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Erin’s head collapses on to her chest. She begins to weep, quiet sounds of exhaustion and defeat.
Gabriel brings up the video file. Moments after it begins to play, Drew’s voice issues from the phone’s speakers. ‘It’s sohot. Can you put the windows down?’
Gabriel’s chest fills. He goes to an unoccupied dining chair and lowers himself on to it. There’s a solemnity to him, now. A terrible, expectant silence.
‘Easy, Romeo,’ Drew laughs. ‘I don’t know what you’re used to. But with me you don’t get everything all at once.’
Then Angus Roth says, ‘Is that right?’
Gabriel inhales sharply. His muscles move beneath his shirt.
‘Play nice,’ Drew says. ‘Be a good boy. And eventually you’ll get rewarded.’
Joseph opens his right fist. In his palm, stained red by the dying light, is the key he lifted from his breast pocket just before Gabriel put the noose around his neck.
Keeping his movements to a minimum, he manoeuvres the key until he’s gripping it between thumb and forefinger. Then he tilts his hands and examines the cuffs. Earlier, to improve his ability to free himself should he get the chance, he’d attached them with the lock mechanisms palm-side. Fortunately, Erin hadn’t known to double lock them, which would have increased the key turns required to disengage the arms.
‘How nice?’ Angus Roth asks.
Joseph guides the key towards the lock. His hands are shaking so badly that metal clinks against metal. The key rattles as it goes in.
‘You hear that?’ Drew asks. ‘Seriously, I think I heard something.’
Joseph glances at Gabriel, but the man still seems engrossed in what he’s viewing. He switches his attention to Erin, sees that she’s watching him through her tears. Her gaze slides down to the cuffs, travels back up.
There’s no reason for her to draw attention to what he’s doing. Their escalatory back-and-forth has reached its conclusion. Any moment, Gabriel will learn the truth of his brother’s fate. Afterwards, Erin will need all the help she can get.
That is, unless she’s so terrified for Tilly – and so sceptical of Joseph’s ability to intervene – that she’ll do whatever it takes to delay that moment as long as possible.
His blood runs cold inside his veins. Goosebumps break out across his skin.
‘I’ve got a picnic blanket in the boot,’ Angus says.
Joseph turns the key, hears a click as the pawl retracts, releasing the rachet teeth. One arm of the cuff glints red as it falls loose. Holding his breath, he extricates his wrist.
Beside him, the toes of Max’s trainers squeal against the dining chair. Erin shifts in her seat, her muscles tensing despite her bonds.
It’s time, irrefutably, to act.
FIFTY-NINE
Tilly Carver staggers into Thornecroft’s orangery and collapses against a wicker sofa. Around her the room spins as if in mockery. Blood and saliva spill from her mouth, sliding to the floor in thick gobs.
Fucking gross, Tilz.
There’s no escaping how badly Gabriel Roth has broken her. She can’t move her jaw without pain so acid-bright her heart threatens to burst free of her ribs. When she probes her mouth with her tongue, she finds jagged points instead of teeth. Her lips have ballooned, mushy and sticky. Underneath her surface pain is a deeper ache of pulverized flesh, bruised bone.
Beyond the orangery’s windows the red sky is everywhere – as if an erupting volcano has filled the heavens with magma. Behind her she sees the blood slick marking her progress through the house.
Tilly coughs, sprays more blood. When she blinks, the light fractures into glass shards that slowly melt back together.
The orangery’s external doors gape open. A night breeze wafts through. The gravity in here feels wrong, as if Angus Roth’s house is orbiting the earth rather than anchored to it.
Tilly forces herself upright. She staggers to the external doors, her hands making red prints when they clutch the frame. Difficult to believe how weak she is. How each burst of movement requires a rest twice as long.
Outside, around a silhouetted oak at the top of the lawn, she sees silhouette figures, a scene that makes no sense. She steps on to cold flagstones. A few steps more and the flagstones surrender to grass. As she weaves across the lawn, those silhouette figures grow sharper. More surreal.
There’s her stepbrother, standing on a chair, a noose around his neck. Her stepfather is on another chair beside him. Gabriel Roth, the sick bastard who broke her, is holding a coil of rope from which dangles a second noose.