Widows

Upstairs, Harry stood in the doorway of the empty nursery. There wasn’t a scrap of furniture left; only the pale blue wallpaper with dancing teddy bears told him that this had been his son’s bedroom. His nostrils flared as a strange and painful anger filled his soul. Wherever Dolly was, he now knew that she had no intention of ever coming back. This room had meant everything. Wolf had meant everything. He had meant everything. All gone. She had nothing to come back for.

In the guest room, the unmade bed told Harry that blondie had stayed the night. He searched, but found nothing. He was seething with fury: he had to find something quickly now, anything that would lead him to the money. Dolly had a clear head start and she was covering her tracks well. If he didn’t find some clue as to where she’d gone — and fast — then the game was up and he’d be left with nothing.

In the master bedroom, he was confronted by a smell of burning and a picture of destruction — the strewn cosmetics, the smashed and trampled photo frame. Dolly was naturally such a pristine woman. He knew this room like the back of this hand but now couldn’t tell if anything was out of place, because everything was out of place. Harry picked up a spilled bottle of face cream and set it back on the dressing table, and then he picked up the smashed photo frame and put it back on the table next to Dolly’s side of the bed. He crossed to her wardrobe, opened it, and saw there were clothes and shoes missing. Then he crossed to his own wardrobe, and discovered that everything had been slashed, torn or stained with nail varnish. ‘Bitch!’ he hissed. Not because of the lost clothes, but because of the hatred Dolly must have felt for him as she destroyed the designer labels he valued so highly. This was the act of a betrayed woman, a woman in pain — and a woman with nothing left to lose. There was no doubt Dolly knew he was alive.

The last remnants of Harry’s old life hung in tatters before his eyes. As he slammed the wardrobe shut, the mirror on the outside of the door shattered.

‘Seven years bad—’ Standing in the bedroom doorway, Eddie shut his own mouth before Harry shut it for him.

Harry followed his nose to the metal waste bin and saw charred paper at the bottom. It wasn’t at all clear what this was, but the cut-up leather book covers could only mean one thing. He reached into the bin, picked up a handful of ashes and let them fall between his fingers like black snow. His ledgers. His ledgers were gone. He clenched his fists; he wanted to scream at the top of his voice. He had nothing and Dolly, it seemed, had everything. How dare she? How fucking dare she do this? ‘I’ll kill you,’ he whispered. ‘I swear to God I’ll kill you myself.’

Eddie couldn’t hear Harry’s words and had no idea what he had just discovered. ‘I’ll carry on searching, shall I?’ he said. ‘Don’t worry about the mess, Harry. Your Trudie will have this ship-shape in no time at all. And your nursery will finally get a bit of use—’

Harry erupted in sheer, uncontrolled anger and kicked Eddie in the balls, sending him crumpling to his knees. He wanted to kill Eddie, wanted to rip his heart out and feed it to him, but the weasely little runt wasn’t worth the effort. Harry spun round, let out a huge roar and slammed his fist into the wardrobe door, punching a hole straight though the wood. Splinters shot into his hand, but he didn’t feel a thing.

As Eddie whimpered from the carpet, Bill ran up the stairs.

‘Harry, come and see...’ Bill stopped at the sight of Harry standing, shoulders hunched, chest heaving and blood dripping from his knuckles. His hooded eyes were as angry as the devil himself. Bill thought Harry had flipped beyond the point of no return and, if he had, then Bill was out of here — he was a cautious thug, never killing or maiming in anger, always with controlled violence. He said what he’d come up to say, in case Harry was capable of snapping back to reality. ‘I found something in the garden. Something buried. You interested or do you just want to kill everybody?’

Harry’s eyes blinked and the glazed look disappeared. He was just stepping over Eddie, who was still on the floor nursing his balls, when the phone rang. Harry froze. He took his time to cross the bedroom and, two rings in, the phone stopped. Harry stopped. The phone rang again and, this time, it kept on ringing. He stood over the phone, his hand outstretched toward it. He knew it was Dolly; it had to be. He didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of answering, but he had to. He sat on the bed and slowly picked up the receiver. No one spoke, yet through the echo of eerie silence he could sense her. ‘That you, Doll?’

The line went dead.

Harry ripped the phone from the socket and hurled it across the room.

Chapter 38