Falling Glass Read Free Page B

herself but it still didn’t feel quite…Something Claire had said, something about a dog.
    She turned and looked at Dave’s house. The newspaper. The truck. Wasn’t Dave supposed to be on earlies?
    She walked back to her own caravan. Looked in. Toilet flushing. Claire reading.
    “Claire, darling, could you do me a favour and tell me what time it is?” she asked.
    “Mother, please!” Claire said.
    “What time is it?” Rachel asked more firmly.
    “It’s eight, okay? Now can I read?”
    Eight o’clock. Dave should have left an hour ago. She stared at the new Toyota down the trail. No one in the cab. The thing just sitting there.
    And what about Thresher? Where was he?
    “Thresher?” she called. “Thresher, boy.”
    She waited.
    Nothing.
    “I’ve got a treat for you. Thresher? Thresher!”
    No barking, no running.
    “Thresher!”
    A chill along her vertebrae.
    She dropped the wine glass, tied the robe about her and ran back inside the caravan. She took the book from Claire’s hands.
    “Mum!” Claire screamed.
    She grabbed Claire’s wrist, squeezed.
    “Mum, you’re hurting me.”
    “Get dressed. Pack a bag. Everything you need. Grab my stuff too and get your sister dressed. Now!”
    “What’s the matter?” Claire asked. She looked frightened.
    “Get dressed, do it now! Tell your sister.”
    “What is it?”
    “Don’t argue with me. Go!”
    Rachel went to the freezer, took out the Heckler and Koch P30, flipped off the safeties. “Mum, Claire says I have to get dressed,” Sue whined.
    “Do as your sister says! Do it! Get dressed and pack a bag,” Rachel ordered with cold authority. She took a deep breath and exited the trailer. She held the P30 two-handed in front of her, finger next to but not on the trigger. She couldn’t shoot a cop. It was twenty-five years minimum if you killed a peeler.
    Her flip-flops were onomatopoeing so she kicked them off. She walked barefoot to Dave’s, looked in. Blinds down. TV dead. She tried the door. Locked. She crouched down and pushed open the dog flap. She peered inside but she couldn’t see anything.
    “Dave?”
    No answer, but most nights he slept with earplugs.
    She walked round the back of the caravan. Here the clayey dirt became sand and the sand showed a russet-coloured blood trail that went off into the woods.
    “Jesus,” she whispered.
    She knelt down and touched it. Dry but not caked.
    Swallowing hard she followed it into the trees.
    “Thresher?” she tried quietly.
    And then she thought of a worse scenario: “Dave?”
    She looked back at her caravan. Everything seemed okay.
    She stepped over a fallen tree and there, about fifteen yards into the big firs, was Thresher covered in ants with a puncture wound in his head.
    She bent down. Cold to the touch. Died a few hours ago. He’d gone after whoever had come and they’d killed him.
    “Good boy,” she whispered. “You did well. Good boy.”
    She was surprised to see that the blood trail did not abruptly end at Thresher’s body but instead went deeper into the wood.
    She followed it easily over the dense layer of pine needles on the forest floor. Even if she hadn’t been schooled by her scoutmaster da she still could have tracked this guy.
    Heavy footprints, a couple of coins, blood, one leg dragging behind the other.
    At one point he’d fallen and it had taken him a while to get back up again.
    He was crawling now, not walking.
    She found him barely a hundred yards from the caravan park.
    Thresher had torn him up pretty well. He was about thirty-five, wearing a leather jacket, black jeans, white sneakers. He had two gold earrings, a pale pock-marked face, a thin moustache and a Mafiya teardrop under his left eye. Lovely.
    He was covered in sweat and he’d contrived to break his leg.
    In his left hand was a mobile phone, in the right a handgun.
    He was definitely not an Irish cop nor Interpol nor Special Branch.
    His eyes were closed but he looked up when she approached.
    “ Spacaba