The House Guest by Mark Edwards(53)

I walked. He marched me up the stairs and through the house to the front door, then out on to the front stoop.

There was no one around. While I had been downstairs, another of New York’s summer storms had started, and rain lashed down, emptying the street. A rumble of thunder accompanied me as Krugman made me walk down the steps. His unmarked car, a mud-brown Toyota, waited by the kerb. He opened the back door and pushed me inside. He chucked my backpack, which he’d worn on his way out of the house, on to the front passenger seat.

He got in and started driving. I tugged at the cuffs, but it was no use.

‘Where are we going?’ I asked after a little while. ‘The station house is in the other direction.’

‘Shut up.’

We drove through the city, Krugman swearing at the clogged-up traffic. From the occasional glimpse of street signs, we appeared to be driving south-west. Krugman had a bottle of Diet Coke, which he sipped from occasionally. My mouth was dry, heart pounding. I tried to think of a way out of this. But every time I tried to speak, to ask him where we were going, he snapped at me to shut up.

After a long, slow crawl through Brooklyn, we crossed a long bridge. A sign told me we were now on Staten Island. This was bad. Really fucking bad. Because there could only be one explanation for what was happening. He was part of it. He was one of them.

Krugman kept driving. When I tried to speak again he put the radio on – a station playing classic rock – and turned it up to drown me out. Creedence Clearwater Revival sang about a bad moon rising. At one point, Krugman’s phone rang but he pressed a button to send it to voicemail.

The traffic was sparser here, and before too long we crossed another bridge, heading out of New York City. It was dark now and still raining, the windscreen wipers sweeping back and forth. I watched them, trying to focus on the hypnotic motion in an attempt to stay calm. On the radio, Elton John was singing and I thought of home, wishing more than anything that I was back there now, sitting in the beer garden of a pub with a pint. I tried to visualise myself there but it didn’t work. I wasn’t home. I was handcuffed in the back of a car, speeding down US Route 9, and I felt it in the pit of my stomach. I was going to die.

It took some effort to get the words out. ‘You’re going to kill me.’

He didn’t reply. Instead, he turned off the highway on to a quieter road. A couple of cars went by in the opposite direction, and then we were driving through woodland, along a curving road. There was no one else around. We passed a ‘Deer Crossing’ sign and Krugman slowed down. He appeared to know exactly where he was going, turning on to a track that led deeper into the woods, his headlights illuminating the trees that crowded around us like voyeurs at a public hanging, trying to get a last look at the condemned man.

Once we were a fair distance into the woods, so no one would spot the car from the road, he slowed to a halt.

‘Wait here,’ he said, and opened the door.

Krugman got out of the car and went to the boot, disappearing from sight for a moment. When he came back into view he was carrying a torch – a flashlight, as he would call it – which he’d already switched on. He held a shovel too.

A shovel. To bury my body.

He opened the back door.

‘Get out,’ he said.

‘No way.’

He stuck the gun in my face.

‘You know something, Adam? You should have gone home. Or just waited.’

‘For Ruth to come back? Changed?’

He narrowed his eyes. ‘That what Callum Maguire told you? That asshole is next. I’m gonna enjoy dispatching that motherfucker, after what Eden’s told me.’

What did that mean?

‘What about Wanda Brooks? Don’t deny it – you told me you’d talked to her. You know where we can find her?’

‘No. We met her in public.’

He put the gun against my forehead. ‘You sure?’

‘I swear. She wouldn’t let us go to her place. She’s totally paranoid.’

‘Hmm.’ He seemed to believe me.

‘Who else you been talking to, huh?’ he asked. ‘I know you went to see Mona. And I also know you went to Columbia. What did they tell you?’

‘Nothing. They wouldn’t tell me anything.’ I didn’t want Krugman going there and murdering Professor Kyle and Brenda. ‘I showed them Eden’s photo but they said they couldn’t say anything because of confidentiality. Listen, I—’

‘Shut up! Talking, talking, always talking. Jesus Christ. You’re worse than Jack. Now get the fuck out of that car.’

He grabbed my arm and yanked me out, twisting me round so he was behind my back. He held on to my upper arm.

Behind me was the road that cut through the woods; ahead I could see nothing but trees. I felt like they were watching me, a solemn crowd, silent and still. Witnesses to an execution.

A path, muddy from the recent rainfall, led into the woods.

‘Let’s go,’ said Krugman, letting go of my arm and pushing me ahead of him.

I forced myself to walk, one foot in front of the other, my way illuminated by the beam from Krugman’s torch. As we entered the woods, the trees closing around us, welcoming us in, I heard a car drive by on the road. Krugman paused and glanced over his shoulder. I thought about calling out but there was no point – they would never have heard me – and by the time I’d dismissed the idea, the road was quiet again. The car gone. I considered running, wondering if I could lose myself in the trees. That might be my only chance. But I would be in the pitch-darkness, hands cuffed, pursued by a man with a flashlight and a gun. I knew I wouldn’t get anywhere.