by Alex Scarrow
The Swingball bat smacked the forearm of the hand that had hold of her hair.
‘Let go of my sister!’ screamed Jacob like a banshee. He pulled the bat back off the arm, revealing half-a-dozen gouges, and then swung it down again on the forearm. The hand instantly let go and retreated taking the Swingball bat with it, still firmly attached.
Leona ducked down and sank her teeth into the hands around her wrist. They too swiftly let go.
The mattress was almost wholly inside the lounge now, and she sensed she and Jacob had already lost the initiative. They were coming in regardless.
She turned to Jacob, grabbing him by the hand, she turned on her heels, leading him out of the lounge, into the hall, and towards the bottom of the stairs.
CHAPTER 76
10.09 p.m. GMT London
When the sky had started to darken she knew she had only a little daylight left to make use of. Jenny decided it was dangerous to be walking out in the streets on her own. The length of pipe she had picked up earlier today had felt like an all-powerful mace capable of dealing out death with one blow. But that had been back when it was in the middle of the afternoon. She’d felt a lot braver then. Now it was dark, and every shadow promised to be the poised form of some starving ghoul, waiting for her to get just a little bit closer before leaping out at her.
Her big metal pipe, right now, felt about as effective and menacing as one of those long twisty party balloons you can make a poodle out of.
Her feet were tired and blistered. She must have walked ten or fifteen miles from Watford.
Along the way she had counted the number of people she had spotted; 47, that was all. Most of them through windows, behind curtains and blinds, picking through piles of discarded plunder in the doorways of stores, or cowering in the dim shells of their homes.
As she had passed through the outskirts of north-west London, entering Kenton, and started seeing bodies, pushed to the kerbside, half-buried down rubbish-strewn alleyways, tucked behind wheelie bins, she’d decided to count them too.
She gave up at 100.
As she passed north-east of Wembley and spotted the unmistakable archway of the stadium in the distance, she entered Edgware. It had gone ten in the evening when she decided the prudent thing would be to find somewhere discreet to curl up and hide until the morning, even though Shepherd’s Bush was now only a few miles away. It would be the cruellest irony if only three or four miles from home she was jumped by someone.
She found a furniture store that had been broken into and some of the stock dragged out and carried away. She was bemused by that, that someone would decide now was a good time to get their hands on that lusted-after leather couch. She felt confident that no one would be lurking inside though. There was no food or water to be had here. That meant it was relatively safe.
She found a comfy couch near the front of the shop, where she could look out of the still intact display window on to the high street, yet she was shielded from view by the high back and the over-large cushions. Safe-ish, comfortable, a good enough place to quietly curl up, watch the sky darken and wait for dawn to come. She finished off her last bottle of water.
She awoke with a start. It was fully dark. The glow-hands on her watch showed it was 10.31 p.m. Something had prodded her awake. A sound? She could hear nothing right now.
It was pitch-black inside.
Outside, on the other hand, was faintly discernible, lit by the pallid glow from the moon. There was nothing she could see in detail, just the outlines of the buildings opposite. There was no movement of any kind. But something had awoken her from a very deep sleep. Something had jabbed her sharply to pull her out of that.
And then she sensed it wasn’t anything outside on the high street. It wasn’t anything inside the furniture shop either. It was within her. An alarm going off; a shrill, terrifying shriek warning her at an intuitive level, that something was happening right now, to her children.
‘Oh no,’ she whispered to herself.
Her adult mind chided her.
Just a nightmare, Jenny. God knows you’re due one after everything you’ve been through this week.
Yes . . . a nightmare. That was it. But the sensation was strong; an overpowering sense of being hunted, chased, fleeing from certain death.
Classic nightmare material is all this is, Jen. This really isn’t what you think it is.
Isn’t what? Maternal instinct? Of course not. She reminded herself that that was the sort of nonsense that belonged in those silly agony aunt columns, or tales from the heart short stories you’d find somewhere in the middle of those glossy Moronic Mummy Mags, tales of mothers sensing their child calling out to them for help.
But it felt so intense, so real, that Jenny found herself sitting up, and clasping a hand to her chest. It hurt, something in her was hurting, like a stomach ulcer that had gravitated up into her chest.
‘Please . . . please,’ she cried, as huge rolling tears coursed down her face in the absolute darkness, her hand kneading her breastbone.
She desperately wanted to rush out into the street and start running towards home. She was maybe as little as what . . . five or six miles away? She could be home in the space of an hour. But it was dark out there, in which direction would she run? She might start running in the dark, and end up in the morning further away, lost amidst some anonymous suburban warren in Finchley.
Your kids need you to be smart, Jenny. Not stupid. It was a bloody nightmare. Lie down. Get some rest. Just a nightmare . . . just a nightmare. You’ll see the kids tomorrow.
Jenny did as she was told. She lay down. She couldn’t sleep though.
CHAPTER 77
10.11 p.m. GMT Shepherd’s Bush, London
Leona dragged Jacob up the stairs.
At the top, they crossed the small landing and dived into Jill’s guest bedroom. In the corner of the room was a wash-basin. It wasn’t plumbed in, that was something Jill had yet to arrange - ‘you know how it is, you can never find a good plumber in London’.
The basin had been built into a recess in the wall, and the space beneath it, where, one day, plumbing and pipes would descend to the floor, had been boxed in with plywood panels and a little access hatch to make it presentable and flush with the bedroom wall.
Leona knew there was space in there for both of them, they’d tried it out this afternoon. And, as an afterthought, Leona had pulled one of Jill’s chintzy tea-towels out from beneath the kitchen sink, and with thumbtacks, attached it so that it draped down over the hatch. She hoped none of the Bad Boys would think to lift the tea-towel and pull on the small brass handle beneath.
Well at least that’s what she hoped.
She lifted the corner of the towel up and opened the hatch. ‘In you go.’
Jacob scrambled inside. She climbed in after him, curling up with her knees jammed under her chin and her arms wrapped tightly around them; curled up snugly, foetus-like, she just about managed to squeeze into the space beside him. She pulled the hatch to, hoping that the towel hadn’t caught on the handle and had flopped down smoothly, concealing their hiding place.
‘Are we safe Lee?’ whispered Jacob.
‘We’re safe. But you have to be very quiet now, okay?’
She felt him trembling as he nodded silently.
The noises coming from downstairs indicated that several of them were inside the house now. She could hear the furniture barricade being pulled aside in the hallway, the clatter of furniture being yanked at angrily and thrown across the hall. She could hear footfalls along the hallway, kitchen unit doors being opened and slammed as the first of the gang to make it inside hunted for the most important thing . . . something to drink, alcoholic or not. Quenching the thirst came above all else.
She knew they were going to easily find all those two-litre bottles of water stacked in the broom cupboard and it would all be quickly consumed by the gang.
There seemed to be a lot of movement in the kitchen. She heard several voice
s raised angrily, the sound of a scuffle, a fight amongst them. It seemed that although 50 Cent might be nominally in charge, there was no firmly established pecking order or agreement on how the spoils were to be distributed amongst them. It was just a free-for-all.
The noises from the kitchen died down after a few minutes . . . thirsts had been quenched.
That’s all our water gone.
Under any other circumstances that would have been a frightening realisation; to know the next drink they managed to find would probably come from the Thames, or the putrid, microbe-infested offerings of someone’s roof storage-tank, festering in the heat of the last few days.
But her thoughts were on right now, her focus was on remaining undiscovered for the next ten, twenty, thirty minutes. That would surely be more than enough time for the Bad Boys to find all of their carefully stored rations of food and water; enough time to completely clean them out and then collectively decide who was the next lucky household to be paid a night-time visit.
But that’s not everything they want, is it?
She shuddered at the thought, her arms and knees twitching violently.
‘What’s up?’ Jacob whispered.
‘Shhhh.’
It wasn’t just food and water they were after, was it? They’d be looking for a replacement Smurfette, a gang sex-slave. If she was unlucky, she’d end up like Mrs DiMarcio.
We should have run.
Leona realised they had made a big mistake staying here. They should have run during the afternoon. Those boys downstairs - no, boys was the wrong word - Leona realised she had stopped thinking of them as such, some time over the last couple of days. She saw them as feral creatures now; wild things, ogres, trolls, hobgoblins. They reminded her of a pack of baboons she had once seen on a family trip to the zoo many years ago, simple-minded creatures with a basic set of overpowering drives: thirst, hunger, anger . . . rape.
Oh God, we should have gone this afternoon.
She heard footsteps coming up the stairs, so many of them, a dozen or more coming upstairs to hunt her down. Because they knew she was somewhere inside still. They knew it, and they were coming for their cookies.
Leona realised if she’d been smarter, she would have left the back door open, suggesting that they had bolted out into the night. But of course, she hadn’t thought ahead, she hadn’t been smart, and now they knew she was still here, somewhere inside. This was going to be another playground game for them to have fun with; hide and seek . . . with the special prize going to the first of them to find her and drag her out kicking and screaming.
The door to the guest bedroom swung in and she heard four or five of them enter. They were giggling. Now that the pressing need to quench their thirst had been dealt with, it was fun and games time. The anticipation, the excitement, the thrill of the hunt and the promise of the fun they’d have as soon as they found her, and raped her, was making them giggle like little boys sharing a guilty secret, an in-joke.
She could feel Jacob’s little frog-like arms quivering against her in shuddering waves that ebbed and flowed. His breathing fluttered in and out. If those boys weren’t making so much noise, they’d hear that so easily.
‘Tch . . . tch . . . tch . . . Here pussy! Here pussy!’ one of them called as if trying to coax out a household pet. The others laughed.
Leona flinched as a narrow shard of light swept across her hand. A flashlight was being panned about the room, a sliver of it had found a narrow crack or a seam in the panelling.
That giggling again . . . Beavis and Butt-head giggling. She used to find that cartoon funny. She used to find the sniggering they used to do hilarious, for some unfathomable reason. Right now, that sound was as terrifying as the metallic rasp of a blade sliding from its sheath.
Her throat constricted with fear, the breath she’d held for far too long, now had to come out. Exhaling, she let out the slightest strangled whimper.
‘Hear that?’
‘She’s in here?’
‘Shit, yeah.’
She heard them spreading out, pulling open the wardrobe doors, opening a closet . . . then the sound of a hand brushing aside the tea-towel and fumbling at the brass handle for the hatch.
Oh God this is it.
Leona leant over and kissed the top of Jacob’s head, she knew this was going to be her very last opportunity to do that.
‘Be brave Jakey,’ she whispered into his ear.
A shout from downstairs.
Another frantic shout and then a scream.
‘What’s up?’ she heard the voice just outside, beyond the panel, utter.
‘Fuck, dunno.’
Leona could hear something crashing around downstairs, as if a bull had somehow found its way inside and was struggling to find a way back out again.
A single gunshot!
The scream of one of the lads.
Then about a dozen more shots.
A voice downstairs screaming, ‘Fuckin’ Boomers! Wankers!’
More crashing and thumping.
The boys in the room were spooked. ‘Shit, Boomers. They got fuckin’ pieces!’
‘Shit, we’re dead if they catch us!’
Leona heard their feet on the bedroom floor, then the rumble of a dozen or so of them charging down the stairs. The noise coming from downstairs continued for about five minutes; shouting, screaming, the crash of young men throwing each other around, and the sporadic pop of a gun.
And then it diminished as the fighting migrated out of the house into the avenue.
She heard the fighting continue for another couple of minutes, diminishing still further as it moved up the street.
And then eventually, silence.
‘Have the Bad Boys gone, Lee?’ whispered Jacob.
‘I think they have,’ she replied.
‘Should we get out now?’
Leona wasn’t ready to climb out of their little hidey-hole just yet. It was uncomfortable, insufferably stuffy and she was getting terrible cramp in her legs, but right now, she’d rather be tucked in here than anywhere else on the planet.
‘Why don’t we stay in here for a while longer, okay?’
‘Sure,’ said Jacob.
CHAPTER 78
11.59 p.m. GMT Guildford
His wishful thinking paid off. He heard the tentative shuffling of feet outside in the hallway, and a moment later he heard a key in the door. Ash moved quickly, from the first sound of footsteps outside to the door creaking open had only been a few seconds, but enough time for him to rouse himself and be ready to deal with any travelling companion she might have brought with her.
As it happened, she entered alone, and almost immediately sensed, even though it was pitch-black, that something was not quite right.
Before she could turn and go, he was upon her, an arm around her neck, his blade tickling her left cheek, and his mouth close to her ear.
‘Kate, I’ve been waiting ages for you.’
She let out a scream, and his hand quickly stifled it.
‘I thought you were never going to come home, Kate.’
She struggled in his firm grasp.
‘Easy, let’s not wiggle about too much. I might pop your eye out with this thing.’
Kate’s eyes rolled down at the glinting object beside her face, and she stopped struggling.
‘That’s better. Now, I need to have a quick chat, Kate. So let’s both sit down. We’ll get a little candle-light going so I can see what I’m doing, okay?’
Five minutes later he had a scented candle from the kitchen glowing prettily in a saucer. Kate sat on the floor, her hands taped up behind her back and Ash squatted over her, swinging his blade like a pendulum in front of her.
And he realised he could have handled this a little more cleverly.
‘Please! Please,’ she whimpered, her eyes locked on to the blade of his knife, as it moved from side to side in front of her face.
Ash had screwed this up. It just goes to show, he mused; you thin
k you’re at the top of your game, and then you find you can still make mistakes.
His error was in letting Kate realise that he was after the Sutherland girl. He could have . . . should have made out he was after Jill - Kate of course didn’t care much about her sister’s friend. She said she’d met her once or twice, had heard Jenny prattle on about Jill from time to time . . . but she clearly wouldn’t lay down her life to protect this woman.
It seemed though, she was prepared to go quite a long way toward protecting her sister’s kids.
‘I . . . I d-don’t know where she lives . . . please . . .’
‘Does she live close to them?’
There was a flicker of reaction on her face. One of those involuntary micro-tics difficult to control, and the sort of thing a trained interrogator, a hostage negotiator . . . or even a big business deal-closer looks out for; better, much better, than a blip on a polygraph.
‘Ahh, so she does live nearby then?’ he said smiling.
Kate shook her head.
‘Too late, Kate. Your very expressive and very pretty face just told me, you know. Now, I suppose I could go look up all the J. Harriotts in the phone book, and pick out any that live nearby your sister’s place. But that sounds to me like a bit of a chore. And you know what? I’m a little pressed for time. Far easier if you just tell me, hmm?’
Kate shook her head.
Ash sighed. ‘Oh dear.’ He gently prodded her left cheek, just below the eye, with the tip of his knife. ‘How shall we do this? Fingers? Or perhaps I could start on your face. What do you think?’
‘P-please . . . please don’t h-hurt me,’ she whispered.
He stroked the bristles on his chin - a normally well-trimmed goatee, that after the last two days of neglect was just beginning to look the slightest bit untidy. ‘You do have a very pretty face, Kate. It would be horrible, wouldn’t it, to no longer have a nose? Or perhaps be missing a bottom lip?’