The Other People: A Novel(39)

HOME-OWNER KILLED IN BUNGLED BURGLARY





HORROR IN SUBURBIA


She recognized the house in the pictures. And the man who was in the photo on the bedside table. Nice, she thought. But dead.

She stared at the pages. Then she stuffed them back in the drawer and shut it. She crept from the room and started to make her way downstairs. Halfway, she paused. She could hear the old lady talking in the kitchen. Momentarily, her heart lifted. Fran. She had come back. She peered over the banister. But the old lady was alone, clutching a glass of something red in one hand and a phone in the other.

“Yes. She’s here now. No, I don’t think her mother is coming back. I think she’s in some kind of trouble.”

A pause.

“About eight years old. Can you come quickly? Thank you, Officer.”

The police. The stupid old lady had called the police. Alice had to get out. Now. She ran down the stairs and darted to the front door. Locked. Crap.

From behind her, she heard a shout: “Alice!”

The old lady stood in the kitchen doorway. Alice looked around desperately and then spotted the keys on the hall table. She snatched them up and stuck them in the lock.

“Stop right there!”

“No. You called the police.”

The old lady moved faster than Alice had expected. She grabbed her arm.

“Listen to me—”

“Get off!”

Alice yanked her arm away.

“Come back here!”

Alice pulled the door open and stumbled outside. The old lady screamed after her: “Your mother isn’t coming back. She’s left you. Wait and see.”

Alice didn’t wait. Tears blinded her eyes. She had no idea where she was going. But she did what she had been told to do, trained to do.

Alice ran.





“Seven stitches. No major organs. You’re lucky it was just a graze.”

Gabe stared at the young doctor. Thin, with bright red hair and a dour northern accent. It was hard to tell whether she was joking or not.

“Err, thank you,” he murmured.

“Of course, if your friend hadn’t found you, you could be dead.”

“From a graze?”

“Shock and blood loss at your age can often lead to heart failure.”

“Well, thanks—again.”

She nodded briskly, satisfied he appreciated the magnitude of his near-death experience.

“Do I need to stay in hospital?” he asked.

She regarded his chart, obviously debating whether “near-death” really required taking up a bed for the night.

“I’ll get you some antibiotics to take home,” she said, and hurried away.

He lay back on the hard hospital pillows. Compassion, he thought, like everything else in the NHS, had been cut back to the bone.

His side throbbed and felt tight with the stitches. Lucky. He had been lucky, he reminded himself. And actually, the doctor was right: if the blonde waitress hadn’t been getting out of her car when he had stumbled out of the van, he could have lain there for vital minutes, the blood seeping out of him. But she had seen him and staunched the wound with her scarf, called 999. Then she had talked to him, trying to keep him conscious, until the ambulance arrived. Her name was Katie, she had told him. A pretty name.

He owed her his life. In fact, he was rapidly beginning to think of her as some kind of guardian angel, appearing at his hours of need. Or perhaps that was the painkillers talking.

He closed his eyes and, this time, he saw the man again, plunging the knife into his stomach, calmly walking away with his bag. The policeman from the coffee shop. It couldn’t be a coincidence. Either there was a blip in the Matrix, or he had been following Gabe, waiting for his chance. But why? The Samaritan’s voice echoed in his head:

“Forget you ever saw those words…don’t go anywhere near that shit.”

Could it be connected with the Other People? Had Gabe stumbled over something important? Something worth attacking him for? His ancient laptop could hardly be the motive, but what about the website? Or was it what was contained in the notebook or the Bible. The codes?

It seemed far-fetched, but then the last forty-eight hours had been a vertical plunge down the rabbit hole. The car, Harry, the photos. Not exactly his normal daily routine. And the worst part—aside from almost being killed—was he no longer had any of the things he had retrieved. The map, the notebook, the hair bobble, the Bible. They were all gone.

“Mr. Forman?”

He opened his eyes at the doctor’s clipped tones. She wasn’t alone. Another woman stood behind her, at the side of his bed. Late forties, petite, with cropped blonde hair and a weariness to her face. A face that said: Really? You expect me to believe that?

Gabe knew that look only too well. He had felt it levelled at him a number of times during the investigation into the murder of his family.

If it weren’t for the stitches and the drugs, he was pretty sure he’d have felt his stomach sink.

“Gabriel.” DI Maddock smiled thinly. “What have you got yourself into now?”





Katie wiped tables, collected empty mugs, filled clean ones, smiled, took money and gave change. At least, that’s what her body did. Her mind was elsewhere. It wandered around in circles but kept coming back to one thing: the sight of the thin man on the ground, leaking dark blood from his side. His panicked eyes. Déjà vu. It reminded her a bit too much of Dad. Except the thin man was alive. So far.