The man with the orange face

December 2003

Josie runs out to the road. The street is spinning and with each step her knees feel like they'll give way. She reaches the BMW. Freezes. Snaz has the key and he's still inside the house.

A light goes on in an upstairs window. A neighbour might have heard. Josie's hand trembles as she crouches by the car, trying to steady herself on the ground. She's wearing black, but someone might see her face, her hair. She tries the car door, forgetting it's locked. All she can do is wait for Snaz, but there's nowhere for her to hide.

She can't go back to the house for him. When she ran from the living room, Rook was on his knees, crouched beside the young man. 'He's dead. You've killed my boy.' And everywhere there's blood. The moment she fired reverberates in her mind.

She hears a clattering sound – a can rolling on the pavement – and, in the shadows, makes out someone coming. She stiffens upright, her brain says run, but panic keeps her rooted to the ground. This pure fear she's known once before.

It's too late, the man's seen her. His dog strains at its leash and jumps at her, makes her stumble against the car. 'He won't hurt you,' the man says. 'Don't be frightened. He's a big softy like me.' He's smiling. His face is orange. They're standing under a light.

Josie raises her hand to hide her face, but he's already seen her. 'Nice motor,' he says as the foul-smelling beast climbs her legs. She tries to push it off her and fumbles in her bag, pretending to search for the key.

'Come on, boy.' The man yanks his dog's lead. 'The pretty lass doesn't want to talk to us.' At last he's going, still watching her over his shoulder. She's clutching her phone, but there's no one she can ring for help. And her boyfriend is still in there with Rook. He should have followed her. Why is he still in the house?

A new dread engulfs her. Rook saw her shoot his son. He's going to go to the police. To stop him, she approaches the house again, scared even more than the first time and wishing she still has the gun. Her steps become shorter, more hesitant, on the gravel path that splits his weed-ravaged lawn.

Rook's front door is wide open. Did she leave it like that? Paralysed, Josie stands outside the porch, too frightened to go further, but unable to turn back. The police might already be coming. Or what if ...? The thought sends cold lightning through her body. When she dropped the gun, did Snaz pick it up or did Rook get to it first? She peers into the hall and calls to Snaz, but her voice is a whisper, she barely hears herself. And then comes the shot – like a firecracker exploding inside her head. Snaz is tearing towards her and before she can think or move he seizes her arm and they're running, she's too scared to check if they're being chased. He aims the key at the car, but the locks don't release. Again he presses it – she wants to grab the key from him and try it herself – until at last, the click. She heaves the door open, crashes into the passenger seat and the car's already moving as she pulls the door shut. At the street corner by the pillar-box is the man with the orange face. He's seen her. He knows.

The glare of the headlamps reflects in the wet tarmac. They pass Kilburn tube station, an off-licence, a fish-and-chip shop being locked up. Josie can hear her heartbeat above the engine.

How can it be so easy to kill someone? One startled reflex, that was all. Her eyes fix on her hands and she tugs at the fingers of her gloves, at the white cuffs of fur, but the leather seems glued to her skin. She rips them off inside out and tramples them under her feet.

'Is Rook dead?' she asks Snaz.

He doesn't answer though, and when they come to red traffic lights he doesn't slow down.

'Stop,' Josie manages. 'The cameras!'

From the top deck of a night bus a man looks down at them, and she shields herself from his stare. The signals take forever to change.

She notices a mark on Snaz's jacket. 'Your arm.' She points. Not one stain, but many, spattered all down his sleeve.

Snaz follows her eyes and studies the leather. 'I can't see anything.' He flicks the light switch. 'Where, Josie, where?'

'I thought I saw blood. Turn the light off.'

Finally he accelerates and the spots move, shadows cast by drops of water on the windscreen. Outside, a supermarket trolley lies abandoned by the roadside, and signposts point to Hampstead, Finchley Road and the West End.

By a bus shelter Snaz slams on the brakes. Josie pitches forward and catches the dashboard. She isn't wearing her belt. He launches himself from the car, and for a second she doesn't know what's going on until he hunches by the post and is sick.

She leans over to beg him to hurry up and, in the door pocket, spies the gun. Hide it. But where? She glances about the car, opens the glove compartment and remembers too late not to touch the weapon with her hands. There's nothing to wipe it with. Snaz keeps the BMW like a shrine. She pulls off her scarf and rubs it clean. Holding it, even through the material, makes her whole body crawl. They have to get rid of the gun.

When Snaz sits next to her, his face is alien. Beads of sweat glaze his dark olive skin. 'I had no other choice,' he says, in a voice that isn't his. 'He saw you kill his son.'

She stutters. 'No one else was meant to be there. You told me Rook lived alone.'

'I said we shouldn't go there, but you didn't listen to me.'

She has no answer and then he turns away. It's the worst silence she's endured since she was three years old, hiding under her bed from the man who was hurting Mummy, and no longer hearing her screams.

Perhaps a minute later, or it may be only seconds, two women step into the street. Arm-in-arm, they cut across the road. One wears a loop of tinsel like a garland round her neck. Josie watches through her fingers, hears the click-clack of their heels as they pass. The sound of their laughter makes her shrink.

When they've gone, Snaz touches her arm. 'It'll be okay, yeah?'

How can she tell him she's been seen?

'If we stick together,' he adds. She feels his hand shaking and he returns it to the wheel.

Josie watches the drops on the windscreen, the shops lining the street, and all the time knows the man will remember her. He spoke to her right outside the house. All she can think is that she has to get away, immediately, before he goes to the police. 'Drive,' she says. 'Take me home.'

Josie

August 1998

Snaz stopped by the iron gates, twice his height and coated with anti-climb paint. Trafalgar Lodge. With its four-columned porch and circular drive, the house could have been transported there from Hollywood. It didn't surprise him to find the side gate locked. He pressed the button on the intercom and waited for a response, beginning to doubt why he'd come. He had no chance with a girl like Josie. Except, she'd phoned him and invited him here. She wouldn't have asked him round if she had no interest in him at all.

A crackle, then Josie's voice: 'Hello. Yes?'

'It's Snaz.'

'Oh, hi.' He heard a buzzer and the side gate glided open.

Snaz checked his reflection in the polished plaque that had the house name embossed on it. He did up the top button of his shirt, then undid it again ... it looked stupid done up without a tie. This feels like going for a job...