Page 56 of Compulsion

“Dead?” Don’t you just hate those people in films who repeat the bad news like a parrot?

“He must have hit his head on the corner of the table. It was an unlucky blow—for him, anyway.”

“But….” I had no idea what to say. “That wasn’t meant to happen.”

Seve sighed. “Max, the kid was insane. This is for the best. He was going to kill you.”

“Well,” I said. “That’s where you’re wrong.”

“What?” Seve looked both angry and amazed. “Don’t tell me now you care a fuck about a manic, murderous little—”

“It wasn’t me he was sent to kill,” I said. “I’m not saying he wasn’t going to slit both our throats when he found us together, but he was surprised to find me here.”

“What the hell are you saying?”

“You,” I said. “I reckon he was here for you.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

SEVE prised my jeans out of my hands and found me a pair of his sweats and a sweater to wear. I couldn’t seem to stop shivering, though the flat wasn’t cold. When I pulled the sweater on, the neckline caught on my cheek, and blood from one of my cuts smeared the luxurious wool. Seve never even flinched.

He dragged a sheet off his bed and rolled Baz’s body up in it. The parcel looked like an obscene mix of shroud and cocoon. There was surprisingly little blood, so I assumed the blow to the head had hit a pressure point rather than cut him open. I didn’t think too closely about the logistics. We pushed him against the wall by the door and started clearing up the mess on the floor. As I mopped tiles and swept up more slivers of glass than I’d ever have imagined would come from just one bottle, it didn’t seem too weird to have Baz’s body lying in the room with us. But then I think I was still in shock.

Seve changed out of his blood-spattered sweats and dressed in jeans and a polo shirt. I bound up his arm with a bandage from his medicine cabinet, and in return, he washed the shallow cuts in my cheek and neck. It was a quiet time between us, and I found it oddly touching. Then I twisted back the ends of my hair with an elastic band and went to settle myself in the living room. I needed recovery time. Seve offered to make a hot drink—compared to me, he didn’t seem too bothered about working in the kitchen alongside his uninvited guest.

Half an hour later, I was still huddled on the couch. The cashmere sweater was fabulously soft and doing its job in warming me up, but I had my hands gripped around a second mug of hot, sweet tea and I was still shaky. Seve was pacing the room.

“That was a bloody good move, Seve. The thing with the wine bottle. Feeling me up, distracting him….”

“It was obvious.” Looked like Seve had regained his natural arrogance. “I could see the way he looked at you.”

“What?”

“Not sexual,” Seve said impatiently. “A kind of devotion. Anything involving you would have been a distraction to him. I used that to gain some time.”

“He’d still have killed me.”

“Yes,” Seve said. “He’d still have killed you. When you heard him break in, why did you tell me to keep out of the way?”

“Huh?”

“What the hell were you going to do, Max?”

I shrugged. Damned if I knew. I was certainly no action hero. “I just wanted to stop anyone getting to you, I suppose. This is your home, your… sanctuary.”

“You think I’m vulnerable? You think you can take on lunatic intruders by yourself?”

“Well, we can all see how that went,” I said dryly.

“You wanted to protect me,” he said slowly. It sounded like he couldn’t understand the concept. Not sure I could myself.

“I wanted to talk him out of it. I thought I could.”

“He was too far gone. It was in his eyes.”

“I know.” I was thankful Seve didn’t tell me how rash I’d been, though I’d told myself plenty of times in the last half hour. “We should call the police.”

“Not yet. Let me think, Max. What the hell makes you think he came for me?”