Solid, too.
He walked around the side, down a narrow alley that bordered the cemetery, and came to the back door. The air smelled of dampness and rotten leaves.
He gripped the door handle.
“What are you doing?”
Nance’s voice jolted him. “She’s here,” he said.
“Andy, I think you need to consider what you’re doing.”
Gilchrist shouldered the door. The frame splintered.
“Andy.”
He shouldered it again.
The door burst open. The shattered frame clattered to the floor as Gilchrist stumbled into a dank hallway of bare floorboards and blistered walls.
“Maureen?” He ran into the first room, an empty room to the right. “Are you here?” He kicked something on the floor, almost tripped, but in the dark could tell only that it was low and wooden. A coffee table? A packing box?
The next room yielded the same result.
His shouts echoed off the walls. “Maureen?”
He tried another room.
Nothing.
Nance almost bumped into him in the centre of what Gilchrist took to be the living room. The realization that he had failed locked his breath in his throat. He felt a stab of pain in his chest, thought for one frightening moment that he was going to black out.
“Andy?”
“It’s…” He spun around, stared at the dark walls, the boarded windows. “It’s…” It’s useless, he wanted to say. All around him only walls, stark and bare and black as night. It was useless. He was too late. Too late. He cupped his hands, screamed at the top of his voice. “Maureen?”
“She’s not here, Andy.”
The strength in Nance’s voice hit him. “Maureen,” he whispered to her. “Dear God, Maureen,” then covered his mouth with his hands, felt his breath rush through his fingers, warm and wet. Jesus, how could he be so wrong? Why had he let himself believe in the slimmest of hopes?
Nance tugged his sleeve.
“No.” He shook free, stepped to the side. “Maureen?” His breath came at him in waves that hit his lungs in gulping sobs. He felt his legs give out.
“Andy?”
He grunted as his knees hit the floor. He pressed his hands to his face, fought back the bile in his throat, felt Nance’s hand on his shoulder, her fingers flex. He said nothing as she stood beside him. He had lost her. He had lost his daughter.
“Andy.”
“I can’t lose her,” he gasped. “I can’t, Nance. I just, I can’t…”
Nance’s fingers tightened.
He looked to the floor, heard her shoes shuffle, except…
Except…
Except Nance had not moved.
He lifted her hand from his shoulder. “Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“Shh.” He tilted his head to the side. “Listen.” He had gained his night-sight, but in the darkness all he saw were shapes. He peered to his right, to his left, twisted his head over his shoulder as-
Another shuffle.
He stared to his right, to the packing box on the floor.
A shuffle. But not a shuffle. More like…
A scrape? From what?
A mouse? A rat? Something else?
Nance had heard it, too. He knew from the stiffness in her posture, the way her body turned to the wooden crate on the floor.
“Maureen?”
Silence.
“Maureen? Are you there?”
Another scrape.
By the box on the floor.
Beneath the box on the floor?
Nance beat him to it. She thudded the box out of the way and was tugging the carpet, peeling back the damp material. He thought she was ripping it into shreds, until he realised a rectangular piece had been cut from it. He gripped a corner, pulled it back-
“Bully warned me about you.”
Gilchrist felt his body turn to ice, his blood to water. If he’d had anything in his stomach he would have dropped the lot there and then.
Light exploded in his brain like a kick to the teeth.
He had time only to cover his eyes and turn away from the boot coming his way, so that it caught him only a glancing blow on his ear. He roared as pain shot through him, and rolled into the darkness, hand pressed hard to the side of his head, half expecting to feel a bloody mess where his ear had once been.
But it was still intact.
A beam of light chased him as he dived to the side, felt the thud of something heavy and sharp shiver the floorboards by his head. A deep curse, a guttural scream, then a flurry of light around the room as the flashlight clattered to the floor.
Gilchrist lunged for it, felt the wind of something brush his ear, heard the metallic clatter on the wall behind him. He picked up the flashlight, trapped the shape of two figures in its beam, caught Nance beneath a raised arm, a sharp point-
He threw the flashlight.
The room flickered as wild as lightning then fell into darkness with a grunt as the flashlight bounced off bone. He heard the thud as the body hit the floor and had time only to dive at where he thought the figure had fallen.
Cuffs out. “You’re under arrest,” he shouted, then the hard clip of metal as he slipped them over a bony wrist.
“Fuck off,” and a fist as hard as stone hit him on the jaw.
His head jerked and he almost lost his grip on the cuffs as another hammer blow hit the side of his head. In the blind darkness and the close struggle Gilchrist knew he could not trap the man’s free arm long enough to cuff it, so he clipped the cuffs to his own wrist.
“Got you, you bastard.”
He felt himself dragged to his feet, surprised by the animal strength of the man. He fought to grab the loose arm as it hit him on the neck like a poorly aimed rabbit punch, and felt his breath leave him as a knee came up between his legs. He smelled the stale tobacco stink of the man, felt the roughness of stubble, the wet spray of spittle as the voice by his ear cursed and spat.
But cuffed together, the man was going nowhere.
Arms as thin and strong as steel ropes wormed their way around his ribcage.
Gilchrist tucked his left foot behind a leg and pushed.
They hit the floor like a loaded sack.
He heard the air go out of the man, but before he could overpower him a hand slapped onto his face, and fingers as hard and sharp as steel claws dug into his skin.
Light again. A dancing beam.
“You’re under arrest.” Nance’s voice, high, unsteady. “Fuck off.”
A roar, a grunt, and before Gilchrist could move, the man had rolled on top of him, then over, body twisted to the wall.
The dancing flashlight caught the blade of the hunting knife at the same instant Gilchrist saw Jimmy Reid’s fingers fold around the hilt and the knife rear into the darkness above his head.
“No!” he shouted, and caught the grim smile of victory as the blade flashed down at him.
Chapter 40
THE KNIFE THUDDED into flesh.
But not Gilchrist’s.
He heard Nance gasp, felt her body go limp, and realised she had dived at Reid and taken the blow meant for him.
Fire flashed through his mind.
Reid shifted his weight.
Nance’s body tumbled off, and Gilchrist knew Reid had pulled the knife from her back. No time to think. Only to move.
And move now.
He gripped his cuffed wrist tight with his free hand, pulled his legs up and rolled heels over head. He heard a grunt of pain, a hard gasp of surprise. He tightened his grip, rolled in toward Reid, felt the pain as his own elbow twisted, the strain on his wrist as the cuff bit into his skin. His contorted move had Reid at a disadvantage. But he needed to move quickly. He pulled himself to his knees, felt Reid try to resist as he shoved his arm up his back.
Reid roared, “My arm.”
Gilchrist pushed higher, heard the dry crunch of gristle tearing and the high-pitched scream like a pig being burned, then felt the loss of power as the strength went out of the guy.