dancing with particles of dust, and reflected as two tiny pinpricks of silver in Ali Green’s eyes.
They were open, but vague, unfocused. Her legs had fallen open and her hands lay at her sides, fingers curled into her upturned palms, and her hair was splayed roughly over the back of the sofa where she’d slumped down in her seat. Her mouth was open and as Diaz knelt, cursing, between her knees, he could see the pool of saliva around her tongue and hear it bubbling in her throat as she took each shallow, unsteady breath.
‘Ali,’ he whispered, suddenly painfully aware of the silence and the need to preserve it, to hear whatever small sound she might make, should it be her last. ‘Can you hear me?’ He placed a hand on her arm and could feel a trembling that he couldn’t see, a vibration almost, from deep inside her somewhere, but she didn’t respond, didn’t so much as blink.
He leaned in closer then, moved to put his lips to her ear, but the blood stopped him. A thin trail, trickling through the neat channel between her ear – such delicate ears, he noted, and pointed sweetly at the top, like pixie ears – and the back of her jaw, and down the side of her neck and onto the collar of her shirt, to bloom inside her jacket.
He painfully swallowed his breath and rocked back on his haunches and pulled out his phone from his pocket and said, ‘It’s okay, it’s okay, Ali, you’re going to be okay,’ as calmly as he could, as though he believed it. And he punched in the code to unlock the phone, and keyed in the number to summon help, and he looked up into her eyes and was startled to see that she was looking right back at him in piercing focus, and her lips were moving as though she were trying to speak, and he let the phone drift away from his ear as he nodded and said, ‘You’re okay,’ and placed a comforting hand on her knee.
‘B—’ she whispered. ‘B—’
‘It’s okay,’ he said, shaking his head and nodding at the same time and hearing the voice on the other end of the phone and shushing and telling her, ‘Help’s coming. Just relax, you’ll be okay. We’re going to find him.’
And he raised the phone back to his ear, and the voice on the phone said, ‘Sarge?’ and Ali Green said, ‘Beh—’ and a single tear rolled down her cheek, and his breath caught in his throat and in the second before she closed her eyes, one of the tiny spots of silver turned black.
And all he could think of to say was, ‘He’s behind me, isn’t he.’
T wo months later
It’s funny, isn’t it, how your mind can always find a way to surprise you? Take mine, for example. After thirty-four years together, I like to think I know it pretty well. And having spent the whole of my childhood being forcibly drummed into myself, and most of my adult life breaking my back to conform to it, God knows I should. And yet, here I was with an unexpected dilemma.
I could hear my phone ringing over the splashing and thumping coming from the bathroom, and I knew that at six in the morning the call was likely important enough that I should answer it. But I didn’t know where I’d left it, and that was a problem.
Normally, like anyone else, I’d crawl out of bed, take a moment to steady myself and for my head to stop spinning, and I’d assume I’d left it in my bag and that my bag was in the lounge, and I’d go find it. And if it wasn’t there and had stopped ringing, I’d call it from the house phone and sooner or later I’d track it down and return the call and receive some bad news and then drink a gallon of coffee in the vain hope that it might make me somewhat safe to drive, and I’d get dressed in a hurry and be on my way.
But I couldn’t do that, not this morning. For one thing, unlike most mornings, I was completely naked under the duvet, and the one eye I could open was so blurry and achey that I couldn’t see any of my clothes. Which, given the mortifying likelihood of bumping into whoever was about to jump out of the shower, meant wrapping myself in a king-size quilt and stumbling around trying to figure out the layout of this house, which, I dimly realised, wasn’t mine.
And now the ringing had stopped, and the light shafting through the thin blind was a dagger to my skull, and then the shower was abruptly silent and my heart began to thump against my ribs and all I could think to do was pull the covers over my head and pretend I didn’t exist.
I don’t know how long I waited. I heard footsteps on the landing, the creaking of stairs; assorted kitchen clangs and clunks and tinkles. My phone again. Damn it. And then the footsteps coming back up the stairs, and the ringing getting louder, and oh God, it was coming into the room.
‘Hmm.’
I froze.
‘Well I’m sure she was in here a few minutes ago.’ A woman’s voice, faintly familiar. ‘Where on earth could she be?’
Dazed now, utterly confused. The phone still ringing. A clunk above my head – a mug on the table? A weight beside me, the edge of the bed sagging beneath it, pulling me towards it.
‘Are you alive under there?’
I took three breaths, and nodded.
‘Are you nodding?’
I shook my head, and heard a giggle.
‘There’s coffee here. And your phone’s ringing.’
‘I know,’ I croaked. ‘Thank you.’
‘I’ll just leave it here for you. Are you hungry?’
I wasn’t sure. Horror kind of feels like hunger, right? ‘Probably.’
‘Bathroom’s free,’ she said, and patted my hip through the duvet. ‘I’ll let you answer that.’ Then she stood up and was gone.
I unscrewed my eyes and eased the duvet aside. Blinked the blinding light out of them. There was a plain green mug steaming on the bedside table, face cream and biscuits and tissues and a library book shoved aside to make room. And on the floor beside the bed, my bag, jangling incessantly.
I reached down, hissing away a twinge in my back, and dug out my phone. I begged it to stop ringing, but someone was unshakeably determined to speak to me. Kevin, as it turned out. I answered. ‘Kevin,’ I sighed.
‘Ali,’ said Kevin, ‘it’s Kevin.’ Which I knew. ‘Where are you?’
I have no fucking idea. ‘What do you mean, where am I? I’m in bed. It’s fuck-off o’clock in the morning. What do you want?’
‘It’s six eighteen,’ he said, ‘the sun’s been up for over an hour and you need to be here twenty minutes ago.’
From the gentle mooing in the background, I deduced that he was most likely overdramatising. ‘I can hear cows,’ I yawned, and peeked inside the little drawer of the bedside table. It was full of hair ties and old sweets, pastel-coloured biros and Blu Tack and various kinds of charger.
‘I’m standing in a field.’
‘Sounds thrilling,’ I said, ‘but you’ve got the wrong Monday. I’m not back
