Page 18 of Don't Say A Word
My heart explodes in my chest. We both pull away. Holly opens her mouth, and for a moment I think she’s going to scream.
I take her face in my hands. ‘Shhh,’ I whisper. ‘Don’t make a sound.’
‘Oh, God…’ she whines softly. ‘Who is it?’
‘I don’t know. Be quiet.’
‘What if it’s the police? Maybe they heard us shout?’
The doorbell rings again.
‘Oh my God,’ she whimpers.
‘They would have said so,’ I say. Would they? I have no idea, but you imagine the police banging on your door shouting, ‘Police! Open up!’Or that’s how they do it on TV anyway.
The doorbell rings again.
Maybe it is the police. Maybe they’re more polite than I realise.
‘They’ll go away. Just wait.’ I feel like I’m going to faint.
Holly and I stand like that for another two or three minutes, my arms around her, Holly shaking and whimpering, her face in her hands. Her heart is beating so hard and fast that I can feel it in my chest, and I’m sure she can feel mine.
Finally, when enough time has passed, I release her gently, slip off my shoes and tiptoe around Max’s body to the front door. I put my ear against it, but I can’t hear anything. I bend down, and ever so softly I push the letterbox flap, only by a hair, looking for the edge of a foot, the cuff of a trouser leg, but all I can see is the granite on the step.
I crouch and open it fully. There’s no one there.
I breathe out and return to the kitchen. Holly is leaning against the worktop, her arms wrapped around herself.
‘They’re gone.’
‘Who was it?’
‘I don’t know.’
She pulls her sleeve over her knuckles. ‘What are we going to do?’
I try to think. I could have opened the door just now and screamed and begged whoever was standing there to call the police, but I didn’t. Why didn’t I?
Because I know, deep down, that Holly is right.
There’s no evidence this was self-defence, no evidence he was ever violent or that her life was ever in danger. He didn’t have a weapon, as Holly pointed out. There are no marks on her. It will just be our word against the evidence – and that’s never going to be enough. Max is a respected member of society, like most psychopaths, no doubt. There are laws. The police would arrest her. She’s sixteen years old. They would charge her. God only knows what would happen to her then.
But the truth remains that he was a monster. He was a horrible, horrible man. He terrorised us both, day and night. And as I look down at his body sprawled on the kitchen floor, I find that I don’t mind that he’s dead.
And anyway, surely, it’s too late to call anybody now. You’re not supposed to wait ten minutes to make up your mind.
‘Kate?’ she whimpers.
I turn to her. ‘I don’t know. I’ll think of something. Let’s carry him into the garage for now.’
8
Holly shakes her head violently. ‘No. I can’t.’
‘You can. Listen to me. We’re going to wrap him in something?—’
‘In what?’
