Chapter 48

Wickes was still in the kitchen, cuffed to the boiler. We hadn’t moved him far.

We’d left Deborah’s body alone. Susan figured it was best to touch as little around the scene as possible. Let the SOCO crew deal with it. Give them an uncontaminated scene to work with.

“We’re going to have to answer a lot of questions.”

I was hoisting Mary’s body off the floor. She was breathing, maybe a little shallow, but she was going to live. The plan was to get her in the front room, make her comfortable.

I said to Susan, “If I’ve learned how to do one thing the past year, it’s answer questions from the police.”

Sounded flippant even to me.

Wickes had gone silent on us. Was it possible he had never been able to acknowledge the things he had done? That when faced with the consequences of his actions, all he could do was shut down?

I figured him for playing some kind of con game.

Pleading insanity. Trying for a cushy sentence. Solicitors would be lining up around the block to take a high profile case, and this one was going national.

Connolly was going to have my balls when he found out what had happened. He was going to be pissed off that he wasn’t in on a scoop like this.

I wasn’t happy about moving Mary, but I needed to get her away from the kitchen. Didn’t want her to see what had happened to her mother. Gingerly, I lifted her, carried her through to the front room, laid her in the recovery position and placed my jacket over her for warmth. Mild concussion? Couldn’t be sure. Not until the ambulance arrived.

Susan’s nose had been broken. She said she was fine, but I noticed a slight distance in the way she talked. And her voice sounded thick, bunged up like a bad head cold. Looking at her pupils, I couldn’t be sure, but I thought they seemed larger than usual.

I tried to figure how long it would take the ambulance to arrive.

And kept telling myself, it could have been worse.

When I’d first got to my feet in the hall, frustration and anger had been burning me from the inside out. The white hot needles in my brain had made me focus on nothing more than simple revenge.

For Susan.

I’d already seen someone I cared for die.

Someone I loved.

Already let the person responsible disappear. Let them get away with it.

It wasn’t going to happen again.

When I confronted Wickes, ready to kill the man, to have the revenge I’d convinced myself I needed…

I couldn’t do it.

I’d felt sorry for the bastard.

Imagine that; feeling pity for a fucking monster like Wickes. A man who kept the woman he loved like a prisoner. Killed her dog. Tortured her psychologically and physically.

After making sure that Mary was comfortable, I went out into the hall with Susan. She stepped out of the shattered front door and into the night. Looked up at the stars.

Her feet crunched on the thin layer of night time frost. Her breath misted in the freezing air.

I stood behind her.

“You need to sit down,” I said.

“We have to call someone.”

I nodded, looked at the car. “She said the payphone was, what, maybe a mile or two?”

Susan nodded.

“You think you’re okay to keep on that bastard back there?” I jerked my head back towards the house. Meaning Wickes.

“I don’t think he’ll be trouble.”

I grunted, non-committal. I’d seen the way his attitudes and behaviour could change. “I can get a signal before then, I’ll call.”

“Steed, you need to sit down yourself.” Susan placed both hands on either side of my face. Her skin was warm, and I wanted to close my eyes, just fall forward and collapse into her.

She said, “Your pupils are dilated.”

Saying, concussion without mentioning the word.

The crashing waves in my skull had quit. I felt fine. Unsteady, but I figured I was okay to drive.

I’d rest soon enough.

What choice did we have? I wasn’t taking him back in the car. Not with a dead body and both Susan and Mary in the state they were in. We needed coppers. We needed paramedics.

I’d take the car, head out, get a signal on the phone. Let them know where we were. What had happened.

Finally, I accepted this was something I couldn’t handle alone.

And when I opened my eyes again and looked at Susan, I realised something.

I wasn’t handling it alone.

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I used to have nightmares. Dreaming of enclosed spaces. Blood. The still aftermath of the long scream of violence.

I would see faces I knew.

And I wouldn’t know them, twisted as they were by the sight of blood and death.

When I woke up from these nightmares, I’d roll over and puke in the plastic tub I’d learned to keep beside the bed.

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The bile gathered.

Susan was slumped in the hall near the kitchen, her legs bent up towards her chest, her head in her hands. Blood on her clothes.

I’d been gone maybe twenty minutes. Got the signal. Made the call. They were on their way.

It was over.

Except, I came back to…

What the fuck had happened?

I knelt beside Susan. She was breathing. Shallow.

But she was alive.

I dropped the phone. It clattered to the wooden floor.

Said, “Mary?”

Susan looked up at me and nodded to the kitchen. “In there,” she said.

I walked into the kitchen.

Deborah was still discarded on the floor.

Wickes was next to her.

The axe was buried in his chest. Didn’t even look like he’d tried to ward off the attack. When I’d left he’d been close to comatose, had to wonder if maybe when the attack came he just no longer cared. One arm was stretched out, his palm resting gently on the small of Deborah’s back. The gesture seemed bizarrely tender considering everything I knew about the man.

The floor was slick with blood.

And Mary was sitting against the back door, looking at the corpses.

Blood on her hands. The IPod I’d seen earlier in the front room plugged into her ears. I could hear the tinny sound of music emanating from the tiny speakers.

She had it turned up loud.

Drowning out the world.

She hummed with the music. The notes coming out in a halting fashion. She wasn’t really thinking about what she was doing. Just trying to comfort herself.

As I came through the door, she stopped the humming, looked up at me and said, “He had to die. You understand, don’t you? For what he did.”

I took a breath. The air tasted tart, something coppery there. Maybe the blood. Maybe my imagination. I heard sirens.