Michael Robotham - Say You're sorry

I open my mobile and send a text message to DS Casey.

PIPER IS UPSTAIRS. BE CAREFUL.

I call Drury’s number. He’s still not answering. What next? 999. I ask for an ambulance and the police. The operator wants me to stay on the line, but I give my name and hang up.

I stroke hair away from Piper’s eyes. They open.

“You said you were coming to get me yesterday.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t let him hurt me.”

“I won’t.”

Her eyes close. She’s breathing deeply. Asleep again. I make my way downstairs, peering over the banister, listening for voices. Instead, I hear silence. I descend again, creeping towards the kitchen.

The room comes into view slowly. I see cans of beer on the table. Two glasses.

DS Casey is sitting in the same chair. His head has rocked forwards and his hand is clutching his throat, trying to stop the blood that is bubbling through his fingers. He groans and his chin lifts, his eyes meeting mine, death within them. Coming soon.

I hold my hand over his throat, my fingers covering his hand, increasing the pressure, but his carotid artery has been severed. He’s bleeding out. Losing consciousness. I want to tell him I’m sorry. I should have stayed with him. Together… maybe…

On the table in front of him a mobile phone, my message on the screen. The last thing he read. A humming refrigerator rattles into stillness. At the same moment, his head rocks forward and his body shudders once before his heart stops, the pump dry. In the sudden quietness, I feel a small ceaseless tremor vibrating inside me, expanding, filling my chest and throat. I look along the hallway. Grievous could be waiting in any one of the rooms.

I could run. I could get outside and wait for the police. But that means leaving Piper.

There is something else on the kitchen table: a small silver key lying next to Casey’s mobile. The key belongs to the set of handcuffs.

I look along the hallway again.

“Can you hear me, Grievous?”

The silence seems to be mocking me.

“We should talk,” I say. “I’m good at listening.”

Still nothing.

Maybe he’s gone. Fled the scene. He’s left me the key. Surely he can’t expect to get away. I wipe my hands on my thighs, pick up the key and move back towards the stairs, stopping at each door to glance inside.

There is a creaking sound above me.

“Grievous?”

Nothing.

From across the street, I hear a burst of laughter and the sound of Christmas crackers being pulled. Cheers. Applause.

I climb to the first landing, moving from room to room. Tiptoeing. Trying not to make a sound. Even before I finish the search, I know where I’ll find him. Mounting the final staircase, I nudge the door with my foot.

Grievous is sitting on the bed with his back to the wall. His arms and legs are wrapped around Piper, hugging her against his chest. She’s a human shield, asleep with her head on his shoulder.

“I thought you’d run away,” he says.

“Ditto,” I reply.

His hair is plastered down one side of his face and his eyes are like dark holes full of shadow and menace. He motions towards the end of the bed. There is a pistol lying on the bedspread, closer to me than to him. Polymer-framed, black as pitch. The ammunition clip has been placed alongside the weapon.

“That’s for you,” he says.

I stare at the gun, trying to make sense of the offer.

“Pick it up. It won’t bite.”

Piper is like a rag doll in his arms, her head slumped to one side, her eyes closed, her breathing shallow.

“What did you give her?”

He motions to the empty pill bottle on the table to his left. “Diazepam. She won’t feel a thing.”

“What isn’t she supposed to feel?”

“Dying, of course.”

“You don’t have to kill her.”

“It’s a bit late now. She swallowed the lot. We’re going to die together.”

He raises his left wrist and shows me how they are handcuffed together. His other hand, hidden until now, has a knife pressed flat against her body, the point roughly over her heart.

“There must have been thirty pills in that bottle. I don’t think she’ll survive even if they pump out her stomach. No time to waste, really. If you shoot me, you might save her.”

“I’m not going to shoot you.”

He looks at me sadly and kisses her forehead. “Then we’ll both watch her die.” He twirls her hair with his fingertips. “It’s such a pity. She’s been a dear, dear thing.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“You’re the psychologist, you tell me.”

Stepping closer, I crouch and take the pistol and ammunition clip.

“It slides in and clicks into place,” he says. “Now release the safety.”

I have never fired a gun. I hate them. I know some people who argue they’re just a tool, like a shifting spanner or a ballpoint hammer, but let’s be honest and accept that guns are designed to be lethal weapons. There are a lot of things I haven’t done. I haven’t had a body piercing or jumped out of a plane or tried to tip a cow. All of these things seem preferable at the moment to holding a pistol in both hands, trying not to shake.

“Careful, you might shoot someone,” he says, smiling.

“Let Piper go?”

“Shoot me and you can have her.”

I point the gun at his head.

“That’s the way.”

“I’m not going to shoot you. Nobody has to die.”

He smiles. He smells almost perfumed, as though he’s showered and shaved and doused himself in cologne.

“You weren’t in the service, were you?” he asks.

“Neither were you.”

“I got close.”

“That’s like saying you nearly had sex, Grievous. You either did or you didn’t-anything else is wanking.”

Anger lights up his eyes. I haven’t seen his temper before. He’s learned to hide it well.

“Should I call you Gerald or George?”

“Call me what you like.”

“Piper and Natasha called you George. It suits you.” I take a step closer. “I’m going to undo the handcuffs.”

He shows me the knife again. “I can flick my wrist and reach her heart before you take another step. How good a doctor are you? Can you patch a broken heart?”

I step back and find a straight-backed chair. I straddle it, resting my outstretched forearms on the top spar. I can hold the gun steadier now.

“This crime of mine,” says Grievous. “Kidnapping the girls, raping them-in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t mean very much. A thousand years from now nobody is going to care about the Bingham Girls or what I did to them. Not in a hundred years. Let’s face it, Professor, men have been penetrating women since our species began. It’s how we survive. So what if we don’t say please beforehand and thank you afterwards. It doesn’t alter the act. We penetrate. We procreate.”

“That’s an interesting philosophy, George. Your mother would be very proud.”

“Leave my mother out of it.”

“Is that who you’re trying to punish?”

“Oh, dear me, how disappointing,” he sighs. “Is that the best you can do-Freudian hostility, a mummy fixation? Please. I expected more.”

“You don’t have a fiancee, Grievous. She’s another fiction. That’s your problem, isn’t it? You can’t find anyone to love. It’s always been that way, ever since puberty when all those hormones were playing havoc with your thinking. You wanted a girlfriend, but you had a problem. You were deaf in one ear and couldn’t quite tune into what people were saying. Nobody knew about the brain tumor slowly growing, benign.

“You refused to wear a hearing aid or to sit up front in class. You didn’t want anyone to know, particularly the girls. You wanted to be one of the cool group sitting up the back, passing notes to each other.