Читать книгу The Fire Witness - Ларс Кеплер - Страница 11

The dog is barking at her as it runs about, panting and moaning. Elisabet limps away from the house, across the dark driveway. The dog barks again, ragged and anxious. Elisabet knows she won’t be able to get through the forest – the nearest farm is half an hour’s drive away. There’s nowhere to go. She looks around in the darkness, then creeps behind the drying house. She reaches the old brew-house and opens the door with shaking hands, goes inside, and carefully closes the door.

Gasping, she sinks to the floor and tries to find her telephone.

‘Oh God, oh God …’

Elisabet’s hands are shaking so badly that she drops it on the floor. The back comes loose and the battery falls out. She starts to pick up the pieces as she hears footsteps crunching across the gravel.

She holds her breath.

Her pulse is thudding through her body. Her ears are roaring. She tries to look out through the low window.

The dog is barking right outside. Buster has followed her there. He’s scratching at the door and whimpering.

She crawls further into the corner next to the brick fireplace, and tries to breathe quietly, hiding right at the back next to the wood basket, as she pushes the battery back into her mobile.

Elisabet lets out a scream when the door to the brew-house opens. She tries to shuffle along the wall in panic, but there’s nowhere to go.

She sees a pair of boots, then the shadowy figure, and then the terrible face, and the hand holding the dark, heavy hammer.

She nods, listens to the voice, and covers her face.

The shadow hesitates, then rushes across the floor, holds her down on the floor with one foot, and strikes hard. There’s a flash of pain at the front of her head, just above her hairline. Her sight disappears completely. The pain is appalling, but she can still feel the warm blood running over her ears and down her neck like a soft caress.

The next blows hits the same place, her head lurches, and all she can feel is how air is being drawn down into her lungs.

Bewildered, she can’t help thinking that the air is wonderfully sweet, then she loses consciousness.

Elisabet doesn’t feel the rest of the blows and how they make her body flinch. She doesn’t notice the keys to the office and the isolation room being taken from her pocket, and she isn’t aware of being left on the floor, or how the dog slips into the brew-house and starts to lick the blood from her crushed head as life slowly leaves her.