Johnny stopped scrolling and reread the two sentences. Then he checked the responses. There were no more comments, they’d just moved on. He threw himself back in his chair, a tingle of excitement passing through him. It was the first chink in the investigation and he was determined to prise it open.
Chapter 35
ELSPETH LAMPARD HAS put the kids to bed and is walking down the stairs when she realizes just how much she needs a glass of Shiraz.
Her husband, Ralph, is away in Europe and won’t be back until next week. She feels lonely at this time of the evening – after the kids are in bed and before she falls asleep in front of the TV.
She goes to the wine rack. Nothing. “Damn it,” she says aloud. She considers taking something from the wine cellar, but Ralph would hit the roof if he found one of his treasured wines had gone missing. There isn’t a bottle in there worth under five hundred bucks.
Dusk is descending over Bellevue Hill as Elspeth walks to the liquor store two streets away. Five minutes later, she is forty yards from her house with a decent thirty-dollar quaffing wine.
It’s quiet, sticky hot. Most of Elspeth’s neighbors are indoors watching TV or lounging by their blue-lit pools with a cocktail in hand.
She hears a click from behind. Ignores it. Then comes a shuffling sound. She turns. Nothing. Sidewalk clear. Elspeth spins back again.
The blow comes from behind.
She falls to her knees, confused.
There’s a blur of houses, concrete, darkening sky. She hits the sidewalk hard. The wine bottle smashes – red liquid everywhere. Pain shoots up her neck, streaks across the left side of her face. She tries to turn, makes it halfway and sees a figure in an anorak leaning over her. Elspeth can smell her assailant’s breath.
She has no time to get up. Her attacker is bigger, stronger. She feels herself being dragged into a narrow alleyway between two gardens. She tries to scream, but as soon as she opens her mouth, a gloved hand comes over it, grips her lips, crushes the flesh about her mouth. Elspeth feels a tooth snap inward. More pain. Terrible pain. It spreads out across her face and around her skull.
She’s pushed up against a fence, a cloth comes up against her mouth. The attacker is leaning over her, knotting the material behind her neck. She struggles, but she’s drained and the assailant is too strong. Elspeth feels a wire being wrapped about her wrists pinned behind her back.
She can’t resist anymore. Her vision is bleary. She sees a head appear in front of her. No detail. The face is in shadow, hooded. She sees a match light, a cigarette lit. The flame illuminates part of the hooded face, but only the mouth … pale, thin lips.
Elspeth screams as the cigarette burns her face, but the sound is soaked up in the gag. She can smell her own burned flesh and screeches, helpless, as the cigarette is pushed into her again, just beneath her left eye. She starts to cry, tears streaming down her face. The pain sears her insides. It feels as though her head is going to explode. She vomits into the cloth in her mouth and starts to choke on it.
The attacker grabs her, spins her over onto her front, Elspeth’s disfigured face hits the sandy ground of the lane.
Next comes the knife. Elspeth doesn’t know it’s a knife. She just knows something has pierced her back. She feels a strange dislocation in her spine. In her confused state, submerged in agony, she imagines she’s a puppet and her strings have been cut.
The knife goes in again and Elspeth convulses and gasps. But now the pain has gone. She’s moved beyond it.
Her assailant turns her over. Peers down into her face, pulls back the hood. Elspeth is almost totally blind, but she feels another shock, a new revulsion. Her life is fading away, but she knows the attacker is pulling up her skirt, spreading her legs.
Chapter 36
TONY MACKENZIE WAS coming to the end of his five-mile run. He always felt a sense of euphoria build at this point in his circuit. He ran the same route at the same time every weekday, and entering Wentworth Avenue marked the final hundred-yard stretch before the wind down.
This morning, he felt energized. The sun was coming up, casting orange light all over the place. He passed the end of an alleyway leading off the sidewalk and kept running. But then something began to play on his mind. Something was wrong. He couldn’t figure out what it was, but it nagged him. He tried to push it aside, but it kept niggling him.
Forty yards past the alley, Tony Mackenzie finally stopped. He’d seen something. Something wasn’t quite right.
He turned and jogged back toward the entrance to the alley. Looking down the narrow lane, hands on hips, he steadied his breathing. Ten yards ahead, to the side of the alley, lay a dark object, vaguely human in shape. It could have been a bundle of rags. But something in Tony’s brain was telling him it wasn’t.