I stop in the doorway, strain my ears for any sound.
Nothing. Just the wind, tree branches clicking and scratching against each other next to the high stone wall. I reach into my handbag for a weapon but there is only the attack alarm, the noisemaker, which will be useless in a place as isolated as this. My fist closes around my bunch of keys instead.
I take another two steps, pushing on the front door. All my instincts tell me not to call out, not to alert anyone to my presence. Instead, I listen again for any human sound, any movement or conversation.
Silence. Even the dogs have stopped barking.
I push on the door again and it swings noiselessly open. There are no lights on and the hallway is dark even though it’s barely noon. I stand completely still, willing my ears to pick up something, anything from inside, straining to hear the sound of a baby’s cry from somewhere deeper in the house. But the only sound is the insistent, steady tick of a grandfather clock opposite the front door. Apart from that, The Grange is utterly, completely still, as silent as a funeral.
I step over the big stone threshold and move around the door. And that’s when I see him.
Gerald is lying on his back in the hallway. His jaw and the left side of his face almost completely blown away, the thick cream carpet beneath him a mass of red. A double-barrelled shotgun lies on the floor next to his hand.
I know instinctively that it’s hopeless but I force myself to kneel beside him anyway, putting two fingers against the big carotid artery next to his windpipe. His skin is still warm to the touch but there is no pulse, no sign of life. He’s gone.
He’s lying on his back, only a few feet from the front door. I try to picture it, imagine him suspicious, on edge, arming himself from the gun cabinet in the lounge when he hears the ring of the doorbell. Pulling the front door open and being shot immediately, barely a chance to register the gun in Dominic Church’s hands. No chance at all to defend himself.
I’m not going to let the same thing happen to me.
I pick up the shotgun, remembering the first time I met Dominic Church, only five days ago. Can it really be only five days?Don’t make the same mistake twice.With blood thumping in my ears, I press the barrel release lever and the gun clicks open, revealing the circular brass caps of two shells, side by side. Loaded. Neither have been fired. Gerald didn’t even have a chance to get a single shot off. I snap the gun shut again, the polished walnut stock smooth against my palms.
Where the hell are the police?
Still crouching, I lay the heavy weapon across my lap and dial Gilbourne’s number on my phone. An engaged tone comes beeping back into my ear.Shit.
A sound. A voice. What was that? Faint, from somewhere else in the house, from above me, the first floor?
Mia?
I have to move. I slip the phone back into my pocket. With multiplying terror at what I’m going to find in the rest of the house, I heft the gun in both hands and make my way upstairs, my shoes sinking into the thick carpet. On the first floor landing I wait, listen again, straining my ears to pick up the slightest sound.
Still nothing. The master bedroom is empty, the bed neatly made, the room tidy, nothing that looks out of place.Keep going.I go to the spiral staircase to the second floor and move quickly up it, expecting the blast of a gun with every step that takes me higher. There’s a very particular smell in my nostrils, growing stronger the higher I go. Oil-sharp and acrid. Dangerous. The stink of petrol.
A sick, metallic taste blooms on my tongue. Fear.
With the shotgun raised to my shoulder, I go to the first door on the right, the nursery, saying a silent prayer.Please. Just this. This one life. I will never ask anything again, but please let Mia be spared.Using the muzzle of the shotgun, I nudge the door open.
Angela is lying just inside the doorway.
She is on her side, curled into herself. The side of her blouse torn by a shotgun blast, the carpet beneath her stained dark crimson red.
Oh no.
Oh no.
Panic is rising in me, heat flowing up to my face. I kneel by Angela’s side, touching my fingers to her neck in search of a pulse. It feels intimate, almost intrusive, to be touching her as she lies here when we had not even shaken hands yesterday. There is a pulse, weak and thready, but still there. Unconscious but still breathing, her airway clear. There’s still a chance.
I ball up a bedsheet and press it to her wound.
‘Hold on, Angela. I’m here and help’s coming.’
I pull out my phone and dial 999, covering her with a blanket as I wait for the call to connect. A part of me had known I’d find Angela here in this room as soon as I saw her husband’s body in the hall. I knew she would fight to defend her granddaughter, guarding the entrance to the nursery. And so she has. The stink of petrol is stronger here, almost overpowering, the floor and furniture stained dark with it. It is splashed everywhere, up the walls and curtains. The smell transports me back to that day in Libya, seeing the corpses scattered in groups, in ragged lines, in ones and twos, dark blood soaked into the dust beneath them. Civilians, all. Men, women. Children.
The call connects and I ask for an ambulance, giving the details as fast as I can.
‘Is the attacker still in the house?’ the operator is saying. ‘Are you in immediate danger?’
‘I don’t know.’
