Denise Mina - The End of the Wasp Season

Still Midnight

Slip of the Knife

The Dead Hour

Field of Blood

Deception

Resolution

Exile

Garnethill

The silence startled Sarah from a hundred-fathom sleep. She opened her eyes to the red blink of the digital alarm clock: 16:32.

The yips of small dogs came from one of the gardens downhill, insistent, ricocheting off the ceiling and around the curved room.

Quiet. The radio was off. Sarah routinely left the radio on in the kitchen when she was here, tuned to Radio 4. The conversational coo took the edge off the emptiness. Heard from another room it gave the impression that the house was full of charming, chatty people from Hampshire. Burglars might find that strange in Glasgow but it was plausible in the exclusive village of Thorntonhall. Sarah left strategic lights on too: hall, stairs, anywhere that couldnt be seen into. She had a talent for making things seem.

Quiet. This was not the burgling hour. The house was at the top of the hill, visible in daylight, especially at this time when neighbors were out in their grounds, critiquing the gardeners work or goading fat pedigree dogs around. A thief would have to be very confident or very stupid to break in now.

Exhausted and desperate to sleep, she considered an innocent explanation: either a fuse in the kitchen had blown or the old radio had finally stopped working. Everything in the house was old and needed fixed.

So she decided that the radio had died, smiled and shut her eyes, curling up under the crisp duvet, almost glad to have woken up for the delicious tumble back to sleep.

Her mind slid softly into the dark warm.

A sudden crack of floorboard at the bottom of the stairs. Her eyes snapped open.

She raised her head from the pillow, the better to hear.

A shoe scuffing over carpet, amplified by the stairwell and a hissed two-word instruction. A high voice. A womans voice. Go on.

Sleep-befuddled, Sarah sat up, imagining her mother on her stairlift, her whirring, inexorable rise to the landing. Her mother, pinch-mouthed and imperious. Her mother wanting answers: why did they fix on that care plan? Why was Sarah never there to bathe her? Why didnt Cardinal Geoffrey conduct her funeral service?

Nonsense.

She threw the duvet off and swung her feet to the floor, attempted to stand up but her drowsy knees failed her and she toppled back, landing awkwardly on the bed with an undignified bounce.

Exasperated with herself, she realized that she was vulnerable because she was at home. Sarah had been in strange places, scary places and managed to stay alert and calm. She always mapped the fire exits on the way in, arrived in charge and stayed in charge, but here she was defenseless.

But this was different to those stranger rooms because here she was a normal householder. She could call the police, ask them to come and help her.

Relieved, she flopped forwards over her knees, reached into her handbag at the side of the bed. Her nervous fingers fumbled past tissues and receipts and passport to the cold metal back of her iPhone. She pressed the button as she pulled it out and was delighted to see the face light up. She had turned it on as she stood in the aisle of first class, waiting to get off at Glasgow Airport. She didnt always. Sometimes she left it off for twenty-four hours until shed had a sleep. Now, using both hands to concentrate on the screen, she unlocked it, selected phone, selected keyboard, jabbed 999 and pressed call just in time to hear movement outside her bedroom door.

It was more of a sensation than a sound, air shifting on the landing. A body brushed the wall by the door, low down, as startling as cold fingers to the small of a bare back.

She shoved the iPhone into a little cave in the duvet and stood up.

The door moaned softly as it fell open.

It was not the ghost of her mother but two teenage boys, gawky, awkward. They wore baggy black jogging trousers and matching T-shirts, inside out, the seams showing all the way down the legs, along the arms. They wore the same black trainers too. The strange uniform made them look like the members of a cult.

Tentative at first, shuffling, they occupied the doorway. Not desperate but confident, boys on a dare.

She almost laughed with relief. What are you doing in here?

One of them was tall, shaven-headed. He couldnt look at her and squirmed slightly at the sound of her voice, stood sideways in the door, his shoulder out on the landing as if hed like to leave.

Look, she said, get out of my house. It isnt empty, this house

The other boy had longer hair, black and thick, but he wasnt tentative. He was angry, standing square to the door frame, looking straight at her, taking in her face.

Sarah knew she wasnt very pretty but she made the best of herself, was slim, had a good haircut. In a kind light she could be thought attractive. This boy wasnt finding her so. He was disgusted by her.

The taller one elbowed his friend. The angry boy didnt break eye contact with her but answered him with the jut of a chin, ordering him into the room. The tall friend flinched, giving a half shake of his head. They continued their conversation in micro-gestures, the angry boy holding her eye, hating her.

My mother died, she said, voice fading as it dawned on her that they werent surprised to find her here. I still live

Wheres your kids? asked the angry boy.

Kids?

Youve got kids. He seemed very certain.

No, she said, I havent got kids.

Yes, you fucking have. He glanced around the room as if her children might be hidden under the edge of the duvet, in the armoire, under the bed.

His voice was high, the voice from the stairs, but the accent was what she noticed: not Glaswegian, not west coast at all. It wasnt even the tempered, indeterminate Scottish of the local kids. He sounded east coast but English: Edinburgh and London maybe. Theyd come here, not stumbled across the house, but had traveled here. She suddenly had no idea what this was.

Sarah tried again. Youre in the wrong house.

But he looked at her and said firmly, No, Im not.

The money. They must be here for the money. It was the only thing in the house they could have come for. And yet the cash was in the kitchen and this room was through a door, along a corridor, across a hall, upstairs. They had come here looking for her.

A little more confident now, she looked at them afresh. They werent getting the money. Shed deny all knowledge if they asked because shed called the police now, and they would come and take the boys away and question them and she needed to sound innocent.

Look, she said, trying to sound reasonable, you should go. I called the police a minute ago, theyll be on their way. You could get in a lot of trouble being here.

The angry boy held her eye as he slid his foot into the room, his toe touching the edge of the yellow Persian carpet, invading the sacred neutral space between them. He saw her bristle with alarm, she saw a spark of empathy on his face before it hardened and he jutted his jaw defiantly. He moved his foot forward again, half an inch, until it lipped over the fringed edge, telling her that he could come over to her, that he would come over.