Leah Giarratano: Voodoo Doll

FACE MASHED INTO the carpet, Joss concentrated on breathing. If he kept his chin tucked into his neck, it reduced some of the pressure from the boot pressing down onto his cheek. Swallowing was out – his bottom lip was crushed flat against the rug, preventing him from closing his mouth. He let some more saliva trickle out; a wet patch had already formed under his cheek.

He angled his eyes to the left. He'd seen only three of them, all in balaclavas – the gorilla now standing on his head, the small, wiry one guarding the front entrance, and the fuckwit terrorising the women in the loungeroom. But he knew there were four: he could hear the screams of his host, Andy Wu, coming from the back of the house. Each scream was preceded by a dull thwack, a sound Joss already knew he would never forget.

He searched for an option; knew he had none. Not yet anyway. He tried to ignore the point of the machete, inches from his forehead, and focused again on his breathing.

Andy's wails were fading. From the room next door, Joss heard his wife, Isobel, her voice trying for calm, reasoning. Andy's wife, Lucy, was moaning, a low, animal keening. He'd heard nothing from the children upstairs. They had to still be asleep. God, he thought, please let them stay asleep.

All sounds suddenly stopped.

A pair of black combat boots appeared in the doorway and walked towards Joss. Each step upon the polished floorboards left a red imprint. Horrified, mesmerised, Joss watched the boots draw closer. They stopped in front of his face. The blood on the boots filled all of his senses. He could taste it.

'Watches, wallets, phones, jewellery. Get them all.' Boots spoke to the man above Joss.

The gorilla removed his foot from Joss's face. 'Did he open the safe?'

'Now what do you think?' Boots answered. 'We're ready to go. Go and make sure everything's okay in there.'

Joss felt the attention of the man in the boots shift downwards. His head free, Joss was able to incline his face upwards a little. When his eyes reached the dripping machete above him, he dropped them back to the carpet.

A boot nudged his shoulder.

'That your wife in there? Isobel? Is that her name?'

Joss considered the weave in the rug beneath his face.

The boot cracked into his head. Joss felt his left cheekbone snap.

'Nah,' Joss managed, pain gyrating through his head. 'Met her here tonight.'

'Nice.'

'Um, thanks?'

'Smartarse, aren't you?'

Shit, Joss thought. 'Look. I just want this over.' He rode a wave of pain with each word he spoke. 'We just want to be safe. You came here for money.' He kept his eyes down; this guy was just waiting for a reason.

'Hmm. So give me your wallet, phone and watch.'

Sixteen minutes earlier, Joss had been helping Andy Wu, his wife's boss, clear away the remains of the barbecued dinner Andy had served them in his courtyard. The Wus' two children and his own little angel had been carried upstairs, leaden weights, sound asleep.

When Andy, on his way back into the kitchen, had dropped a ceramic platter onto the concrete, the crack was like a gunshot, and Joss had automatically hit the ground, rolling off the path. Reactions like that usually embarrassed the fuck out of him. Tonight, it had given him ten seconds to take in the sight of Lucy Wu with a fifty-centimetre blade held to her throat, a black mask behind her emerging like a piece of the night. Joss had scrabbled through his pockets. With an awkward twist of his arm, he had managed to throw his wallet into the bush behind him.

Lucy's eyes had bulged, silently screaming. While the intruder had motioned Andy to his knees, Joss had carefully taken his mobile phone from his shirt pocket and palmed it. He had been about to throw it to join his wallet when another pair of eyes and a glint of steel materialised in the night. Joss had dropped the phone onto the lawn. When he'd stood, signalled to rise by the machete, he had stepped on the mobile, and pressed it lightly with his toe into the night-wet grass.

Now, face down on the floor, he carefully lifted his wrist to show his watch to the man above him. Moving slowly, he unclipped the heavy silver band and lay the watch next to him on the floor.

'I don't carry a wallet,' Joss said.

'Sure you do.'

'I don't need one. I've got a company card. I didn't bring a wallet tonight.'

'Your phone then.' The voice was flinty.

Joss felt the man above him tensing. From the corner of his eye, he saw the blade leaving his line of vision. This guy was not going to accept that Joss had nothing at all on him; he was going to use this as an excuse for more blood. Joss inwardly tightened, preparing himself to roll.

'Cong an!'

Joss knew the Vietnamese words from his childhood – police, danger! It came from the skinny one at the front door.

He heard the man above him exhale. He sounded disappointed. His voice flat, Boots directed the other men. 'Out the back.'

To Joss, he said, 'None of you will move from this house for thirty minutes. I may not have your ID, smartarse, but I can find you through these people. If you go to the cops we will be back.' He paused. 'Hell, maybe I'll come find you anyway.'

Anger overriding his training, Joss could not stop himself from raising his face to meet the man's eyes.

All the air left the room when their eyes locked. A millisecond later, Joss prayed he had been able to mask his shock of instant recognition, but he knew the intruder would have heard his gasp, seen his pupils dilate.

The man above him laughed when Joss dropped his eyes back to the ground.

Over the roar of blood in his ears, he barely heard the men leave the house. He hoped that the man in the boots would take his reaction for fear; that he hadn't noticed the nonverbal cues that indicated recall, identification.

The problem was, Joss could recognise those cues, and his hammering heart told him he'd seen them mirrored in the other man's face.

'GODDAMN IT!' JILL Jackson's toe caught the edge of a metal filing cabinet. She hurled the half-packed archive box across the room, coloured manila folders and white sheets of paper trailing an arc through the air behind it. 'Ow. Shit. Ow!' Clutching her bare foot, she hopped through the room, her face a warning.

Scotty knew better than to say anything, but his eyes danced.

Jill dropped into a chair, cradling her foot. 'I think I broke my fucking toe.' She rocked backwards and forwards in her seat, biting her bottom lip and grimacing.

Scotty waited a few moments then approached cautiously. 'Give us a look.'

'Don't touch it! It's broken!' Jill waved her hand in front of her, motioning him away.

'Oh, you'll be right, Jackson,' he said doubtfully, watching darkness already suffusing the white skin on the top of Jill's foot.

She looked up at the man towering above her, and to her horror, her eyes filled with tears.

'Oh come on, Jill, it's going to be okay.' Scotty reached out to touch her, then stopped. He moved his hand up to run it through his hair, then finally shoved it in his pocket.

'It's not.'

'Are we still talking about your toe?'

'I don't want to go.' She swiped viciously at a tear before it spilled from her lashes.

'It's a big promotion, Jackson. Think of the pay rise. Shit, I wish it was me going.'

'No you don't. And I don't care about the money. I was just starting to feel… ' She wanted to say 'safe', but Jill didn't disclose that sort of thing so easily, even to her partner, who was closer to her than her own brother.

'Yeah, I know,' said Scotty. 'But what else can you do? Anyway, it's only a secondment. You'll probably be back here with me and Elvis and the gang in a couple of months.'