CHAPTER ONE #4
‘Forgive me,’ she said, regretting the unintentional slight, forgetting for a moment her mother’s sadness at never having carried a son to full term. Not for the first time she dearly wished that she herself had been born a boy. How much happier they might all have been.
London 2019.
Tudor took the stairs. He had not descended more than half a flight when the sounds of violence reached him.
Screams. Shouts. Cries of fury and of anguish, words indistinguishable but fierce intent and terror all too clear.
Instinctively he put his hand to the gun holstered beneath his jacket but stopped short of drawing it.
He broke into a run, dropping down the carpeted stairs two at a time.
On the landing of the third floor he met Deri, face drained of colour.
‘It’s coming from Flat Seven. Mr and Mrs Salinger!’ His words were hissed low. Not because there was anyone shouldn’t hear: the man was rattled. Shock can rob a person of their power, take the volume from their speech.
‘Did you go to their door?’ Tudor asked, turning towards the direction of the noises.
‘Yes, I knocked and called but I don’t think they heard me.’
At that moment a uniformed man arrived, sprinting up the stairs faster than his level of fitness was ready for.
He looked to be about fifty, carrying more weight than was healthy, evidently never expecting to have to break into a run.
He was hampered by the amount of equipment strapped to him - body-cam, torch, radio, handcuffs. He stopped, breathless.
The concierge was relieved to see him. ‘Oh, Mr McAllen! It’s the Salingers. You must go and help them. You have to hurry.’
‘All right, Deri, keep your hair on. It’ll be a bit of a domestic. And you are?’ He aimed the question at Tudor.
‘New resident’s personal security,’ he said, moving along the hallway.
The security guard pushed past him. ‘I’ll handle this,’ he said, striding towards the apartment door.
The older man appeared to be reassured by the presence of the security guard. Tudor did not share his confidence.
‘The Salingers,’ he asked Deri, ‘not given to brawling, then?’
He shook his head. ‘They are a retired couple. I’ve not heard a raised voice from either of them in twenty years.’
McAllen was banging on the door, trying the handle.
‘You might want to stand to one side,’ Tudor cautioned.
‘Two elderly residents having a row? A bit of noise?’ he said, like it was nothing to worry about.
It wasn’t the noise that had raised Tudor’s level of concern; it was the silence. Sudden, unexpected, unnatural. Louder than the noise itself had been.
‘Deri,’ McAllen spoke quickly, ‘give me your keycard.’
The concierge hesitated but then did as he was told. The security guard took the card, swiped it, and grabbed hold of the door handle.
Tudor put a hand on his arm. ‘Easy, tiger. Hurry doesn’t make a return journey. Maybe let me go ahead?’ he suggested, pulling his gun from under his jacket.
‘That won’t be necessary!’ McAllen insisted, switching on the camera at his lapel, pushing the door open and stepping into the hallway of the apartment.
Tudor swore under his breath and followed him in.
The silence was oppressively heavy, broken only by the sound of a TV programme droning on.
He turned back to the concierge. ‘Call the police. Do it from your desk downstairs and stay there to let them in. Do it now,’ he said, an order not a request; a command to summon help and keep the older man safe.
Once he was sure his instructions were being carried out he moved on into the flat.
McAllen was calling out. ‘Mr Salinger? Mrs Salinger? Security here. Everything OK?’
The inner hallway was in darkness, but the room it led to was lit, the TV on, a gardening show running.
Tudor pondered the sleeping habits of the elderly and the usefulness of gardening experts when you inhabited a third floor apartment without so much as a window box.
He moved forwards. He’d caught up McAllen, the stouter, slower man having come to a halt.
The silence, after sounds of such loud distress, was all wrong, and no amount of chat about roses could change that.
They passed a room to their right, door open, darkness requiring their full attention.
McAllen flicked the light switch on and swept the room. Nothing.
Tudor decided that either there was no intruder, or there was an intruder who wasn’t inclined to give himself up.
Either way, the lack of response from the residents was a gut-twistingly bad sign.
He stepped past the security guard, whose nerve had weakened sufficiently to allow himself to take second place now without further protest.
They reached the living room. Plenty of light there.
From the doorway they had a clear view of the clean and tidy furnishings, the dated television set, the shining bric-a-brac, the family photos, the pale gold velour sofa, and Mr Salinger’s eviscerated body on it.
There was no-one else in the room. Tudor heard McAllen fighting down vomit behind him.
It was a tough find. The old man’s eyes were still open, staring through blood splattered spectacles, his chest rent, his stomach torn and spilled.
It had been a sustained and frenzied attack, with a large blade, and enough enthusiasm to kill a prize fighter, much less an octogenarian.
‘Jesus!’ gasped McAllen, breathing through clenched teeth now.
Tudor checked the obscured places; behind the door, behind the couch.
No sign of anyone else. He signalled to the trembling security guard to keep close behind him, and they stepped towards the next doorway.
The half-lit space ahead was the kitchen.
Evidently this was the source of all the smashing and breaking they had heard.
Mr Salinger must have met his end first, before the party moved to a kitchen scene.
There were bloody footprints confirming this theory.
As the carpet changed to tiles they became smudged, smeared, no clear path discernible.
Tudor snatched open the door to a walk-in cupboard to his right.
No jump scares in there. The cupboards and shelves had been violently cleared of their china and glass, most of which was in a shattered mess on the floor, much of it bloody.
A tap was running, the blind at the window pulled off its roller, a pane shattered, glass in the sink.
Then a tiny sound. A whimper.
Both men turned to face the far corner, where there was a space between the units, a dog bed in it.
But there was no dog. Only Mrs Salinger, crouched and cowering, her nightie drenched in blood, her white hair crazy, her eyes wide with horror, more blood smeared across her face.
What must she have witnessed? What might have been done to her?
McAllen exhaled, recognition and pity carried on that breath. ‘Mrs Salinger! It’s OK,’ he told her softly, reaching forward a gentle hand. ‘It’s OK,’ he repeated, glancing around the room, still searching for the monster who had caused such suffering.
A decade in the forces and five more in high level security had tightened Tudor’s senses.
Made him wary. Made him pick up on things another man might miss.
Like the fact that he couldn’t see the old woman’s hands.
Like the fact that the old man hadn’t tried to defend himself.
Hadn’t even thought to raise his arse out of his seat before he was filleted.
Like the fact that there was no-one else in the apartment.
Like the fact that they had just found the perpetrator.
In the time it took his warning to McAllen to exit his mouth, the old lady had uncoiled from her hiding place faster than a striking snake.
She sprang forwards, the kitchen knife in her right hand raised, the blade flashing under the flat kitchen light, her expression pure venom.
The guard didn’t have a chance to protect himself before she landed on him, chopping as they fell to the floor together; a middle aged man too stunned to defend himself, and a crazed woman intent on slaughter.
Tudor didn’t bother to shout a warning before he fired.
To hell with procedure. There was a risk one of the bullets might find its way to McAllen, but it was smaller than the risk he would end the same way Mr Salinger had if he didn’t shoot.
The force of the blast hitting the skeletally thin senior citizen sent her sideways, knocked her off her balance, knocked her off her prey.
Because that’s what she looked like: a predator, a wild animal using its base instincts to bring down its chosen victim in the most efficient way possible.
The sound that came from her was a shriek of rage, then nothing.
The sounds that were coming from the security guard were pitiful.
Tudor yelled back to Deri, shouting at him to call an ambulance, knowing even then that it would come too late.
Dropping to his knees on the bloody floor beside McAllen, he placed his hands over the two worst wounds.
A futile gesture, offering little comfort to either of them.
The stricken man tried to speak. Tudor hushed him. ‘Help is on its way. Hang in there.’
He shook his head, giving up a hopeless cause.
Tudor grabbed his face with one hand, turning it so he had to look at him. ‘Just hold on. You are needed here, d’you hear me?’
This brought a crooked smile from him, even as he began to spit blood.
If he had a witty reply ready he never had the breath to use it.
He gasped, a bubble in his throat gurgling, his chest heaving once, twice, and that was it.
Tudor looked at the openings in his ribcage and stomach and the lake of blood beneath them. There was no bringing him back.
From the other room, the TV expert was busy explaining that geraniums needed wrapping up in fleece to survive two degrees of frost.