The call was cut.
Strike jabbed at the number to call it back, but nobody answered. Robin slammed her foot to the floor.
‘That wasn’t Katya – that was Flavia. Strike, call—’
But he’d already dialled 999.
‘Police – there are screams coming out of number eighty-one, Lisburne Road and there’s a man in there with a knife… Because I know there fucking is… Cormoran Strike… A family of four…’
‘Shit,’ said Robin as Strike hung up. ‘Shit – this is my fault, it’s all my fault, I spooked him—’
‘It’s not your fucking fault,’ said Strike, grabbing the sides of his seat as Robin took a corner at speed.
‘It is, it is – I should have realised… Strike, he can draw really, really well.’
‘How d’you—?’
‘There’s a self-portrait in the loo at North Grove. I thought it was done by Katya, but then I saw one of hers in Josh and Edie’s room and it was rubbish – and—’ Robin gasped. ‘Strike, I know why he diverted into trees after stabbing Edie. Ryan Murphy told me there was an out-of-control Alsatian on the Heath that afternoon—’
‘And he’s terrified of dogs.’
106
Bid me defend thee!
Thy danger over-human strength shall lend me,
A hand of iron and a heart of steel,
To strike, to wound, to slay, and not to feel.
‘No police,’ said Robin frantically as she braked a few doors from the Upcotts’ house.
She threw off her seat belt, leaned across Strike and, before he realised what she was doing, slammed her hand on the button that opened the glove compartment and seized his skeleton keys.
‘What the fuck d’you think—?’ shouted Strike, grabbing the back of her jacket as she opened the driver’s door.
‘Let go of me—’
‘You’re not going in there, you fucking idiot, he’s got a fucking machete—’
‘There’s a twelve-year-old girl – get OFF ME!’
Dragging her rape alarm out of her pocket, Robin pulled free of her jacket and half fell out of the car. The rape alarm slipped out of her hand and rolled away; now free of Strike’s restraining hand she chased it, snatched it up, then sprinted up the road towards the Upcotts’ house.
‘Robin! ROBIN!’
Swearing fluently, Strike turned to pull his crutches off the back seat.
‘ROBIN!’
A silhouetted head appeared at the lit window of the nearest house.
‘Call the police, call the fucking police!’ Strike bellowed at the neighbour, and leaving the door of the BMW open he set off in slow pursuit of Robin on his crutches.
She was already at the Upcotts’ front door, trying, with shaking hands, to find a key that worked. The first three were ineffective, and as she tried the fourth she saw the light in Gus’s ground-floor bedroom window go out.
On the fifth attempt, she managed to turn a key in the lock. Ignoring Strike’s distant bellow of ‘ROBIN!’ she pushed the front door ajar.
The hall was pitch black. One hand still on the doorknob, she groped on the wall beside her, found the light switch and pressed it. Nothing happened. Somebody, she was certain, had pulled out the main fuse block, doubtless because they’d heard the shouts, the mention of the police, running footsteps and the jangling of keys at the front door.
Leaving the front door open to admit some light, her thumb on the button of her rape alarm, Robin crept towards the stairs.
She was halfway up when she heard the thuds of Strike’s crutches and his one foot. Turning, she saw him silhouetted against the streetlights, then something moving in the shadows behind the door.
‘STRIKE!’
The dark figure slammed the door behind Strike. Robin saw blue sparks and heard a buzz. Strike fell forwards, limbs jerking, his crutches clattering to the ground, and in the grey ghost light admitted by the glass above the front door Robin saw a raised machete.
She jumped from the fourth step, landing on Gus’s back, arms around his throat; she’d expected him to fall, but thin as he was he merely staggered, trying to prise her arms off him. Her nostrils were full of his dank, unwashed smell, and then he’d tripped over Strike’s outstretched, motionless leg and both of them tumbled forwards, and as Gus’s head hit the opposite wall he let out a roar of rage:
‘I will fucking kill you, you cunt—’
Somehow, Robin was on her feet again, but as the machete sliced the air in front of her, Gus still half-kneeling, she had no choice but to flee up the stairs, and only then registered that the rape alarm was still clutched in her fist, and activated it. The screech pierced her eardrums.
‘Flavia? FLAVIA?’
She couldn’t hear a response over the screech of the alarm, but behind her she heard Gus running after, taking two steps at a time on his long legs.
‘FLAVIA?’
There was more light up here: the curtains were open and through the door to the sitting room Robin glimpsed a huddled figure on the floor near the window. Thinking only of interposing herself between the girl and her brother – where were the police? – Robin sprinted towards what she thought was Flavia, skidded on a dark pool on the polished floor, and only then saw the overturned wheelchair that had been hidden by the sofa, and the crooked glasses on the dead man’s face.
‘Oh Jesus—’
She turned. The alarm in her hand was still screaming its warning and she threw it from her. Gus was advancing slowly on her, panting, still holding the machete.
‘I’m going to rape you before I kill you.’
‘The police are on their way,’ said Robin.
‘That’s all right,’ said Gus, half panting, half giggling. ‘I probably won’t last long. It’ll be my first time.’
The foot-high marble torso of a woman lay feet away on its table. Robin began to edge towards it.
‘Does it make you wet, thinking I’m going to rape you?’
Robin’s right foot slipped on more blood. Still she edged towards the table.
‘I know women fantasise about being raped,’ said Gus, still advancing.
Robin’s groping hand found the marble.
‘Do you smell of fish?’
In one quick movement, Robin had seized the marble from the table: it was so heavy she could barely hold it, but then, with a strength born of terror, she swung it into the window, which shattered: the marble slipped through her hands and fell with an echoing bang onto the path – if that didn’t alert the neighbours, nothing would.
Then Gus was on her, twisting her around, one arm around her throat, the other still holding the machete. Robin stamped hard on his bare foot before both slipped in another puddle of Inigo’s blood. As Gus’s grip loosened, Robin’s found his forearm with her teeth and bit down, hard. He dropped the machete to punch her in the side of the head: she felt dizzy, the room seemed to spin, but terror kept her jaws locked on his flesh and she could taste his blood, and smell the animal sweat on him, and then Gus trod on the fallen machete and with a yelp of pain he slid sideways, releasing her. Robin stamped again on his injured foot and then, somehow, she was free again, skidding and running towards the door.
‘Fucking bitch!’
‘FLAVIA?’ Robin bellowed as she reached the landing.
‘Here, here, I’m up here!’