The Passenger by Daniel Hurst (great book club books TXT) 📕

it, and I’m just about to swing it open when Charles slams me into it hard, and I hit my head against the frame. Now everything is spinning, and I’m sure I can feel blood running from my nose. But I can also feel his hands on me again, and now I’m too dizzy to make him stop.

He holds me against the door, and I’m not sure if his plan is to drag me away again or just try to rape me right here where we stand, but as my focus returns, I’m able to spot the gold statuette sitting on the table to my left.

I reach out for it, but it’s just beyond my grasp. But the sound of Charles’s heavy breathing as he forces himself on me gives me the strength I need to lunge to the side and grab it.

As I seize the solid object, the sudden momentum of my body sends me falling to the floor, and I hit the carpet hard. But before I can get back to my feet, Charles is right behind me. A slight groan escapes his lips as he lowers himself to his knees and looks to get on top of me, and I notice the crazy look in his eyes as he prepares to take what he wants.

But before he can, I swing the statuette , striking him in the temple and knocking him onto the floor beside me.

It was obvious from the sickening sound of his skull cracking open that Charles wouldn’t get up from that.

I lie on the carpet for a few moments to get my breath back, but it’s mainly because I know the danger is over now. Charles is not moving, nor is he making a sound. His body lies still beside me, and I can no longer hear his heavy breathing.

When I do eventually get back to my feet, I notice the blood on several of the notes scattered around the floor. At first, I worry that it has come from me, and I put my hand on my nose, checking the damage after I went head first into the door. But there is no blood. It’s not mine.

It’s his.

I see the pool of velvet seeping out from behind the old man’s head as he lies in front of me with his eyes wide open and his body still.

I don’t bother to check if he is still alive. I already know he’s dead.

Now I just need to get out of here.

It’s only when I return to the door that I remember my wig is still in the apartment. I turn back to retrieve it and find it only a few yards away from where his body lies. But as I pick it up and return it to my head, I see the open safe across the room and the vast treasures that sit within it.

I contemplate what would happen if I just left right now. I might get away with this if I’m lucky. But that would be all. I wouldn’t come out of this awful event with anything but a bad memory of the attack.

Unless…

It’s an instinctive decision, made in a split second, and it almost feels as if my brain shuts down for a moment while my body goes into action.

I pick up my handbag from where it fell on the floor and rush to the safe before scooping out as much of the cash as I can fit inside. But it’s barely big enough to hold more than a couple of stacks of notes, so I enter a bedroom and find a small rucksack underneath the bed. Returning to the safe, I frantically pull out the rest of the money, but in my desperate state of mind, I also take a couple of items of jewellery too, including a watch and a ring. Then I close the safe door, and when I try to open it again, it won’t release because I know it needs Charles’s prints to open. Hopefully, the police will never know the contents were stolen when they eventually enter this apartment and see the dramatic scene inside.

Zipping the rucksack up, I head for the door, checking as I go that there is nothing left behind that could tie me to what happened here tonight.

My glass.

I rush over to the bar and pick up the one I was drinking from, stuffing that into the bag too. I’ll throw it in the river on my way out of here.

As I open the door and step outside, I take one last look back at the scene behind me.

The locked safe. The solitary whiskey glass on the bar. And Charles’s body lying on top of the bloodied cash.

Then I close the door behind me and go home.

30

AMANDA

From my position on the carriage floor, the photo of Charles in the newspaper stares back at me beneath the headline:

MYSTERY AROUND MURDERED DIRECTOR REMAINS UNSOLVED ONE MONTH ON

The image in the paper shows him how the world knew him, a suave and friendly gentleman in a suit smiling at the camera. But the image I see in my mind is the one of his true self: the angry, frustrated man with the evil glint in his eye.

It’s nice that there is no photo of what he looked like when he died in the article, but that doesn’t mean I can stop seeing the image of his bloodied body returning to me whenever I close my eyes. But right now, there’s no time for looking back at the past.

I need to get to my feet before I’m caught.

Pushing myself up off the train floor and brushing off the help of a fellow passenger, I scoop up the mobile phone and continue on toward the toilets. A quick glance over my shoulder tells me that my pursuer has suffered an unexpected hold-up of his own, and it’s the bit of good luck I have been lacking today. A rotund passenger has stepped out of his