Free Lost Girl by Adam Nevill Page A

eyes.
    ‘You ain’t the filth,’ the man said, almost joyously, as if he’d bested the father at some ruse, before raising his arm to hurl the bottle. Without a thought the father
shot through the torch’s yellow glare.
    The snarling face jerked. There was a brief hint of a small black hole, punched above an eye, before the back of the grey head scattered wetly across the messy room, like a handful of pebbles
flung hard through a leafy bush.
    The father lowered the gun and moved away.
    Bowles now sat with his back to the toilet, a dirty towel pressed into his face.
    Dear God
. He’d just murdered a man while swept along in a rush of anger, adrenaline, joyous endorphins bathing his shoulder from the inside, and a reckless desire to destroy
anyone who opposed his presence. The car was a long and terrible run away. Shots fired would sometimes bring a patrol car. The address wasn’t in the town centre, where violence was habitual,
but would righteous neighbours, sharing these hideous walls, know the sound of a handgun? He wondered all of this while aware of the wasted seconds. The weapon had made a short, dull, slapping
sound and was hardly fearsome on the ear.
    The father looked to the next set of stairs, which led to the loft conversion. A closed white door was visible. Feet retreated from behind it and lowered voices rumbled. But whoever was there
soon fell quiet as if they knew he was listening to them. The father recalled a loft conversion seen from outside. ‘Who is that?’ he said to Bowles. ‘Up there?’
    Bowles stayed quiet.
    Beside his foot, the father saw what he had been struck with: the polished handle of a snooker cue, unscrewed for demolishings in confined spaces.
    Bowles peered at the father around the side of the towel, with one sphincter eye. ‘What you want?’
    The father had to swallow to speak. Still so deeply puzzled by his actions, he also needed to force himself to remember why he had come to this place where he had become so unwound, so quickly.
‘Information.’ His good hand opened the rucksack. Two of his shaky fingers found the photograph of his daughter. He went and placed it on the bathroom floor, stepped back, then
retrained the handgun on the big man.
    The father glanced again, over his shoulder, at the loft door when a bed strained its springs as someone above climbed onto a mattress. Curious, the father moved the torch onto the door and saw
the padlock, then returned his sweat-stinging eyes to the figure on the bathroom floor. ‘What am I going to find up there?’
    ‘Nuffing.’
    ‘That so?’ The father wanted to fire the gun again before the police arrived, so that Bowles would never get away with what he had done in this house and in other places. ‘The
picture. Look at it.’ The father shone the torch on the photograph. ‘Lean forward and take a look.’
    Bowles obeyed, then leaned back. ‘I didn’t take her.’
    ‘Who did?’
    He shook his head.
    ‘Give me a clue or this might go off again.’ The father shook the gun in the air.
    ‘I tell you anyfing, youse will kill me.’
    ‘Your friend’s dead. I don’t want to kill again, but I will. The photo.’
    Bowles shifted about where he sat. ‘You have to ask Rory about her.’
    ‘Who’s Rory?’
    ‘He lives down the front. Says to me, he knew who done that one.’
    Bowles’s one available eye closed, issued fresh tears. The father scrutinized the man’s face. ‘Second name? Address?’
    ‘Forrester. Lives in one of them old hotels. The Commodore. You won’t get near him though, cus he’s mobbed up wiv the Kings.’ Bowles smirked as if proud of even a minor
association with this group:
Kings
. He was referring to an organized criminal gang, who would be running something in and out of the area: drugs, wealthy refugees, prostitutes, meat,
medicine, like all of the other gangs; mostly stuff that was no longer manufactured in the country any more, or exported from others, which was nearly anything