“Yes. Not really. Sort of.”
The drumming stops. “Do you want me to tell you what I’ll do to you if I think you’re lying, Holly Sykes?”
“Esther Little was by the river yesterday, but I never met her before. She gave me some tea. Green tea. Then she asked …”
The pale man’s stare drills into my forehead, like the answer’s written there. “
“For asylum. If her …” I hunt for her exact words, “… plans went up in flames.”
The pale man lights up. “
“Look,” I manage to say, huddling, “if this is like MI5 stuff, about Ian and Heidi’s communism, I’m nothing to do with it. They just gave me a lift, and I … I …”
He steps towards me, suddenly, to scare me. It does. “Yes?”
“Don’t come near me.” My voice sort of shrivels up. “I’ll—I’ll—I’ll fight. The police—”
“Will be baffled by Heidi’s gran’s bungalow. Two lovers on the loungers, the body of teenager Holly Sykes. Forensics will have a proper farrago to disentangle by the time you’re found—especially if the triple murderer leaves the patio door ajar for the foxes, crows, stray cats … The
“Let me go! I—I—I’ll go abroad, I’ll … go.
“You’ll look adorable dead.” The pale man smiles at his fingers as he flexes them. “An unprincipled man would have some fun with you first, but I’m against cruelty to dumb animals.”
I hear a hoarse gasp. “Don’t don’t don’t please
“Sssh …” His fingers make a twisting gesture and my lips, my tongue, and my throat shut down. All the strength drains from my legs and arms, like I’m a puppet with its strings cut, pushed into the corner. The pale man sits on the same rug I’m on, cross-legged, like a storyteller but sort of savoring the moment, like Vinny when he knows he’s going to have me. “What’s it like, knowing you’ll be dead as a fucking stone in sixty seconds, Holly Sykes? What pictures does your insectoid mind flick through just before the end?”
His eyes aren’t quite human. My vision’s going, like night’s falling, my lungs’re drowning, not in water but in nothing and I realize it’s been ages since I last breathed, so I try to but I can’t and the drumming in my ears has stopped ’cause my heart’s shut down. Out of the swarmy dusk the pale man reaches out his hand and brushes my breast with the backs of his fingers, tells me, “Sweet dreams, dear heart,” and my last thought is, Who is that doddering figure in the background, a mile away, at the far end of the lounge …?
The pale man notices, looks over his shoulder, and jumps up. My heart restarts and my lungs fill with oxygen, so quick I choke and cough as I recognize Heidi. “Heidi! Get the police! He’s a killer! Run!” But Heidi’s ill, or drugged, or injured, or drunk, her head’s lolling about like she’s got that disease, multiple sclerosis. Her voice isn’t the same, either—it’s like my granddad’s since his stroke. She pushes out the words all ragged: “Don’t worry, Holly.”
“On the contrary, Holly,” snorts the pale man, “if
“Temporary accommodation,” says Heidi, whose head flops forward, back, then forward: “Why kill the two sunbathing youths?
“Why not? You people, you’re so why why
“Let the girl go,” says head-flopping Heidi.