The House Guest - Mark Edwards Page 0,47

the head or heart? Is there a moment of knowledge, of realising this is the end, before you die?

But nothing happened. No one came running towards me from across the street. No shots rang out.

I passed the foot of the bridge and found myself at a busy intersection. Life. Movement. People. I had never been so happy to hear the great cacophonous rush of the city. I followed the crowd across, aware that my pulse had slowed, and feeling less afraid as I turned into the quieter street that led to Callum’s apartment.

And then a black car with tinted windows pulled up beside me.

I scrambled backwards, looking for somewhere to hide, a wall to hurdle or a garbage can to squat behind. This was it. I would soon be in the morgue beside Jack. I would never know what had happened to Ruth.

The rear window slid down and a wild part of me expected to see the Devil sitting there, ready to offer me a deal for my soul.

It was Callum.

‘Get in,’ he said.

‘Where are we going?’ I asked. The interior of the car was cavernous but ancient. There was a thick screen between us and the driver, and the smell of decades of stale cigarette smoke clung to the cracked leather. It seemed like the kind of car a mob boss might have been chauffeured around in twenty years ago.

‘I want you to meet someone,’ he said.

‘Who? The reporter you went to see earlier?’

He nodded. ‘It’ll be useful for you to hear what she has to say. Now, do you want a beer?’ He fished out a six-pack of lagers from the footwell. ‘It might calm your nerves. No? Suit yourself.’

We drove out of the city. On the way, I told him everything that had happened, from my encounter with Mets up to Jack’s murder.

‘Holy mother . . . I didn’t think things would move this fast.’

‘I think someone might have been following me too,’ I said. ‘Probably the same person who tried to run me over.’

He held up a can of beer. ‘Sure you don’t want one of these?’

I watched the city recede, the lights of the five boroughs fading as we hit the highway and then found ourselves on curving roads crowded by trees. Callum sipped his beer quietly while my brain replayed the events of the day on a nightmarish loop. I was just about to give in and ask for a beer when he said, ‘This is it’, and we pulled off the road and drove up a long track into the woods. It was pitch-black, the car’s headlights picking out the reaching silhouettes of trees and exposing the dark places between.

We pulled up outside a large cabin and Callum said, ‘We’re here.’

We got out and I followed him to the front door. I heard a whirr and looked up to find myself staring into a security camera, its red light blinking. Behind us, the car slid away into the night.

The door opened and a dog immediately started barking, loud and close; so loud I thought it might shake the pictures from the walls. A woman shouted, ‘Quiet, Julius’, and then there she was, beckoning us in. She was wearing a baseball cap, from which a few locks of grey stringy hair had escaped, and, strikingly, yellow-tinted glasses that covered most of the upper half of her face. She was broad and short, a Janis Joplin T-shirt stretched across her chest. She wore a copper bracelet on one wrist.

‘Come on, come on.’ Her voice was barely audible above the dog, which continued to bark like only the taste of blood would satisfy it. I hurried inside after Callum, and turned to see her peer out at the woods before shutting and locking the door, sliding across one, two, three heavy bolts.

It was dimly lit inside the house. Somewhere nearby, the dog growled, muffled by a closed door. The woman yelled at it again – her shouts had no effect – before turning to face me.

Callum jerked his chin in my direction. ‘Wanda, this is Adam. Adam, Wanda.’

I put my hand out to shake hers but she ignored it. Instead, she said, ‘Put your arms up’, and proceeded to pat me down like an airport security officer.

‘He’s clean,’ Callum said.

‘How do you know?’ Wanda responded, moving down to my legs and running her hands down one thigh then the other. ‘Take off your shoes.’

‘Oh, come on,’ Callum said. ‘He’s not wearing a wire. And he definitely