Fifty Fifty (Detective Harriet Blue #2)(52)

‘Just give it a break for a while, Harriet,’ she said. ‘You look like the walking dead. You smell even worse. Have fifteen minutes off, and then we can get back to it.’





Chapter 79


I WALKED NUMBLY to the bathroom and stripped, pulling off a bunch of soft layers of skin from my forearms and neck. Looking in the mirror, half my face appeared badly sunburned, already peeling at my temple. I must have turned away at the last second, put my hands up to try to shield myself from the blast. The tender flesh on the underside of my forearms had taken the worst hit. The edges of my cast rubbed at the irritated skin, causing it to burn anew.

I held my arm up out of the stream of cool water and closed my eyes, raked back my singed hair. Against the back of my eyelids I could see the outline of Zac’s mangled corpse in the front seat, the flames twisting around him, flaring out over the roof.

I screamed as something brushed against my leg. The pig had muscled his way into the bathroom and nosed open the shower door.

‘Vicky! Vicky, help! Oh God!’ I hollered, trying to shove the beast away. It weighed half a tonne. Snale rushed into the room, horrified, trying to shield her eyes from my naked form.

‘Oh God, I’m sorry!’ Despite everything, we were both almost laughing. ‘He likes to drink the water. I think it’s the soap. It tastes different. Oh Jesus, I’m so sorry. Jerry! Jerry! Come here, you idiot!’

The pig was snorting and snuffling at the few centimetres of water at the bottom of the shower. Eventually Snale gave up trying to haul the animal out of the shower with me. I got out and she handed me a towel.

‘I’m seeing stuff on the news about Sam,’ she said. ‘The girl they found. Caitlyn? Someone got some footage of her being carried to an ambulance. She looked terrible.’

‘Nothing about us out here?’ I asked. ‘The bombing? Zac?’

‘No. No way. We’re small fry.’ She sat on the toilet seat near me.

I wrapped the towel around my body, felt exhausted.

‘The girl,’ Snale cleared her throat, ‘she’s saying –’

‘I know what she’s saying,’ I said. ‘It isn’t true.’

Snale shifted uncomfortably.

‘Would anything make you believe that it was?’ she asked.

I took a comb from the edge of the sink and pulled it through my hair, looked at my own eyes in the mirror. Sam’s eyes.

‘No,’ I answered.





Chapter 80


KASH WAS IN the living room, looking at the diary, the book pressed flat on the tabletop in front of him. On the left-hand page was a sketch of a body fitted out for a massacre, a faceless dummy strapped with guns and knives. It was a lot like the sketches Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris had made in their own diaries as they planned their assault. They’d envisioned body harnesses in which they could house handheld pipe bombs, holsters with easy access to knives for hand-to-hand combat should they run out of ammo. The diarist had copied excerpts from Eric’s diary into their own.

I must not be sidetracked by my feelings of sympathy, mercy.

I want to burn the world.



In reality, the boys had become bored midway through their killing spree and hadn’t used most of the weaponry they’d strapped to themselves. It was the same with Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech killer. He seemed to burn out his rage much faster than he went through his ammunition. It was all about build-up with these guys. Anticipation of the terror of their victims.

Maybe that was why the killer had left the note for Zac on the steering wheel, warning him that he was going to die. Otherwise, why not just let the thing activate itself the moment he shifted position? Why give him a chance? Why give him time to escape?

So he could think about it.

So he could know death was coming and be afraid.

‘Yow!’ Kash yelped, drew a finger to his lips.

‘What?’

‘I scraped it on the staple.’ He sucked blood from the tiny cut, examined the injury in the light.

I went to the book, sat down next to him. Indeed, there were two staples in the centre of the notebook, holding the pages in place. The bottom fold of one staple was crooked, sticking up slightly, a trap that would catch a careless hand sweeping over it.

I pushed the fold of the staple down. It sprang back up.

Something rushed over me, an electric sensation that made all my injuries come alive at once, my muscles hardening. I snatched the book up and examined it in the light of the living room, tilted it to get the right angle.

‘Oh my God,’ I whispered. ‘There’s a page missing.’





Chapter 81


‘HOW DO YOU know that?’ Snale took the diary from me, examined it, squinting.

‘The staples are crooked. Someone’s bent them outwards to slide the middle page out of the notebook without tearing the paper. They’ve folded the staples back but they’re not completely flat.’ I took the book from her hands. ‘Look. Here. I can see the shape of a square indented in the next page. It isn’t on the previous page. The missing page has left indentations.’

Snale shifted away, her face taut with concentration. She began pulling open drawers and shuffling through them. She found a pencil and a blank sheet of paper and came back to the dining-room table. She flattened the book and began gently shading the pages with the side of the pencil.