and the cuffs of his pyjama bottoms were thick with mud, the rest of his body was spattered and the dark patch of urine around his crotch had grown. He imagined what Jordan would say if he saw that he’d wet himself in fright. A hammer blow hit when Dante realised that his brother was never going to say anything again, ever.
Dante looked back cautiously and was pleased to see the Führer heading deeper into the fields. The house provided visual cover, but he’d still hear if Holly started bawling and Dante needed both hands free to move Jordan’s racing bike and wheel out Lizzie’s.
He crouched slowly and moved Holly’s head back from his shoulder. Dante never usually carried her any further than the walk between the house and car and she was surprisingly heavy if you held her for long enough.
‘Good girl,’ Dante whispered, but as he moved the hand away from Holly’s neck he saw the huge triangle of blood that had run from the cut on her head and soaked into her sleeping suit. Holly made no sound as he rested her on the concrete and pulled his finger from her mouth.
The baby looked still, eyes closed and a glaze of sweat on her cheeks. She was breathing, but there was stiffness about her and a dead look that reminded him of a plastic doll.
‘I’m sorry I hit your head,’ Dante said quietly as he wheeled Lizzie’s bike away from the wall and ripped open the Velcro cover on the pouch.
After hurriedly throwing out Lizzie’s GCSE history textbook and science folder, he cradled Holly and lowered her carefully into the pouch. He pulled down the Velcro cover, but deliberately left it loose so that she could breathe.
Dante was much shorter than sixteen-year-old Lizzie. His feet didn’t reach the ground from the saddle and he had to tilt the bike uncomfortably to one side to push off, but after a wobbly start he took a final look back over his shoulder as he pedalled up the drive.
The trees overhanging the road gave him cover, but he worried that whoever the Führer had phoned would pull into the driveway before he made it out. When he got up to the road he reached forwards to flip on the headlight before looking both ways and swinging out.
4. HANDS
Salcombe wasn’t exactly a crime blackspot. The police spent most of their time dealing with parking offences, low-level drug dealing and burglaries of rarely used second homes. Even the Brigands knew better than to piss in their own backyard and usually kept whatever trouble they caused behind the high fences of their clubhouse.
A burned out house with five bodies inside was the biggest crime in decades. Twenty-six-year-old constable Kate McLaren had never known anything like it. The fire brigade’s first impression was arson, but the house didn’t burn completely and the charred corpse blocking the front doorway had an obvious bullet wound in her back.
The media had poured into the area, split between the crime scene and the car park around Kingsbridge police station four miles away. Photographers, journalists and TV vans fitted with satellite dishes were double parked in the street awaiting a press conference.
There had been no official announcement, but it was common knowledge that two of the dead were Brigands and many journalists jumped to the conclusion that an old grudge had flared between the Brigands and a local gang known as the Headless Corpses.
The key witness lay silently in a small room filled with toys and cushions. There was a two-way mirror, a video camera mounted above the doorway and anatomically correct dolls that little kids could use to re-enact the horrible things that adults did to them.
As the only woman on duty, Kate McLaren had been asked to play mother. Dante’s clothes had been taken for forensic purposes. After comforting him during a doctor’s examination and taking him upstairs for a hot shower, she’d persuaded the manager at Woolworths to open early so that she could buy underwear, tracksuit and trainers for age 7–9. Through all of this, and the four hours that followed, Dante hadn’t spoken.
The child-friendly room felt too warm as Kate stepped inside. Dante was warmer still, having buried himself under every cushion and soft toy he could find. The click of the door made his eyes swivel and he flicked some hair off his face before going back to being dead.
‘You didn’t eat any of your lunch,’ Kate said softly, as she stared at