Martha’s car pulled up on the pavement outside my house. I looked up at the window, tried to wrap my head around the last day, around everything that had happened, everything that was happening.

  “We’ll catch this fucker, Blake,” Martha said. “Even if it means me opening my legs for him, we’ll catch him.”

  I grinned at Martha as I opened her car door and stepped into the cool evening breeze. “Please don’t open your legs. I wouldn’t want to send him on an even more murderous rampage.”

  She jolted the car forward and made me tumble out onto the pavement, and we both laughed.

  “Sleep well, hun,” she said.

  “You’re gonna have to stop calling me that.”

  “What? Hun? What’s wrong with hun, hun?”

  “Ergh! There it is again. Bugger off. I’ve got some ‘Breaking Bad’ to watch.”

  She stuck up her middle finger and sped down the road, away into the darkness.

  I smiled as I approached the front door of my flat. Unfamiliar feeling, to be honest. Yes, Mart might be a woman now and, yes, it was weird as shit to get used to. But Martha was good fun. Just as much good fun as Mart used to be, if not even more fun.

  Holy shit. Had I gone and made myself a real living friend?

  I stuck my key in my front door. Twisted the lock.

  I could’ve sworn I heard the sound of Katrina and the Waves’ “Walking on Sunshine” humming from nearby, but I didn’t think much of it and I stepped inside.

  SIXTEEN

  He watches as he opens the door to his flat. Watches as he smiles, the car of his he-she itfriend speeding away down the road. He watches him step inside his flat, scrape his shoes on the doormat, then close the door.

  Checkered Shirt doesn’t even think to look over his shoulder.

  The sound of “Walking on Sunshine” rumbles through his speaker system. It makes him calm. He listened to this one when the life seeped out of his third victim today.

  Oh, the third victim. How much fun she’d been. Not just because of how much of a fighter she was no matter whether he was shoving knives into her body or her eyes. No, of course that was fun, but there were other little bonuses too. Today, he’d seen weeks of hard work and preparation come to fruition.

  First, there was the gate at the back of the Crown Court. The gate he’d sneakily picked the lock of several weeks ago, but left to see if anyone came to repair it. Just a tester of how many people used that rear entrance.

  Evidently, not many people did.

  And then there was the climb to the top of the court. The CCTV blind spot. He’d made sure to deal with the CCTV too, of course. That had been more difficult, but it paid to have friends in the right places. Friends being people who took bribes, of course. All it took was the flick of a switch—the flick of a switch for five minutes—and he was free to complete his work.

  He rubs his hands against his legs. Watches as the lights flicker on upstairs in Checkered Shirt’s flat. He knows he will be caught eventually. He knows that CCTV, accidental witnesses, as well as the presents he has left, will pin him down in time. But that’s fine. One day is over and he is almost halfway through his journey. Almost halfway through his quest—the greatest quest of his entire life.

  And he’s found some bonuses along the way, too. Some extras to enjoy himself with.

  And one of them wore a checkered shirt and lived in the flat across the road.

  He listens as “Walking on Sunshine” segues into “Purple Rain” and he knows it is time.

  He has planned this carefully. So carefully, and yet he’s only had a tiny amount of time to actually work it out. But since his three pieces of the puzzle were completed—since he’d ended the lives and bathed in the blood and screams of the three—his senses and his reactions have been enhanced.

  He is the version of himself he’s always known he could be were the leash yanked away from his neck.

  He is free.

  He reaches onto his passenger seat. Reaches for the white envelope and can’t help the corners of his mouth turning up. He knows he’s putting himself in danger. He knows there’ll be CCTV, and that he might be caught.

  But nobody will catch him until he finishes his quest.

  And Checkered Shirt is just a roadblock along the way.

  He lets “Purple Rain” peter out. Listens to its smooth vibes fade away, his skin tingling, his erection craving another release.

  And then he opens his car door and steps outside.

  Walks across the street to Checkered Shirt’s house…

  SEVENTEEN

  I woke up to the smell of burning.

  It jolted me up right out of my sleep. I looked around my living room, disoriented. I was on the sofa. The damned sofa that had pimples in it, left my face feeling nasty.

  But shit. The burning. Something was burning.

  I jumped up. Tried to go through those bullshit fire safety courses I’d taken all those years ago, but I couldn’t think clearly. I could smell the burning coming from… from the bathroom. Or was it from outside the door? Or out on the street even?

  And then I saw it.

  “Shit.”

  I jogged over to my oven. Dark smoke steamed out of it. Hardly ate any pasta at the Olive Press, so the first thing I did when I got in was put a Chicago Town pizza in the oven. But crap—I must’ve forgotten to set the timer.

  “Bloody, ruddy thing,” I said, wafting away the smoke with an oven glove.

  I held my breath as I turned the oven down, the heat and the stench of the smoke overwhelming. And shit—no sound from the smoke alarm either. Bloody useless little things, they were. I looked up at it. Saw its little “on” light bleeping away. So it wasn’t faulty. It was just shit.

  “Nice of you to let me know,” I muttered, as I grabbed the boiling-hot oven handle and worked out my next step. I’d have to buy some sprinklers. I’d seen them on Amazon, strategically placed so they wouldn’t do much damage to electricals.

  Although I’m not sure I could cope with “not much damage.” I didn’t want anything being damaged, not even a little bit.

  I yanked open the oven door and an even bigger cloud of smoke engulfed me, the smell of a pizza charred long ago filling the room.

  “Jesus,” I said, letting the door slam shut again. Bloody Nora. I’d have to leave it in there until it calmed down. The oven was off now anyway, so it’d be fine. Absolutely fine.

  And hey. I could always order a Domino’s.

  In fact, that wasn’t such a bad idea at all.

  I walked across my open-plan flat and grabbed the landline phone. Dialled in the number to Domino’s, which naturally, I knew off by heart, and hit call.

  Dead line.

  I looked at the phone. Everything seemed in order—full signal, light working on the little LED screen. So why wasn’t it working?

  I cancelled the call. Entered the number again, a bit more carefully this time. Hit dial.

  And again, nothing but a dead line. Slight hint of static crackling at the other end.

  For a few moments, I just stood there staring out of my window, rain tapping against it. I wondered whether I’d upset the pizza gods any time recently. I did have a crappy pizza from Fernando’s last week. Might have said a few curse words about it.

  “Oh, noble pizza deities. Please forgive me for my pizza-based transgressions.”

  I put the landline down.

  Oh well. I could always use my mobile.

  I started to walk back towards the kitchen, where my iPhone rested on its side, when something caught my eye over by the door.

  There was a white envelope sitting on the doormat.

  I stopped. Had a good look at it from distance.

  Now, I get a lot of junk mail. Washing machine repair services, shitty local magazines. But this, this didn’t look like junk mail. Not the way it was sat on my doormat all crumpled, all… official.

  Hell. Maybe somebody had remembered my birthday this year. Sent me a belated card. A man could dream.

  I walked over to my door, the smell of smoke from the oven still hanging in the air. The rain hit the window heavier as I hovered over the envelope. It was weird. It looked less like a card now I was close up to it, more like a package of some kind.

  I crouched down. Picked it up. Turned it over.

  My stomach tingled when I saw what was written on the front.

  There wasn’t a name. No address, or anything like that. Just two words. Two words in bold black Bic biro. It was faded in places, which meant whoever sent it had made the mortal mistake of writing the words after filling the envelope.

  Look Inside! the note read.

  That was it. Nothing else.

  I stood there holding this envelope, noticing the slight indentation in the middle of it. Every instinct inside me told me to ring the police right away. To get Lenny—or whichever fellow clown he was convening with—to get down here so they could open it together. Maybe it was just the current case, but since Gus got stabbed to death in broad daylight, since the third victim got hung from the front of the Crown Court, I felt wary. Wary of what it might be. Wary of who might be watching my back.

  But as I lowered the envelope back to the floor, I wondered why anyone would target me. Why anyone would even know about my involvement. Because all I was was a civilian who ran a smoothie stall. I wasn’t involved, not to the naked eye.

  Look Inside!

  I tried to think what it might be. Martha dicking around? Or one of my weird neighbours playing their silly games again?

  Or… shit. What if Lenny had sent an initial payment through? A little treat?

  Every instinct in my body told me not to open this envelope. Every instinct told me to put it down, to ring the police, to look inside together.

  But like with all seemingly important scenarios, I did what every normal person would do: told my instincts to shove it and slipped my finger beneath the seal.

  I tore it open. Tore it open, folded it over, and looked inside.

  I wished I hadn’t.

  Inside the envelope, the first thing I thought I saw was a plastic finger. Like one of those joke fingers you get from a magician’s shop to pretend you’ve had yours chopped off.

  But despite how waxy it looked, despite how unreal it looked, something told me this finger wasn’t plastic.

  Probably the exposed tendon dangling out of the bottom of it.

  My heart raced. I had to phone the police, no doubt about it now. I went to place the envelope on one side.

  And that’s when I saw something else.

  A little flashing light underneath the finger.

  A little black wiry device, tick, tick, ticking away.

  My stomach went numb. My body froze. The hairs on my arms pricked up.

  Without thinking, only reacting, I tossed the envelope over towards the middle of my lounge, right over by my television.

  If I’d been a second later, I’d have been blown into several pieces. It would’ve taken the police weeks—probably months—to piece me all back together.

  But I was just in time, which meant that the explosion from the envelope blasted the middle of my lounge area, smashed the television, struck my wooden flooring and set it on fire.

  The fire crawled up my sofa. Spread fast around my lounge, then over to the kitchen, then up the walls and through to my bedroom and bathroom.

  I fell back. Fell back into my front door. Winced as my right shoulder cracked against it, the pain of a thousand needles pricking into it drifting through me.

  I took a few deep breaths, then instantly regretted it when I realised just how smoke-filled my flat was. I squinted through the growing darkness. Reached up for the handle of my door. Yanked it down, tugged at it.

  But the door wasn’t moving.

  I pulled myself up. Leaned against the wall, my shoulder stinging like mad. I turned the handle again. Turned, and pulled the door with all I had.

  And still, no movement.

  I turned around. Looked around my apartment, as the television burned, as my iPad screen cracked with the heat, as my expensive-as-shit kitchen work surface went up in smoke and flames.

  My smoke alarm started to beep.

  “Nice of you to let me know,” I muttered, as my breathing got heavier, my eyes stinging with the burning and the toxic fumes.

  Somebody really didn’t want me to eat pizza tonight.

  EIGHTEEN

  The thing they don’t tell you about fires on television and the Internet is just how damned quickly they actually spread.

  I stood back against my door. Watched as the flames engulfed my living area, my kitchen, spreading across expensive item after expensive item. A part of me died inside with every iPad, every iPod, every eReader that fell victim to the inferno. I watched, but I knew I had to move.

  The smoke was getting thicker. My eyes burned and my head spun. The smoke would knock me out soon. It knocked anyone out in a matter of seconds. Turned them into sitting ducks for the flames to sweep in on and gobble up. The truth about burning was that, yes, it was one of the most painful deaths imaginable.

  But most fire victims had already choked on smoke by the time the flames arrived.

  And no, that didn’t reassure me in any bloody way.

  I yanked at the handle of my door again. Tugged at it, smacked on it, called out for help. There was something at the other side of it. Something stopping me from pulling it open. Something, or someone.

  But I had to keep on trying. As the flames crackled behind me, as an orange glow danced on the cream walls, I pulled even harder at the door handle. I hadn’t even had time to think about the explosive in the Look Inside! envelope, or the finger.

  The evidence, incinerated.

  Shit. No time to think about that now. No time at all.

  I held my breath. Felt tears drip down my cheeks from my hot, stinging eyes. Grabbed hold of the handle and readied myself for one final, huge pull, my right shoulder still aching like mad.

  Come on, Blake. You can do this. Get the hell out of here. You’ve got yourself out of worse.

  I counted down from three.

  Got to two, then pulled.

  I flew back. Flew back into my room, flew back towards the heat, towards the crackling.

  For a split second, I thought I’d fallen back and opened the door.

  And then I realised I was several metres away from the door with the bronze handle still in my hand.

  “Fuck,” I muttered. The handle had come off. The pissing handle had come off. I turned around. Turned and looked for another escape route. The flames crept up the bedroom door. Surrounded the bathroom.

  I was fucked. Completely fucked.

  I started to move to the left, stopped when the smoke got thicker there. I grew lightheaded. More and more lightheaded, and even though I was shitting myself, the lightheadedness made me calmer in a weird way. More prepared for what was about to happen to me.

  Don’t worry, Blake. Let yourself pass out. Then you can burn to a crisp in peace. No pain, none at all…

  I squeezed my eyes together. Coughed up a huge bout of phlegm. Screw that. No way was I passing out here. The smoke wasn’t taking me. The fire might be stripping away all my collectibles, all my beautiful prized possessions, but it wasn’t taking me.

  I covered my mouth and yanked open the kitchen counter nearest to the lounge. Pulled out a miniature fire extinguisher I’d had in there for donkey’s years. Fuck, it looked like something Fireman bloody Sam might reject. A discontinued extinguisher toy, tossed aside by a retailer for not being “authentic enough.”

  But it was going to work. It had to work.

  I pointed the nozzle and squeezed the trigger.

  It farted out a drizzle of foam then died on me.

  Okay. Maybe it didn’t have to work.

  I tossed it aside. Tossed it aside, my heart pounding, my mind clouding up again. No door. No fire extinguisher. First floor flat. Think…

  I’m not sure whether it was through feeling woozy from the smoke poisoning, but something made me run over to the window behind my destroyed television. Something made me yank it open, even though it was boiling, even though the flames were creeping up the walls beside it.

  Something made me stick my head outside. Take a huge gulp and gasp of the fresh, clean summer evening air.

  And then something else made me step onto the window ledge.

  I lowered myself down. Stared out over the street. I could see people gathering outside. Lights flickered on in the neighbouring houses. No one seemed to be calling anyone though. No one was ringing for the fire brigade. In fact, I swear I saw one scrawny little shite recording me. Just wait ‘til I get my hands on him.

  Or his YouTube account, anyway. Serious trolling was heading his way.

  I grabbed the edge of the window ledge, the heat from the fire still nipping at my body. I stuck the tips of my fingers into the brick, wondered how the hell I was going to turn myself around. Bloody hell. I should’ve climbed out with my back to the outside. Would’ve made things a whole lot easier.

  I eventually managed to shuffle myself around, almost tumbling to my death a few times, but hey, the smoke sedation was keeping me fairly chilled about it. Fairly chilled meaning I hadn’t shat myself. Yet.

  I gripped the window ledge again. Bit my lip as I edged my legs over the side, a blanket of fire and a wall of smoke staring back at me through my window. I tried not to focus on it. Just focus on getting down, Blake. Focus on lowering yourself. You’ll be okay.

  I held my breath some more and realised I was holding my breath a lot lately, and I edged my torso over the window ledge. Gripped tight hold of the brick. Prayed to God my shoulder was tough enough to support me, that my biceps still had plenty of juice left in them.

  Come on, Blake. You’re a tough bastard. A tough bastard who’s going to pull through. A tough bastard who isn’t gonna fall to his death.

  And then I lowered myself completely over the edge.

  For a moment, I felt my fingertips sticking into the brick ledge, felt my upper arms and forearms supporting my body weight as I dangled out of my window like some kind of trainwreck of a Lara Croft tribute.