The meanest Flood

clenched into a tight fist, down by her side, close to her body. Sam went down on his knees, reached for the fist and held it for a moment, surprised at its warmth.
    He prised open the fingers of the fist, one at a time, hoping that within he would find a Hitchcockian clue. A gold medallion with the killer’s name and address, some irrefutable proof that would lead him directly and instantly to the man who was responsible for this mutilated and broken body.
    Zilch.
    The fist was simply a fist, a reaction to the sight of the killer bearing down on her. There was nothing clutched within Holly’s poor dead fingers, no tell-tale locket screaming identity. Only her hand and her fingers and her mother’s ring, which she had worn since her eighteenth birthday.
    Sam didn’t know if there was life after death. He doubted it. The universe was complex and he was prepared to be wrong. But even if people somehow came back again and again in a succession of reincarnations it wasn’t possible to reclaim the past. Holly’s past would never live again, and neither would Sam Turner’s. There were fewer and fewer witnesses to the fact that he’d had one.
    It was not the sound of a footstep behind him, nothing audible, that made him turn his head. Inge Berit was standing at the top of the stairs. She wore the same black cape she had worn at the Coco Chalet, the long boots with the heels. Her bag was slung over her shoulder and one of her gloves had fallen to the tiled floor. Sam thought her mouth was wide open, but that was before he took in the size of her eyes.
    As he turned and got to his feet, exposing Holly’s prostrate body, Inge Berit took a step backwards down the stairs. She lost her footing and for a moment Sam thought she would go over and crack her head on the steps. But she grabbed for the handrail and saved herself, pulling herself back on to the landing.
    Later, he couldn’t remember when she had started screaming. It could have been at that point, when she pulled herself back, but it could have been a long time before. She may already have been screaming when he turned and saw her for the first time.
    He took a step towards her but she grabbed the straps of her bag and wielded it like a weapon. ‘Keep away,’ she said. She screamed for help in Norwegian: ‘Hjelp meg, hjelp meg. Mord. Morder.’ Her voice cracking with rage and frustration. ‘Holly... ahhh.’
    The door to the flat opposite opened and a barefoot teenage boy looked out. Sam ran before it was too late. He brushed past Inge Berit and ducked as she swung her bag at his head. Must’ve been a bottle in there because it cracked against the wall. He hesitated at the turn and looked back, desperate to explain, to comfort and quieten her. But her face was a mask of outrage and hatred. Behind her Holly’s body was prostrate in the doorway to the flat, a lake of water spreading from the bathroom and flooding the hall where she lay.
    Sam took the steps fast, Inge Berit’s accusations darting after him like the tail of a kite.
    He stopped at the flat in Osterhaus gate to collect his coat and rucksack. He was checking that the wad of twenties he’d brought from England was safe in the side pocket when he heard a car come rapidly along the street. He glanced out of the window as the police left the car blocking the road and headed for the entrance to the flat.
    Sam locked the door and went out to the rear balcony as footsteps thundered on the stairs.
    ‘Politi. Open up,’ a voice shouted through the door. Sam looked down at the cobblestones in the courtyard, tried to convince himself he could take the fall, land on his feet and live to tell the tale. But he rarely believed his own stories.
    The roof was an easier option.
    ‘Politi. Open the door,’ the cops shouted. They hammered on the wood with their fists.
    Sam stood on the balustrade and hoisted himself on to an area of coping around the perimeter of the roof. A magpie trying to grab forty winks tottered off along the tiles sideways before taking to the skies.
    Sam let himself fall into the gap between the coping and the roof tiles as the noise from the flat door rose to a climax. The cops must have smashed it off its hinges and he could hear them running around in there, inspecting the loo to see if he’d got out that way. A couple of them came on to the balcony and spoke to a third who was down in the courtyard. Sam’s grasp of the language wasn’t perfect but good enough to work out that