Chapter 75
LXXV
Sometimes it was OK to give up and just slip away.
Wave goodbye to the pain and the suffering and the struggle.
Like Nanna Carter, in her hospice bed.
Natasha blinked out at the filthy barn.
The air was heavy with flies, making the air thrummmm and buzzzzzzzzzz. Seemed to be more of them every time she opened her eyes – drawn to the all-you-can-eat buffet of blood. Gorging.
Not that DS Davis minded.
A big greasy bluebottle landed on his face, doing a little dance across the ragged scar on his cheek, then onto his top lip.
Before disappearing up his nose. Looking for a way to get at those tasty internal organs; somewhere warm and dark to lay a million little eggs that would hatch in a couple of days and—
‘Aaaaargh!’ His eyes shot open. ‘Fuck!’ His right leg jerked and trembled, but the left one – the one she’d turned into a colander with her rusty Stanley knife – stayed dead still.
Davis batted at his ghost-pale face with his right hand a couple of times. Coughing and spluttering. Then a tortured retching noise and he spat the bluebottle out.
It lay on its back in the wide scarlet lake, stuck there, legs twitching.
Davis’s left arm hung limp at his side, but he used the right one to shove and swear and cough his way up, till he was half-sitting, half-slumped against the table saw. Breathing hard. Face screwed up in agony.
Good.
Natasha could barely work up a dry, whispery sneer. ‘Why can’t you just die?’
Took a while, but eventually his eyes opened again. ‘You don’t . . . remember me . . . do you.’
‘Go fuck yourself.’
‘Your sort never . . . do. You dish out all . . . all this grief and hate . . . but . . . but there’s never any repercussions . . . no consequences . . . . So you just . . . move on to . . . next victim.’
She hauled in a deep breath and rasped it out. ‘JUST DIE!’
Davis closed his eyes again.
Maybe the bastard had actually done what he’d been told?
But she wasn’t that lucky.
He reached into his trouser pocket. ‘I could . . . save us.’ Fumbling a cheap, knock-off iPhone free. He thumbed a button on the side and the screen lit up like Christmas.
The screen was smeared with blood, but he wiped it on the shoulder of his T-shirt and held it out.
Natasha’s fingers quivered . . . but her arms refused to move.
A smile twisted its way across the bastard’s ruined face. ‘Don’t you . . . want it?’ Waggling the phone. ‘They could save you . . . . Not want . . . to live?’
‘Why are you like this?’
He nodded. ‘I’ll . . . phone the police.’
‘YOU ARE THE BLOODY POLICE!’
Squinting one eye shut, Davis poked his thumb against the screen three times.
Then held the phone to his ear. ‘Hello? . . . Is that the police? . . . I . . . I need an . . . an ambulance . . . quick.’ His voice getting fainter with every word.
‘Quick, we’re . . . we’re dying . . .’ Then his arm went limp and his head fell forward.
Now, the only noises were the droning flies and the distant thunder of heavy metal.
‘No! Tell them where we are!’ The dry words burned through her throat: ‘TELL THEM WHERE WE ARE!’
Legs – move your bastard legs.
Get over there.
Get that fucking phone.
Get—
Cramp rampaged down the back of her left leg, the muscles tightening like a corkscrew, pulling her foot up and her toes wide, flaying the nerves from her skin. Then her right leg, clamping her jaw shut; arching her back as the cramp rioted along her spine, torturing every muscle on the way.
A scream battered out between her clenched teeth.
Then it was gone, and her body slumped against the dust and rat-piss concrete again. Her head thunking off the barn floor, setting her ears ringing.
Then a dry sob wracked free.
‘Tell them where we are . . .’