Page 158 of Making a Killing

‘OK.’

Her voice is very small.

Kate glances across at the body, wrapped now, in a sheet Kate found upstairs because she couldn’t bear that glassy stare. But even the sheet can’t hide the spreading stain.

Sabrina looks up at Kate, half timidly. ‘There are some woods at the back here. I saw it on the web.’

Kate nods, reading her mind. They’ve always been able to do that – see what the other is thinking without needing the words. As if they’re two halves of the same soul.

She gets to her feet. ‘There’s an outbuilding – I saw it from the cab. I’ll go and see if I can find a spade. And while I do, you check exactly where these woods are, OK?’

‘And we need something to tie her up too.’

Kate stares at her. Does she think somehow the woman is still alive? With those already-clouding eyes and brain matter weeping from the back of her head?

Sabrina bites her lip. ‘It’ll be easier to carry that way. I saw it in a movie.’

‘It’ will be easier to carry. Not her. It.

‘OK,’ says Kate, ‘I’m sure there’ll be something we can use. I’ll see if I can find a torch as well.’

Tierney is not a big woman but it takes all their strength to move her. Kate wanted to stop as soon as the trees closed around them – it was far enough, surely – but Sabrina said no, almost hysterical. There’s a tree she kept saying, a tree where they starved a witch – if we put her there they’ll think it was some weirdo, they’ll never think it was us. Us. Kate hugs the word like a precious secret. Us. Her and Sabrina against the world, just like it used to be. OK, she said, soothing, OK. It’s a good idea. It’s clever. Just like you.

And when they get to the place and she sees the twisted half-human tree, there does indeed seem a terrible rightness to it, as if the darkness once done here has left its own shadow, sucking the air chill, even after such a hot day. It’s the Mere, Sabrina says, without waiting for the question, it’s just through the trees. It’s only a small pond really but it affects the temperature. Yes, says Kate, of course. There’s always a rational explanation. She just wishes her body believed it.

They lay the body down on the ground and Kate hands Sabrina the spade.

‘I’ll go back,’ she says. ‘I’ll go back and clean up.’

Sabrina’s eyes widen. ‘You can’t leave me on my own!’

‘Darling, we’ve only got one spade. It’s a waste of time both of us being here. And I’ll do a better job on the clean-up than you will.’

She touches Sabrina’s cheek gently, and for the first time inmonths her daughter doesn’t flinch. ‘I’m a professional cleaner, remember? I do it for a living. All you have to do is dig the hole, and when I come back I’ll help you lift her. I’ll be as quick as I can.’

She half expects to see the police there already, a phalanx of blue lights, men in white suits unspooling crime scene tape. But the house is silent. She knows where the security camera is and makes sure to keep out of range as she skirts round to the front of the house, letting herself in with the keys she found in Robin Tierney’s room.

Some small part of her was hoping the stain would be gone. That time would have closed over and healed and there would be no sign of what happened here. But no. Even with all the lights on, the blood looks so black it’s like a rent in the floor. She closes her eyes for a moment, grounds herself, tries to breathe.

It’s when she opens her eyes again that she notices it. She rubs her temples, telling herself it’s tiredness, stress, a tic – but it’s still there. A flicker. It’s coming from the table. She takes a step forward and realizes it’s a phone. A mobile phone half shoved under Sabrina’s backpack, the weight of it keeping the screen open, stopping it closing down. She reaches towards it, realizing with a new sick jolt of unease that she’s never seen this phone before – it’s not the one she pays for, not the one she loaded with a hidden app that tracks every what and who and where of her daughter’s narrow life.

She picks it up, as tentative as if it would scald. There’s barely anything on it. An email account for a Kelsie Smith, whoever that is. WhatsApp too, but the only messages are with Tierney and someone called Gary. And something called MyShadowJournal. The icon is two faces staring at one another, one dark, one light, like one of those Escher drawings. She touches the screen, expecting the app to have its own password lock, but no. A list of ‘sessions’, dates, exercises completed and yet to do. She opens one at random, not knowing what on earth she expects to find.

But not this.

Whatever else, not this.

She knows she doesn’t have time – she knows she has to finish her task and get the two of them out of here – but the words jolt at her from the screen, searing into her brain.

She reaches blindly behind her for the sofa and sits down, as rigid as an old woman.

She’s a good cleaner. No one would ever know, looking at this room, what happened here. And she’s seen enough crime dramas to remember to wipe every surface either of them could have touched. She doesn’t want it to be too easy. The police have to think they’ve worked it out themselves.

She found the other mobile, of course. Tierney’s mobile, hidden behind books on one of the shelves. She watched the video she was secretly recording, hardened to it now, her anger blossoming, unfurling like a thicket around her heart. It’s in her bag now, that mobile, out in the car with Tierney’s suitcase, everything packed and ready to go.

She takes one last look around the room. She hasn’t missed anything: it looks exactly as it did when she arrived. Not that the owners would notice anyway; in her experience, people as rich as this are both thoughtless and complacent. She hitches Sabrina’s backpack over her shoulder, then kicks that phone of hers under the sofa and closes the door behind her.

As she makes her way back through the woods she pounds it out with every step.You do not need to feel guilty. You will achieve what you set out to do. You are strong.But her heart is beating so fast she feels radioactive, as if the air around her is toxic and that alone will give her away.

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