Page 51

Chapter 50

2000

Margot

The sound of the gunshot is deafening. My ears ring as I cower, and when I dare to look up, Warren is towering over the man, now slumped on the floor, much of his right cheek and an eye missing. Behind him, blood trickles down the wall like syrup. I look to Jenny and Zain, frozen in time. Even Warren remains sealed in a stunned, numb silence, watching the last flicker of movement in the man’s remaining eyelid.

But Warren is the first to regain his senses.

‘Why did he close the door?’ he asks slowly.

We are all still too much in shock to answer him.

He walks slowly towards it, opens it and disappears inside. We hear a woman’s voice talking at first, then soon escalating into a panicked, frightened shriek. I edge towards the door and the light in the lounge illuminates something held up to her chest. From this distance it looks like a can of hairspray. She fumbles, trying to spray it in Warren’s face, but in her panic, she drops it to the floor. He grabs her by the neck and frogmarches her out into the lounge. She is sobbing.

‘Shut up,’ Warren yells, and slaps her hard across the side of the head. ‘Where’s the key to the safe?’

Now she’s coughing, choking on her tears, her words unintelligible.

‘Where is it?’ he screams at the top of his lungs.

None of us have met this version of Warren before. He points the muzzle of the gun at the centre of her forehead.

‘I don’t know,’ she sobs. ‘Sanjay hides it in different places.’

‘Tell me!’ he demands.

‘I don’t know!’ she cries. ‘I promise.’

This time, when Warren pulls the trigger, it isn’t reactive. It’s deliberate, brought about by rage and frustration. The woman falls into a console table then crashes to the floor, landing on her side. Blood oozes from the hole in her throat. She clasps it but bleeds out in less than half a minute.

It’s too much for Zain. He grabs Jenny’s wrist and pulls her towards the staircase, the two of them disappearing in an instant. Warren is too slow to react and they are already out of his eyeline when he fires the gun twice in their direction. I should follow, but I’m too far away from the stairs to make a dash for it.

Now it’s just me, Warren and two dead bodies.

His eyes dart around the room, lizard-like, unsure of what to do next, before they settle upon me. The only remaining witness. I watch as the hand holding the gun begins to rise and point in my direction. I don’t think either of us knows what he’s going to do next.

And then it’s like someone flicks a switch in my brain which pushes me to take charge. I spot a tin of cigarette lighter fuel on the floor by the overturned console table. I point to it.

‘Go find more,’ I order Warren, as if ignorant of the gun aimed at me. ‘Our fingerprints are everywhere. We need to burn this place down.’

Warren casts a curious eye over me before acknowledging I’m on his side and I might be right. He lowers his weapon, disappears downstairs, re-emerging moments later brandishing three two-litre bottles of white spirits.

‘Pour them over the curtains and sofa,’ I tell him. ‘Anything that might be flammable.’

I clock a box of firelighters by the side of the fireplace, so I break them into cubes, enter the bedroom, then toss them around like chunks of confetti. Warren throws me a bottle and I empty the liquid across the bed and curtains in a zigzag pattern.

I’m so nervous that when I remove the tin of lighter fuel from my pocket, it falls to the floor. I crouch to find it, shining my torch across the floor and under the bed.

And that’s when I see them.

Two young faces.

Wide-eyed and staring back at me.