He went up to what he thought was the original front door and looked through the glass panels. He saw only darkness. It was a bright day, but he sensed that at the back of the property (‘property’ needed inverted commas), all lightwas shut out by curtains. He wondered about ringing but there was no bell. He was about to tap on a cracked pane of glass with a single knuckle when he heard another scream. Definitely a woman.
‘Sick, she is, we’re used to it.’
He turned and saw a lone figure with a humped back moving at a snail’s pace along the grass verge. An older woman with a shawl and a headscarf who had spoken without even looking up at the house.
Edward felt his fear replaced by sadness. This could not be the right property. These could not be the pair who’d attacked him. Even if they were the right size – the couple at the church had both been well over six foot – one of them now sounded like she was dying. And he had thought two men, right?
He was about to turn and leave when he caught sight of a flash of jacket in the hallway, hanging underneath longer raincoats abandoned for summer. On the edge of the jacket sleeve was a line of gold trim.
He moved the door slowly. He heard nothing from inside the house now, as if the people deeper within it had stopped breathing to hear the intruder. Edward shifted his bodyweight in silence, cursing that he was holding his crash helmet. There was a panting noise and another exhalation – not a scream of pain this time, but a deep groan that could have been from a male or female but sounded more like a dog. He stopped. There was a narrow flight of wooden stairs up to his right. The hallway rug was threadbare. The wooden boards beneath it creaked. Without repositioning his feet, he reached left and lifted the raincoats to see the jacket underneath.
There were two. They were huge, deep blue oceans of thick material. They said NYPD on the upper sleeve. They had silver badges on the front with the word POLICE embossed. There were three lines of gold trim at the cuff, which looked more like the kind of embroidery a pilot would have.
They were fancy dress outfits. Bought on Amazon or eBay.
He put his hand underneath the raincoats and felt the material.
What … the … fuck.
So it was them. ‘Stop asking questions’ – and the violence. The sheer desperate hatred. Why?
He put his hand across the cheap material, turning his body to face the walls. Again, the floorboards complained as his weight shifted. As he reached up behind the raincoats, he felt rubber.
Jesus, no.
He lifted the macs off their hooks carefully. There they were.
Two latex masks.
He stared. And then saw the movement in the doorway to his right. A man, at least six foot six, moving towards him.
‘YOU—!’ the giant screamed.
His own scream was joined by another from within the house. Shit, was the wheelchair woman going to jump up and join in? Edward was frozen to the spot for an instant. Then he jumped across the narrow hallway to the lowest stair. As he did, a hand shot out and grabbed his arm, tearing at the skin, ripping his shirt, losing its grip. It clattered against the side of Edward’s head. His hearing aid was knocked out.
Edward backed up on the stair as the man faced him. Tall himself, even one step above the floor, Edward still did not reach his adversary’s height. The man had a huge oblong head, wingnut ears, and the most piercing stare Edward had ever seen. The eyes were milky white, the pupils shrunk to a spit of grey. Edward held his crash helmet across his chest so he would have a single chance to fire it out with both hands and hope to catch the giant on the chin. After that, he was done for. Where did the stairs lead? If he ran up them, he was trapped.
‘You!’ said the man again.
‘You weren’t police officers. I thought you were police officers,’ said Edward breathlessly. ‘You’re Les and Lily Boyd.’
He hoped their names might stop the man in his tracks, but at that moment, a long breadknife appeared at Boyd’s shoulder. Edward did not need to look to see who was around the corner of the wall. The breadknife extended to reveal the other Boyd, who was just as tall, just as heavy, and now standing wheezing beside her husband. She had taken one of the masks and pulled it over her face, but it was not pulled on straight. It gave the horror-movie effect of a person whose head had spun a quarter-revolution. The left eyehole was over her right eye and the mask was moving inwards each time she inhaled. The knobbled walking stick appeared, wedged in the door frame as if it was taking all her weight. The breadknife was now an inch from her husband’s jugular.
And there they stood, the only sound the rattling lungs of the woman.
Then Les Boyd said, ‘And now we kill you.’
Chapter Forty-One
There was an aching pause while Edward faced off against the two giants.
He took a step back and, thank God, found the next stair instead of tripping. The second stair gave him a tiny height advantage over the two, who were struggling to move forwards in the narrow gap between the wall and the rickety wooden banister. It seemed as if the masked woman had no sense of where the breadknife was. She stabbed the air blindly. It could just as easily penetrate her husband as Edward. As she stabbed, she screamed, a guttural noise like a trapped animal.
Les Boyd moved sideways, conscious of the woman’s looseness of aim. ‘Watch that bloody knife, get back in your chair.’
Edward’s vision become hooded, as when a car accident happens and everything tunnels. Les was shoving him, trying to make him fall backwards onto the stairs where presumably Edward would be smothered and stabbed by Lily. He pushed the crash helmet at the giant, hoping to catch him in the face. The woman yelped as if every movement in her bodycaused terrible pain. It was the sound Edward had heard in his garden, where she had clumped at him with the lock-legged march of a zombie.
The crash helmet had missed Les. It made a dent in the wall opposite. Edward felt his shoe catch on a ruck in the stair carpet and reached left to stop his fall, dropping the helmet. Now he was defenceless. Les moved back. Lily moved forward. She swung the breadknife left and right at him.
