A Silent Death Peter May (i read book TXT) 📖

chair and feels her well-travelled path to the kitchen to fill his bowls with food and water. He follows her, but is making no attempt to eat or drink. His front paws are up now on her thighs and her waist, very nearly knocking her over. He never jumps up.

She pushes him away and speaks sharply. Something she never does. And immediately regrets it. But it must have brought a response, for she can no longer feel him within touching distance. As she makes her way in the dark to her bedroom she is terrified that somehow she might trip over him.

The odour is less invasive here. She crosses to the window and fumbles for the catch to open it. But it is already open. She can feel the hot air from outside seeping into the room, and is aware that she is having trouble breathing.

A prickle of perspiration stings her face as she makes her way into the tiny hallway at the top of the stairs. Out here the smell is much stronger. The heat is nearly overpowering, and the air seems to fibrillate almost tangibly against her skin. She feels Sandro pushing hard against her leg again and reaches down to place a hand on his upturned head. She is certain now that he is barking.

An overwhelming sense of dread slowly envelops her. Invisibly invasive, like nuclear fallout. She reaches forward and finds the handle on the door to the box room where Cristina or Nuri sometimes stay over on the fold-up single bed against the far wall.

The stench hits her immediately, like a physical blow, and it is all she can do not to be sick. A heavy scent, like rotten eggs. And something else, almost sweet, like sugared ammonia. She feels flies battering against her face. There has been a problem in here before with regular hatchings, but these are frenzied. She feels several crawl into her mouth and spits in disgust, stumbling forward waving her hands about her face. But somehow Sandro has insinuated himself between her feet and she falls heavily to the floor.

Her hip and shoulder are bruised from the fall, and it is with difficulty that she overcomes the pain to get to her hands and knees. Crawling forward now, seeking some leverage to help her back to her feet. Until her hands find something soft beneath them, smooth and abnormally cold in this heat.

The stink is so all consuming now that her olfactory senses have very nearly shut down. It has ceased to be so much an odour as a wholly engulfing sensation of fear.

With both hands she explores the planes and curves of the softness emerging from the miasma that consumes her, only now admitting that it is a body lying on the floor before her. A body from which all warmth has long since departed. Muscles stiffened by rigor mortis, skin crawling with maggots. Her trembling fingers track up along the buttons of the shirt to the neck, and the faintest stubble on the chin.

She knows the features of this face. Features etched in her memory from twenty years ago, and remembered again from only yesterday. The smooth curve of the brow, the hair thinning now across the crown. The face of the man who had come looking for her again after all these years, only to meet his fate at the hands of a psychopath. His blood sticky like glue on her hands.

Her scream is filled with horror, and pity, and pain. A cry in the dark heard by no one. Not even herself.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Mackenzie’s foot was pressed hard to the metal, engine screaming, and still it was all he could do to keep his underpowered Seat in touch with the blue and orange flashing lights of Cristina’s SUV.

It had been a roller-coaster drive from Marbella on the AP7, vehicles pulling over at the sound of the siren to let Cristina past on the off-ramp from the motorway, and at the Estepona roundabout. Now they flew under the overpass at the Condesa Golf Hotel, and the lights of a whole body of police vehicles and ambulances became visible in the parking area outside the Eroski Centre. Advertising hoardings stood atop a double-storey yellow building with red shutters on the second level. Dia Maxi. Supermercado. Helicopteros Sanitarios. Marlows Fish and Chips. Behind it, brick-coloured apartment blocks stepped up the hillside, and palm fronds rattled in the heat of the late afternoon breeze.

Cristina nearly overturned her vehicle as she wrenched the wheel hard right at the roundabout and turned down into the car park. She was out of the SUV and running for the ramp to the underground car park before Mackenzie had even brought his car to a stop.

A dozen or more police officers and Guardia Civil stood around in huddled groups. They moved silently aside as Cristina sprinted down the ramp. Inquisitive shoppers from the supermarket crowded hastily erected crime-scene tape. Restaurant staff from Mini India, and medics from the Helicopteros medical centre stood along the first-floor walkway, staring down with naked curiosity. Medical assistance had been instantly to hand, but there was nothing to be done.

Mackenzie ran down the ramp after Cristina. Into the fetid gloom of the subterranean parking lot. Half the roof lights were broken. The rows of red and white pillars supporting the roof itself were chipped and scored. A single vehicle sat on flat tyres in dusty abandon at the far end of it. Beyond the wreck, a colourfully graffitied wall was nearly obscured by darkness. The underground entrance to the supermarket itself was shuttered, and looked as if it might have been that way for some time.

Almost in the centre of the parking slots, lamps had been erected to cast a surreal light on a scene of carnage. A car, which Mackenzie immediately recognized as Antonio’s, sat skewed at an angle, the driver’s door lying wide open. Antonio himself lay in a twisted heap beside it. The force