Simon Kernick - The Business of Dying

'Dead right. You can never be too careful these days.'

He moved off down the hall and I made my way up the stairs, remembering back to that night just three days ago when I'd walked up them the first time. A lot had changed since then.

When I got up to the third floor, I stopped outside her door and listened carefully. The television was on with the volume turned up high. It sounded as though it was switched to the news. I pressed my ear against the door and tried to pick out any other sounds, but couldn't hear anything.

I reached down and tried the handle, but it wouldn't give. The door was locked, so I leaned down and checked the lock itself. It was an easy one. Reaching into my pocket, I pulled a credit card from my wallet and manoeuvred it into the tiny gap between the door and skirting. The lock gave without resistance, and slowly I turned the handle.

I stepped into the hallway and gently eased the door closed behind me, putting the chain across it to delay her if she tried to make a getaway. There were no lights on in the hallway itself but the sitting-room door on my left was open, providing some light. I stopped and listened again.

Making as little noise as possible, I slowly put my head round the sitting-room door.

The room was empty. In the corner, the TV blared as a news reporter in some dusty war-torn location gave a dramatic run-down on whatever conflict it was he was covering. A half-drunk cup of coffee sat on the teak coffee table, and next to it was an ashtray with two butts in it. I waited a moment, then, still hearing no sound from anywhere in the flat, walked inside. I leaned over and dipped my finger in the coffee. It was cool, but not cold. Maybe half an hour old. No more than that.

I retreated back into the hallway. Immediately to my right was the kitchen. The door was half closed but the light was on inside. I pushed it open and had a quick look but, like the sitting room, it too was empty. That only left two rooms, one of which was the bathroom, right opposite me at the end of the hall. Its door was wide open. I crept up, paused for a moment, then reached round and pulled on the light.

Empty.

Which left the bedroom.

I assumed she must have gone out for something; either that or she'd taken a very early night. It didn't matter. I could wait for her easily enough. I didn't suppose she was having a romantic tryst in there, otherwise I'd have been able to hear her. Carla was not a woman who could enjoy a quiet fuck.

I stepped forward and listened briefly at the door. Again, just silence.

Slowly, ever so slowly, I turned the handle. The door creaked open.

It was pitch black. Even without looking, I could tell the curtains were closed. I stepped inside, waited a moment, then reached for the light switch, trying to remember which side of the door it was on. Again, no sound. No sound at all.

I picked the right side, found the switch, and flicked it on. It seemed very bright and I blinked rapidly as my eyes refocused.

It took me two, maybe three seconds to see the huge dark stain that spread high up the wall behind her kingsize bed. Beneath it, lying face forward on the heavily bloodstained sheets at a slightly skewed angle from the wall and with its arms and legs spread wide, lay the fully clothed corpse of Carla Graham. She was wearing a white blouse, whole swathes of which were now crimson, black trousers and socks. One of her bedside lamps had fallen off its perch and now lay on its side on the floor, the only obvious sign of a struggle, and her hands were gripping on to great clumps of the sheets. There was a vague, airless smell in the room but nothing like as pungent as the stench in the funeral home after Raymond had murdered Barry Finn.

I stepped forward, still finding it difficult to believe what I was seeing, and gingerly approached the body. I didn't want to touch it, not without gloves on, but I wanted to check that she was actually dead, although with that much blood it was difficult to believe she could be anything but.

Her eyes were open. Wide. Terrified. But still beautiful somehow, even in death. We could have been something. We really could have. At that moment, I felt a bitter regret that it had come to this.

The gaping wound in her throat was partly obscured by her hair, but I could see that it was very deep and very wide… similar to the one that had ended Miriam Fox's life. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched a droplet of blood ease slowly down the wall. I looked back down at Carla's throat. The blood was still oozing out of the wound, though its flow was now down to a trickle.

She had died only a short while before. A very short while. Ten, fifteen minutes. No longer than that. The blood hadn't even coagulated yet. I'd been outside for about ten minutes, sitting in the car. No one had left the building in that time. It had taken me five minutes to get up the stairs, give the flat the once-over, and come into the room where I stood now. That was fifteen minutes in total. In my estimation, she'd almost certainly been alive fifteen minutes ago.

Which meant only one thing.

I heard the movement behind me and whirled round at just the second the knife came flashing through the air in a great arc, still dripping with Carla's blood. I jumped backwards and banged into the bedside table. The blade swished past perilously close to my skin, almost touching it, only an inch separating me from certain evisceration.

My attacker was a big man, well over six feet with a build to match. He had a black baseball cap pulled low over his face, but I could make out the look of steely determination beneath it. There was no way he was going to let me live. Not now I'd seen him.

He stumbled slightly with the momentum of his swing and I jumped forward, grabbing him by both wrists and kicking him as hard as I could in the shins. He flinched with pain but maintained his balance, and pushed me back against the table, at the same time twisting his way out of my grip.

Now he had both hands free again, and he brought the knife up in a rapid thrust aimed at my belly, but I leaped aside, landing on my back on the bed, my head resting on Carla's still warm corpse. I could feel the blood-drenched sheets wet against my body. I tried to kick out as he lifted the huge knife above his head but his legs were pressed up tight against mine, making movement next to impossible.

He brought the knife down hard, but I wriggled violently and grabbed his arm with both hands, pushing it to one side and banging it against the wall with all the strength I could muster. He didn't release his grip. Instead, with his free hand he punched me hard in the face and I felt a terrible pain shoot through my cheek. He punched me again, a triumphant look in his eyes, and my vision began to blur.

Then, suddenly changing tactics, he stopped punching me and reached over to grab the knife from his other hand, which I had pinned against the wall. In doing so, he relaxed the pressure on my legs, and before he had a chance to stab at me again I kicked out wildly, cracking him in the knee with the heel of my new brogues. He jumped backwards out of range of my feet and his cap flew off, revealing a thick head of unkempt hair. The loss of it appeared to distract him momentarily, like Samson losing his locks, and I took the opportunity to roll across the bed, forcing myself over Carla's slick, greasy body.

I seemed to roll for ages before finally crashing down the other side. I could hear my attacker coming round the front of the bed, and I desperately hunted through the pockets of my coat for the gun I'd taken the previous night. I got a grip on the handle and tried to tug it out, but it snagged on the material. He was coming into full view, replacing the black cap on his head, the knife held wickedly aloft. Only feet away. I felt the material around my pocket tear. I pulled again, desperately trying to get it out, panic threatening to fuck up everything.