He was wrong.
Putting my hands up had increased the frying pan’s potential energy. A large mass, held up high. I let the weight of it drag my hand down, and I pulled it, through an arc, like swinging a cricket bat towards a ball arriving at waist height, giving it everything and going for the boundary. I let go of the pan, on a trajectory towards the man’s head. He had a fraction of a second to react, and he wasted it, raising the gun towards the pan as if he were shooting at a target. The pan knocked the gun from his hand without slowing down. It took him in the neck, its momentum unaltered until it was embedded in the full depth of his soft tissue.
The pan thumped to the ground with a clang, and the man went down, clutching at his throat. I kicked his gun away. Better safe than sorry.
I pulled up a kitchen chair and sat, waiting for him to die. Asphyxiation takes a long time. I didn’t feel any sympathy. He’d killed Kate and her son in cold blood. Odds were he’d done the same to the Leckies the day before.
But why? I could think of a few reasons that would fit if this were a murder novel, one of those paperbacks that were all the rage. He was looking for somewhere to lie low while his unit was transported out of the area, back to their base. He was a long-lost son, back for revenge over some long-harboured slight. Or perhaps he’d heard a story from a mate about a buried treasure kept in the garden. All unlikely, but basically feasible.
The crunch of stones from the driveway warned me I wasn’t going to be alone for long. It was an effective alarm. A car. Idling, then silent. Then the sound of doors opening.
I slipped out the back door and waited to the side, in the shade of an ancient pear tree. I was invisible to anyone in the house, but if I got the chance I’d be able to peer in. I wanted to know who it was. Perhaps the killer had accomplices,coming to retrieve something, or to make sure the job was finished to their satisfaction.
Voices filtered back from the front of the house. They’d found Kate. From the tone of the voices, it didn’t sound like they were affiliated with the killer. They sounded surprised. One of the voices was clearly in charge. He was giving orders. Calm, measured.
I recognised the voice.
Neesham.
Stay or go. Leaving quietly seemed sensible. I was an innocent bystander. The police might not see it that way.
A rustle of leaves warned me I wasn’t alone. Someone pushing through the beech hedge at the side of the house.
I turned quickly, assessing the threat. A police constable, truncheon raised, ready to take me down.
The truncheon was a fearsome weapon. Thirty inches of solid lignum, the densest and heaviest wood in the world. Designed to subdue the angriest and most intractable criminal. It didn’t leave me with many options. Either get hit hard, or take out the man wielding it. Me or him.
I hesitated. I’ll do whatever it takes to survive, even if it means killing the man in front of me. But this man wasn’t my enemy. He was a young lad, barely out of school, who’d signed up with the police to do his bit. An honourable choice. Not his fault that doing his bit and smacking me on the head with a truncheon were one and the same thing.
My hesitation made all the difference. Inaction instead of action. Always a poor choice. More footsteps behind me. Leather soles. Another threat. I turned, my attention divided. My head exploded in a bright light, and the next thing I felt was the ground digging into my cheek.
31
‘Tell me,’ Neesham said, ‘from the beginning.’
I was laid out on the couch in the drawing room. I tried to raise my hand to my head, but handcuffs cut off my movement. I pulled myself up to a sitting position, intending to stand, but the room spun alarmingly.
Neesham sat on the opposite couch, where Kate had sat the last time I’d been here. He looked tired.
‘How did you get here so quickly?’ I asked.
‘What do you mean?’
‘The murders took place about five minutes before I got here. You got here five minutes after me. You were on your way already.’
‘I don’t have to explain my methods to you, Cook.’
My head was pounding. I closed my eyes.
‘You’re not the law, John,’ Neesham said. ‘Let the rest of us have a chance. Some of us might surprise you.’
I didn’t respond to Neesham, but I could feel his satisfaction in the silence. Since our days together at school, he’d always been in my shadow. Since I’d come back from the war we hadn’t crossed paths much, but I knew how he thought of me. Cook, the man who’d lost his mind and stayed in the army after the war. Seen so much killing he couldn’t come home. Damaged goods.
‘Tell me again,’ he said.
I told him about taking Mrs Leckie home from the station. About her and Stan being bruised, threatened and evicted.
I told him about coming to see Kate, and her promise to leave the Leckies alone.
