And saw Dave’s car.
She let out a breath, felt her shoulders slump with relief. She rang the police station and told them all was well, just the gate not properly secured.
She drove in, and parked alongside Dave’s car. Where was he? He didn’t have a key. She thought he might be sleeping it off in the back seat of the car but when she looked there was no sign.
She shook her head, exasperated by his messing about. He could be in the summerhouse, keeping warm. She needed to disable the burglar alarm first before playing bloody hide and seek in the garden.
After unlocking the door and entering the code on the panel, Sammy’s birthday backwards, she listened for a moment to make completely sure that the house was empty. It sounded and felt exactly like it usually did when she was on her own. Besides, if anyone had got into the property it would’ve triggered other zones on the alarm but only the gate LED had been flashing on the controls.
Gill went back outside, called Dave’s name. Nothing. She swung the torch around, the cone of light travelling over the grass at the far side of the garden, picking out the white pips of the cherries below the tree. The birds had taken all the fruit. No sign of him out here.
The security lights snapped on as she crossed the patio and stepped on to the lawn. The light illuminated the lawn and shrubs but didn’t quite reach as far as the summerhouse. The garden was large, it went round the house on all four sides. It was something they’d asked for when they had the plans drawn up. The front of the house faced across the narrow road to the moors. The summerhouse at the rear caught the afternoon sun. It wasn’t used much these days, usually by Sammy, who would have mates round and set up camp out there, but even that had changed in recent months with the arrival on the scene of Orla. They had electricity out there but there was no glow of light from the mullioned windows.
She pointed the beam ahead of her and walked over the grass, damp with dew and spongy from the recent rain, to the summerhouse. One of the windows was broken; fragments of glass, uneven triangles, ringed the frame. She felt her heart pick up pace.
She shone the light and peered in, saw the camping chairs, folded leaning against the wall, the clutter of bats and sticks and racquets next to them and then Dave, prone on the sun-lounger, his face white in the gloom.
The door wasn’t quite closed and Gill caught the stink of vomit, high and sharp, as she pushed it open and stepped inside, saw by torchlight that his lips and chin were speckled with sick, there was a pool of it by his right cheek and a patch on that shoulder.