stretched and passed, and though Thorne had lost track of who was where, he was aware of movement, of arms and legs, of pressure…
He was aware of Eve's voice as the scream in his head died down a little, and he heard her saying, 'Hold him.'
He was aware that he had started to cry, and was grateful that he hadn't lost control of bladder or bowels.
Thorne raised his head an inch off the floor. The wetness slipped beneath his chin and into the gash, stinging. 'One thing,' he said, looking for Jameson, his voice somewhere between a gasp and a rattle, 'just for my own satisfaction. Are you going to rape me before or after I'm dead? We never could work that out…'
Jameson was sitting across the top of Thorne's back. He leaned down close to his ear. 'Ding, ding. Stupid again. I've never raped anyone…
Thorne felt his head being lifted up by the hair and twisted around. He quickly forgot about the searing pain in his neck and shoulders when he saw what Eve was holding. It was dull, and dark, and thick as his fist. A warped simulation of a sex-organ, designed only for the pleasure of one who sought to invade and to injure:
A weapon, pure and simple.
'No need to bother with the condom, this time,' Eve said. Thorne thought about the traces found at the first post-mortem. The natural assumption that the victim had been penetrated by flesh and blood. That the rapist wore a condom. That the rapist was a man…
In wholly different circumstances, Thorne might even have laughed, but he knew very well what the thing Eve held in her hand would do, condom or not, when she rammed it into him…
'To answer your question though,' Jameson said, 'we find that doing both things at the same time works pretty well for us.'
Holland thought he heard a cry as he dropped down on to the kitchen floor. He froze, listening. There was music playing in the living room. Thorne's usual country crap. From somewhere, there was a series of dull thuds, and then silence.
He moved slowly and quietly through into the living room, in much the same way as the burglar who'd come in through the same window six weeks earlier. From the table on the far side of the room a red light caught his eye, flashing from the handset that had been taken off the hook. Thorne's mobile was next to it. Holland didn't need to go any closer to know that it had been switched off… '
The song faded out, and in the gap before the next one started, Holland heard the low murmur of voices. He turned towards the sound as the music began again.
They were in the bedroom. Jameson, and the girl, and… Though he couldn't make out what was being said, relief flooded through him as he recognised one of the voices as Thorne's.
The relief turned into something that tasted bitter in his mouth, as Holland realised that he needed to act quickly, that he would have no idea what to expect on the other side of the bedroom door. He thought about Sophie as he stood, rooted to the spot, looking around the room for something he might use as a weapon.
Thorne felt the pain shoot through his neck and shoulders as Jameson shifted his weight. He watched a hand pass in front of his face. The washing line was looped around the fingers…
'Strange how a man's mind works,' Jameson said. 'Even close to death, they were all far more afraid of what was happening at the back end than the front…'
Thorne winced as Eve's hand pressed down on to the small of his back. He tensed and sucked in a breath at the touch of cold plastic brushing against his thigh.
'On that scale of one to ten,' she said, 'how keen are you now?' Thorne clenched, and drove his pelvis down towards the floor, but he was unable to flatten himself. He felt only the gentle resistance of the pillows that had been placed beneath him, raising his backside just enough, however much he tried to move away… Jameson grabbed a handful of Thorne's hair, lifted up his head.
'Some advice, for what it's worth.' Thorne grunted, shook his head.
'It's best not to fight the line when you feel it round your neck…'
Thorne channeled every last ounce of strength he had left into his neck, driving his head back down towards the floor. He could feel his hair being torn away by the roots… He could feel the thick tip of the phallus pushing at the crack of his buttocks…
He pushed his face towards the carpet, knowing that Jameson just needed enough room, enough space to get the hood on. The line would quickly follow and then it would all be over…
'Take it or leave it,' Jameson said. 'Seriously though, if you let me get on with it and let the line do its job, you'll be unconscious long before she's finished…'
Thorne screamed, and at the same moment, Jameson stopped pulling and smashed Thorne's head forward on to the floor. Thorne lay still, momentarily stunned, for the few seconds that Jameson needed to slip the hood over his head.
Even as he writhed and jerked, Thorne felt a bizarre calm, which grew deeper as the ligature tightened around his neck. He felt the fear inside him shrivel to nothing. He saw faces burst and scatter as flashes of light. He drifted through a black space so thick that he knew it had more to do with death than darkness.
The crash of the door and the shouting are like distant sound-effects which echo and grow suddenly deafening as the pressure around his neck is released…
Thorne sucked air into his lungs and reared up, snarling and snapping his head back into something, feeling it give and soften. The weight fell or was lifted from him, and he pitched forward, rolling over on to his back. He lifted his hands, numbed by the belt, and began scrabbling with dead fingers to remove the hood. A scream, and then a crack, and the piercing squeal of castors as the bed moves at speed across the floor…
He stared up at the ceiling, heard grunts of effort and pain, and the crash of bodies impacting with something solid. Dropping his head to the side, Thorne saw Jameson and Holland in a heap by the wardrobe. He saw the wardrobe door swing slowly open and, in the mirror on the back, he saw Eve coming at him.
Spinning quickly from the reflection to the real thing… With her knife raised, she launched herself, or stumbled or Ell, towards him, and Thorne could do little but turn his face away ad kick up hard at her. As she opened her mouth, grimacing with the effort or with the hatred, Thorne's foot crashed into the underside of her jaw, knocking her head back and sending a thick string of blood arcing high above them both. The last drops were still raining down long moments after she'd fallen to the floor like a side of meat…
Thorne climbed gingerly to his feet and moved slowly across to where Holland was standing, doubled-over and white-faced, panting. Jameson lay moaning on the floor, one arm bent awkwardly behind him and the other stretched towards a knife that he was never going to reach. He looked up, his expression impossible to read through the pulpy red mess that Thorne's head had made of his face. A bottle of wine lay on its side, half rolled beneath the wardrobe. Thorne nudged it out with his foot as Holland began untying the belt around his wrists.
'It was all I could find,' Holland said between gulps of air. 'I think I broke the fucker's arm with it…'
Hands free, Thorne turned and walked back to where Eve was sprawled near the bedroom door. She still had the knife in her hand, but barely noticed as Thorne took it away from her. She was busy scanning the bloodstained carpet for half of her tongue, bitten off as cleanly as her father's had been, when he'd dropped from a banister all those years before.
Thorne sank down to the floor, leaned back against the bed. He felt the pain start to return. In his head, in his arms, everywhere. From the other room he could hear George Jones singing like nothing had happened.
He stared at himself in the mirror on the back of the wardrobe door. Naked and covered in blood, he looked like some kind of ravening savage. He watched himself slowly move a hand to cover his genitals.
'I phoned Hendricks,' Holland said. 'There's back-up on the way.'
Thorne nodded. 'That's good. That's very good, Dave. Pass me my fucking underpants first though, would you…?'
PART FOUR
