‘Yurrrrggggghhhh!’ the man yelled, as the snake instantly began winding itself round him and bit him on the hand. ‘Yowwwww!’ he yelled, trying frantically to shake the snake free, but it responded by wrapping itself tighter round him, pinning his arms to his sides, then continuing to wind round his shoulders and then neck. He could feel its strength crushing him. ‘Get him off me, you bitch!’
Jodie grabbed a glass vivarium containing four tarantulas, raised it in the air and held it up above her head.
‘Who the hell are you?’ she shouted. ‘Are you police?’
He looked up at the spiders, terrified. ‘Who the fuck are you?’ he shouted back. ‘Jodie? Judith?’
‘Both of them,’ she replied, clearly. ‘And more.’
‘Get this thing off me!’
‘Oh yes? And then what?’ She raised the vivarium higher, as if preparing to hurl it at him.
‘No. Noooooo! Please, I hate those critters, please. Look, lady, I’ll go away, I promshhhh.’ The snake was winding more tightly round his throat and it was getting harder for him to speak.
‘Like I believe you. You know something? I’ve killed three people — two husbands and a fiancé — actually, four, if you count my stupid sister. You think I care a toss about some shitty intruder?’
‘Plessshhhhh. Pleassshss gerris off me.’
He was finding it even harder to gulp down air. He stared up, wide-eyed with fear, at the undersides and hairy legs of the spiders.
‘Help you? Tell me who the hell you are!’ she yelled.
His voice was coming out as a croak now. ‘Get this thing off me and I’ll—’
She slammed down the vivarium on his head, knocking him sideways and onto the floor. It shattered, freeing the spiders. She picked up another vivarium containing three light-brown-coloured deathstalker scorpions, and brought that crashing down on the floor beside his head. As it shattered, freeing the scorpions, she took several steps back towards the door, and saw, to her satisfaction, one of them crawling across his face.
‘Helppssshhhhhhhhhh!’ he screamed, writhing in terror, his face bleeding in several places, as the boa increasingly tightened its grip.
‘Who are you?’ she said. ‘Who are you?’
He stared back at her in silence, shaking.
She raced past him and through the open glass door, slamming it shut behind her, shaking with fear and relief. And confusion.
‘Who are you?’ she screamed again, through the door.
He just stared back, transfixed in terror.
Was he a police officer?
But he had an American accent. Couldn’t be. So who was he?
His face was turning blue. A tarantula was crawling down his neck. A scorpion, its sting poised, was standing over his eyes.
The boa was coiling tighter and tighter round his neck.
‘Help me please!’ she heard him gasping. ‘Helpppsssshhh haveshhhhh — plsssshhhhh, pleashhhhh help.’ His eyes were bulging as if they were going to pop, and stared at her, imploring: Have some pity.
She watched the scorpion crawling over his cheek.
Then she went into the spare room, picked up the remote and pressed the button. Instantly the false wall began sliding back into place, blocking the stranger from sight and blocking out his rasping screams.
She didn’t do pity.
115
Saturday 14 March
Norman Potting had just reached the top of the drive, racing after the car, when the blast threw him off his feet. He picked himself up and stared, in momentary numb shock and disbelief, at the scene in front of him a hundred yards or so along the road. It was like something out of a war movie. He saw the blazing, skeletal remains of the convertible Mercedes, and a Range Rover, that had been parked in the road, on fire beside it. A solid lump of a smouldering engine rested against a garden wall yards from where he stood.
Even closer, in the middle of the road just feet away, he saw a blackened human arm, wearing a wristwatch. Two wheels, attached to an axle, lay a short distance further on. Unable to help himself, and shaking uncontrollably, he threw up.
His confused mind was in turmoil. Was this Jodie’s doing? Had she engineered him to be driving her car? Just who the hell was the shifty-looking character in the baseball cap, who’d been sitting in the driver’s seat as he’d entered the garage and had raced away in the Mercedes?
His professionalism began to kick in. Pulling out his phone and giving his identity, his voice full of panic, he requested all the emergency services and, panting with exertion, ran forward as close as he could get to the inferno. Twenty feet away the searing heat was so intense he had to stop, impotently. All he could do was watch, transfixed. Thinking.
This would have been me.
He also called his handler, asking for urgent backup, and then Roy Grace.
‘Stay where you are, Norman, don’t go back into the house. We have armed response and a full team on their way.’
‘Thank you, chief.’ Then he began to shake uncontrollably once more.
Staring at the fireball, all he could think again was that person driving could have been him. Should have been him. He tried to piece the last few minutes together. Who the hell was the man driving the car?
People were starting to appear from every direction around him, some of them holding up phone cameras. He saw a woman with two small children, staring, frozen. As he heard the first distant siren, he began shouting at them, ‘Police, keep back! Keep back!’
He saw another woman holding the hand of a small girl who was crying. ‘You really want your child to see this?’ he yelled in blind fury, as he noticed more charred human body parts everywhere amid the glass and debris from the car. All the time he was thinking more and more clearly.
Jodie.
That bitch had set him up. But who the hell was the poor sod in the car?
For some moments he stood, uncertain what to do. He needed to go back to the house to get Jodie. But he had to take charge of the scene. Were there any casualties other than the driver? He realized that the way he was dressed, he looked pretty improbable as a police officer. A woman was screaming hysterically. Only yards from him.
He saw her, with a large dog tugging on a leash, trying to restrain it from reaching a human head and part of a spinal cord only a few feet in front of her.
He looked over at Jodie’s house. At a line of cars backed up down the street. Christ. Christ. Sirens were coming closer.
More and more people were appearing.
‘Back!’ he yelled at them. ‘Stay back, there might be another explosion!’
There were also people gathering on the far side of the car, but the heat was too intense to run past it. To his relief he saw strobing blue lights. The first siren came closer and he saw a patrol car. He ran up to it as it halted, holding up his hands, and jabbered out a quick summary. As he finished, another patrol car, followed by an ambulance with a fire engine in its wake, were all approaching.
He broke into a fast, lumbering run back towards Jodie’s house, down her steep drive and in through the open garage door. ‘Jodie!’ he yelled. ‘Jodie!’
She came down the stairs, looking pale, in her dressing gown. ‘What’s happened?’ she said. ‘Paul, what’s happened?’
‘I’ll tell you what’s happened, young lady.’ He strode over to her before she had a chance to move, grabbed her right wrist roughly, then swung her arm up behind her in a half-Nelson hold. ‘I’m arresting you on suspicion of attempted murder. That’s what’s happened.’ He was shaking like a leaf. But he wasn’t going to blow this by putting a damned foot wrong, despite the state he was in. ‘You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’