Dee has found the girls’ Nintendo DS players and hugged Irene and tried to talk to Barbara and persuaded them that their parents are on their way back to the family home, the ‘forever house,’ as Irene calls it. By ensuring that both Dave and Charlie, the scrawny Irish guy who clearly thinks the world of himself but looks to Dee like a weasel with bad teeth, keep completely out of sight, she manages to persuade the girls into the back of Dave’s SUV. Then, having texted Claire on Donna’s phone to let her know Barbara and Irene are waiting to be collected at Donna’s house, she takes off for Madison.
Charlie T is stationed up at the gates of Donna’s house, ready and waiting in a Halloween mask, a red El Diablo with horns. The only car visible in the drive is Donna’s.
Ten minutes, fifteen, twenty, and then a blue Toyota Corolla comes rolling in through the gates and crunching down the gravel to park behind Donna’s vehicle. Charlie T has the gate swung shut in seconds, and keeps Danny Brogan and Claire Taylor in his sights as they rush toward the house, Claire forgetting even to close the passenger door. They are in the porch now, ringing the doorbell. Charlie T is closing in on them from behind. The door opens on Dave Ricks in a full face werewolf mask, his arms outstretched.
‘Trick or Treat!’ he says.
Claire screams, and Danny flies at the werewolf, two hands around his neck, wrestling him to the floor, slapping his head on the tiled porch. Charlie T fires a shot in the air, doesn’t like doing it in case there are any pain-in-the-ass good citizens mooching about, but even if there are, it’s Halloween, who can tell a gunshot from a firecracker? The second shot does the job.
‘Get off him, now!’ Charlie T shouts.
As he closes in on Claire Taylor with the Steyr, Danny Brogan releases Dave Ricks, who scrambles to his feet. And here they all are, in the porch together.
Trick or Treat!
‘Where are the girls?’ Claire says. ‘Where are Barbara and Irene?’
‘Who is it in there?’ Brogan says, pointing at Dave’s mask. ‘Is it Dave? Dave? What the fuck are you doing? Have you lost your fucking mind?’
Charlie T has given Dave the chloroform rags and is waiting for him to use one on Brogan, but Dave seems shaken, he’s just standing there, swaying. Amateur hour. Brogan’s swearing and shouting, throwing all kinds of shapes, and Charlie T sees it’ll take the pair of them to subdue the fucker and then the missus might get away. Only thing he can do is smack Brogan between the eyes with the butt of the Steyr, then again on the back of the head. Down he goes, that’s the way to do it. Claire starts up again with the screaming, but Charlie T moves in quickly behind her and restrains her hands with one arm. He extends the other hand to Dave Ricks, and Ricks passes him a cloth, and Charlie T presses it over Claire’s nose and mouth and holds, as she squirms against his hand and wrestles with his arm and kicks back at his shins, hold on, hold on. One hundred, two hundred, three hundred. Fourteen hundred and she goes limp in his arms.