the bed. Her body was covered with sheets, and there was some kind of raised chicken-wire structure encasing the lower half of her body – more specifically, the part where her legs should be.
Royle went to her and sat down in the chair at the side of the bed. He groped for her hand. She grabbed his fingers, squeezing lightly, with all the strength that she had.
“What happened to you?”
The heart rate monitor increased in volume, the beat becoming more erratic. Wanda let go of his hand. She reached up, to her face, and removed the oxygen mask.
“No, don’t...” He tried to replace the mask, but she turned her head on the pillow. Her face was white. Not pale, but white.
“Royle...” Her voice was barely much more than a whisper. He could hear her pain; he knew how difficult it must be for her to speak. “Go back... go to the Grove... something... coming... stop it... stop it and save your baby... the last... Gone Away girl... go to her family...”
Her body went limp, her mouth hung open. She was dead. She’d hung on for as long as she could, until she could see him and pass on this oblique message. He was meant to go back to the Concrete Grove, to witness whatever the hell was going on there and somehow prevent events that he could not understand.
He had no idea why this all seemed to revolve around the Gone Away Girls, but it almost made sense. In terms of his failure to solve the case, it made a lot of sense. But still it was difficult to believe that his personal obsession should make such a tangible impact on the world. There was something larger than his own despair going on here, but he was only being allowed glimpses: tiny snatches, like weak light through a broken window.
Somehow he needed to suspend his disbelief and find some faith in himself, because if Wanda was right, the life of his baby depended on what he did next.
Royle closed Wanda’s eyes with a gentle stroke of his hand across her face. “Thank you,” he said, and left the room to try and take care of things – just as his wife had asked.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
THE FIRST POLICE car arrived about fifteen minutes after the shot had been fired. Then, pretty quickly, the street outside Abby’s house was cordoned off and several more vehicles arrived on the scene – three more police cars, a Black Maria van and an ambulance.
Erik watched from the bedroom window as the TV news crew set up their cameras. Some pretty blonde woman in an expensive suit delivered a to-camera update. She kept turning to indicate the house, lifting her head, tossing her hair, and Erik started to realise that he was about to be famous.
“Don’t fucking move.” He stood before Abby, grinning. She couldn’t move, of course; he’d tied her to the radiator with packing tape after he’d watched her get dressed. Then he’d gone down to the car to fetch Monty. He hadn’t made a very good job of the bindings, because he’d been in a rush, but they had held her long enough for him to get back here.
He turned and left the room, ignoring for now the ruined shrine and the motionless bastardised figure that was standing in the corner, watching in silence. He went downstairs and checked the front door again. He didn’t want anyone coming in; didn’t even want them walking up the path to the doorstep. He knelt down, lifted the letterbox, and shouted to the gathered crowd: “Anyone comes near this door and she’s dead. I’ll shoot her in the fucking face.” He wasn’t sure if he meant it, but the proximity of Monty’s mutated remains made it difficult to focus. Everything was fuzzy, as if he’d been on a day-long alcohol binge and somehow managed to drink himself almost sober.
As one of the police officers outside started speaking through a bullhorn, Erik let the flap of the letterbox drop back into place and retreated further inside the house. He went into the living room and stared at Monty, who was curled up like an ugly house pet on the sofa in front of the television. Images of Erik’s face flashed across the screen. The text beneath the photographs described him as a ‘local gangster’, a ‘psychopath’ and a ‘danger to society’. Perhaps he was all of those things; perhaps he was none of them. It didn’t matter now,