Osama

EIGHT

Joe had thought that things might look better in the morning. He was wrong. As the sky grew lighter and condensation dripped down the inside of the window, people started to appear. A man walking his dog. A Lycra-clad cyclist hunched over her handlebars. The same two girls he’d passed last night, staggering home, the worse for wear. Every movement made him tense. The axe-split of a headache he was suffering wasn’t just the booze. Joe didn’t let go of the knife.

The clock chimed six times. He didn’t move. Seven. There were sounds from upstairs. Floorboards creaked. Footsteps descended. He sensed Caitlin staring at him from the door.

‘Pack a bag,’ he said.

‘Joe…’

‘Pack a bag.’

He didn’t know at what point during his vigil he had come to the decision, but now that it was light he had made up his mind: they weren’t staying here. Maybe someone had tried to kill him last night; maybe it had just been a bunch of pissed-up, joyriding dickheads unable to keep control of their vehicle and the kid with the Coke bottle was just a kid with a Coke bottle. Either way, getting out of Hereford felt like the right move.

‘Where are we going?’ Caitlin asked.

‘JJ’s.’

‘Does he know?’

For Joe and his family, JJ’s meant holidays. Whenever Joe’s mate had any down time – which was hardly ever – he spent his time at the secluded old farmhouse, ten klicks from Berwick-upon-Tweed, that his grandparents had owned. There, he kept his eye in by shooting every last game bird he could find with an old two-bore shotgun. ‘No difference,’ he’d said to Joe just three weeks previously, ‘between a bird and a bad guy.’

‘Joe, does JJ know we’re… ’

‘No!’

‘But—’

‘JJ’s got other things on his mind, trust me.’

Caitlin didn’t much like it up in Berwick, but Joe loved the remote bleakness of the place. And with JJ stuck out in Bagram, he knew the house would be empty. More importantly, he’d be off the radar.

‘Maybe we should just stay here… The Regiment want you to go in and—’

‘Fuck the Regiment.’

Caitlin jumped. She had that look again. Anxious. A little scared – maybe of him? Perhaps he should tell her what had happened last night.

Or perhaps not. She already thought he was losing it.

Joe took a deep breath to calm himself, then approached her and brushed one hand against her soft cheek. ‘We need some time out,’ he said. ‘Just the three of us. I need to wind down, babe. Get away from it all.’

It was the right thing to say. Joe knew it would be. Caitlin’s eyes softened; she bit her lower lip and nodded at him. Fifteen minutes later she had three bags packed and was back in the front room, standing just behind Conor with her hands on his shoulders.

The boy looked tired. Dark rings. Pale skin. He was wearing a light blue anorak and clutching his DS. ‘What happened to your face?’ he asked.

‘Don’t worry about it, champ.’

‘Just asking.’

‘We should get moving,’ said Joe.

‘What about school?’ asked Conor.

‘Look, just forget about school, OK?’ Joe snapped. Conor flinched and withdrew a little into his mother’s embrace. Joe pushed past them. ‘Let’s go,’ he said.

It was a silent trip north. Conor slept in the back of their silver Mondeo estate; Caitlin removed her shoes and hugged her knees in the passenger seat; Joe put talk radio on to fill the silence. Some arsehole of a shock jock was presiding over a banal phone-in. Joe barely heard what they were saying until two hours into the journey when, snapping out of his driving trance on the M6, he realized the conversation had inevitably moved on to bin Laden. An ‘expert’ – he sounded Middle Eastern – was giving his opinion: ‘… and it’s quite simply wrong of the American government to suggest that Osama bin Laden’s body was disposed of according to Islamic practices…’ Joe slammed the button to turn the radio off, drawing another of Caitlin’s anxious glances. He could tell she wanted to talk to him about what they’d just been listening to. She wasn’t stupid. She knew that ops like the raid in Abbottabad were Joe’s bread and butter. But she also knew it was a waste of breath asking him about what he did when he was on Regiment time.

Joe glanced in the rear-view mirror. His face was still dirty and scabbed, but he wasn’t looking at that. He saw a red Citroën Picasso behind him, and an XK8 behind that. He hadn’t noticed either car before, but he still pulled out into the centre lane and lowered his speed suddenly, forcing them to overtake on the inside before he dropped back into the slow lane behind them. If Caitlin noticed what he was doing she gave no indication of it – she had removed a bottle of nail-polish remover from her bag, along with a wad of cotton wool. She dabbed her nails in silence, while Joe kept his eye on the two cars. The Picasso pulled off at the next junction; the XK8 zoomed off into the distance.

Conor woke at midday. Joe kept driving as Caitlin passed their son sandwiches she’d made before they left. Neither she nor Joe had an appetite for them. He kept his eyes on the road. She kept hers on her nails. From the back came the beep-beeping of Conor’s DS.

They stopped around 3 p.m. to buy food in a dingy supermarket – the closest to their destination, but still thirty klicks south-west of JJ’s. Caitlin didn’t comment on the booze Joe piled into the trolley: a case of Tennent’s, two bottles of Famous Grouse and half a dozen bottles of cheap wine. She concentrated on adding microwave meals – JJ was no Jamie Oliver and his kitchen looked like it. Twenty minutes later they were back in the car. And an hour later they were at their destination.

JJ’s house stood alone at the foot of a hill that was covered with grazing sheep. When he was younger, Conor always used to say that it looked as though it had a face, and he was right. The narrow windows and cracked pebbledash render made it look mournful. It wasn’t helped by the rain that had started the moment they had caught sight of it. An old iron fence, about a metre high, marked the boundary of the property, but it was so covered with bindweed that the metal was barely visible. The grass to the front of the house was a couple of feet high. Their vehicle made a clear track through it as Joe pulled up by the front door, whose green paint was peeling to reveal the white undercoat beneath. The house looked a little shabbier every time they came here.

There was an old coal shed along the right-hand side of the house and it was here, hidden behind a loose brick, that JJ always kept a key. Joe found it immediately and let them in.

‘I’m freezing,’ Conor complained as the door swung shut behind them and they stood in a hallway that was somehow darker than it should have been given it was still light outside. The terracotta tiles on the floor seemed to leach any warmth out of the air, and the woodchip walls had yellow patches of damp rising up from the skirting. Against the right-hand wall stood an old mahogany grandfather clock, its hands stuck at seventeen minutes past twelve. The air was thick with the musty smell of neglect.

Caitlin flicked a light switch. Nothing happened. A minute later Joe had his head stuck inside a corner cupboard in the kitchen, poking around at the fuse board. He flicked a trip switch and heard the beep of the microwave as the kitchen lights turned on.

‘I’ll sort the beds out,’ Caitlin said as Joe emerged. ‘Come on, Conor, you can help me…’

‘I want to stay with Dad.’

Conor was lingering in the doorway. His face was still pale, but the rings around his eyes had faded. Caitlin looked askance at Joe, who nodded. ‘Come on, champ,’ he said. ‘Let’s make a brew.’

Caitlin left them alone while Joe wiped the dust off an old kettle with his sleeve and filled it with water, before turning to look at his son. Conor had moved into the centre of the room, next to the long pine table. He looked troubled.

‘How’s your mum been, champ?’ Joe asked. ‘You been looking after her like I told you to?’

Conor nodded gravely. ‘But sometimes I hear her crying. I don’t think she likes you being a soldier any more.’

There was an awkward silence. Why was it that Joe could hold his own in the testosterone-fuelled hangars of Bagram, but when he was alone with his own son, he could never find the right words to say?

‘Your mum’s fine,’ he muttered.

‘She’s not fine.’ Conor spoke so forcefully, and in such an adult tone, that Joe was taken aback. A memory flashed before his eyes. He saw himself as a kid, standing up to his own dickhead of a father, pretending not to be scared of his strong, tattooed arm. Whenever Joe’s dad came back from a stretch away, he’d been at Her Majesty’s pleasure, not at Her service. But that meant nothing to Conor. Joe wondered if he was pretending not to be scared now.

‘Are you always going to be a soldier, Dad?’

Joe frowned.

‘What did happen to your face?’

Joe touched the scraped, sore skin. ‘Fell over.’ He could tell Conor knew it was a lie. Joe crossed the length of the kitchen to the window that looked out to the front. Their car was the only sign of human life that he could see. For some reason, that made him relax. ‘You remember learning to ride your bike out there?’ he asked.

Conor was standing next to him now, looking out too. He wormed his little hand into Joe’s, and they stood there in silence for a moment.

‘You don’t ride your bike much now, huh?’

‘I prefer my computer,’ Conor said. ‘And I don’t like it when Mum cries.’

‘Nor do I, champ,’ Joe said. And he meant it. ‘Let’s make sure she’s got nothing to cry about, hey?’

For the first time since Joe got back, he saw a smile spread across his son’s face. ‘Do you want to see my new DS game?’ Conor asked.

‘Sure,’ Joe said, and Conor scampered off to find it.

Joe looked out the window again. He felt a million miles from anywhere. A million miles from danger. It was a feeling he hadn’t had for a very long time. The Regiment would be wondering where he was. The adjutant was probably banging on his door at home right now. He didn’t give a shit. Tomorrow he’d get a message to JJ. Let him know he was here. He was sure his mate wouldn’t mind if they stayed here for a bit. Long enough for Joe to get a few things straight in his head.

God knows he needed to.

‘I thought I’d see if Charlie was around.’

It was the following morning, and Joe felt refreshed. His sleep had been far from dreamless, but it had at least been uninterrupted. Now he was sitting in the kitchen with Caitlin, drinking coffee and watching Conor through the window. Their son was tramping out a pattern in the long, dewy grass.

‘Charlie?’

‘His friend. From last year.’

Joe vaguely remembered. There was a kid about Conor’s age living in the nearest village. They’d met on the beach last summer. The mother was blonde, overweight and bubbly. The father was a twat. Dressed head to foot in army surplus gear that covered his paunch, he thought he was David fucking Stirling, not some shitkicker from Berwick with a beer belly and a shelf full of Bear Grylls DVDs. It was true that Conor and Charlie had hit it off, but now something made Joe reluctant to be in contact with anyone else.

‘It’s better if he stays with us,’ he said.

‘He can’t stomp around the house by himself all day, Joe. He needs someone his own age.’

‘It’s safer if—’

‘What are you talking about, safer?’ Caitlin took a deep breath, as though calming herself down. ‘Nobody knows we’re here, sweetheart. Even JJ doesn’t know we’re here. And anyway…’ She glanced down sheepishly. ‘It would be nice for you and me to spend a bit of time together.’

Joe nodded. ‘Right,’ he said.

Conor had other ideas. At midday, once Caitlin had spoken to Charlie’s mum and arranged for Conor to spend the night with them, he looked crestfallen. ‘What if we can’t think of anything to say?’ he asked.

‘You’ll be fine, sweetheart. He’ll be fine, won’t he?’

Joe nodded. He’d be fine.

At 4 p.m. he was packing Conor into the car. ‘You take him,’ Caitlin had whispered in his ear. ‘But hurry back.’

Conor hugged his mum tight, clearly holding back some tears. Joe looked away. He didn’t want anyone to see his frown. Why couldn’t his son be a bit tougher?

It was a short, silent journey to Charlie’s. Joe felt himself growing tense as soon as JJ’s house disappeared from the rear-view mirror. And as he rounded the base of the hill that hid the house from sight, he found his senses were as alert as if he was driving out on ops. He scanned the fields on either side. A tractor trundled over the horizon two klicks to the south-west. A silver Clio sped up behind him and overtook dangerously just before a hairpin bend – female driver, two kids in the back. A white Transit van passed from the other direction, registration number VS02 RTD. Driver bearded, baseball cap shading his face. Rear doors, Joe saw when it was behind him, blacked out…

Ten minutes later he was entering the small village of Lymeford. A road sign announced that it welcomed careful drivers, but Joe was tipping eighty: the Mondeo’s brakes screeched as he slowed down and passed the Crown and Sceptre, where he and JJ had sunk more than a few pints in years gone by. There was a quaint little pond where a couple of kids were feeding the ducks. Here he turned left, into a close of modern red-brick houses, then pulled up outside one that had a black Cherokee Jeep parked outside, with a Help for Heroes sticker on the rear window.

‘OK, champ?’ he asked.

Conor nodded mutely.

Charlie’s mum – Caitlin had reminded him that her name was Elaine – greeted them at the front door with a wide, bubbly smile and a hug for Conor that wasn’t really reciprocated. ‘It’s so lovely to see you again… Charlie’s been dying to have you round…’

Charlie, who was waiting for them in the front room, didn’t look like that was true. He’d grown in the last year, both upwards and outwards. Conor looked tiny next to him, and when Elaine encouraged them to go upstairs to play, neither boy looked very enthusiastic.

‘Bless,’ Elaine observed. ‘Would you like a cup of tea, Joe?’

‘The man doesn’t want tea,’ came a voice from the next room. Two seconds later Charlie’s dad, Reg, appeared carrying two cans of Carling. He wore camouflage trousers that were several sizes too small for his considerable waist, and a Parachute Regiment T-shirt. ‘How do, mate.’ He nodded gruffly and handed Joe the warm beer. ‘What happened to your face, eh? Bit of bother with Terry Taliban?’

Joe had a vague memory of telling Reg that he was off to the Stan, though of course he hadn’t mentioned the Regiment.

‘Something like that, Reg,’ he said, taking a sip of beer.

‘Sit down, then.’ Reg plonked himself in an armchair that was already indented with the shape of his arse. Next to it there was an occasional table on which lay a copy of Jane’s Defence Weekly.

‘I should go…’

‘So we’ve given those fuckin’ Al-Wotsit bastards a good seeing-to, eh?’ Reg spoke proudly, as if he’d nailed the Pacer himself. Then he belched.

‘Right,’ Joe muttered. Elaine had already rolled her eyes and left the room.

Reg leaned forward. ‘You want to know what I think, though?’ Joe didn’t, but knew he was about to find out. ‘That bin Laden – something fishy about him. Our Charlie, always on the fuckin’ computer, he is. Always on that fuckin’…’ He clicked his fingers three times and shouted, ?‘Elaine! What’s that You-Wotsit he’s always on?’

‘YouTube,’ came the reply.

‘Always on it, lookin’ at dancing cats and shit like that.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Probably lookin’ at all sorts of mucky stuff an’ all. Anyhow…’ he tapped himself proudly on the chest ?‘… I’ve been looking on it myself. Wouldn’t believe the stuff I’ve found, you wouldn’t.’

‘Right.’

Reg leaned forward. ‘You know 9/11?’

‘Yeah,’ said Joe. ‘I know.’

‘Well, did you know that there was a third building went down that day? Just near the Twin Towers, it was. And did you know it was reported on the news before it happened?’

Reg sat back and took a triumphant swig of his beer.

Joe put his down on the mantelpiece. ‘Look, mate,’ he said. ‘Really, I’ve got to—’

‘So if it were on the news before it happened, how come they knew about it?’ He leaned forward again, as though he was about to reveal a great secret. ‘Mark my words: that Bin Laden, he was a double agent’ – he almost spat it out – ‘working for the Americans…’

‘Reg, I’m sorry, mate. I’ve really got to be off.’

‘None as blind as them that can’t see,’ said Reg, ‘but you answer me this: what was he doing living where he was, eh? Right under everyone’s noses? You think the Americans didn’t know?’

Fortunately, Joe didn’t have to say what he thought, because just then Elaine walked back into the room. She put an affectionate hand on Joe’s shoulder.

‘Never mind Reg, love,’ she said quietly. ‘He’s always looking for someone to listen to his loony ideas.’ Reg shrugged, and belched again. ‘Now don’t you worry about Conor. They’ll have a lovely time. I’ve got fish fingers for their tea, and I’ll make sure they’re not too late… Oh, and I’ll bring him back round first thing after breakfast. We pass your place on our way to school. Now then, Reg, say bye-bye to Joe.’

Reg just raised his beer in Joe’s direction.

Joe couldn’t get away quickly enough. Guys like Reg were fucking everywhere, keeping the army surplus stores in business and boring everyone shitless about their knowledge of modern combat from the comfort of their armchair. Put a fat fuck like him within sniffing distance of a contact situation and he’d be browning his boxers before you could say RPG. But he was harmless enough, and Elaine would look after Conor.

He looked through the windscreen. Conor was at a window on the first floor. His pale face looked almost ghostly. Joe gave him the thumbs up, and the boy smiled unconvincingly back.

Joe checked the time: 1710 hours. With a nagging sense of guilt he reversed the car, drove away from the house and headed back to JJ’s.

It was growing dark when he got there. The sheep had moved from the hillside and a flock of noisy geese, silhouetted against the sky, were flying north-westerly in an arrowhead formation as he stepped out of the car. Their croaking echoed across the landscape. Once they had gone, everything was silent.

Joe looked at the house. There were no lights on.

Why the hell not?

Something was wrong.

He checked the long grass at the front of the house. He counted three sets of tyre tracks: arrival of the Mondeo yesterday, departure to Charlie’s, arrival just now. He located the indentation of Conor’s footprints from this morning. And nothing else.

But still, no lights.

He circled the house. The back garden was just as overgrown as the front. There was a modern, two-storey annexe here. On the ground floor was a kind of boot room, with a spiral iron staircase that led up to the landing on the first floor of the main house. But the rear door to the annexe was locked. Windows closed. No light. No sign of access.

A gust of wind picked up, carrying with it the bleating of a distant sheep.

Nobody knows you’re here, Joe told himself. He walked round the other side of the house, past the coal shed. The rickety wooden door was closed, the loose chain tied round its bolt in a figure of eight, just as he had left it. When he reached the front door again, the evening had grown a shade darker. And still there were no lights from the house.

He opened the door and slipped inside.

He was about to call Caitlin’s name, but something stopped him. The chill darkness of the hallway, perhaps. Or the silence, broken only by the ticking of the grandfather clock that Joe had wound that morning.

The kitchen: empty and dark, the remnants of their lunch still unwashed by the sink. The sitting room on the other side of the hallway: ditto. Joe headed silently up the stairs. The steps were nearly two metres wide, with a winding, burnished-wood banister. Joe walked lightly along the left-hand edge of the treads, to minimize the creaking. The staircase turned back on itself. The banister continued horizontally for two metres along the landing, overlooking the staircase.

At the top of the steps, he stopped and listened.

Silence.

He was on the verge of calling Caitlin’s name again. And again, something stopped him.

The landing was ten metres long and covered with a musty grey carpet. To his left, there was a closed door that led back to the annexe, with its spiral staircase down to the ground floor. At one end of the landing was a door leading to the bathroom. This too was shut. The room Conor slept in was at the far end on the right. His door was fully open but no light was on inside. Opposite this was the room he shared with Caitlin. The door was a couple of inches ajar, and from it emerged a faint, flickering glow.

A glow he hadn’t seen from the window that looked out onto the front.

He approached with care, treading lightly, the tip of his shoe checking for any looseness in the floor that might make a noise before the heel went down. It took him twenty seconds to approach like this. When he was just inches from the doorway, he stopped and breathed deeply.

Then he kicked the door open.

The flickering glow, he saw instantly, came from a single tea light burning on the chest of drawers by the door. Against the left wall was a wardrobe with two long mirrors on the double doors. Opposite it, just to the right of the window, where the curtains were closed, was an old four-poster bed without any drapes.

And on the bed was Caitlin.

‘Jesus!’ She had sat up suddenly when Joe kicked the door in. ‘Joe, what’s the… ’

Caitlin closed her eyes, inhaled deeply, then forced a smile to her face. She wasn’t wearing much. A satin vest that did nothing to hide the curve of her breasts; skimpy underwear.

Joe stood stupidly in the doorway. Caitlin approached him, took his hand and led him over to the bed.

‘I’ve missed you,’ she whispered as he sat on the edge of the bed. She clambered up behind him and started massaging his shoulders. ‘Baby, you’re so tense. Take your shirt off.’

Joe removed his shirt; behind him, he could sense Caitlin taking off her vest. When she started massaging again, he could feel her breasts brushing against his back.

‘Lie down,’ she whispered.

He obeyed.

Conor placed his knife and fork together on his empty plate, the way his mum had told him. He didn’t really like fish fingers, but he’d eaten them anyway, as well as the potato waffles, both smeared with ketchup.

‘Looks like blood, doesn’t it?’ Charlie had said as he squirted his own plate. Conor had kept his eyes fixed on his food. Charlie’s dad, who was passing through the kitchen on the way to the fridge, had said, ‘Too thick for blood, sunshine,’ before his mum had asked them to change the subject. After that they’d eaten in silence. They weren’t really getting on, and Conor didn’t want to be there.

‘Half an hour’s telly before bed, boys,’ Charlie’s mum said as she gathered up their plates. They walked through into the front room, where his dad was sitting with a can of beer in his hand reading his magazine. He gave Conor the creeps, and he sat as far away as he could, at the other end of the sofa.

They watched Doctor Who on DVD. Conor found it scary, but Charlie was rapt and he didn’t want to look like a wimp. He was glad when Charlie’s mum came in and said, ‘Seven-thirty, boys. Time for bed.’

Conor slept on a blow-up mattress on Charlie’s floor. Or rather, he didn’t sleep. He lay there in the darkness, listening to Charlie’s slow breathing and the sound of the TV downstairs. Thinking of his mum, and how she put on a brave face when it was just the two of them, even though he knew how much she hated it when Dad was away. And thinking about Dad too. How he had been sitting in the bath with the water pouring over him. How he had ripped his Xbox away from the screen when he’d been playing Call of Duty – something he was only doing because he thought playing a game like that might make his dad think more of him.

Thinking how Dad was just different this time.

He didn’t know how late it was when he started crying. All he knew was that once he started, he couldn’t stop.

Joe and Caitlin lay together, naked. Spent.

‘What’s that?’ Joe breathed.

‘It’s nothing, baby. Just the old house creaking.’

The curtains were open now, and their bodies were lit more by the moonlight that flooded in through the window than by the tea light. Caitlin had her head on his chest and one hand on his stomach, which she stroked reassuringly. She was warm, and there was something about her touch that made Joe feel more relaxed than he had for months. She was right. No need to be scared of things going bump in the night.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said after a long pause. ‘This wasn’t the homecoming I had in my head. I’ve been—’

‘Shhh…’ Caitlin soothed him. ‘I do understand, baby. I know the old Joe’s in there somewhere. I wish I could just make it better.’

‘I’ll make it up to you. And to Conor. I promise.’ I’ll be a dad, he thought to himself. I’ve had enough of being a soldier.

‘You don’t have to promise anything, baby.’ Her voice cracked slightly. ‘It’s enough that you’re back with us.’

Silence. He stared at the ceiling, listening to the soft sound of her breathing. Neither of them felt the need to speak. Joe pretended to himself that he was not keeping an ear out for another creak from elsewhere in the house.

A minute passed. Something caught Joe’s eye.

It was almost nothing. A dot of light, reflecting from the wardrobe mirrors and zigzagging like a firefly across the ceiling before vanishing. Joe sat up immediately, bringing Caitlin with him.

‘Joe, what is it?’

‘Quiet!’ he hissed. ‘Lie down…’

‘Joe, please…’ She was sitting on the edge of the bed, naked, her arms crossed over her breasts as though she was trying to protect herself from something.

‘Lie down.’

But Joe was looking out through the edge of the dirty window, casting around for movement. Clouds were scudding across the sky; the long grass out front was rippling in a light breeze. But apart from that, nothing.

Joe quickly pulled on his jeans, blocking out the sound of Caitlin’s voice, which was tearful once more. ‘Joe… it’s all in your head…’

But it wasn’t in his head. He’d seen something.

He looked around for anything that would serve as a weapon. Finding nothing, he removed his sturdy leather belt from his jeans and held each end tightly. At least you could strangle someone with it – just.

‘Stay there,’ he said.

The tea light was guttering. Joe snuffed it with his thumb and forefinger before stepping back out into the hallway. He remembered that JJ kept his shotgun and cartridges in a locked cabinet in the basement. If he could get there…

He edged down the landing. But he’d only gone a couple of metres when he stopped and stood very still. There was no doubt about it. He could feel a breeze in his face. He peered into the darkness. The door leading to the spiral staircase and the annexe was open.

‘Caitlin!’ he roared. ‘Caitlin, get dressed!’

Many things happened at once. Two figures appeared, one at the end of the corridor, emerging from the open door, a second from Conor’s bedroom two metres away at Joe’s eight o’clock. But it wasn’t the presence of these figures that momentarily paralysed him with terror. It was what they were wearing: white, all-in-one outfits.

A dazzling light. The man at the end of the corridor was holding a pencil-thin torch. He switched it on, shining the bright halogen beam in Joe’s face. Half-blinded, Joe turned to attack the man who had emerged from Conor’s bedroom. He had a torch too, and so did a third man behind him. Joe hurled himself at them, and they crumpled down onto the floor. Joe only had to touch the guy’s clothing to realize what these men – he assumed they were men – were wearing: reinforced-paper SOCO suits. They covered everything: shoes, bodies, heads. They wore tight yellow rubber gloves, sealed to the SOCO suits with layers of packing tape. Their faces were covered with what felt, as he clawed his hand into the assailant’s face, like tinted cellophane.

A scream. It was Caitlin. ‘He’s got a gun! Joe! He’s got a gun!’

Rage surged through him. He didn’t bother with the belt, but brought his fist down on the nearest man’s face. He could instantly feel the wetness of his blood slipping around between the cellophane and the man’s nose. He rolled off the intruder, ready to jump to his feet and strangle the cunt that was threatening Caitlin. But now the one he’d seen coming in from the annexe door was standing right over him, shining the torch in his face. Joe started to push it away.

But then he saw that the intruder was carrying something else: a Taser rod, about forty centimetres long. A high-voltage strike from that would put him down immediately. He tried to parry it. But too late.

Joe’s whole body juddered for about three seconds as the electricity surged through him. When it stopped, he felt as though the blood in his veins was made of lead, and the room was spinning. All he could do was concentrate on staying conscious. Not easy. He had palpitations in his neck. Nausea…

And something else was happening.

One of the intruders – he couldn’t tell which – had pulled down his jeans and taken hold of his penis. Joe felt the sharp pain of a needle being inserted into the urethra, followed by a dreadful sensation that felt as though molten lead was seeping into his abdomen. Still dazzled by the halogen light, he couldn’t see what was happening, but he knew he’d been injected. He tried to push himself up again, but his muscles would barely obey the commands his brain was giving them. The molten-lead sensation spread down his limbs. He dropped the leather belt and collapsed, his body limp, the back of his head motionless against the floor.

He couldn’t move. Jesus, he couldn’t move…

Caitlin wasn’t screaming any more, but whimpering. Fast, terrified sobs. All three intruders had moved into the room now, and Joe heard them say something, though he couldn’t make out what. Caitlin said ‘No,’ but then there was a scuffling sound. Joe tried to call out, but all that came was a dry, dusty gasp. His eyes rolled as he desperately tried to move his head at least. Nothing doing. Whatever they’d injected had caused muscle failure. Suxamethonium chloride, was Joe’s guess. Very difficult to trace in the bloodstream, especially when injected in that part of his anatomy. The panic inside him was like a bullet ricocheting in a small room. What were they doing? Why hadn’t they just killed him?

What was about to happen?

Movement on the edge of his vision. He managed to roll his eyes forward sufficiently to see Caitlin, still naked, being dragged from the room by two of the intruders. Were they going to rape her? He didn’t think so. The SOCO suits were on for a reason. It wasn’t a comforting thought.

With a cry, Caitlin broke away from them and threw herself at Joe, sobbing uncontrollably. But she only managed to hold on to his immobile body for two or three brief seconds, before the intruders pulled her up again and bundled her into the bathroom. They switched on the light, which cast a confusion of shadows onto the grey hallway carpet, but Joe could not see inside.

He wanted to roar with anger and frustration. More than that, he wanted to move. He couldn’t. He couldn’t even twitch. He could only lie there, a prisoner in his own body. Listening. Caitlin was screaming again. ‘What are you doing? Oh God, what’re you doing?’ There was a clattering sound. Some kind of movement in the bathroom that Joe couldn’t work out.

A thump. Caitlin’s screams grew louder. More desperate, if that were possible.

And then two of the intruders were standing above him. They had dropped their torches, and the cellophane in front of their faces was misted from their heavy breathing. They bent over, each grabbing one of his arms and, with obvious effort, pulled the deadweight of his body up from the ground, before dragging him into the bathroom.

What he saw in there horrified him.

The intruders had ripped the shower curtain from its rail and used it to wrap around the naked Caitlin, who was now lying in the bath, her feet at the tap end. She was shaking violently and trying to speak, but the only sound that came from her mouth was of retching. She vomited. It smeared over the front of the shower curtain, lumpy and yellow. One of the intruders was standing over her, but the moment the other two dropped Joe onto his knees, so that his top half drooped over the edge of the bath, this man disappeared.

Now the only sound in the bathroom was Caitlin’s sobbing, which echoed off the mildewed tiles. Joe couldn’t see her face. His head was pointing the other way, so all he could see was the shower curtain wrapped round the dark triangle of her pubic hair – soaked with urine – and her naked legs, her feet twisted awkwardly, and a bulbous, distorted reflection of the room in the bath taps, showing the two men standing over him.

It took no more than a minute for the third man to return. Joe didn’t know what he was carrying until the other two pulled him back up from the bath again. The man spoke, but his voice was still muffled by the SOCO suit, so Joe couldn’t discern his accent. ‘Do the fingernails,’ he instructed.

‘Joe,’ Caitlin whispered, her voice oozing dread, ‘what’s happening?’

But all Joe knew was that his hand was being lifted towards Caitlin’s face by one of the intruders, who bent his fingernails forward and scraped them two inches down Caitlin’s left cheek.

And suddenly Joe understood.

They were making him scratch Caitlin’s face to put her DNA under his fingernails, to make it look as though there had been a struggle between them. And they were wearing the suits to stop their own DNA from contaminating the crime scene.

Because that was what they were creating. A crime scene.

A murder scene.

Conor’s door opened. He immediately gulped down his tears because he didn’t want anyone to think he was a baby. But it was too late. Charlie’s mum was leaning over him. He could smell her perfume. ‘What’s the matter, my little love?’ she asked in a concerned whisper, stroking his hair.

‘Nothing,’ said Conor, but his voice wobbled as he said it, and he couldn’t stop himself crying again.

‘Homesick?’

Conor nodded.

‘Why don’t we call your mum?’ she suggested. ‘Would you like that?’

He nodded again. He would ask Mum to come and get him. He didn’t want to stay here any more.

Joe’s brain was shrieking at him. If he could just move… If he could just do something… But it wasn’t possible. His horrified thoughts were trapped inside a useless body. He was powerless.

A new sound. The ringing of Caitlin’s mobile phone from the bedroom. The intruders stood perfectly still, obviously listening to the ring, and the faint buzzing as the phone vibrated.

It fell silent.

‘Do it,’ came the order from behind a SOCO suit. ‘Now.’

With every ounce of his being, Joe tried to lash out. But all he showed for it was a hoarse whisper from the back of his throat. ‘No…’

Now he saw what the man had fetched from downstairs: a kitchen knife with a slightly buckled blade of about three inches long. One of his assailants was forcing it into his hand, wrapping his fingers around the handle.

It was only as one of them lifted him under his armpits and another clenched his knife hand firmly that Caitlin appeared to understand what was happening. In an instant she stopped shaking, as though her body was frozen. ‘Joe,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t let them… please don’t let them…’

But there was nothing Joe could do. His eyes were fixed on Caitlin’s face. He thought he had witnessed true terror before. He realized now that he had not.

Charlie’s mum put her phone back down. ‘Oh dear,’ she said kindly. ‘She’s not answering.’

They were sitting in the front room now, Conor in his pyjamas, still sobbing. Charlie’s dad was in his usual place, a can of beer in his hand and a glazed look on his face.

‘Why don’t you have another go at going to sleep?’ said Charlie’s mum. ‘It’ll soon be morning, eh?’

But the suggestion only made Conor cry even more. He had given up trying to be brave. ‘I want to go home,’ he said. ‘I want to see my mum…’

‘Ah, take the lad home,’ muttered Charlie’s dad. ‘We won’t get any peace until you do.’

Charlie’s mum gave her husband a dark look, but then started stroking his hair again. ‘Would you like that, love? Would you like me to take you home?’

Conor nodded.

The shower curtain was not easily punctured.

At first the point of the knife just made an indentation both in the curtain and in the soft flesh of Caitlin’s belly. It needed a sharp yank forward to pierce the plastic, but once it came into contact with Caitlin’s skin, it slid in with gruesome ease.

‘No!’ Joe roared. But the roar was only in his head.

Caitlin gasped. Immediately blood gushed from the wound. Most of it remained trapped between her skin and the clear plastic curtain, but some of it seeped through the hole and onto the handle of the knife, Joe’s hand and the paper suit of the man controlling him.

Joe’s mind started to spin. He heard Caitlin’s sharp, pained intakes of breath. He felt his hand being pushed downwards, slicing through her belly in the direction of her womb. A distended bubble of intestine slid softly, monstrously, from the gash as his hand was pulled back and reinserted, not into her belly this time, but into the area around her left breast. This was clearly more painful. She shouted out, but her cry faded after only a second as the strength sapped from her.

There was so much blood, most of it still caught between the shower curtain and her skin. Joe tried once more to fight against his paralysis, to take control of his body. It was useless. His assailants were moving him further up the bath now, forcing his knife hand towards the vicinity of Caitlin’s throat.

Their eyes locked. Joe had seen enough people die to realize that life was ebbing from her.

She spoke. A single word. ‘Conor…’

And there would have been no time for Joe to reply, even if he’d been able to. All his effort was focused on trying to stop the intruder from moving the knife forward. For an instant, when the tip of the blade was just three inches from Caitlin’s throat, he thought that maybe… maybe… a little strength was returning to his useless muscles.

But it was much too little, and much too late.

The incision of Caitlin’s throat was physically the easiest. There was no shower curtain to get through – just the unblemished skin of her smooth neck. And below the skin, the tight lengths of sinew that required a little more pressure from the intruder, but not much.

Caitlin’s eyes rolled. A disgusting mixture of blood and saliva foamed from her mouth and over the vomit that was now oozing down the side of the bath. Her whole neck was scarlet. As the knife was pulled out, she tried to breathe in. But her windpipe was punctured, and all Joe saw was a little of the blood around the wound being sucked back in, before oozing out again.

‘Enough,’ said one of the men behind him.

Joe felt himself being dropped, the knife still in his hand. His head hit the side of the bath before he crumpled to the floor. All he could see now was the pedestal of the basin, the toilet next to it and three pairs of SOCO-suit-clad feet walking out of the bathroom and into the hallway.

He could hear a sinister gurgling sound from the bath.

It lasted no more than ten seconds. And then there was silence.

A small spider crawled out from behind the basin’s pedestal. It scurried in the direction of the bath and out of Joe’s field of view.

His left leg twitched. Movement. He tried to manoeuvre it consciously. Still nothing.

Something was happening on the landing. He didn’t know, and couldn’t see, what. And he almost didn’t care. The horror of the past few minutes was burning his mind. He kept seeing the knife entering Caitlin’s body, kept seeing the blood piss from her wounds. Kept hearing her last, strangled, desperate word.

‘Conor…’

He felt his body jerk. The leaden numbness of his muscles was dissolving. Was the injection wearing off?? He tried to move again. His knife hand shifted an inch. But no more.

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.