Free Decay Inevitable by Conrad Williams Page A

that supposed to mean? Don’t talk copspeak with me. What did you do?”
    “I was in a fight. A knife was pulled–”
    “Oh, Will...”
    “Not me. I didn’t have the knife. I headbutted this guy. Broke his nose.”
    They were quiet for a while. Then Elisabeth said, “That’s why we aren’t together any more.”
    “You don’t have to explain, Eli. That was five years ago. I can work it out for myself. But I can’t go to them. They’ll think I did it.”
    “What will you do now?”
    “I have to go up there. Catriona might still be alive.”
    Elisabeth was becoming, in these moments, much as she used to be when she grew agitated by their arguments. She drew breath as though to say something and then fell silent. It was like watching a shy person struggling to express herself.
    “The police,” she blurted finally, persistently. “You must go to them.”
    “I can’t,” he said, simply. “There’s no time. They wouldn’t listen to me.”
    “I’ll back you up.”
    “No. I have to go now. Do you still have the car?”
    It was as if, in a second, Elisabeth’s rigidity towards him had returned. She gave him a better view of her chin. “Fuck off, Will. My help desk has just closed.”
    “Eli–”
    “Don’t Eli me. You’re on your own.”
    The burbling computer and a slow foot on broken glass in the street filled the silence. Will was grateful that Elisabeth wasn’t pushing for him to leave, but he knew that it wouldn’t be long in coming.
    He said, “Can you smell anything burning?”
    Elisabeth regarded him blankly. “Do I look like I’m cooking?”
    “Well something’s caught. Are you sure you haven’t got anything on the stove?”
    A finger of smoke curled around the door.
    Elisabeth said, “Shit.”
    She flew upstairs to the kitchen, but there was nothing on the cooker. Will checked her when she hurried back into the hallway. Something in his poise stopped her dead.
    He put his finger to his lips; his reddened eyes shifted their focus to a point behind her. She turned to find the back door smouldering, a black handprint gaining definition in the grain of its wood.
    “What–” she managed, before Will gripped her hand.
    “We have to leave,” he said. “Now.”
    She nodded.
    “Where’s the car?”
    They left by the front door. The sun was a fat, orange, cold thing wrapped in mist, low in the too-blue sky. Frost marbled the roads. A heavy woman in a nurse’s uniform laboured over the handles of an ageing bicycle.
    “Show me,” said Will.
    They hurried to the corner of Dartmouth Park Road as a series of muffled crashes peppered the stillness they’d vacated.
    “I was followed,” Will said.
    “Who?” Elisabeth glanced back at him as he propelled her along the pavement. She caught his strangled answer I don’t know , and then her attention was dragged over his shoulder by frenetic movement in their wake. Elisabeth could see, over the top of Mr. Royle’s neatly clipped hedges, a head, jerky with intent. Whoever it was moved fast. Faster than them.
    “Where’s this fucking car?”
    Elisabeth was about to answer when their pursuer stepped out from behind the hedge, sucking the breath from her.
    “How can she run?” she managed at last, before Will pulled her off the road. He had spotted Elisabeth’s car – a cherry-red Volkswagen Golf – parked in a familiarly skewed fashion in a side street. It still bore a scratch from a visit they had made to Abersoch years before.
    “ Keys ,” he demanded. He was wondering how the woman could walk, let alone run. Her legs had been molten, running into each other in shapeless flesh loops before rediscovering normality.
    One hand had hovered beneath her chin, like a soup-eater aware of his lack of skill with the spoon, to scoop back great drifts of skin that oozed off the boss of her skull.
    Elisabeth was laughing, her eyes as big as eggs. “The keys are on the fridge. Next to a bag of plums.”
    They moved on, past Elisabeth’s car,