Chapter Twenty-Six
Sam hears about it secondhand, of course.
It doesn’t make the evening news, because that’s still being wasted on Andrei Albescu; apparently serial killers are evergreen headlines.
She’s eating supper when she receives a text from Adam Taylor.
She pauses Only Fools and Horses and reads the message several times over:
Julius Windsor (the lawyer with the flamingo tie) has been attacked. We’re looking for Richie Scott—he’s on the run. Thought you’d want to know. See you soon? Axx.
Sam doesn’t reply, but she smiles to herself.
“Not very satisfying, really,” she remarks to Toni, who’s sprawled over her lap. “If this was a book, readers would want details. They’d want to see everything play out scene by scene. But sometimes, imagining is better.”
She closes her eyes and tries to picture the prick of a lawyer who wrote How to Get Away with Murder, to cover up his murder of his aunt.
He’s walking toward the front door in his fancy house to answer a knock.
He looks through the peephole, because even killers take precautions.
A man waits on his doorstep. He recognizes the man.
A client. A fellow criminal. The lawyer opens the door and Richie Scott steps inside.
Richie’s ranting about his girlfriend, Lindsay, saying that he’s tracked her phone to this address.
Richie suspects she’s trying to leave him and has hired herself a lawyer.
The lawyer, of course, denies all knowledge of Lindsay’s whereabouts.
Unfortunately, Richie doesn’t believe him and, more unfortunately still, Richie has a temper.
What follows is a bone-crunching, lip-bursting, rib-cracking montage in Sam’s imagination.
She forces the smile from her face, takes out her phone and calls local hospitals until she lands on the right one. She tries to lace her voice with concern and to sound much older than she is when she speaks to the nurse.
“Windsor, Julius Windsor,” Sam says, “I’d like to know how he’s doing, please, dear.”
“Are you family?” the nurse asks.
“Oh, yes,” Sam says. “I’m his Aunt Elizabeth. But you can call me Betty.”
The nurse tells her that she’s very sorry, but Mr. Windsor is in a critical condition.
If Betty can possibly make it to the hospital, she should come soon.
Sam explains that she can’t come but would the lovely nurse please hold Julius’s hand and tell him that Auntie Betty is thinking of him? She will? How kind.
Sam hangs up and laughs hard as Del Boy pours Maxwell House coffee over Uncle Albert’s posh dinner.
It takes a few minutes for her to regain her breath, then suddenly something makes her spine tingle: a noise.
The gentle click of her garden gate. Movement outside.
A footstep. The crunch of glass underfoot.
An outside security light flashes on. She holds her breath, straining to hear more.
Then, the unmistakable sound of someone trying the handle of her front door.
Sam grabs the TV remote, hitting the off-button and plunging the room into darkness.
It’s time.