Surrender Read Online Free Page B

really know you’ve killed anyone before. Youcould drive away with my five thousand and that’s the last I’ll hear from you. You could have read about that girl, the prostitute, in the papers and then gone around telling people you did it, so as to — well, I don’t know, to impress them.’
    Gemma’s voice had gone up an octave as she searched for a convincingly aggrieved, indignant tone. She was pushing her luck and she would have known it. I imagined I could hear the faint, fast beat of her heart, but it could have been my own pulse racing.
    I imagined Sean listening to all this from the car nearby. Tense, alert, hand on the door handle. Ready to respond as soon as she gave the signal. I bet he was swearing at Gemma under his breath, at the risk she was taking in pushing Snow that hard, and maybe regretting he’d agreed to be part of this. I’d heard him mumble and swear like that often enough when he was frustrated with me. The memory made me smile.
    ‘Well, I’ll tell you what wasn’t in the papers.’ Snow’s voice boomed out as he moved his lips so close to the microphone I could hear the sibilant click and pop of spit against his teeth. Gemma’s wire would have been attached near her collar. I could picture Snow’s lips and teeth, feel his breath hot and moist on her neck. ‘I stuck that bitch with a knife right between the shoulder blades. I thought she’d die pretty much straight away but it took eight minutes. Eight fucking minutes. I timed it. Jesus, there was enough time for an ad break! I thought about sticking her again, get it over with, but it was kind of interesting to watch. She fought it. That chick really did not want to die.’
    My hands were shaking so badly the coffee was spilling. I placed my mug on the floor. The room was retreating and expanding like lungs. There was just Snow’s voice. Nothing but his voice. Bile rose in my throat.
    ‘And you know what? I thought of doing her in those eightminutes. I got her dress hitched up, and I was all good to go, but she was wearing these panties — like kids’ panties with fucking puppies and balloons or something on them. Well, I may be some things, but I’m not a pervert. Those little kids’ panties put me right off.’
    Wolf yelped in pain. I was clutching the roll at the back of his neck so hard I’d hurt him. I didn’t want to hear any more. I tried to stand but my legs wouldn’t support me. Snow hadn’t finished. He laughed. A thin, unlikely laugh for such a huge man.
    ‘By the time I’d ripped them off her and was ready to go again, she was dead. I thought about doing her anyway but …’ Snow was still laughing as I staggered across the room and slammed down the laptop lid, shutting him up.
    The room had retreated entirely, leaving me in a black void. There was a roaring in my head and I was pretty sure it wasn’t the beating of angels’ wings the nuns used to talk about. I took deep breaths, willing myself not to pass out. That film director had been right: the bear-man’s girlfriend should never, ever listen to the sound of her loved one being mauled.
    Rabbits. On her underwear. When Niki was five she went through a phase of what’s now called obsessive compulsive disorder, shorthanded by the familiar to OCD. Dad had yet another new live-in girlfriend who found his youngest child ‘difficult’ and there were murmurings that perhaps Niki should spend some time getting ‘the kind of help she deserves’. In other words, Dad’s girlfriend thought life would be a lot more fun without this creepy kid hanging around touching everything three times and counting her footsteps and generally being a pain in the arse and an embarrassment at dinner parties. Even I could see that unless Niki stopped doing that shit she was going to be locked up and therapied to hell.
    She’d become obsessed with the idea of luck. Good luck, bad luck, how arbitrarily it was handed out. Not that she talked aboutit like that at five years old,