Thicker Than Water

The shock and pain of it almost made her release her hold on life right then and there, but she held on by main force, determined to stay in the world long enough to see that Kenny got his come-uppance.

So while Kenny stalked Matt, she stalked Kenny. And when Kenny finally baited his sick, over-elaborate little trap, she was watching from a little way off. She saw Matt keep the rendezvous. She saw him walk away. She saw Kenny cut his own arms, his own face, squeezing out enough blood so that he could write Matt’s name on his windshield.

He was crazed, she said, revelling in it. There was no doubt at all that the wound-demon was inside him by this time, influencing his thoughts and actions. It wasn’t responsible for Kenny’s hatred of Matt: that had always been there, for as long as he’d known that Matt was Mark’s father. But it was certainly the demon that made Kenny’s revenge take the shape it did.

Anita watched the parked car for more than an hour. When she was certain that Kenny had passed out from blood loss, she moved in and finished the job with Roman’s Swiss army penknife.

It had just come to her, as she stared down at him, that she was never going to have a better chance: that her zombie body was too slow and uncoordinated for her to fight him when he was awake and alert. The temptation had grown in her, and suddenly she’d had the knife in her hand and she was working it backwards and forwards in Kenny’s neck. The wound-demon again, maybe, although God knows she had reason enough on her own account to want Kenny dead. ‘Cutting that bastard’s throat was the best thing I ever did,’ she said, through lips that were now a cyanotic blue. ‘I just wish - I’d done it back when we were all - kids. I wish—’

She shook her head, unable to put the waste and the wistfulness into words.

‘The penknife,’ Coldwood said, ever the consummate cop. ‘The one you used to finish Seddon off. Is there any chance you—’

‘It was in my jacket,’ Anita said. ‘The pocket of my jacket. And the jacket was covered in blood.

I couldn’t bear the feel of it on my skin. I took it off and I - I threw it away. I don’t know where.’

‘I do,’ I said to Coldwood. ‘There’s a car park underneath that underpass. I looked over the edge when you first called me to the crime scene, and I saw a jacket there behind some wheelie bins. You probably can’t see it at all from the ground, so it may still be there.’

Coldwood went away to make another phone call, and Anita lapsed into silenceÛed eig.