We are all still too much in shock to answer him.
He walks slowly towards it, opens it and disappears inside. We hear a woman’s voice talking at first, then soon escalating into a panicked, frightened shriek. I edge towards the door and the light in the lounge illuminates something held up to her chest. From this distance it looks like a can of hairspray. She fumbles, trying to spray it in Warren’s face, but in her panic, she drops it to the floor.He grabs her by the neck and frogmarches her out into the lounge. She is sobbing.
‘Shut up,’ Warren yells, and slaps her hard across the side of the head. ‘Where’s the key to the safe?’
Now she’s coughing, choking on her tears, her words unintelligible.
‘Where is it?’ he screams at the top of his lungs.
None of us have met this version of Warren before. He points the muzzle of the gun at the centre of her forehead.
‘I don’t know,’ she sobs. ‘Sanjay hides it in different places.’
‘Tell me!’ he demands.
‘I don’t know!’ she cries. ‘I promise.’
This time, when Warren pulls the trigger, it isn’t reactive. It’s deliberate, brought about by rage and frustration. The woman falls into a console table then crashes to the floor, landing on her side. Blood oozes from the hole in her throat. She clasps it but bleeds out in less than half a minute.
It’s too much for Zain. He grabs Jenny’s wrist and pulls her towards the staircase, the two of them disappearing in an instant. Warren is too slow to react and they are already out of his eyeline when he fires the gun twice in their direction. I should follow, but I’m too far away from the stairs to make a dash for it.
Now it’s just me, Warren and two dead bodies.
His eyes dart around the room, lizard-like, unsure of what to do next, before they settle upon me. The only remaining witness. I watch as the hand holding the gun begins to rise and point in my direction. I don’t think either of us knows what he’s going to do next.
And then it’s like someone flicks a switch in my brain which pushes me to take charge. I spot a tin of cigarette lighter fuel on the floor by the overturned console table. I point to it.
‘Go find more,’ I order Warren, as if ignorant of the gun aimed at me. ‘Our fingerprints are everywhere. We need to burn this place down.’
Warren casts a curious eye over me before acknowledging I’m on his side and I might be right. He lowers his weapon, disappears downstairs, re-emerging moments later brandishing three two-litre bottles of white spirits.
‘Pour them over the curtains and sofa,’ I tell him. ‘Anything that might be flammable.’
I clock a box of firelighters by the side of the fireplace, so I break them into cubes, enter the bedroom, then toss them around like chunks of confetti. Warren throws me a bottle and I empty the liquid across the bed and curtains in a zigzag pattern.
I’m so nervous that when I remove the tin of lighter fuel from my pocket, it falls to the floor. I crouch to find it, shining my torch across the floor and under the bed.
And that’s when I see them.
Two young faces.
Wide-eyed and staring back at me.
Chapter 51
2000
Anna
Hot tears pour down my cheeks and pool in the collar of my nightie. I cover my ears while my brother slips his hand over my mouth as we remain hidden under the bed. I feel him shaking just as much as me. Nothing happens for the longest time, until the door is suddenly thrown open again, and Mum’s shrill screams echo throughout the room as she’s dragged into the lounge. I’m so scared I pee myself.
A man’s muffled voice shouts at her, demanding she tells him where something is. And then there’s a second banging sound, much louder than the last because the door is still open.
I pull my hands from my ears just in time to hear a thump on the ground and, soon after, feet running down the stairs and more bangs, one after the other. And there are voices too. People are still out there. A few moments pass as I hear them moving around and then two strong, familiar smells arrive in the bedroom: white spirits, which Mum used when she decorated the lounge last Easter, and the fluid Dad uses to fill his cigarette lighter.
Suddenly a tin falls to the floor and bounces under the bed. A pair of knees press into the carpet. A hand enters our safe space and fingers fumble round for it. Finally a face appears. Her surprise mirrors ours.
Our eye contact holds for only a few fleeting seconds, but it’s long enough for me to take in every inch of her, imprinting it into a memory before she scrambles to her feet. A handful of seconds pass and the lighter fluid falls once again, only this time, the flame is clearly visible. We watch helplessly as line after line of fuel spreads across the floor in zigzagging ribbons.
