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He came up to the house and saw a shiny black Merc sitting in the driveway, glinting under the porch light. All the windows were dark.
Without looking up or slowing his stride, McBree sca
A TV comedian. McBree had seen the show. Not fu
Without a dip in his stride he walked down the driveway and cut off to the side of the house, around the corner where the empty bins were. He stopped. A deep velvet blackness enveloped him. He let his face relax and pulled his latex gloves on. He looked up at the side wall of the house next door. No lights on, and only one small window on each house, high up, the neighbors’ netted, the target clear but dark. He stepped back against the dividing fence and looked more carefully. Clear but even in the darkness he could see the outline of bottles neatly regimented, shoulders to the glass. Main bathroom. The small window at the front was the second bedroom.
A high slatted fence ran between the properties and there was a gate into the backyard, locked with an old-fashioned black bolt lock. He fingered it and smiled. It wouldn’t have kept a chicken out.
Reaching into his pocket, he felt for his old skeleton key, the cold, firm shank sitting comfortably in his hand. It was a while since he’d used it. Most locks were more complex now. He spat on the bit, rubbing the saliva over the teeth to silence the entry into the lock, and tried it. The lock sprang back with a loud, unaccustomed crunch. McBree stood perfectly still for a moment, listening for movement. Nothing. He spat silently onto his fingertips and rubbed the exposed hinges on the gate, trying it tentatively at first until he was sure it made nothing louder than a mild creak. Pausing only to pull his balaclava on, he adjusted the eye holes and slid through the gate into the garden.
A patch of grass surrounded by the high fence, a glass conservatory, shallow, leading into a kitchen. A television on standby sat on a table, the lone red eye lighting the floor in front of it. The place looked tidy, no clothes or newspapers left on the floor or counter tops, which was good: it was unlikely there would be any debris lying around to trip over. Not like the photographer’s house. Shit everywhere. Val would have had a fit if she’d seen that. She liked the house perfect. It was her one sphere of control. Her mother had been the same.
The back door was plastic like the front but windowed, a long mottled strip of glass in a PVC frame. He looked at the lock, standing close in so that his shadow would blend in with the line of the house if anyone looked. It was complicated, a bolt and a Yale, a lot of work.
He turned back to the conservatory. A ground-level glass panel could be cut and slipped out of the frame easily enough and he would fit in sideways. He paused, half listening for noise inside and out, but really savoring the moment. These quiet times, when his mind was fully occupied with an immediate problem, when his hot breath gathered as droplets of moisture inside his mask, he was content.
He wanted a cigarette. He always wanted a cigarette. Sometimes while he was actually smoking he craved a cigarette.
He took the penknife from his pocket, checked carefully with his finger that the blade was exposed, and spat a long line of saliva down the glass. He’d left saliva at a scene before but he was the most common blood group and the police would be steered away from him even if they spotted it. The blade scratched quietly down then across, and he pushed with his fingertips, starting when one edge of the glass snapped and the muffled crack echoed across the lawn. No movement.
Taking hold of the edge, he pulled first one section out, then the next and the last. Just wide enough. He squared his shoulders to the hole and wriggled in easily, landing on the cold floor like a snake shedding its skin.
He stood up, looked around, padded silently through the kitchen to the hallway-carpeted, better. He turned the locks on the front door, snibbing them so that both would be ready for a quick exit, and watched the door in case it fell open. Fine.
Upstairs, padding the steep carpeted steps, moss green, to the landing. Stop. Breathing behind one door, the master bedroom, a man snoring in a light, regular whistle. The bathroom to the side, where the window looked over the alley. The door to the second bedroom straight ahead.
Stop.
Nausea. Confused images. His own grandson sleeping over on New Year’s Eve, nuzzled up to Val on the settee, his cheek resting on her thigh, and McBree creeping through the dark of a house to harm him.
Bullshit.
He stepped forward, aware of the brush of his sole on the fibers of the carpet, the rubber of his gloves catching on the landing banister as he trailed his fingers. He was facing the boy’s bedroom door, could sense the living presence on the other side. He did a quick mental rehearsal: open the door, step in, find the torso, knife into left side, straight for the heart. He had a point to make. Every drop of blood, every gut-churning task-they were all necessary. But McBree’s heart weighed like a stone in his chest. The justifications weren’t working tonight. A child. A healthy child. Asleep, trusting the world to mind him.
He remembered his O-level Shakespeare. Macbeth. Losing it. “I am in blood stepped in so far that returning were as tedious as going over.” Something like that. Go. Just go.
His right hand circled the handle of the blade. His left took hold of the door handle, his wrist moving awkwardly, pressed it down, releasing the catch.
“What are you doing here?”
McBree spun on his heel. He hadn’t even heard footsteps, hadn’t heard a door open, no padding feet or steadying hand brush a wall. A woman, good-looking, blond hair pillow blustered, eyes heavy with sleep, standing in the doorway to the master bedroom in a long white nightie, the ties at the neck lying open, exposing the curve of her breasts. He lunged with the knife but she fell back into the room and he only nicked her skin, carving a wide crescent on her left breast. She fell to the floor, scrambling backwards on all fours like a spider, blood gushing, panting and whimpering at the same time.
The man snoring in the bed sat up very suddenly, threw the duvet off and got to his feet, staggering sideways, facing the wrong way. He was six foot two, three maybe, and broad, much bigger than McBree.
McBree’s combat-hardened mind gave him two options: kill them all, stage it like a break-in, or run.
The man stumbled to where he had begun as the woman rolled her head back to let out a ripe, earsplitting scream.
McBree bolted down the stairs, threw open the door, and was gone.