SIXTY-ONE

Stephanie heard two sets of footsteps slowly make their way to the door. One of them had to drag itself down the corridor. The second set of footsteps followed patiently and in silence.

When the door was unlocked, she heard someone breathing heavily from the exertion of turning the key and the door handle.

The door opened slightly, but no one came through. Not for a while anyway. Voices entered instead.

‘I want it done by the time I come down, yeah?’ It was Fergal, but whoever he spoke to did not answer, which angered him. ‘Yeah? You fucking deaf as well as stupid?’

‘Awright, awright,’ Knacker said in reply, and in a voice that suggested a speech impediment.

‘She’s the reason you got fucked up, so deal wiv it or I will deal wiv you.’

‘I said awright, yeah?’

‘She ain’t done by the time I’m done with the other slit, then you can start cutting your own polyfene to size. You got it? Five minutes, tops.’

‘Yeah,’ Knacker said quietly.

‘Show me.’

A whisking of a Gore-Tex coat.

‘And what about the other fing?’

In the corridor outside, Stephanie heard a rustle of plastic.

‘All right,’ Fergal said. ‘I find you is lying about doing this, I’ll kick the last few teef out your face. Don’t you unlock her till she’s cold neither.’ At that, Fergal walked back to the stairwell, presumably to attend to his own business with Svetlana.

The subtext of the conversation, and the fact that they didn’t care what she heard, brought Stephanie close to a faint. Momentarily, she could not feel her legs or her arms, and was so frightened she could no longer see straight.

And then Knacker shuffled into the room to kill her.