The Pain Tourist

By Paul Cleave

A young man wakes from a coma to find himself targeted by the men who killed his parents, while someone is impersonating a notorious New Zealand serial killer ... the latest chilling, nerve-shredding, twisty thriller from the author of The Quiet People...

Paul Cleave is an automatic must-read for me' Lee Child

You can' t be a true fan of crime fiction if you' re not reading Cleave' s books' Tom Wood

Uses words as lethal weapons' New York Times

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James Garrett was critically injured when he was shot following his parents' execution, and no one expected him to waken from a deep, traumatic coma. When he does, nine years later, Detective Inspector Rebecca Kent is tasked with closing the case that her now retired colleague, Theodore Tate, failed to solve all those years ago.

But between that, and hunting for Copy Joe a murderer on a spree, who' s imitating Christchurch' s most notorious serial killer she' s going to need Tate' s help ... especially when they learn that James has lived out another life in his nine-year coma, and there are things he couldn' t possibly know, including the fact that Copy Joe isn' t the only serial killer in town...

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Praise for Paul Cleave

The sense of dread builds unstoppably in this gripping page-turner ... an intense, chilling read' Gilly Macmillan

You may think you know where it' s going, but you couldn' t be more wrong. A true page-turner filled with dread, rage, doubt and more twists than the Remutaka Pass' Linwood Barclay

A true page-turner, with an intriguing premise, a rollercoaster plot and a cast of believably flawed characters' Guardian

An absolute BELTER of a book ... I' d forgotten how good Paul Cleave is!' Sarah Pinborough

The psychological depth of the leads bolsters the complex plot. This merits comparison with the work of Patricia Highsmith' Publishers Weekly STARRED REVIEW

Cleave writes the kind of dark, intense thrillers that I never want to end. Do yourself a favour and check him out' Simon Kernick

Tense, thrilling, touching. Paul Cleave is very good indeed' John Connolly

An intense adrenaline rush from start to finish' S J Watson

A riveting and all too realistic thriller' Tess Gerritsen

A gripping thriller ... I couldn' t put it down' Meg Gardiner

This very clever novel did my head in time and again' Michael Robotham

Cleave' s whirligig plot mesmerises' People

This thriller is

• Language: English
• Publisher: Orenda Books
• Release date: Nov 10, 2022
• ISBN: 9781914585494

Paul Cleave

Paul Cleave is the internationally bestselling author of ten award-winning crime thrillers, including Joe Victim, which was a finalist for the 2014 Edgar and Barry Awards, Trust No One and Five Minutes Alone, which won consecutive Ngaio Marsh Awards in 2015 and 2016. He lives in Christchurch, New Zealand. 

Book preview

Chapter One

James’s thoughts as he lies in bed tend to gravitate toward what he’s just watched or read – which isn’t great if what he’s just watched or read is a story about killer clowns hiding in the closet. Fully aware that night-time noises only make it harder for him to fall asleep, his parents keep their voices to a whisper and movements to a shuffle, but what he’s hearing now are daytime noises: knocking on the door, followed by voices, followed by arguing, all at – he glances at his bedside clock – 11.00pm. He can’t make out what the argument is about, but he doesn’t like how it sounds, nor does he like the thumps and bumps that follow.

What is going on down there?

The question gets him to his feet. His room is in darkness. His nightlight has been living in his wardrobe for the last two years, after Hazel teased him for still using it. He picks his way slowly through the minefield of toys to the door, toys he was meant to put away but didn’t. He can’t see them, but doesn’t need to. He has one of those memories where he can walk out of a room and months later tell you the location of everything that was in it. His memory is so good he’s frightened his brain will pop one day from hanging on to everything. He opens the door slowly and steps into the hallway. He passes Hazel’s room; unsurprisingly, she has slept through all the noise.

From downstairs, his mother says, ‘Please don’t do this.’

The fear in her voice makes his blood run cold, but the smack that follows turns it to ice, so much so that when he goes to take another step toward the stairs, his legs give out, and he has to clutch at the wall to slow his descent to the ground.

‘Don’t,’ his dad says, the same fear in his voice as his mum’s. ‘Please, don’t.’

James’s chest tightens around his banging heart. The world blurs as he fights to get a decent breath. Ahead of him there’s an angle from which one can see downstairs into the lounge – something he’s done when his parents are watching horror movies. Since his legs are useless anyway, he rolls onto his belly and slowly slinks along the carpet.

Smack. He jumps at the sound.

‘Where is it?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ his dad says. ‘Please, you have the wrong house, you have the—’

Another smack, and James covers his mouth to stifle the building scream. More banging and bumping from downstairs. He needs to call the police, but can’t – his parents say he’s too young for a cellphone, and the same goes for Hazel, even though all their friends have them. And to make things worse, his parents got rid of the landline years ago. Best he could do would be to send a message to one of his friends online from his computer, but they’d all be asleep. Can you send an email to the police?

He keeps shimmying forward. The lounge comes into view. It’s lit up. He can see somebody’s lower half, dressed in black pants and black shoes. A stranger. Another shimmy forward, and now he can see somebody the size and shape of his dad, in his dad’s clothing, kneeling on the floor with a pillowcase over his head. There’s a spot of blood on the pillowcase. That somebody is next to another somebody, this one also on their knees, also with a pillowcase over their head, this one dressed in his mother’s clothes.

The stranger says, ‘Just tell us where it is.’

‘There is no—’

His dad rocks back when he is smacked across the face, but before he can fall, the man who hit him grabs his shirt to keep him upright. James can’t tell who he’s talking to when he says, ‘Go and get the kids,’ but then a second man comes into view, this one also in dark clothing, and a ski mask too. In movies, monsters are always zombies, or vampires, or some weird kind of mutant, but in this moment his eleven-year-old brain tells him he’s been wrong all this time. What he’s looking at now are monsters. Real monsters.

The second man – the second monster – comes toward the stairs.

‘Don’t!’ his dad yells, and the first monster turns back and hits him again.

If you don’t get up, they’re going to hurt you. They’re going to kill you.

He wiggles away from the stairs. His legs are jelly, the floor quicksand, the walls are the sides of a sinking boat. But to stay on the floor means capture. He grabs at the wall and gets to his feet, then stumbles to Hazel’s room. He gets the door open and closes it gently behind him. There’s no way to lock it, and he’s not strong enough to block it with heavy furniture. He crosses the room. Hazel doesn’t stir until he’s pulling back the curtains and opening the window. Is there time to climb out onto the roof? He can hear the second monster on the stairs.

‘Wha … wha soo doing? James?’

He shakes her, and, voice low, he hisses, ‘We have to go.’

‘Wha…?’

He puts his finger to his lips and grabs her hand.

‘There are monsters in the house. We have to climb out the window.’

Hazel is fourteen, but acts like she’s sixteen. She snatches her hand back, and, more alert now, she says, ‘It’s too late to be playing one of your immature games, James.’

During the last year she’s discovered she likes saying ‘games’ and ‘James’ in the same sentence.

‘We have to go!’ he says, giving up on the whispering in the hope what he can’t convey in words he can convey in volume. He grabs at her again.

‘I’m not going anywhere. Now get out of my room!’

She pushes him away. A strip of light appears beneath the bedroom door as the hallway light clicks on.

Crying now, he says, ‘Please, Hazel, please.’

His tears give her pause. She can’t see them, but can hear them. But it’s too late. The door opens. The second monster is backlit by the hallway light. He’s huge. Twice as big as anybody he’s ever seen. Like something Doctor Frankenstein put together from dead bodybuilders.

Hazel freezes. James does the same.

‘Come with me now,’ the monster says, his voice deep, like those bodybuilders were chugging back the steroids.

‘No,’ James says, so scared he’s not sure he’s spoken loud enough to be heard.

But he must have been, because the monster points at them and says, ‘Say no to me again and I’m going to kill you.’

Hazel takes James’s hand.

‘You got three seconds. After that I’m breaking bones.’

James casts his memory over the books he’s read – there have been so many, but he can’t recall a scene like this. In them, all the kids, who are often around his age, are so brave. Some of them even solve mysteries.

‘We’re coming,’ he says, but he has no intention of that. The open window gives them access to the roof, and then to the fence, then the street, the neighbours, the police.

Can you both make it through?

No. Not both.

He pulls on Hazel’s arm and she gets out of bed. She’s shaking.

‘One,’ the monster says.

If a kid was brave, wouldn’t he do anything he could to protect his sister?

‘Two.’

Even a sister who wished their parents would drive their little brother to an abandoned farm and leave him behind?

‘Three.’

He twists Hazel toward the window. ‘Go!’

She doesn’t go. Instead she turns back to James.

‘Go!’ This time he shoves her, then he charges the monster, because that’s what brave boys do, it’s David and Goliath, but David won, and so can—

The monster scoops James off the floor and hurls him into the bookcase. He bounces and lands heavily on the floor; books, photo frames, a lamp, some dolls, all raining down around him. A yell from his dad downstairs is cut short. The monster reaches the window and grabs Hazel as she’s climbing through it. Despite James’s fall, the floor no longer feels like quicksand nor his legs like jelly; it’s as if being tossed across the room has centred his balance. He picks up the lamp and gets to his feet and smashes it against the monster’s back. The reaction is instant, with the monster spinning and backhanding James so hard across the face he ends up back on the floor, but the motion does make him lose his grip on Hazel. She disappears through the window, off balance, the roof tiles rattling as she tumbles out of sight. Was she able to stop her fall? Or is she lying in a puddle of broken bones?

The monster puts his head out the window to check, then comes back to James. He grabs his leg and drags him into the hallway and down the stairs, his head banging off each one. He’s hauled into the lounge and forced up onto his knees.

Dad is opposite, pillowcase over his face, his arms behind him. Mum is on her side, a pillowcase over her face too, but her hands have been restrained in front of her with a cable tie. He can’t tell if she’s dead or unconscious. The first monster he saw is standing over them with a gun in his hand. He’s seen a thousand guns on TV, but never one for real. This one has a silencer on it. Furniture has been pulled in from the walls and tipped over. His mum’s paintings have been tossed onto the floor.

‘The girl got out the window,’ Monster Two says. ‘She’s going for help.’

‘Find her.’

There aren’t just two monsters, but three, which he discovers when Monster Two steps away and a third takes his place. That monster wrenches James’s hands behind him and locks them together with another cable tie. The whole time he keeps staring at the blood on the pillowcase hiding his dad’s face.

‘Please,’ his dad says. He sounds out of breath. Panicked. Scared. ‘Don’t hurt my family. I have money. It’s not a lot, twenty thousand maybe, maybe a little more. I can go to the bank in the morning. You can have it all. You can look at my accounts online. You can see what I have. You can. Just don’t hurt them. We can transfer it if that’s what you want.’

‘Tell us where it is.’

‘There isn’t any safe,’ his dad says. If there were a safe James would know about it. The year he found out Santa wasn’t real, he searched the house all December long, looking everywhere a present could be hidden. He didn’t see any safe.

‘There an office upstairs?’

‘There is, but there’s no safe.’

‘I wanted to do this without having to kill your kids, but you’re leaving me no choice,’ Monster One says.

James’s bladder lets go. His chest hurts so bad. He’s going to die, and he’s always going to be known as the kid who wet himself first.

Please, Hazel, run. You have to run and get help.

‘For the love of God, there’s no safe!’ his dad says, his voice higher, panicked, desperate. ‘Take anything else you want, anything.’

Monster Two returns. ‘The little bitch got away.’

Relief washes over James. The police will come, and these men know it. This is as far as things go.

‘Shit,’ Monster One says.

‘We gotta go,’ Monster Three says. ‘She’s probably banging on somebody’s door right now.’

‘It’ll take a few minutes for the police to arrive,’ Monster One says.

‘We don’t know that,’ Monster Three says. ‘And for all we know that neighbour is coming over here right now.’

‘Which would be a mistake for the neighbour,’ Monster Two says.

‘Either way, we gotta go,’ Monster Three says.

‘Not until we get what we came for.’

‘What if he’s not lying? What if this is the wrong house?’

‘We haven’t seen your faces,’ his dad says. ‘We can’t identify you. Please, just go.’

Monster One pulls the pillowcase from his dad’s head. It barely looks like his dad. His right eye is swollen shut, his hair is ruffled, his lips are swollen, there’s blood over his chin.

‘Last chance.’

‘There is no safe!’

Monster One points the gun at James’s mum. There’s a pfft, and his mum’s body does the smallest of jerks, and then a red patch the size of a coin appears in the middle of the pillowcase.

His dad is halfway to his feet when there’s another pfft. His nose disappears into a mist of blood and his face slackens and his eyes lose focus. He falls into a lump. James screams. He barely hears Monster One when he says, ‘Do the kid.’

James closes his eyes tight and he waits for the pfft.

He doesn’t have to wait long.

Chapter Two

The street is lit up – patrol cars, ambulances, media – all mixed in with the lights from the neighbouring houses, where folks watch from porches and front lawns. Barriers are set up in the street, people pressed up against them, some on tiptoes, while others stretch their necks for a better view. A few have brought binoculars. Some have coffee. All have cellphones, and most of those phones are pointing toward the crime scene.

The barriers are pulled aside so Detectives Theodore Tate and Carl Schroder can drive through. The media yell questions. The two detectives ignore them. Tate is driving. He parks up opposite the house. The night is warm, the air heavy, it’s been one of those rare summer days that pops up in the middle of winter.

‘You ready for this?’ Schroder asks.

Tate shakes his head. ‘You?’

‘No.’

They get out of the car. The buzz of voices from folks watching on carries in the warm air. Lights erected in the garden and along the boundary of the house are so bright a plane could safely land. The house is two-storey, as are most on the block. Similar designs too – like the architect gave a community discount. The neighbourhood is ten years old, no front fences, but lots of manicured gardens and lawns drained of colour thanks to winter. The front door is wide open. There are half a dozen officers scattered around the house, guarding it, but none inside. The house has been cleared and left as undisturbed as possible. Both men pause at the door to pull on latex gloves and nylon booties before going in. To the left an open-plan kitchen and dining room, modern furniture, modern appliances. Straight ahead a staircase, a white wooden rail, narrow, black steel balusters. To the right a lounge, and in the lounge the bodies of the Garrets. Tate shudders.

‘Jesus,’ Schroder whispers.

Knowing what they’re about to see doesn’t soften the blow, and yet they both know if Hazel Garrett hadn’t got away, the scene would have been worse. The neighbour whose house she ran to – Brian Mann – raced over here after watching three men fleeing out the front door. James was still alive – though barely. A retired ER doctor, Mann used all his skills to keep him alive until the ambulances arrived.

There was nothing that could be done for Frank and Avah Garrett.

Frank and Avah are slumped on the floor. Mann told the first officers on the scene that Avah had a pillowcase over her head, which he removed so he could check on her condition. The pillowcase is next to her body. She’s on her side, face against the carpet, eyes open, a bullet hole in her cheek, the hair between her face and the carpet matted with blood, her hands bound ahead of her. Tate wants to tell her he’s going to find the people who did this, but he says nothing. Nobody is saying anything. The only noise is coming from the folks outside. Avah Garrett looks familiar.

He pivots to Frank. There’s a pillowcase next to his body too, but Mann said that one had already been removed. He’s on his back, his legs buckled beneath him. There’s a bullet hole where his nose ought to be. Hard to tell if he also looks familiar.

Another pivot to a patch of floor where there is gauze and bandaging and bloody towels from where James was kept alive. Among them is a cricket bat Mann brought over as a weapon. There’s a plastic cable tie among the mess that match the ones on the parents, these ones removed from James by the paramedics. Tate has never seen so much blood come from somebody who wasn’t already dead. He can smell urine. Hard to know if Hazel escaping is why the rest of the family were shot, or if they were all going to be shot anyway. People capable of doing this, it’s probably the latter.

‘You recognise them?’ Tate asks.

Schroder shakes his head. ‘Why? Do you?’

‘Avah maybe, but not sure from where.’

Tate does a three-sixty. More modern furniture flipped over, a smashed TV on the ground, artwork pulled down, holes in the canvases, a bookcase tipped over.

‘They were looking for something,’ Schroder says. ‘Maybe some kind of wall safe.’

‘So why not tell them? Three men come into your house with guns – you’re going to give them whatever it is they’re looking for.’

‘Maybe they did, and got killed anyway, in which case the safe is in a different room.’

They split up. Schroder takes downstairs, and Tate heads up. First room upstairs is an office with a view out over the backyard. The paintings are on the walls and the furniture is in place. The paintings are done by the same artist and match the ones downstairs. A closer look and he can see a signature. He thinks it’s Avah Garrett. The landscapes are beautiful. He wants to bury whoever is responsible for this in one of those landscapes.

A search of the office doesn’t reveal a safe, but it does tell him why he recognises Avah. Avah and Frank Garrett are the real-estate agents who sold him and Bridget their house. He remembers them being warm and friendly with big smiles. It’s a horrible reminder that one moment you can be selling a house, the next you’re lying executed on the floor of one.

Hazel’s bedroom is next. He pictures how it all played out. Mum and dad held at gun point, not revealing what the men wanted to hear. The killers decide to use the kids as leverage, but the daughter escapes. The three men go from having all night to having to get the hell out of there. They could have just left, but instead chose to execute the family. It’s cold. Colder than anything he’s ever seen.

He finds Schroder in the master bedroom. ‘Anything?’

‘I found some business cards,’ Schroder says. ‘The Garretts are real-estate agents.’

‘I saw. We bought our house from them.’

‘Small world. You remember much about them?’

‘Only that we liked them a lot. I’m going to go chat to the daughter.’

‘You want me to go with you?’

‘I’ll manage,’ he says, and heads back downstairs.

Chapter Three

James Garrett is on his knees in the lounge. Monster Two can’t find Hazel, which means she didn’t fall from the roof, she didn’t break any bones, she’s got help. He’s scared, his pyjamas are wet, and he can feel the barrel of the gun against his head … He’s waiting … waiting…

The headache that explodes into being is like nothing he has ever experienced – it’s like people are screaming into a canyon, the echoes bottled up and released en masse into the centre of his brain. His skull is tearing open. His brain is expanding and pressing at the jagged edges of the tear. The lounge lights are flickering, they blink off, and—

The surgeons lose James Garrett at 11:39pm. The blood loss and the severity of the injury is making this one of the hardest surgeries Doctor Wolfgang McCoy has ever had to perform. The bullet has entered through the back of James’s skull, creating a fingertip hole that has expanded in a spiderweb of fractures. James’s head has been shaved and that web cut away, opening a window to the brain and the wound below. The bullet has entered on a downward trajectory, furrowing through the occipital lobe and into the cerebellum, and is either lodged in there or against the jaw bone. There hasn’t been time to x-ray the boy to see if the bullet is in one piece or a dozen.

The surgeons attempt resuscitation and are successful.

James is in the dark for only a few moments before the lights in the lounge blink back to life. The loud ringing in his ears – the bottled screams – have dulled. He’s lying on his side, mirroring his mum’s position. His dad is still on his knees with Monster One now pointing his gun at him. What do these men, these monsters, want?

A slight movement from his right. His mum? Yes, there it is again, a twitch. She’s still alive! Monster One also sees the twitch, and turns toward her. He takes aim—

His dad screams, the muscles in his neck tighten, and he snaps the restraints behind his back. Monster One is too slow to react as his dad leaps up and grabs his gun hand and gets it pointing at the ceiling.

Bang!

A hole appears next to the light and plaster dust rains down on them.

Bang!

The light explodes. Monster Two opens fire, bullet holes lining the wall. His dad twists Monster One around and uses him as a shield. The monster jerks back and forth as his chest is torn open by gunfire. The lights in the lounge flicker … they stay on … they flicker some more, then die.

The second time the surgeons lose James Garrett is at 11:44pm.

The occipital lobe’s primary function is vision. Even if the boy were to survive the surgery, there is every chance he would be partially or fully blind, with blindness only one of a multitude of life-changing – or life-ending – scenarios. With all the possibilities, the only thing Doctor Wolfgang McCoy is confident about is James will never be the boy he was this morning. Most people who get shot in the head don’t live to tell the tale, and those that do don’t get to tell it well. There is a whine as the defibrillator is fired up, somebody yells clear, and James’s body jerks as hundreds of volts race through it. His heart starts beating, and…

The lights come back on. James can hear sirens. They’re getting loud fast. His mum sits up and pulls the pillowcase off her head. There’s a bloody graze running the side of her face from the bullet.

‘Shit,’ Monster Two says, and he turns and runs for the door.

James rolls over to see Monster Three staring at his dad. There’s a term he’s come across in the books he read – fight or flight. Monster Three lands on fight. He grabs at the gun buried in the waistband of his black jeans. At the same time his mum picks up Monster One’s gun. It’s like one of the old westerns his dad likes to watch on TV, where two men face off in the street, reading each other’s expressions as to when to draw.

‘Don’t,’ his mum says.

Only Monster Three does. He takes aim.

Mum fires, and Monster Three drops like a rock.

Dad rushes over and kicks the gun away from Monster Three’s hand, but there’s no need – there’s a bullet hole in the centre of his forehead. James has never seen a dead body before, never thought he would, and doesn’t know how he feels about seeing one now. Pleased, he thinks – especially when compared to the alternatives.

His mum helps James sit up. ‘Are you okay?’

‘I think so,’ he says. Except for the headache.

His mum disappears into the kitchen while his dad stands guard at the door with the gun. The sirens are getting louder. His mum returns with a pair of scissors. She cuts his wrists free, then he does the same for her. He rubs his wrists. He feels cold.

‘Hazel must have got help,’ his dad says.

‘Everything is going to be okay,’ his mum says.

The lights from the police cars reflect into the room. His dad puts the gun on the ground so the officers don’t open fire on him. They come inside, and James hopes the conclusions they’re coming to are the right ones. He recognises them. They spoke at his school last week about the dangers of drugs. Officer Bligh and Officer May. Bligh is overweight, his uniform stretching at the seams. May has a tightly knotted ponytail that sways as she looks quickly around the room.

They take it all in, and they do the math, and they do the math right, because Bligh says, ‘You’ve done a great job.’

‘You guys were lucky to survive this,’ May adds.

‘You can thank our kids,’ his dad says. ‘They’re the ones who figured out we were in danger, and it was Hazel who got help.’

‘We know,’ Bligh says.

‘Your kids are heroes,’ May says.

The lights in the lounge flicker.

The third time they lose James Garrett is 11:48pm.

The cerebellum’s primary job is to control motion. If they can stop the bleeding, if they patch the torn parts of brain back together, even if there is a day when the kid leaves the hospital breathing, he’s unlikely to be doing it on his own two feet. When it comes to the brain, it’s like the Wild West – anything can happen – and that includes miracles. Doctor McCoy isn’t a religious man, but that hasn’t stopped him from praying in the past when he’s been wrist deep inside a patient, holding the pieces together, and he prays now, he prays this kid can pull through.

They ride out the darkness in silence until the lights come back on. For a moment there, James didn’t think they were going to.

‘There was another man,’ his mum says.

‘We know,’ Bligh says. ‘We already arrested him.’

‘He will go to jail for a very long time,’ May says. ‘Possibly forever.’

James likes the officers. A lot. Sometimes he thinks he wants to grow up to be a cop. Other times he thinks he’d like to be a fireman, or an actor, or a musician, but mostly what he wants is to be a writer. He wants to write books, or maybe movies. He’d be good at it. The teachers at school are always telling him he has an incredible imagination. It’s probably why at night his mind is restless when he’s trying to get to sleep.

Hazel shows up, followed by Doctor Mann. Doctor Mann takes in the scene and comes to the same conclusions the officers came to. Two dead bodies, two police officers, and the Garrett family safe and sound.

‘I think we should look at getting you patched up,’ Doctor Mann says to James’s mum. ‘How about we get you to my house and disinfect that wound, then make us all some hot chocolates? How does that sound?’

James thinks it sounds as good as anything he’s ever heard. The others agree. He will have two hot chocolates if his parents will let him, and hopefully some cake too. Doctor Mann makes the best hot chocolates, but Mrs Mann makes the best cakes. He hopes they’re—

The lights flicker. The world pauses. He still feels cold.

James’s blood pressure drops, the machine flatlines, and Doctor McCoy keeps on fighting.

Chapter Four

A six-foot-tall Dr Brian Mann’s hand swallows Tate’s when they shake, making him think that any wound Mann touches would be made all the larger for it.

‘It’s truly horrible, truly a horrible thing,’ Mann says. ‘I hope you catch these men.’

Tate is invited inside. The house is warm, cosy, every horizontal plane graced by a framed family photograph. They pause outside the lounge, where he can see Hazel Garrett sitting with Pauline Mann, Pauline trying to get her to drink tea. Pauline is shorter, and thin, with small hands, as though over the years her husband has absorbed parts of her.

‘Hazel has been withdrawing into herself at the same pace the crowds have been growing outside,’ Mann says, keeping his voice low. ‘I feel like going out there with the garden hose and spraying it over all of them.’

‘Does Hazel know?’

‘We haven’t told her, but she’s a smart kid and knows there’s a reason her parents haven’t come to get her. She’s asked over and over what I found, but all I’ve said is her parents have been hurt, her brother too, and I did everything I could to help them.’ He runs a hand through his hair before resting it on the back of his neck, his elbow pointing at Tate. ‘I couldn’t bring myself to tell her the truth. After I retired I thought my days of giving bad news were over, but I can tell her now, if you like. It will be better coming from me than from you.’

It’s a lot to ask, but Doctor Mann is right. ‘Okay. But first, does she have other family?’

‘Grandparents. I … I was going to call them, but wasn’t sure if you’d have wanted me to.’

‘We’ll take care of that. The three people fleeing the house, did you get a good look at them?’

‘All I can tell you is one was bigger than the other two, and when I say bigger, I mean big. Guy had to be six and a half feet, easy, and solid too, not the kind of guy you’d want to tangle with.’

‘You could judge his height from your window?’

‘I judged it when he folded himself in half to get into the back of the car.’

‘What were they wearing?’

‘Black, all of them, black tops, black pants, black ski masks.’

‘And the vehicle?’

‘A blue SUV. I’m not good with cars, so I couldn’t tell you what kind, but it looked modern. It was parked outside Grant and Nancy’s house.’

‘Grant and Nancy?’

‘Frank and Avah’s next-door neighbours.’

Tate jots the names in his pad.

‘Talk me through it from the moment Hazel showed up.’

Mann tells Tate they were watching TV when there was tapping at the French doors that open onto the back deck. Urgent, but not loud. Hazel was there, her face red from running. She was crying. They let her in and she quickly closed the curtain behind her and told them they needed to call the police, that there were people in her house, that some of them were probably looking for her.

‘It’s why she didn’t bang and scream on the front door, because she knew they’d find her, and she said not to turn the lights off because it’d draw attention. We didn’t doubt her for a second. She’s a smart kid, and that’s why I’m here telling you the story and not a coroner.’

It’s a grim assessment, and not one Tate can argue with.

‘I went to our bedroom to peak through the curtains. There was a man in a ski mask running up and down the street, looking for Hazel. I watched him give up and head back into the house. By then Pauline was on the phone to the police.’

‘How long until they came out of the house after that?’

‘Couldn’t have been much more than a minute.’

‘You said the big one was male – what about the other two? Could you tell?’

‘They moved like men, but maybe that’s just my preconception. I mean, what kind of woman would have done what these three did? What kind of woman would shoot a boy in the back of the head?’

Probably the same kind of woman who would drown her children, Tate thinks, or gas them in her car, or let them be abused by some deadbeat guy she’s dating. When it comes to hurting children, it’s equality all the way.

‘Could you make out the licence plate?’

‘Thirty years ago I could have from that distance, but not now.’

‘You didn’t hear any of the shots?’

‘Nothing. We were still up watching TV – we’re both night owls. I guess we just didn’t hear them over the TV.’

‘How’s your hearing?’

‘A lot better than my eyesight, that’s for sure. So is Pauline’s.’

The killers must have used silencers, otherwise half the neighbourhood would have heard.

Mann looks down at his hands. They’re red from where he’s scrubbed them clean, and there’s still blood under his fingernails. ‘As soon as they were gone, I grabbed the cricket bat and went over. I wasn’t expecting to find what I found. There was nothing I could do for Avah and Frank. I didn’t think there’d be anything I could do for James either, but he had a pulse, and then it was just a matter of fighting to keep it until the paramedics arrived.’ He looks back to Tate. ‘They’re such a nice family, all of them. I can’t believe this happened to them.’

Nobody ever can.

‘Let’s talk to Hazel.’

Chapter Five

Hazel Garrett is on the couch with her arms around her legs and her knees under her chin. A blanket hangs over her shoulders like a cape. She’s thin, pale, a pixie haircut blending into a lightly freckled face. She’s staring at a coffee table, where there are untouched hot drinks. Pauline Mann has her arm around her. The air is so thick with grief Tate wouldn’t be surprised to see the walls bowing outward from it. He makes room on the coffee table and sits on the edge.

Hazel doesn’t look up, and her voice sounds hollow when she asks, ‘Mum and Dad are dead, aren’t they? And James too?’

Mann crouches next to her. He goes to talk, but his voice catches. He coughs into his hand and clears his throat, and tries again. ‘I’m sorry, Hazel, but yes, both your parents have passed away, but James is in hospital, fighting for his life.’

Hazel wipes a palm beneath one eye, then the other, and with a voice still hollow while she stares at the coffee table, she asks, ‘Is he going to be okay?’

‘The doctors are doing everything they can, just as we will do everything we can to help you get through this. You need to know you’re not alone.’

She wipes at her eyes again and looks at Tate. ‘You’re a detective?’

‘I am.’

‘You catch monsters?’

‘I do.’

‘James said there were monsters in the house. I didn’t believe