by Chris Ryan
But then he saw that the intruder was carrying something else: a Taser rod, about forty centimetres long. A high-voltage strike from that would put him down immediately. He tried to parry it. But too late.
Joe’s whole body juddered for about three seconds as the electricity surged through him. When it stopped, he felt as though the blood in his veins was made of lead, and the room was spinning. All he could do was concentrate on staying conscious. Not easy. He had palpitations in his neck. Nausea . . .
And something else was happening.
One of the intruders – he couldn’t tell which – had pulled down his jeans and taken hold of his penis. Joe felt the sharp pain of a needle being inserted into the urethra, followed by a dreadful sensation that felt as though molten lead was seeping into his abdomen. Still dazzled by the halogen light, he couldn’t see what was happening, but he knew he’d been injected. He tried to push himself up again, but his muscles would barely obey the commands his brain was giving them. The molten-lead sensation spread down his limbs. He dropped the leather belt and collapsed, his body limp, the back of his head motionless against the floor.
He couldn’t move. Jesus, he couldn’t move . . .
Caitlin wasn’t screaming any more, but whimpering. Fast, terrified sobs. All three intruders had moved into the room now, and Joe heard them say something, though he couldn’t make out what. Caitlin said ‘No,’ but then there was a scuffling sound. Joe tried to call out, but all that came was a dry, dusty gasp. His eyes rolled as he desperately tried to move his head at least. Nothing doing. Whatever they’d injected had caused muscle failure. Suxamethonium chloride, was Joe’s guess. Very difficult to trace in the bloodstream, especially when injected in that part of his anatomy. The panic inside him was like a bullet ricocheting in a small room. What were they doing? Why hadn’t they just killed him?
What was about to happen?
Movement on the edge of his vision. He managed to roll his eyes forward sufficiently to see Caitlin, still naked, being dragged from the room by two of the intruders. Were they going to rape her? He didn’t think so. The SOCO suits were on for a reason. It wasn’t a comforting thought.
With a cry, Caitlin broke away from them and threw herself at Joe, sobbing uncontrollably. But she only managed to hold on to his immobile body for two or three brief seconds, before the intruders pulled her up again and bundled her into the bathroom. They switched on the light, which cast a confusion of shadows onto the grey hallway carpet, but Joe could not see inside.
He wanted to roar with anger and frustration. More than that, he wanted to move. He couldn’t. He couldn’t even twitch. He could only lie there, a prisoner in his own body. Listening. Caitlin was screaming again. ‘What are you doing? Oh God, what’re you doing?’ There was a clattering sound. Some kind of movement in the bathroom that Joe couldn’t work out.
A thump. Caitlin’s screams grew louder. More desperate, if that were possible.
And then two of the intruders were standing above him. They had dropped their torches, and the cellophane in front of their faces was misted from their heavy breathing. They bent over, each grabbing one of his arms and, with obvious effort, pulled the deadweight of his body up from the ground, before dragging him into the bathroom.
What he saw in there horrified him.
The intruders had ripped the shower curtain from its rail and used it to wrap around the naked Caitlin, who was now lying in the bath, her feet at the tap end. She was shaking violently and trying to speak, but the only sound that came from her mouth was of retching. She vomited. It smeared over the front of the shower curtain, lumpy and yellow. One of the intruders was standing over her, but the moment the other two dropped Joe onto his knees, so that his top half drooped over the edge of the bath, this man disappeared.
Now the only sound in the bathroom was Caitlin’s sobbing, which echoed off the mildewed tiles. Joe couldn’t see her face. His head was pointing the other way, so all he could see was the shower curtain wrapped round the dark triangle of her pubic hair – soaked with urine – and her naked legs, her feet twisted awkwardly, and a bulbous, distorted reflection of the room in the bath taps, showing the two men standing over him.
It took no more than a minute for the third man to return. Joe didn’t know what he was carrying until the other two pulled him back up from the bath again. The man spoke, but his voice was still muffled by the SOCO suit, so Joe couldn’t discern his accent. ‘Do the fingernails,’ he instructed.
‘Joe,’ Caitlin whispered, her voice oozing dread, ‘what’s happening?’
But all Joe knew was that his hand was being lifted towards Caitlin’s face by one of the intruders, who bent his fingernails forward and scraped them two inches down Caitlin’s left cheek.
And suddenly Joe understood.
They were making him scratch Caitlin’s face to put her DNA under his fingernails, to make it look as though there had been a struggle between them. And they were wearing the suits to stop their own DNA from contaminating the crime scene.
Because that was what they were creating. A crime scene.
A murder scene.
Conor’s door opened. He immediately gulped down his tears because he didn’t want anyone to think he was a baby. But it was too late. Charlie’s mum was leaning over him. He could smell her perfume. ‘What’s the matter, my little love?’ she asked in a concerned whisper, stroking his hair.
‘Nothing,’ said Conor, but his voice wobbled as he said it, and he couldn’t stop himself crying again.
‘Homesick?’
Conor nodded.
‘Why don’t we call your mum?’ she suggested. ‘Would you like that?’
He nodded again. He would ask Mum to come and get him. He didn’t want to stay here any more.
Joe’s brain was shrieking at him. If he could just move . . . If he could just do something . . . But it wasn’t possible. His horrified thoughts were trapped inside a useless body. He was powerless.
A new sound. The ringing of Caitlin’s mobile phone from the bedroom. The intruders stood perfectly still, obviously listening to the ring, and the faint buzzing as the phone vibrated.
It fell silent.
‘Do it,’ came the order from behind a SOCO suit. ‘Now.’
With every ounce of his being, Joe tried to lash out. But all he showed for it was a hoarse whisper from the back of his throat. ‘No . . .’
Now he saw what the man had fetched from downstairs: a kitchen knife with a slightly buckled blade of about three inches long. One of his assailants was forcing it into his hand, wrapping his fingers around the handle.
It was only as one of them lifted him under his armpits and another clenched his knife hand firmly that Caitlin appeared to understand what was happening. In an instant she stopped shaking, as though her body was frozen. ‘Joe,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t let them . . . please don’t let them . . .’
But there was nothing Joe could do. His eyes were fixed on Caitlin’s face. He thought he had witnessed true terror before. He realized now that he had not.
Charlie’s mum put her phone back down. ‘Oh dear,’ she said kindly. ‘She’s not answering.’
They were sitting in the front room now, Conor in his pyjamas, still sobbing. Charlie’s dad was in his usual place, a can of beer in his hand and a glazed look on his face.
‘Why don’t you have another go at going to sleep?’ said Charlie’s mum. ‘It’ll soon be morning, eh?’
But the suggestion only made Conor cry even more. He had given up trying to be brave. ‘I want to go home,’ he said. ‘I want to see my mum . . .’
‘Ah, take the lad home,’ muttered Charlie’s dad. ‘We won’t get any peace until you do.’
Charlie’s mum gave her husband a dark look, but then started stroking his hair again. ‘Would you like that, love? Would you like me to take you home?’
Conor nodded.
The shower curtain was not easily punctured.
At first the point of the
knife just made an indentation both in the curtain and in the soft flesh of Caitlin’s belly. It needed a sharp yank forward to pierce the plastic, but once it came into contact with Caitlin’s skin, it slid in with gruesome ease.
‘No!’ Joe roared. But the roar was only in his head.
Caitlin gasped. Immediately blood gushed from the wound. Most of it remained trapped between her skin and the clear plastic curtain, but some of it seeped through the hole and onto the handle of the knife, Joe’s hand and the paper suit of the man controlling him.
Joe’s mind started to spin. He heard Caitlin’s sharp, pained intakes of breath. He felt his hand being pushed downwards, slicing through her belly in the direction of her womb. A distended bubble of intestine slid softly, monstrously, from the gash as his hand was pulled back and reinserted, not into her belly this time, but into the area around her left breast. This was clearly more painful. She shouted out, but her cry faded after only a second as the strength sapped from her.
There was so much blood, most of it still caught between the shower curtain and her skin. Joe tried once more to fight against his paralysis, to take control of his body. It was useless. His assailants were moving him further up the bath now, forcing his knife hand towards the vicinity of Caitlin’s throat.
Their eyes locked. Joe had seen enough people die to realize that life was ebbing from her.
She spoke. A single word. ‘Conor . . .’
And there would have been no time for Joe to reply, even if he’d been able to. All his effort was focused on trying to stop the intruder from moving the knife forward. For an instant, when the tip of the blade was just three inches from Caitlin’s throat, he thought that maybe . . . maybe . . . a little strength was returning to his useless muscles.
But it was much too little, and much too late.
The incision of Caitlin’s throat was physically the easiest. There was no shower curtain to get through – just the unblemished skin of her smooth neck. And below the skin, the tight lengths of sinew that required a little more pressure from the intruder, but not much.
Caitlin’s eyes rolled. A disgusting mixture of blood and saliva foamed from her mouth and over the vomit that was now oozing down the side of the bath. Her whole neck was scarlet. As the knife was pulled out, she tried to breathe in. But her windpipe was punctured, and all Joe saw was a little of the blood around the wound being sucked back in, before oozing out again.
‘Enough,’ said one of the men behind him.
Joe felt himself being dropped, the knife still in his hand. His head hit the side of the bath before he crumpled to the floor. All he could see now was the pedestal of the basin, the toilet next to it and three pairs of SOCO-suit-clad feet walking out of the bathroom and into the hallway.
He could hear a sinister gurgling sound from the bath.
It lasted no more than ten seconds. And then there was silence.
A small spider crawled out from behind the basin’s pedestal. It scurried in the direction of the bath and out of Joe’s field of view.
His left leg twitched. Movement. He tried to manoeuvre it consciously. Still nothing.
Something was happening on the landing. He didn’t know, and couldn’t see, what. And he almost didn’t care. The horror of the past few minutes was burning his mind. He kept seeing the knife entering Caitlin’s body, kept seeing the blood piss from her wounds. Kept hearing her last, strangled, desperate word.
‘Conor . . .’
He felt his body jerk. The leaden numbness of his muscles was dissolving. Was the injection wearing off?? He tried to move again. His knife hand shifted an inch. But no more.
And then they were picking him up again. They dragged him backwards out of the bathroom so that he could see Caitlin’s body again as he exited. Her face was a fixed mask of terror, the skin a shocking, pallid white – a sharp, monstrous contrast with the devastating wound in her neck and the scarlet smears trapped within her shower-curtain shroud. He tried to say her name – like that was going to do any good now – but he was still no more the master of his voice than of his body.
Within seconds she was out of sight and Joe was lying on his back at the far end of the hallway, by the banister overlooking the staircase but up against the opposite wall. His body was twitching again, as though an electric shock was passing through it every ten seconds. He could move his left foot, but that was all.
He managed to roll his eyes to the right. One of the intruders had his back to him and was doing something to the banister. After fifteen seconds he stepped away. Joe saw that he had tied a length of rope to the rail. It was about two metres long and the other end, which the intruder held in his gloved hands, was tied in a loop.
A noose.
Another of the men came into view. He grabbed the banister and shook it. It rattled a little.
‘Will it take his bastard weight?’ his muffled voice asked.
‘Let’s find out,’ came the reply. The two men turned to face him.
Joe’s body jerked. He managed to move his right arm at the elbow. It lifted forty-five degrees, then flopped down to the floor again.
The drug was wearing off . . . His strength was definitely returning. But not fast enough. The intruder with the noose was bending down. Joe’s body twitched. He could hear the man’s heavy breath from behind his mask, and just make out his eyes behind the misted plastic.
The rope was barely twelve inches from his head . . .
A noise.
It came from outside: the sound of a vehicle pulling up. The ghost of a headlight beam shone through the bathroom window and along the hallway. The engine cut out. The two intruders that he could see straightened up. The one holding the noose dropped it.
‘Leave him. Take the rope.’ The instruction was curt, and responded to only by a nod. The intruders left quickly but silently. By the time – ten seconds later – Joe heard three sharp raps on the front door, they had already reached the spiral staircase, having shut behind them the door that led to it.
He tried to shout: to scream to whoever was at the front door to get to the back of the house. Nothing but a feeble croak emerged. Another three raps. He concentrated all his energy on trying to move, but all he could do was roll uselessly onto his front.
He heard the front door open.
‘Hello?’ called an uncertain voice. ‘Hello? I did knock!’
Joe would never have thought his stomach could get even more knotted. He recognized Elaine’s voice well enough, and he knew what it meant.
He knew Conor was downstairs.
He tried to call out again, to scream at them not to come up. Still the words wouldn’t come. With a massive effort he pulled his knees up under his body. Elaine was still shouting. ‘Hello? Hello? It’s only me . . . Elaine . . .’ He could hear her moving into the kitchen; he could also hear footsteps up the stairs. Small, tentative footsteps.
A child’s footsteps.
Joe was kneeling now. He stared at his blood-covered hands, and at the knife he was still holding. With a terrible, painful struggle he managed to look over his shoulder at the open door of the bathroom. Then he turned back, and saw an unmistakable sight through the railings of the banister: Conor’s scruffy, russet hair, his earnest young face, his shoulders, his blue dressing gown.
‘Go!’ was all Joe could say.
Conor was six or seven steps from the top of the staircase. He turned to his right and looked through the railings. His eyes widened in shock.
‘Is anybody here?’ Elaine’s voice, back in the hallway, sounded worried. And then: ‘Conor? Conor, is everything OK?’
Conor was shaking his head. He was staring now at the bloody knife in Joe’s hand.
‘Where’s Mum,’ he whispered.
‘Go!’ Joe croaked again.
But now Conor was running up to the top of the stairs and past his dad. Joe forced himself to look back again. He saw Conor disappear first into his own bedroom, then into his parents’. And only when he was satisfied
that his mum was in neither room did he approach the bathroom door.
It was almost as if he knew there were unspeakable horrors behind it. He opened the door slowly, as if scared to see what nightmares the room contained. He looked so small, framed in that doorway, wearing just his night things. But his shadow was long, and stretched half the length of the landing.
Joe couldn’t bear to watch. He turned back. At some point during the past twenty seconds, the knife had fallen from his fingers. He managed to lift his arms, to bury his face in his hands.
If he could have joined in with the animal scream of his ten-year-old son, he would have done. But he couldn’t. He could only listen to Conor’s howling, feeling that his heart was being ripped from his chest, and wondering if it would ever end.
NINE
Joe remembered the way Elaine’s screaming had joined Conor’s: she standing at the top of the stairs, he in the bathroom, begging his mother not to die.
He remembered trying to stand up, but not yet being back in full control of his body.
He remembered Elaine shouting at Conor to come with her, and how his son, as he passed him on the landing, threw himself at Joe, beating him with his tiny fists, a puny flurry of rage that Joe wouldn’t have resisted even if he’d been able to.
He remembered the minutes passing like hours as the strength seeped back into his body.
He knew he was alone in the house with Caitlin’s corpse, that Conor and Elaine had fled. He knew it would be just minutes before the police arrived. They wouldn’t see what they were supposed to have seen – a sight that told a story of Joe having murdered his wife before hanging himself. But they would see enough. And when he heard the sirens – faint at first, but quickly growing louder as the cars approached – he knew what he had to do: forget all thoughts of running to Caitlin’s side, or trying to see his son, or attempting to explain the truth of what had happened.