The man peers through the window. She watches his eyes scan the garden.
His eyes sweep over her.
She realizes that the kitchen light is on, which is why the kitchen looks as bright as a fish tank. The man is probably staring at his own reflection.
But that’s difficult to accept. So when the man turns and storms out of the kitchen, she thinks it’s a trap. She stays there, clinging to the wall, too scared to move.
He’s gone for a long time.
Mia begins to climb again.
She grazes her fingers and her toes, and once her leg slips; she barks her shin to the knee. But she makes it. She heaves and struggles and pulls herself onto the roof of the old outhouse.
Then the young man comes back to the kitchen. He opens the door and steps into the garden.
Mia freezes on the roof of the outhouse. She squats there like a cat. She is higher than the man’s head. If he doesn’t look up, it’s possible that he won’t see her.
He pokes around the garden, probing the corners with the beam of a torch. When he turns in her direction, she sees that his face is different: it’s scrunched up as if he’s been crying. There’s black stuff all over one side of his face, in the vague shape of a human hand. Except Mia knows it’s not really black stuff, it’s red stuff.
She gasps — and the man looks up.
He and Mia stare at one another, perfectly still.
Then Mia scrambles over the remaining few feet of wall between her and next-door’s garden. She drops to the other side of the wall.
Her ankle twists and it hurts. She should be screaming, but she doesn’t even think about screaming. She just sprints, hardly registers the damaged ankle.
She doesn’t look back until she’s crossed the wide garden, waded into the rose bushes where thorns scratch her.
There he is, scrambling onto the garden wall. He jumps down, a lot better than she had. He doesn’t look like he’s hurt his ankle at all.
He lowers into a crouch and scampers towards her.
Mia tries to climb but there’s nothing to grab; the ivy the Robertsons used to cultivate before they moved away is too tangled and loose, it just spools away in her hands. She gets tangled and panicky. She risks one more look, just one more look over her shoulder.
There he is, the sad-faced young man with the red handprint over his face. He’s just looking at her.
She doesn’t know how long he’s been there.
She’s scared to see the young man is scared, too, because that means there’s something even worse in her house — and whatever it is, it’s in there with her parents. Mia wants to cry. Her knees are knocking together.
The man is breathing funny. He looks away, at the empty house the Robertsons used to live in, which is now for sale.
He says, ‘Come on.’
‘No,’ says Mia, although her voice is small.
The man says, ‘Listen. We don’t have time. We don’t. My dad’s in that house and he’s sent me out to get you.’
Mia begins to cry. She says, ‘What does he want?’
‘To make you his little girl.’
‘I don’t want to be his little girl.’
‘Then come with me.’
‘Who are you?’
‘Patrick.’ He thrusts out his hand. ‘This way.’
When Mia doesn’t take the hand, he simply strides to the kitchen door of the empty house and tries it. It’s locked of course. So he takes off his hoodie and wraps it round his fist.
He puts his fist through the window, brushes loose glass from the frame. Then he wriggles like a worm through the broken window. He appears at the kitchen door and opens it. And still, Mia doesn’t scream.
She thinks she shouldn’t go with this man, but she hurries on bare feet to the Robertsons’ kitchen door. She and the man hurry through the monstrous, echoing darkness of the empty house. The ghosts of all the families who lived here before watch from the black corners.
They come to the front door. Patrick opens it. They sneak out, back into the cold night.
And then they’re running.
Henry finishes smearing the word on the wall. He calls out, ‘Patrick?’
There’s no answer.
Then he hears a noise.
It’s a pane of glass shattering. And Henry knows. Just like that.
He looks at the mess in the room. The mess on his clothes and in his hair.
He jogs to the kitchen. The door is open. No glass is broken.
He thinks of the empty house next door.
He returns to the living room and hurries to pack. It takes too long. His things are wet and his hands are busy with rage.
Then he slings on the backpack and rushes out the front door.
He sprints for the car.
They run silently. Patrick has told her to be quiet as a mouse, not to make a noise, because if they do, his dad will know where they are.
Patrick is faster than Mia, whose feet are bare and tender on the hard pavement.
Now he turns, hopping up and down on the spot.
Hurry up! Come on! Please!
She tries. But there’s a green bottle of lager in the gutter and Mia steps on a shard of glass.
She doesn’t make much of a noise, and Patrick is proud of her.
But these are quiet streets.
Henry hears a child cry out.
A girl.
He runs faster. He pumps his arms. In his hand is a carpet knife.
Patrick runs to Mia. His tears have thinned the blood on the side of his face.
‘I know it hurts,’ he whispers. ‘I know it does. But please.’
She limps to him, fast as she can.
Patrick kneels. He and Mia are face-to-face. ‘Please let me carry you.’
She hesitates, balancing on one foot. But when she sees the way his eyes glance fearfully over her shoulder, she says, ‘Okay.’
Patrick scoops Mia into his arms, the cold skin and warm core of her. She’s all rods and knobs, heavier than she looks.
He runs.
The car isn’t far.
Henry turns a corner at speed and sees them.
There’s Patrick, hobbling along with the girl in his arms.
Her foot is blood black.
Henry laughs, but it doesn’t sound like a laugh.
He runs faster still.
Patrick reaches the car and sets Mia down.
‘Wait just for one minute. Watch the road for me.’
She leans against the car, watching the long straight avenue.
Patrick searches in his pockets for the keys. His hand is shaking.
Mia whimpers, deep in the back of her throat.
‘What?’ Patrick says. He’s trying to get the key into the lock.
‘He’s coming.’
Patrick looks up to see Henry sprinting down the road. Lunatic, blood smeared. He’s got a carpet knife in his hand.
Patrick knows he won’t get the car started in time.
‘Mia,’ he says. ‘Run now. Scream. Make as much noise as you can.’
Mia sees the look in his eyes. Then she bolts.
As she runs, she screams.
What she screams, again and again, is Please.
Patrick waits, keys in hand, as Henry descends upon him.
He isn’t scared.
He’s thinking of his bike. A BMX.
Henry doesn’t slow. He just keeps coming and coming.
Patrick braces himself.
Henry punches his shoulder into Patrick’s solar plexus. Patrick smashes into the bonnet of the car.
Henry grabs his throat, stretches him out. Rips and lacerates with the carpet knife.
As Patrick slips from the bonnet of the car, Henry runs in pursuit of the screaming child, knife in hand.
She’s only little. She won’t have gone far.
And Henry is very, very fast.
CHAPTER 21
Luther drives to Highbury Fields and parks across the square. He knits his hands on the steering wheel and watches Crouch’s red Jaguar.
He waits for a long time. He doesn’t know how long. His mind is blank with hate.
Then he grabs the pickaxe handle from the front passenger footwell and gets out of the Volvo.