‘Look, I really can’t do this right now. Could I come and speak to you later today?’ said Angel. She thrust the book and pencil back into Farmer’s hands.

He read quickly.

Two men in the kitchen. Back of house. Knife. Two aunts in there.

Farmer looked at her long and hard then read the last line.

Back door unlocked.

‘Maybe you could step outside for a few minutes, so we could talk?’ he suggested. There was something bad cooking up in there, and his only thought was to get her away from it.

‘I’m sorry, I really can’t. We’ve got something going on, a family occasion. But later. Maybe,’ she said. She wanted to step outside with him. She really did. But she couldn’t do it. There was literally no way she could get out of this and leave Lil and June to their fate.

‘If you’re sure?’ He didn’t want her to shut the door and vanish inside again. He could see stark terror in her eyes and he was afraid that if she shut it, right now, then that would be the last he would ever see of her.

‘I’m sure,’ she said, and closed the door quietly in his face.

Farmer stood there for a single beat, then turned on his heel and ran for the car and threw open the door. Paddy’s face was a picture of surprise.

‘Radio for backup. We got trouble. Then in two minutes kick that fucking front door in, I’m going round the back.’

And he took off at a dead run across the front garden and down the side alley of the house.

153

When Angel turned away from the door, it wasn’t Frank standing at the end of the hall beside the open kitchen door, it was his accomplice. He grinned at her with yellow tombstone teeth and held out the big knife in his hand. Then he started coming toward her.

Oh Christ!

Angel stood frozen, unable to move a muscle, paralysed with fear.

You know what a Colombian necktie is?

She knew now. Nauseatingly, she could feel the sun’s heat on the back of her neck as it beamed through the fanlight over the front door. Within seconds, she was never going to feel it again. Her life was going to end here, in the most gruesome, most horrible way.

But she couldn’t fling open the front door and leave the aunts inside here.

She couldn’t.

He was coming closer.

With a cry of terror, she turned and bolted up the stairs, not knowing where she was going or what she intended. He was hot on her heels, she could hear him, his harsh breathing, his pounding footsteps. His hand snatched at her, she felt it. He caught at her skirt, but she ran on, wrenching it free, sobbing with fright. The first door she came to, at the top of the stairs, was the one she threw open. A bathroom. She hurled herself inside.

There was a bolt, tiny and insubstantial, on the inside of the door. She would shut it, keep him out. Into her mind came that weakening image of Aunt June on the floor, hurt. Aunt Lil kneeling beside her. And Frank, that malevolent bastard, standing over them with the knife. Oh God, would he do it? She’d run away from him, would he now turn his fury on them?