.
‘It’s murder. I know it is. Who got killed?’
‘Again, I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to—’
‘It was her, wasn’t it? Eva. Her husband killed her, and then he drove away. That’s it. I knew it.’
Cody takes a back seat while Mrs Morley makes up her own version of events. He doesn’t care if she says later she got it straight from the detective’s mouth, as long as she gives up her own nugget of information first.
And then something hits him.
‘Hold on. What do you mean, he drove away? Why do you say that?’
Mrs Morley squints purposefully down the road, as if to distract Cody from his line of questioning. He senses she is feeling the discomfort of having just lodged her foot in her overly busy mouth.
Cody presses her again: ‘Mrs Morley, this is important. Did you see someone drive away from the house during the night?’
‘It woke me up. We sleep at the front of the house. We moved out of the back bedroom because of the gas.’
‘The gas?’
‘The boiler. It’s at the back of the house, and it makes a racket. The man from the gas company says they can’t make it any quieter, but what does he know? He has a terrible stutter.’
Cody tries not to be thrown by the latest non sequitur.
‘So you sleep at the front of the house. And a noise woke you?’
‘Yes. Which is unusual for me, because I normally sleep like a log unless I eat chocolate liqueurs after seven-thirty.’
‘What kind of noise was it?’
‘Well, I don’t know. I was asleep, wasn’t I? But it was something. So I went to the window and looked outside.’
‘What time was this, do you know?’
‘About four-thirty in the morning, I think.’
‘And what did you see?’
‘A van. Driving away from here.’ She gestures to the kerb in front of the McVities’ house.
‘Definitely a van? Not a car?’
She frowns at Cody. ‘If it was a car, I’d have said so, wouldn’t I?’
‘Do you know what kind of van it was?’
‘A white one.’
‘White? Okay, you’re doing great. Do you know the make? A Ford, maybe, or a Vauxhall? A Peugeot?’
She shrugs. ‘Could have been.’
‘Big or small?’
‘What do you call big?’
‘I mean, was it just a little bigger than a normal car, or was it something you could fit a wardrobe into?’
‘I’m not sure about a wardrobe. You’d probably manage some garden furniture. Or a few illegal immigrants. You can get quite a lot of them into a small space, can’t you?’
Cody dod
ges the question. He has already formed an opinion about what sort of newspapers this woman reads.
‘That’s brilliant, Mrs Morley. I don’t suppose you got the vehicle registration number?’
‘You’re lucky I could see it was a van. I didn’t have my glasses on. I should have them on now, really, but I thought I might get on the telly. Are they here yet?’
‘Who?’
‘The TV people.’
‘I’m sure they’re on their way. Now if you can just cast your mind back to last night. Did you see any people outside? Anyone in the van, or going to or from the house?’
‘No. Just the van. Which was a bit strange, really.’
‘Strange? In what way?’
‘Well, Eva’s husband doesn’t usually drive a van. I’ve never seen it here before.’
Something clicks in her mind, and for the first time she forgets whatever it is that has been occupying her at the end of the road, and locks her gaze on Cody.
‘It wasn’t Eva’s husband, was it? It was somebody else.’ She looks up at the McVities’ front-bedroom window. It is clear that lights are burning behind the closed curtains. ‘Oh, my Lord,’ she says.
Cody thanks her for her assistance. Lets her know that another detective will take a full witness statement from her.
He moves away, thinking about how cases can sometimes rest on a knife-edge of probability like this. If only Mrs Morley had thought to put her glasses on. If only she had managed to see the registration number. If only she had got out of bed a few seconds earlier and witnessed the killer heading towards his van with the little girl.
If only. Two words that could change everything but are worth nothing.
‘This changes everything.’
The words are from Blunt, coming towards them from the house. Cody can almost see the dark cloud hovering above her head. Her face carries the discomfort of its presence.
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