“Fu… ck… ing… bitch,” he wheezes. The only light in the room now comes from the streetlamp outside. Richie is just a silhouette. He tries to stand. Sam has a split second to decide what to do. Richie’s in the doorway between the lounge and hallway, blocking her only exit. But he’s still wobbly on his feet, and once she’s past him, the front door is unlocked and she has plenty of neighbors to run to. Alternatively, she could run up the stairs; he might not follow.
Sam charges at Richie, careening into his side like a rugby player. They both fall heavily, her on top. She pushes herself off him, to her feet and makes a run for it. He grabs at her dressing gown, yanking her back. She slides out of it and runs into the hallway. Turns right. Up the stairs.
She’s lived in this house almost her whole life; she needs no light. Two stairs at a time. She hears him right behind her. He flicks the hall light switch; it doesn’t work. He pounds after Sam, up the unlit staircase, reaching the top step. Then trips and crashes down heavily. Air splutters from him; he’s winded. Prone on the small upstairs landing. Sam looms over him, a large, steel baseball bat in her hands. She doesn’t hesitate, just swings. A strange whooshing sound comes out of him but he doesn’t scream. Samstrikes once more, hears a crack. She quickly pushes open her bedroom door and flicks the switch, sending light spilling across the scene on the landing.
On the floor, Richie rolls on to his side, clutching between his legs. He’s struggling to pull air into his lungs. Sam swings the bat at his back. He cries out and then whimpers, still clutching his genitals. She must have ruptured a testicle. Sam swings again, another blow to the back. He’s barely moving now. Just lying there, trying to breathe.
“How does it feel, Richie?” she whispers. “To be the helpless one?” There is liquid pooling on the carpet. It’s coming from Richie’s waistline.He must have pissed himself, she thinks. She swings the bat casually in front of his face. He tries to push himself away from her, but can’t.
“Please,” he wheezes, “wait.”
“Did Melanie say please? Did Lindsay say please?”
“You… you…”
“Bitch?” Sam says. “That is so boring. Find a new word for us.” She swings the bat again, but he curls into a ball and she just catches his ankle. A small crack and a squeal.
“You won’t get… away… with…”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Richie,” she says slowly. “This is exactly how to get away with murder. You would have learned a lot more about it if you’d paid attention to whatI’vebeen up to, rather than Denver.”
She lands a final blow on the side of Richie Scott’s head. There’s a crunchy squelch that Sam thinks may have killed him. At this point, she’s not too bothered either way. It’s one hell or another for this asshole.
She takes a few deep breaths to gather her thoughts, then gets to work. On tiptoe, she tightens the landing light bulb that she’d loosened and turns it on. She can now see the scene in all its glory, just as the police and, later, the forensics team will.
She moves to the top of the stairs and unties the cable she’d fastened across the top step three weeks earlier, the day after her meeting with Julius Windsor. She coils it neatly before stepping into her bedroom and placing it into her waiting laptop bag. She’s pleased it’s back where it belongs, having tripped over it herself once or twice while packing up her things. It’s the price you pay for booby-trapping your own house, she supposes. Just like inHome Alone.
Behind her, Richie begins to make a strange bubbling sound. Probably dying, but she can’t be sure. She removes the glove on his left hand, takes her baseball bat and wraps his fingers around it several times. Replacing the glove proves tricky, but she manages, then she leaves the bat next to Scott. Given that his fingerprints will be all over it despite the gloves he’s wearing, all evidence will suggest that he brought it with him Arriving at her home armed will make Richie’s crime more serious, and her less likely to be charged with excessive self-defense. If Richie dies, a postmortem will show that she only inflicted a few blows with the bat—hardly excessive. If he lives, it’s back behind bars for him.
She stands and considers the scene for a second. Richie lies bloody, on her landing, next to the bat. He’s still breathing. She walks back downstairs. It’s over. It occurs to her that Julius Windsor and Richie Scott could even end up in the same intensive care unit, and she begins to hum. Something she hasn’t done in a long time.
Calmly, she collects her baton and Taser, wipes them down with an alcohol wipe from the kitchen then places them in her utility belt, which is hanging in the under-stairs cupboard. She reconsiders, and hides the Taser in the drawer of her dad’s desk, in the basement. She shouldn’t really have a Taser at home.
Finally, Sam stands at the front door and breathes for a second with her eyes closed. Then she walks the entire house again, making sure that everything looks how it should—like a lone femalehas had no choice but to defend herself from a criminal on the run.
After her walk-through, Sam perches on the sofa and takes some panting breaths, each one faster and shallower than the last. Once she’s sure she’s ready, she pulls her phone from her pocket, where it’s been the whole time, and dials 999.
“This is DI Samantha Hansen… I need police and an ambulance,” she says, infusing her voice with panic. “A wanted man… Richie Scott… Please, send help… He’s just tried to kill me in my home… My God… he had a weapon—a bat… I’ve defended myself… Oh Jesus… I think I’m going to…”
Sam lets the phone slide to the floor, then rests her head on the arm of the sofa, slows her breathing and waits for the cavalry to arrive. Was her phone call overly dramatic, bordering on suspicious? She doesn’t think so. She might be a detective, but she’s also just a woman. She suspects her female hysteria will be deemed perfectly natural.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Sam spends the night in hospital. It’s precautionary, they tell her, as she was unresponsive when the paramedics arrived. She must have passed out. Adam Taylor is there when she opens her eyes. He’s brought Maltesers and daffodils. Sam closes her eyes again. Adam sits for hours as nurses come and go. To pass the time, he talks non-stop, in that awkward way people talk in hospitals. He goes on about the case he’s working on, the London weather and his mother’s UTI. Adam only leaves her bedside to go to the toilet and Sam takes one such opportunity to text Neil and check how Lindsay is doing.
Sam must have nodded off, because when she next opens her eyes, Taylor’s fingers are resting gently on her hand and he’s nodding off himself in his chair. One of the good ones. She smiles to herself, laces her fingers through his and closes her eyes again.
By lunchtime, Sam is ready to shower and get out of the hospital, but there’s zero privacy and she’s wearing a crinkly, open-back gown, as the police took her clothing into evidence. When sheasks Taylor to leave, he initially refuses, so she begins to pull back the covers.
“I’d like to preserve the innocence of your eyes.” She grins and he blushes, taking the hint.
“Call me when they release you,” he says gently. “I want to drive you home and make sure you’re OK. I can stay over if—”
“Actually, Taylor,” she says. “Could you do me a favor?”
“Of course.”
She gives him instructions and her house key.
