Killer Instinct

Seventeen

Victoria didn't so much start screaming, as let out a single high-pitched yowl of terror. It lacerated the night air, and gave me instant goose bumps. I spun round so fast I skidded and nearly tripped over my own feet on the lichen-covered slabs.

I had time to see a darkened figure grab Victoria's shoulders to shove her out of the way, thrusting past her. She crumpled by the side of the Mini as the figure made off down the drive and out into the road.

Something about the way it moved told me the flying outline was a man. Not only that, but the same man who'd fled from outside the ballroom window. He had his covered head down and was fleeing with a purpose, already thirty yards away. For a moment I was torn over direction. Did I give chase, or go to Victoria's aid?

Rescue won out over capture. I ran over to her, heart thundering far more than it should have been from such a short burst of exercise. To my relief, she was already starting to regain her feet, clinging onto the door handle of her car for support, her back half-towards me.

As she heard my footsteps she gave another stark cry, cowering back. It took me a couple of attempts – speaking loudly and calmly, and not trying to touch her – before her brain registered my voice. She quietened with a sob.

Then, she let me reach out to her, to help her up. I let go once she was on her feet and propped against the side of the Mini. My hands came away wet, and sticky.

Under the gloomy lighting it was difficult to distinguish the colour, but I knew.

“Victoria,” I said, “where are you hurt?”

She looked at me blankly, then saw the blood on my fingers, and her legs gave out again. She slid down the bodywork, ending up back on the ground.

I checked her over quickly, searching for the wound, but I couldn't find one. There was blood on both her upper arms, quite a lot of it, but it didn't seem to have come from Victoria herself.

A little slow-motion action replay rolled through my mind. I saw again the black-clad figure swinging Victoria roughly aside. Saw his gloved hands grasping her shoulders . . .

I straightened up. Victoria's assailant could only have come out of the darkened foliage that bordered the drive. I didn't want to go in there, among the dark whisperings of the leaves, but I wasn't sure I had a choice. The man hadn't moved like he was injured. What did that leave?

As I started to move round the front of the Mini, I felt Victoria grab at the bottom of my sweatshirt, trying to prevent me from going. I had to prise her hand away from my clothes. “It's OK,” I said. “I need to check.”

Brave words. Shame I didn't quite have the brave heart to go with them.

It was dark in front of the Mini, the car casting its own shadow onto the gravel from the lighting in the road behind it. I edged forwards until my toes bumped against the terracotta coping that marked the border between drive and shrubbery.

But coping stones aren't soft, and they don't flinch when you kick them . . .

I spun round, told Victoria to turn her headlights on so I could see what I was doing, but didn't get a response.

When I glanced at her I found the blonde-haired girl had one hand clamped over her mouth as though to either prevent a rising tide of nausea, or bite back on her screams. Above her blenched fingers her eyes were stretched wide, the white gleaming clearly all around the iris. She kept moaning, over and over, “Oh God, oh God.”

I went through her pockets until I found her car keys, opened the door, and fumbled with every knob and switch I could find on the Mini's dashboard until the headlights blinked on.

What I saw in their feeble glow made me wish I hadn't bothered.

The figure of a woman was lying in an almost perfect recovery position, with her feet disappearing into the shrubbery, and her upper body onto the gravel. She was on her left side, but nearly rolled onto her face, with her back to the Mini's front bumper. One arm was out behind her, the other crooked up in front.

It briefly crossed my mind that she might have fallen and hit her head. Blood had haloed round her face, soaked into her clothing. The palm and fingertips of her forward hand rested in the growing pool that covered the stones around her.

Victoria whimpered behind me. I turned back to her. Her ashen face made perfect sense to me now. I squatted alongside her.

“Victoria, listen to me,” I said gently, holding her head so she had to look straight into my eyes. “I need you to go back into the house and get them to phone for the police, and an ambulance. I'll stay here and see what I can do for her. Go and find Ailsa and tell her what's happened. Can you do that for me?”

She clutched briefly at my hand, her fingers almost unnaturally cold, then gave a hesitant nod. She was shaking as she climbed to her feet. I watched her as she stumbled numbly back towards the lights of the hallway, like someone sleepwalking.

I hung back just until she was close enough to the front steps for me to be sure she was going to make it without collapsing, then turned back to the woman.

I got the same crunch of fear in my gut that I'd felt when I'd first seen Terry's body. I wondered how many corpses you had to see before you got blasé about them.

I pushed the memory of the fleeing man from my mind, and trod carefully round the prone form on the ground. The girl's legs were bare and one shoe was missing. Her hair had fallen partly over her face, and her coat collar had rucked up. I'd already crouched and put a hand out to smooth them away when I stilled, recognition as jarring as an unexpected thorn in a bunch of roses.

It was Joy.

Fearing the worst, I pushed her hair back, intending to check her airway was clear. She started under my fingers, making me jump back with a muffled curse. Her eyes opened, smoky with pain. She seemed to gaze at me, but unfocused, and began to struggle in panic.

“Joy, it's OK, it's me. It's Charlie,” I told her, trying to keep her steady. Christ, I needed to keep her still. I'd no idea what her injuries were. “Don't worry, help's on the way. Where are you hurt?”

She was still thrashing around, hands fluttering at my wrists, making unintelligible noises like a wounded animal. I just couldn't understand what she was trying to tell me. Later, it was the sounds she made that haunted me.

She lifted her head, eyes wide. A spurt of blood oozed from between her parted lips, staining her teeth like a heavy smoker. It joined the steadily expanding puddle, which was pooling round my feet. Joy was losing it at an alarming rate. I knew I needed to stem the flow if there was going to be any chance of saving her.

The fight went out of her abruptly and she sagged back. It seemed like even that short spasm of energy had drained her. I took advantage to open her coat, searching for the cause of all that bleeding.

It didn't take me long to find it.

As I pulled back her collar I couldn't suppress a gasp of revulsion. Joy's throat had been slashed straight across from one side to the other.

Her windpipe, a tangle of sinews, and disconnected blood vessels were all clearly visible through the gaping wound. Blood was pumping out at a speed which dismayed me. I yanked my sweatshirt off over my head, balling it up into a pad to hold over the gash. I dredged through my memory and recalled that pressure was the only way to stop bleeding. Trouble was, how did I press on her windpipe without hastening her death?

I squeezed as tightly as I dared, but all that seemed to happen was that my sweatshirt turned steadily dark with blood.

Joy was lying quietly now, her skin taking on a clammy pallor. Her breathing was so shallow I could hardly tell if she was still alive or not. Come on, for God's sake! How long does it take to get an ambulance up here? They always seem to be in a damned hurry whenever I've hustled the Suzuki out of their flightpath.

“Come on, Joy, don't give in!” I think I knew in my heart that she was fighting a losing battle.

I felt tears begin to slide down my cheeks. I didn't notice the cold, even though I was down to a thin T-shirt. I knelt beside her, not caring that her blood soaked into the knees of my jogging pants.

I ran our last conversation round and round like a loop tape. I couldn't get it out of my head. If I hadn't confronted her, we would probably have walked out together. Her attacker might have backed off. If he had got brave then maybe, together, we would have been able to take him down.

Right now we should have been laughing and congratulating each other, boosted by the adrenaline thrill of success. We should have been waiting for the cops to show up and cart off a very surprised and down-trodden mugger. One who wasn't expecting his victims to fight back.

Instead I was waiting for the paramedics to come and tell me with their serious eyes and their sober stance that there was nothing they could do . . .

The sound of running footsteps shook my foggy mind aware. I glanced up and saw Ailsa and one of the other residents hurrying down the drive towards us. The other woman took one look at the scene illuminated in the Mini's headlights, then reeled away and threw up onto the edge of the lawn.

Fortunately, Ailsa had a slightly stronger stomach. She came forwards like someone approaching the loose edge of a chalky cliff, her hand squeezing my shoulder in silent support.

More footsteps made us both turn. Tris came jogging out of the house, pulling on his old parka jacket and carrying a couple of blankets. “Help's on the way,” he said in a hushed voice when he reached us. “Is she . . .?”

I grimaced up at him and shrugged.

Joy's eyes snapped open again at that moment, making the pair of them jerk backwards, cursing. With a sharp movement she gripped tight onto my wrist, desperation lending unearthly strength. She tried to mouth words her destroyed voice box couldn't begin to form.

Blood bubbled between her lips, speckled with saliva, then she went limp. I swear in that moment I watched the light dim in her eyes, like the last flicker of a torch with an exhausted battery.

In the distance, came the faint wail of sirens.

***

It was well after midnight when I wearily climbed the stairs to the flat and let myself in. The half-cleared debris of the interior seemed even more depressing as I flicked on the lights.

I put the kettle on for coffee as a reflex rather than out of any real desire for caffeine. I was too wired to sleep, too tired to do much else. My mind couldn't stop turning things uselessly over and over.

I stripped out of my ruined jogging pants and threw the sweatshirt straight into the rubbish, pulling on fresh clothes. I suppose I could have soaked the blood out of them in a bucket of cold water, but I didn't have much of an inclination to try.

The pants had been pale grey and looked worse than the shirt, which was green. Blood goes black on a green background. I remember my father telling me that was why surgeons wore it. Saves making the relatives faint when they came straight out of the operating theatre splattered with the stuff.

I checked the answering machine for messages. There were a couple of pupils letting me know about classes they couldn't make, and one from Sam, asking me to get in touch. The last message was from Marc.

“Just calling to check you're OK,” said that rich voice, perfectly at ease talking to a machine. “You sounded slightly off-line the other day. Call me, Charlie. Any time – I mean it.”

I half-smiled. People who say things like that on answerphone messages so often don't really expect you to take them up on it. Like the ones who say, “you're always welcome” or “see you soon”. They'd be horrified if you actually turned up on their doorstep at two the following morning.

On an impulse, I picked up the phone and dialled Marc's mobile number. I nearly changed my mind in the time it took to connect, but once it had started ringing out I held my nerve.

“Yeah?” His laconic greeting wasn't quite what I expected. For a moment I couldn't think what to say that didn't sound foolish, or inconsequential. “If that's you, Zachary, you better have a good excuse for ducking out of work tonight! Hello? Talk to me.”

I rushed into speech. “Hi Marc, it's me. You said call any time, so – I'm calling.”

A fractional pause. “Charlie! How lovely.” There was genuine warmth in his voice. “It's late. Are you all right?”

“Er, yes – no. I don't know,” I faltered. There was the heavy beat of music in the background at his end of the line. He must still be at the club. Busy.

“Want to tell me about it?” he suggested without impatience. The gentleness in his voice was nearly my undoing. I'd been fine all through the impersonal information-gathering of the police who'd turned up at the Lodge. Now I was in danger of losing it big time.

Victoria had gone to pieces so badly that a woman constable had driven her home in the battered Mini, after the medics had given her a sedative. It was the only effective thing they'd been able to do. By the time they arrived Joy was past even their best-trained ministrations.

“A friend of mine has just died,” I said. It sounded so lame, such an inadequate way of describing the events of the past few hours.

“Oh Charlie, I'm sorry,” he said politely. “Was it sudden?”

“You could say that. She had her throat cut. I was with her.” The surface tension broke and the tears spilled over. “I watched her die, Marc, and there was nothing I could do.”

There was another pause, longer this time, tense. “Would you like me to come over?”

I pulled myself together. “N-no,” I said. “I'll be OK.” I caught sight of the hand that gripped the phone receiver and stretched the other one out in front of me. They were both ingrained with dried blood, sunk deep into my pores and laced under my nails. I grimaced at the sight of it. “Besides,” I added with the semblance of a smile, “I look a mess.”

He laughed softly. “How very female,” he murmured, then, “Hold on a moment, would you?” I heard him take the phone away from his mouth. There was the mutter of voices in the background.

I took advantage of his absence to sniff loudly and tell myself to get it together. I suppose I should have been grateful that I hadn't gone off the rails quite as badly as Victoria. Maybe I was just getting used to bloodied corpses...

“I'm sorry,” I apologised when he came back on the line. “You're obviously busy and the last thing you want is me blubbering at you.”

“Don't be stupid. You're hardly blubbering,” he said. “It's been a relatively quiet night, but Len's just been having fun and games with a couple of rowdy punters. We're a bit short-handed.”

“I would have thought all you'd have to do is let Angelo off his leash and stand by with a mop and bucket to clear up the aftermath.”

“We probably would have done, but he wasn't in tonight,” Marc said with a hint of annoyance. “He called in sick. In fact, that's who I thought was calling me now. I tried him earlier and couldn't get a reply. He's either too sick to answer the phone, or he's not sick enough and he's gone out somewhere.”

“He's probably too busy beating up his girlfriend,” I muttered, recalling suddenly the way Victoria's eyebrow rings had been torn out of her face. It made me wince to think about it. I didn't even have my ears pierced. Still, that was nothing compared to the level of violence that had been shown towards Joy . . .

“Sorry, Charlie the line just crackled. What did you say?” Marc asked.

“Oh, nothing,” I said, shaking my head to clear it. “Look, I'm sorry Marc, I'm still all mixed up and my brain just seems to be going off at a tangent half the time.”

“Are you sure you don't want me to come round? I can be there in less than twenty minutes.”

“Yes I'm quite sure,” I said more firmly. “Thanks anyway Marc. Maybe I'll see you tomorrow.”

“OK. I'll call you,” he promised. “And if there's anything I can do, Charlie, you know you only have to say.” I heard the sincerity in his voice, knew he meant it.

“Thank you,” I said, grateful for his understanding, “but I think I'll be OK. I'll talk to you tomorrow.”

As he rang off he told me to get some sleep. His tone suggestive enough to almost make me offer him a place in my bed to help me try.

***

Maybe, if I'd gone to bed then, I would have managed more sleep than I did. I sat for a long time on the most solid part of my leaking sofa – I really must finish clearing up the stuffing – cradling another cup of coffee and trying to blank the vision of Joy's desperate struggle to cling to life.

Would I have been able to fight any harder? Would I have held out any longer than she had? I looked down again and saw my bloodstained hands.

With a grimace I set down my cup and went to scrub the traces away. Soap struggled to shift the blood now it was dry. I ended up using washing up liquid, with some gritty brown sugar thrown in as an improvised scouring agent. By the time I'd finished my skin was pink and raw, but at least it was clean.

I had just walked back into the lounge again when the phone rang. I picked it up with a smile on my face, thinking that at this hour it could only be Marc, with some just-remembered remark.

“That was a close one, wasn't it, Charlie? Next time, it could be you.”

I lurched. It wasn't Marc. Instead, I heard a quiet sexless voice with a faint mechanical twang to it that took me a moment to place. Then I realised it was the way you sounded when you were using a voice-changer device, like mine. Correction – like the one I used to have, but hadn't been able to find since the flat had been turned over . . .

“Charlie? I know you can hear me,” the voice went on nastily. Oh shit. I jerked away from the receiver as though it had burned me. “I know you're listening. Not so brave now, are you? Your friend wasn't brave. She hardly even struggled. No sport there, Charlie. Not like you.”

“Try me!” I threw at him. Oh Christ, where had that burst of bravado come from? The fear rippled down me, making my spine twitch. I wanted to run away screaming with my hands over my ears, but I was caught, dazzled, like a rabbit in the headlights of the car that was just about to run it over.

The voice gave a delicate laugh. “Maybe next time, Charlie,” it said. “Maybe I will.”

“There won't be a next time,” I said, amazed at how level my own voice sounded.

“Oh there'll definitely be a next time,” repeated the metallic voice. “You won't know where, and you won't know when, but it'll happen. You can count on it.”

I didn't have the capacity to breathe enough to answer that one, but I didn't have to. There was a click and the monotone whirr of an empty line. I let the receiver drop back onto its cradle slowly, stunned.

My legs suddenly opted out of supporting me. I wasn't close enough to the sofa to make it, and I ended up on the floor. My vision started to tunnel out, the blood thundering in my ears. I didn't know if I was going to pass out, or throw up, or both.

I sat there for some time, eyes staring without seeing. He's coming after me! I couldn't get it out of my head. I wanted to panic, or run, but common sense told me that wasn't the answer. If I didn't stand and fight this, I was never going to be able to stop running.

I shook myself out of my stupor long enough to dial 1471. The frosty-voiced automated lady at BT told me I had been called today and gave me the precise time, then added unsurprisingly that the caller had withheld their number.

“Thanks,” I told her. “That's a great help,” but she didn't respond to the jibe.

***

I didn't move far that night. I dozed fitfully, shivering, wrapped up in what was left of my quilt and still wearing the clothes I'd changed into when I got home. The thought of facing a would-be murderer naked was too much to bear. It was a long cold night, and I'm not just talking about time and temperature.

I kept the light on, and stayed away from the windows. The phone rang another couple of times in the early hours, but I'd put the answering machine back on by then. Both times the caller rang off without waiting for the beep as instructed, and the numbers were withheld.

I could only guess it was my friendly neighbourhood psycho again. It seemed only too likely.

By seven I gave up any idea of sleep and got up, pacing round the flat restlessly, unable to settle to anything. Eventually I gave in and admitted defeat. I picked up the phone, dialling Lancaster police station quickly, before I'd chance to chicken out.

When they answered I asked to be put through to whoever was dealing with Joy's death.

A detective inspector came onto the line and I explained to him who I was. “I don't wish to sound alarmist,” I said carefully, “but I think whoever killed Joy might have decided that it's my turn next.”