The Silent Ones by Ali Knight Read Free Book Online Page A

nursing station checked it and opened the door.
    He figure-eighted the floor, getting angrier by the minute. The Witch was having sex and enjoying herself while Carly lay rotting somewhere cold. And here he was, cleaning bloody corridors. He could be painting the house, doing something useful for Mum and Dad; for his living family.
    Several hours later he was trying to quell his anger by imagining what the corridor would look like painted different colours, with the ceiling gunmetal grey and the walls yellow, or with Carly’s graffiti tag as a motif down the wall. He was tracing the letters of her tag on the floor in a furious mop stroke when the door at the far end of the corridor was opened by a male orderly in a nurse’s uniform, keys on his hip. ‘Excuse me, what’s your name?’
    ‘Darren.’
    ‘There’s been a spillage, can you come through, please.’
    The nurse held the door open for Darren, who pushed his bucket through the door. It closed behind him with a loud click. He was in a kind of recreation room with about ten people in it, a large space with full-length plate glass windows that gave on to an expanse of grass with a single willow tree in the middle, the low red buildings at the sides and opposite giving it the appearance of a large courtyard. Low-slung chairs with well-used leather cushions were dotted around, and four women were at a table where their card game had been interrupted by what was happening beyond them. An old woman was bent sideways over her wheelchair, staring at a puddle of vomit.
    ‘Linda’s been feeling unwell all day, haven’t you, Linda?’ A female nurse announced, to Linda but intended for Darren. She unhitched the wheelchair’s brakes and pulled Linda backwards away from the mess.
    ‘If you could deal with that please,’ the male nurse said to Darren, indicating the vomit spread across the lino.
    Darren pushed the bucket across the room, fighting the disgust churning in his stomach.
    ‘You’re a new face.’
    Darren glanced up – and nearly fainted. Olivia sat in a low chair near him, staring at him. He looked around the room. One nurse was pushing Linda towards the door; another was turned away from him, talking on the phone at the main desk. Darren straightened, gripping the mop handle. He had an overwhelming urge to cry out Carly’s name and shove the mop head with its old woman’s sick straight down the Witch’s gob, watch her writhe in pain, but he fought the desire, so strongly he felt his knees shaking.
    Olivia noticed. She was staring at his legs, or maybe his crotch, he couldn’t tell.
    ‘Cat got your tongue?’ Her head was cocked to the side, watching.
    No one was paying them any attention, but his mind was like a bucket with a hole, draining of anything he could think of to say, and even then, what did you say to the woman who had murdered your sister?
    ‘What’s your name?’ she asked. Her voice was deep, more like a man’s.
    Even this simple question was fraught with complications. Was he giving too much away? He struggled for a few seconds and said, ‘Daz.’
    She smiled as if this amused her. ‘That’s a washing powder, not a name.’ She crossed her legs and he could see her ankles as her baggy trousers rose up. Her legs were shaved. The thought of her with a razor blade made the contents of his stomach move unpleasantly. ‘You can dissolve a human knuckle in biological washing powder in less than twelve hours.’
    Carly was on his shoulder, her thin arms round his neck like when he used to give her backies on his BMX, urging him on to kill her right there with the mop. ‘I don’t know,’ was all he could manage. It sounded as if his voice was coming from far away and belonged to someone else.
    Her smile broadened and he saw her teeth for the first time. She had pointed incisors. ‘I’m going to call you Darren. I don’t like Daz.’ Her brown eyes bore into him, as if she knew every lie he had told to get close to her.
    Darren