As I get through the door, this is the sight that greets me: Em is standing halfway across the floor. The front door is swinging open, and just inside it, straddling the inner and outer halls, the master of the house is lying on his back. The stained glass from the door between the porch and the hall makes a shattered rainbow around him. Elle must have knocked him out somehow. But how? She’s half his height and wouldn’t have expected him to open the door.
Then I realise Elle is nowhere to be seen, and weirder still, the man’s changed his shirt. The previous one was white and cotton. This new one is scarlet and satin, and absolutely covered in … Oh.
Someone has removed a good portion of our new friend’s middle. That’s the shot we heard. And now Sausage Fingers appears to be stone dead on the stone floor.
Behind me, there is a massive boom, as the marble bust hits the floor and Julius Caesar cops it all over again.
‘Nobody move.’ That’s Jonny, behind me. He approaches Sausage Fingers, steps gingerly over him, nudges his foot out of the way with his own, and rams the front door shut.
‘What do we do?’ Em.
Jonny says: ‘Ambulance?’
‘Good shout.’ Em’s hand goes to her pocket.
‘Guys. No.’ What sort of bastard denies an ambulance to a man who’s just been shot in the chest? Me, it turns out. ‘Look at him. They’d take half an hour to get here, you know that. I don’t think you can keep going without a middle for that long. He’sdead.’
Jonny and Em look at each other, then at the body. In my defence, he’s clearly not getting up any time soon. Em leans down, and I say – again, it’s weird how quickly you can think in these situations – ‘Don’t touch him. Fingerprints.’
‘For Christ’s sake, Al. I want to see if he’s breathing.’
‘And I’m saying you can see he’s not. He’sdone.’ Em stays where she is, bent over him. ‘We have to just get our things together and—’
And then Sausage Fingers heaves a ragged sigh, and I nearly die of fright.
He starts hauling in breath after breath, God knows how. There’s so much of his torso missing – what was it, a shotgun? – that I have no idea what he’s even breathing with. Oneof his arms gropes in the air, then flops back like a spent fish across the remains of his chest.
‘Hey. Hey.’ Em is down next to him. ‘You’re all right.’ (No idea why she says this.)
His eyes wobble towards her, but he’s not really with us.
‘We’re here to help you.’ Debatable, in my opinion, but Em’s a diplomat.
‘Pen?’
‘What?’
He’s properly drifting now. A corner of his mouth twitches and his wandering eye catches mine for a second. ‘Get your money. It’s all … in the … out … building.’
And then he dies, this time for good. His breathing tails off, and his eyes film over. I thought it was made up, but there’s a tangible moment where the spark of life actually leaves the premises. It’s the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen.
We all fall silent. Nobody wants to be the first to speak. And then a voice comes from behind us.
‘What’s going on?’
Elle is standing in the doorway leading to the back of the house. And I’m clearly going mad, because I find the time to think:Ah, good. At least she got her coat.
Ten minutes later, we’re back in the van. Here’s what happened between then and now:
We left Sausage Fingers where he was. No paramedic on the planet could do him any good now.
We gathered our things.
We wiped for fingerprints as best we could, but I had no memory of what I’d touched since I’d got there. We were all in shock.
We headed to the back door, because who knew who was lurking around near the front with the same gun they’d used to kill our host.
We slipped out, raced to the end of the garden, scrambled over the fence, and had a horrible muddy slither round the edge of the neighbouring property until we were back on the lane. Then we ran through the village, strung out. I was in front.
