بخش 03 - فصل 49

49

The front door of 23 Sycamore is standing open. Hodges is out of the Mercedes before Jerome has brought it fully to a stop. He runs inside, one hand in his pocket, gripping the Happy Slapper. He hears tinkly music he knows well from hours spent playing computer solitaire.

He follows the sound and finds a woman sitting – sprawling – beside a desk in an alcove that has been set up as an office. One side of her face is swollen and drenched in blood. She looks at him, trying to focus.

‘Pete,’ she says, and then, ‘He took Tina.’

Hodges kneels and carefully parts the woman’s hair. What he sees is bad, but nowhere near as bad as it could be; this woman has won the only lottery that really matters. The bullet put a groove six inches long in her scalp, has actually exposed her skull in one place, but a scalp wound isn’t going to kill her. She’s lost a lot of blood, though, and is suffering from both shock and concussion. This is no time to question her, but he has to. Morris Bellamy is laying down a trail of violence, and Hodges is still at the wrong end of it.

‘Holly. Call an ambulance.’

‘Pete … already did,’ Linda says, and as if her weak voice has conjured it, they hear a siren. It’s still distant but approaching fast. ‘Before … he left.’

‘Mrs Saubers, did Pete take Tina? Is that what you’re saying?’

‘No. He. The man.’

‘Did he have red lips, Mrs Saubers?’ Holly asks. ‘Did the man who took Tina have red lips?’

‘Irish … lips,’ she says. ‘But not … a redhead. White. He was old. Am I going to die?’

‘No,’ Hodges says. ‘Help is on the way. But you have to help us. Do you know where Peter went?’

‘Out … back. Through the gate. Saw him.’

Jerome looks out the window and sees the gate standing ajar. ‘What’s back there?’

‘A path,’ she says wearily. ‘The kids used it … to go to the Rec. Before it closed. He took … I think he took the key.’

‘Pete did?’

‘Yes …’ Her eyes move to a board with a great many keys hung on it. One hook is empty. The DymoTape beneath it reads BIRCH ST REC.

Hodges comes to a decision. ‘Jerome, you’re with me. Holly, stay with Mrs Saubers. Get a cold cloth to put on the side of her head.’ He draws in breath. ‘But before you do that, call the police. Ask for my old partner. Huntley.’

He expects an argument, but Holly just nods and picks up the phone.

‘He took his father’s lighter, too,’ Linda says. She seems a little more with it now. ‘I don’t know why he would do that. And the can of Ronson’s.’

Jerome looks a question at Hodges, who says: ‘It’s lighter fluid.’