Progress, of a sort.
What she sees next is not progress of any sort.
The body is no more than two metres away. Blood haloes around it and edges ever closer as if seeking a living host. It leaches from a dozen ragged slits in clothing and skin.
The face is turned towards her, features bisected by a diagonal slash from cheekbone to chin. The lips are peeled back in the parody of a sneer.
Even in death the eyes are flatly accusing.
In the past she has seen the aftermath of violence too many times to count, but this? This finally overbalances her. She scuttles backwards instinctively from the sight of it, a moan of horror and despair escaping her.
Pure visceral emotion rises along with bile. She feels her stomach give a lurching heave and she reaches to cover her mouth—an instant reflex to avoid contaminating the scene.
It is only then she realises she is clutching something in her right hand so tightly her fingers are locked around it.
She pulls back, staring dumbly. It takes a long time for her to register she is holding a knife.
The blade catches the light and gleams darkly wicked.
It is blooded to the depths.
And so is she.
1
Tyrone wasn’t fazed by death. But as he shouldered open the door the only thing on his mind was getting the job done and getting out of there fast.
It wasn’t as though he couldn’t hack it—he could wade through gore as well as anybody. It was just something about this job was freaking him out.
He bent to put down the plastic gallon-drum of chemical enzyme cleaner onto the bathroom floor. As he did so he felt the back seams of his disposable Tyvek oversuit start to rip like they always did.
They were supposed to be one-size-fits-all but that didn’t take account of the fact he was six-foot-plus and well into his sports. He’d shot up while he was still at school and now at nineteen he’d finally grown into his shoulders. It looked good but didn’t help him find an oversuit that fit.
Still, at least they didn’t have to wear masks for this one.
Tyrone inhaled cautiously just to be sure. The only smell was a kind of sticky sweetness with only a hint of sour at the back of it, like emptying the kitchen bin in the flat for his mum only just before what was in it went bad.
That was the upside of gunshot suicides. They made so much noise they were found quick and there wasn’t time for decomp to set in. The quiet ones—where nana died in her bed and was left to seep into the mattress for weeks before her loving family even began to wonder—now they were bad news.
He straightened and took in the bathroom.
Man, this place is huge.
He glanced to where Kelly Jacks stood across the other side of the room. She was far enough away that if he stretched out his arms all the way he still wouldn’t be able to touch her.
Kelly’s suit didn’t fit any better than his. She always had to roll up the cuffs and the ends of the legs and the crinkly material ballooned round her narrow waist. On just about anyone else it would have looked like some kind of clown. Funny thing was, he thought Kelly looked great whatever she wore.
Tyrone opened his mouth ready to make a snappy remark, a joke. But something about the way she stood there, staring at the place where it all went down, had the words dying on him.
“I know that look. What’s up Kel?”
He moved across, careful not to slip on the Italian tile. The boss made them wear plastic booties for work. Tyrone thought it made him look a right prat but he’d soon found that trying to scrub God-knows-what out of the treads of his boots at the end of the day was far worse.
Small hard lumps crunched under his feet. He didn’t have to look to know they were fragments of bone and teeth. When he’d first started this job he’d been surprised at the distance stuff travelled from this kind of head wound. Man, how those suckers could bounce on a hard surface like this.
But at least the tile meant not too much was wedged into the walls. Brain sludge set like cement and scraping it off fancy wallpaper was a right pain.
Kelly raised her head but she didn’t really see him. A frown carved twin dents between her eyebrows.
She only just came up to Tyrone’s chin and he’d felt like a big brother since they’d been teamed up, even though at forty she was old enough to be his mum. Hell, the way some of the girls round home get themselves knocked up soon as they hit puberty, she could have been a grandma by now.
Not that you’d know how old Kelly was, not really, with that short choppy haircut, clear skin and the little diamond stud through the left-hand side of her nose. Amazing she looked so fit what with all she’d been through.
“What’s up?” he asked again.
Kelly shook her head, murmured, “There’s something not right here.”
Tyrone peered over her shoulder down into the blood-swilled bathtub with the exploded hole in the tiles at one end and the cast-off spray across the snazzy window blinds. There was something so careful about it made him shiver.
“Well she puts on her best gear, climbs into the empty bath with one of her old man’s rifles and blows her brains out, yeah?” he said trying to nudge Kelly out of introspection. “’Course there’s something ‘not right’ about that.”
Kelly shook her head and for once didn’t lighten up. Every now and again she could be like that—all quiet. Like she folded in on herself.
It bothered him at first. He’d worried it might be something he’d done or said, but in the end he’d accepted that prison made people go that way. He’d seen enough of it to know.
Tyrone wasn’t sure what Kelly had been inside for and it wasn’t something he would ask. But she knew stuff about the scenes they were sent to that she shouldn’t—couldn’t—know unless she’d worked right there up alongside death all close and personal.
Tyrone didn’t think he had an overactive imagination but sometimes Kelly freaked him out just a little too.
“It’s the blood,” she said now, almost to herself. “There’s something not right with the position of the blood.”
Tyrone bit back the comment about how maybe that was because blood was supposed to be worn on the insides of a body. Besides, he always tried to look beyond the mess to what was underneath it. Their job was to put things back the way they were before—to wipe out not just the mess but the memory.
He and Kelly had done jobs where they’d had to rip out skirting boards because of what had leaked behind them, scrub textured ceilings, take down light fittings. And they bantered while they worked. It was the only way to deal. But this was the first time he’d heard her so unsure about anything.