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.
Forget about everything, except getting out of there. The police would have his name. They’d know who he was. They wouldn’t be sending some two-bit bobby and a community service officer. They’d be sending an ARU, fully prepared to drop him if necessary.
Somehow he found himself standing up, holding on to the banister like he was learning to walk again. He remembered edging towards the top of the stairs, the sirens blaring now, their blue strobes flooding in through the bathroom window, lighting up the hallway. The sound of the door being kicked in. The red dots of laser scopes flashing up the staircase. He could hear his own voice, a shadow of itself, shouting as loud as it could: ‘Unarmed! I have no weapon!’
And he remembered his legs giving way, and the brutal, soul-shaking thump as his body collapsed down the stairs and everything around him went black.
When he reawoke – it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes later – he was surrounded by SOCOs, trying to force him, feet first, into a paper body bag to preserve any incriminating DNA on his clothes and skin. Every muscle in his body shrieked with pain, but that hadn’t stopped him lashing out with heavy fists. It had taken at least six officers to pin him down, bind his hands behind his back and continue the process of wrapping him in the DNA suit, before forcing him outside where the night was lit up by flashing blue lights. He remembered shouting –
But nobody even answered him.
