John Harvey: Lonely Hearts

Inside the room, watching, Doria leaned back on the door and laughed.

Rachel, shuddering, saw the bread knife beside the board and seized it between the fingers of her right hand.

“Carole,” Resnick said, his voice unnaturally high, “Rachel, is she there?”

“Who is that?”

“Christ! Resnick, Charlie Resnick. Is she with you?”

“I thought she was at your house. She told me she was going to take back the keys you…”

He ran for the car; Lynn Kellogg was behind the wheel with the engine running.

“My place,” he said. “Fast. I’ll call through to the station as we go.”

He imagined, he didn’t know what he imagined, trying to blank out the worst excesses of his imagination and never quite being able, all through that drive that seemed endless but was less than ten minutes. All the while wanting to be driving himself, yet knowing that they would arrive no more quickly and, besides, trusting Lynn’s co-ordination more than his own.

“Which side of the street, sir?”

“There, left. There!”

Resnick jumped clear of the car too soon, buckled over and was close to losing his footing. Stumbling, he steadied himself against the open gate; stopped, finally, where Rachel was standing, quite still, looking back towards the house with Bud cradled within her arms.

At the first movement of his arm about her shoulders, she flinched.

“Are you okay?”

Her head moved up and then down, slowly.

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“He was here, Doria?”

“Oh, yes.” Rachel continued to stare back at the house.

Resnick moved his arm away and motioned for Lynn Kellogg to come and look after Rachel. Police sirens could be heard, distant but getting closer.

There was blood on the hall carpet and Resnick thanked God that it was not Rachel’s blood. There was blood in thick clusters on the treads of the stairs, blood smeared over the walls and along the banister. Blood darkening the length of the landing until it stopped at the door to the small bedroom at the back of the house.

With the outside of his shoe, Resnick pushed at the door. Something stopped it and it would open no further. He set his weight against it, just enough to squeeze inside the room.

Doria lay, what seemed like pieces of him, close against the small bed. Where he had hacked at himself with that blunt, serrated weapon more blood had splashed up on to the walls, to join the paint Resnick had so zealously applied. Even so, here and there, fragments of the nursery showed through.

The final thing Doria had done was to slice open his throat.

Resnick, sick, pushed open the window and saw, below, Rachel Chaplin being led towards a waiting ambulance.