Written In Blood

27

27

Emily was on her bed, reading a book, one eye on the clock on her bedside cabinet so she wouldn’t be late taking the meat out, when she heard a vehicle pull into the yard outside. Pushing herself up, she craned her head around to look out the window to see who it was; it was too early for it to be her dad or her brother, they were unlikely to get home until just before dinner was ready to be served.

The moment she saw the Land Rover in the yard, she leapt to her feet, pleased that Zack Wild had returned. As pleased as she was, she was also a little nervous. She knew she had caught Zack by surprise when she kissed him, she had caught herself by surprise as well, to such an extent that she had forgotten to grab her bag when she got out of his car, and now she had had time to think about her actions, she realised what a fool she had made of herself.

On her way out of the bedroom and down the stairs, Emily imagined the possible reasons for his return: he could be there simply to return her bag, or he could be there to make sure she was not going to tell anyone what had happened between them; he might even be there because he had changed his mind about what he had said earlier.

She hesitated with her hand on the front door catch, reluctant to open the door and discover how her next encounter with Zack Wild was going to go. After half a minute, she took a deep breath, summoned her courage, and opened the door so she could step out into the yard.

Zack was nowhere to be seen. Emily had thought to find him outside the front door, about to ring the bell, but he wasn’t there. She looked around the yard but couldn’t see him, which made no sense to her; she couldn’t think where he might have gone. She walked to each corner of the house to see if he was there, but there was no sign of him. Bewildered, she walked to where the Land Rover sat in the middle of the yard.

She wasn’t normally the sort of person to go rummaging around in someone’s car without permission, it wasn’t polite, but on this occasion she thought it okay since she was after her bag. Her bag wasn’t where she had left it, though. It should have been in the foot-well in front of the passenger seat, but the foot-well was empty; leaning further into the vehicle, she searched under the passenger seat, where she found a number of items, none of them her bag.

The desire to find out more about the man who lived down the road, and with whom she had made such a fool of herself, made her take out each item in turn so she could examine it. She discovered little, other than that Zack Wild was messier than she had previously thought, at least initially; the first few items she pulled out were a road map of the county, an empty crisp packet, a couple of chocolate wrappers, and a hammer – she had no idea why he had a hammer under the passenger seat, it seemed a strange thing for him to have there, but it wasn’t as strange as the next thing she pulled out, a pink mobile phone.

For several long moments, Emily simply stared at the phone; it was familiar to her, she was sure she had seen it before, but she knew it wasn’t Zack’s. She couldn’t work out where she knew the phone from, and that annoyed her because she was sure it was important; whose phone it was, and where she had seen it before, came to her in a flash when the voice sounded from behind her.

“What are you doing?” The voice that uttered the question was curious, but evidenced no concern until she turned around and its owner saw the phone in her hand. “Where did you get that? Give it to me,” he demanded, holding out a hand insistently.

In an instant, Emily knew who had killed Georgina Ryder and Lucy Goulding, and it was the last person she would have thought capable of murder. So great was her shock, she was left frozen to the spot, unable to react to her discovery except by staring at him. Only when he lunged at her, demanding, “Give me that phone, you nosey b***h,” did she recover the ability to move.

At the last second, right before his grasping hand closed around her wrist, Emily twisted away. She felt a small amount of satisfaction when his momentum carried him into the side of the Land Rover, which he collided with heavily, but didn’t allow that to stop her racing across the yard to the still open front door. Once she was through the door, she slammed it closed and, with fumbling fingers, dropped the catch; she didn’t suppose that was going to keep him outside for long, but any delay was good.

When the front door, against which she was leaning, shook under the impact of something heavy, Emily left it and hurried up the stairs. As she ascended she sought to unlock Georgina Ryder’s phone – she had seen it previously in the hands of her brother’s girlfriend, which was why she had found it familiar the moment she picked it up – so she could call her father, but her fingers continued to display a reluctance to obey the commands from her brain. She was beginning to think the phone was dead when the screen lit up; unfortunately, that was as far as she got, for Georgina had her phone secured with a password.

Inspiration struck her as she closed the door to her bedroom with a bang and twisted the key in the old-fashioned lock. The relief she felt when Georgina’s birthday unlocked the phone was amazing, she had never felt anything so powerfully before. That relief quickly disappeared, however, when she got no answer from her father’s number.

Again, and again she tried to get hold of her father, while she listened with one ear to the front door smash into the wall of the passage, followed by the thunder of footsteps on the stairs.

“Come on, dad,” Emily pleaded, the phone pressed to her ear so hard it was liable to stay there even after she let go of it. “Pickup, pickup, pickup. Where are you when I need you?”

When the thunderous footsteps reached the top of the stairs and stopped, only to be followed by a crash as something heavy slammed into the door of the bedroom, Emily abandoned her efforts to contact her father, and instead dialled the number for Oakhurst’s police station. She hoped, while dialling, that the solid, and old, oak door she had always hated would prove strong enough to keep out Georgina and Lucy’s killer; so far it had stood up to the job – it shook and shuddered within its frame, but remained secure.

More than she feared being murdered, if it was possible for her to fear something more than that, she feared what he might do to her before he killed her. As she had told Zack Wild on the drive back to the village, she knew what Sergeant Mitchell believed had been done to Georgina and Lucy before they were killed. Until a few minutes ago, she would not have believed that someone she knew so well could be capable of either r**e or murder, and she certainly would not have believed him capable of committing either act on her.

Having seen his face when he tried to get the phone from her, though, she found herself scared that he was prepared to do anything, to anyone, including her.

Sturdy the door might be, sturdy enough it wasn’t. Once, twice, three times, he threw his body against the door, and on the fourth time it burst open in a shower of splinters that made Emily duck for fear of being struck. When she straightened up, she saw the menacing figure of the person she had cared about approaching her through the ruins of her door. His face was a twisted, barely recognisable, mask of rage that made her tremble violently.

“Gimme the phone,” He demanded in a voice that was so harsh and full of hatred it combined with the look on his face to give him an air of insanity.

Emily could only wonder how it was that she had not seen how crazy he was before. It didn’t seem possible that he could have concealed what kind of person he was for so long. Someone should have seen through the act he was putting on, she thought during the millisecond in which she was able to think with some semblance of clarity.

“I said gimme the f*****g phone.”

Emily twisted away as he lunged for her. She tried to slip past him and out of the room, thinking that if she could get out of the house without getting caught, she stood a chance of making it to the village – once there she would be safe. The idea was good, but it failed at the first hurdle; she was caught before she could even get out of the room. She was almost at the door when she was brought up short by a sharp jerk on her top, the back of which had been grabbed by the killer she was trying to elude.

“Where the hell d’you think you’re going?”

The question was accompanied by a yank that sent her spinning and stumbling across the room. She hit the bed and fell over it, landing heavily on the floor on the other side. Unaware that her call to the police station had been answered, Emily lost her grip on the phone, which bounced out of her hand to disappear under the bed.

More concerned with protecting herself from the maniac who was obviously intent on causing her serious harm, and most likely on killing her, Emily gave no thought to the phone she had just lost as she struggled to her feet. At least she tried to, before she could make it further than her knees, she was grabbed and thrown onto her back.

“What the hell were you doing looking around in my car?” he demanded, punching Emily in the face as she tried to sit up. “Why are you so f*****g nosey? I said, why are you so f*****g nosey?” Grabbing Emily by the front of her t-shirt, he pulled her up so he could punch her again for not answering him, not that she could have done so for the first blow had rocked her head back so it struck the bedside cabinet behind her.

He repeated the question several times, in different ways, and each time Emily failed to answer him, he hit her. Finally, it sank in that he was not going to get an answer because Emily was incapable of providing one. Once he realised that, he let go of her t-shirt, leaving her to drop to the floor with a thud. While the thud echoed around the bedroom, the madness that had overcome him began to fade; sense, or some semblance of it, began to return to his mind, though not before he was struck by a last – for the time being – burst of open insanity.

“Look what you’ve made me do. Look at the mess you’ve made me make.” He kicked her in the stomach. He felt like kicking her a second time, but now that the madness was gone and he was thinking a little more clearly, he realised he had to move quickly if he wanted to avoid getting caught.

He had no idea how much time he had before Tara got home, and he had to get Emily’s body out of there before she did, before she could see what he had done. He didn’t know where he could take her – he certainly couldn’t dump her body where he had dumped Georgina and Lucy, that would be the first place the police looked, but having a destination wasn’t half as important as getting her out of the house.

He took a quick look out of the window quickly, to be sure the yard was clear, then bent to grab Emily by the front of her t-shirt. It took all of his strength to get her dead weight to his shoulder, and he staggered a little as he made his way out of the room.