One wrong turn, p.16
One Wrong Turn, page 16
Samantha knew she tended towards melancholy and pessimism. She’d always been a glass-half-empty type, even from when she was a little girl. It was no different tonight. She couldn’t shake the feeling that things would still turn out badly.
The country lane Paul emerged on was thin and winding, and he drove so aggressively that the hedges on either side of them became a blur. It would only be a matter of minutes now until they reached the outskirts of Fowey.
‘Is it really all there?’ Paul asked.
‘I . . . think so?’
Samantha picked up one of the banded bundles of fifty-pound notes, turning it in her hand. It was thick and weighty, the paper faintly warm and waxy, as if it had just been run off a printer.
But it was real. The money was real. The baby changing bag was filled with it.
‘Oh, thank Christ.’ Paul flung his head back for a moment, venting a gust of air from his lungs. Then he jolted and looked at her with a new concern. ‘Will your parents call the police?’
‘Mum said she’d talk to Dad,’ she told him. ‘I think she knows now why we can’t do that.’
A little part of Samantha’s heart broke as she pictured her mother running back into the house for the money. She’d lied to her parents. She’d done it because she’d had to. But her betrayal would forever be between them now.
‘OK.’ Paul nodded. ‘OK, so we get back to Bristol. We’ll be at the house for nine a.m.; they’ll show with Lila or they’ll contact us and tell us where to go. Either way, we’ll give them the money and they’ll hand us Lila back.’
Samantha paused, and another little part of her fractured as she asked the question she really didn’t want to ask. ‘But what if they don’t?’
‘They have to.’
‘But what if they don’t bring Lila?’
‘They will.’
She shuddered. A dark disquiet seemed to be leaching out from the bank notes in her hands, coating her fingers, permeating her skin. Her blood tingled as if a contaminant had invaded her system, a vibrating, hot itchiness streaking up her arms, creeping up her neck.
So many things could go wrong. What if the kidnappers asked for more money? What if they’d harmed Lila, or worse?
She felt suddenly feverish, the hot itchiness settling around her core, making her want to scratch at herself until her skin broke. There was a bag filled with one hundred and eighty thousand pounds on her lap. There was a further seventy thousand in the suitcase in the boot. But all of it was meaningless without Lila.
Ahead of them, through the fog, Samantha could see the blur of yellow lights in the windows of a scattering of pretty terraced cottages that overlooked the road, facing towards the estuary. Several vehicles were parked in a row, tucked in tight against the opposite hedge.
‘I can’t believe we have the money,’ Paul said.
Samantha tensed at the way he said it, the manic light that had crept into his eyes. It was the same dangerous glimmer she recognized from his gambling stints in the past. Days and nights when she had no idea where Paul was, or who he was with, until he returned home dishevelled and broke and full of apologies.
Truly, Samantha, how well do you know your husband?
Her father’s question repeated in Samantha’s head. Because wasn’t there a part of her, even now, that wondered if she could fully trust Paul with this money? What if, on the way to Bristol, he got it into his head to risk everything on one final throw of the dice? A big win to clear their debts, get Lila back and set them on their way again.
The thought rocked her.
‘This is my parents’ money, Paul. Their savings.’
He said nothing, apparently too preoccupied with his driving.
‘We’re going to have to pay them back. Whatever happens.’
Silence.
‘Paul?’
An awful, sickly feeling in her gut. A stabbing cramp of unease.
Which is when Paul braked very hard and Samantha glanced up, startled, to find that he was staring aghast through the windscreen.
At a woman who had stepped out from behind one of the parked cars at the side of the road.
A woman with a gun in her hand.
44
‘I don’t understand,’ I said, looking at Paul. ‘What happened? What’s going on?’
But Paul didn’t answer me. He shook his head as if he couldn’t bring himself to speak. His eyes were damp and quivering, and he was swallowing deeply and repeatedly, as if he might puke.
‘If your wife was still in the car, we would have seen her.’
Unless . . .
A strange, off-key note sounded in my head, like a nasty screech on a violin.
‘Was she . . .?’ I broke off, then tightened my knuckles around the steering wheel, forcing myself to say it. ‘Was your wife in the boot?’
‘The boot?’ said the woman I now knew as Collette. ‘Oh no, Abi, she wasn’t in the boot. If you must know, she was sitting right about where Paul is now.’
Saturday Night
10.34 p.m.
The woman measured them coolly, standing sideways, the gun extended at the very end of her reach.
She was wearing a full-length quilted jacket with a cashmere scarf wound around her neck and a beanie hat on her head. Her dark hair cascaded downwards, some of it obscuring her face.
But Samantha recognized her.
How could she not?
It was the woman who had threatened them in their kitchen. The woman who’d snatched Lila. The woman who’d haunted her thoughts ever since.
‘Paul,’ Samantha breathed.
She didn’t take her eyes off the woman. It felt to her as if an invisible fishing line had been strung between them and pulled so taut that she could feel a hook tugging at her throat.
‘Paul, what’s she doing here? Where’s Lila?’
Her husband was speechless. He didn’t move.
The lane they were on was lonely and quiet. The line of parked vehicles was in darkness. Nobody was looking out from the windows of the short terrace of whitewashed holiday homes.
Nobody is watching.
‘What do we do?’
But Paul didn’t speak. He looked stricken.
The woman advanced purposefully towards Samantha’s side of the car, her gun muzzle tracking between Paul and Samantha and then drawing frighteningly close to Samantha’s window as she reached out with one hand and rattled the handle of the rear door.
‘Paul,’ Samantha shrieked, covering her face with her hands. ‘Do something.’
Because they couldn’t let the woman in.
They mustn’t.
Not until they saw Lila. Not until they knew she was safe.
‘Unlock this door.’ The woman rapped twice on Samantha’s window with her gun; two sharp, impatient taps. She then aimed her gun at Samantha through the glass.
‘You can’t,’ Samantha pleaded with Paul. ‘Don’t.’
But then Paul’s face collapsed, and she heard it.
A groan, followed by a muted click and a succession of fast shuffling sounds as Paul disengaged the central locking.
‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered. ‘I don’t want you to get hurt.’
45
My heart seized as I stared again at Paul, feeling woozy, dazed.
She was sitting right about where Paul is now.
Paul hadn’t responded directly to what Collette had said. He wasn’t engaging with either of us. He seemed to be trapped in his own private world of torment, staring in apparent bewilderment at the gun in his hand, then in slack wonder at the road we were travelling along, blinking against the tears that were glistening in his eyes.
I gulped air. My ears popped.
Then I glanced at Collette for a second, and immediately pulled up short. She cocked an eyebrow, twisting her mouth to one side, almost as if she was enjoying this.
An uneasy sensation tiptoed down my spine.
Was it possible she was telling the truth? Could Paul’s wife really have been in the front passenger seat of the broken-down Mercedes? How could we have missed her?
My mind raced back through the sequence of events from when we’d first seen their car. I thought of how dark it had been, the dense and hanging fog, how I’d still been recovering from the shock of nearly colliding with Paul and—
Something else occurred to me, and a sickly horror radiated out from the middle of my chest.
The harrowing look Collette had given me when she’d held my eyes as I was driving past. She’d been standing in front of the driver’s door.
It could have been deliberate, I realized now. She could have been blocking my view into the car on purpose. The windows had been darkly tinted. And when we’d stopped the bonnet had been raised, meaning we couldn’t see in.
My heart flip-flopped.
When we’d first pulled over and Ben had offered to take a look at her car, Collette had dissuaded us. And when Paul had been struggling to free the base of the baby car seat – when we’d believed that was what was happening – Ben had offered to help, only for Collette to deter him again.
Oh, God.
A hollow opened up inside me, a bottomless cavity of dread and grief.
Collette was the one who’d told us she was married to Paul.
Did you see my husband? He went that way to try to find help . . .
And it was Collette who’d first told us there was a baby.
I’m worried about the baby getting cold . . .
I felt sick.
When Collette had said those words to us, she’d been standing with a baby car seat on her arm that she knew to be empty. The seat had been turned towards her, its hood up, in much the same way that the bonnet of the car had been raised. The main reason Ben had grabbed the steering wheel and made me stop in the first place was because we’d seen a woman holding a baby car seat, stranded in the dark. It was why Ben was able to persuade me to give them a lift, even though the idea of having a baby so close was incredibly difficult for me.
Who was this woman? How could she do such a thing?
I looked at her again, chilled and unnerved by the sly superiority she was projecting, and instinctively I knew.
It wasn’t just possible.
I believed her.
Everything she’d said and done – all of it – had been intended to make sure we only saw what she wanted us to see.
Saturday Night
10.38 p.m.
‘Do you have the money?’ the woman asked.
Paul coughed nervously, looking at Samantha. ‘Where’s Lila?’
Something cold and hard pressed against the flesh at the back of Samantha’s neck. The gun, she realized, with a sinking terror, looking desperately to Paul to save her.
‘Yes, we have the money,’ he said in a rush.
‘All of it?’ The woman pressed the gun in deeper, drawing a horrified gasp from Samantha’s lips.
‘Yes.’
‘Where is it?’
Paul’s eyes went to the baby changing bag on Samantha’s lap. ‘Most of it is in there.’
‘Show me.’
With trembling hands, Paul reached across and slowly raised the flap on the bag, revealing the money inside.
‘And the rest of it?’
There was a brief delay and then Paul said, ‘In a suitcase. In the boot.’
‘OK.’ The woman eased the pressure on the gun very slightly. ‘Pass what you have there through to me. But do it carefully. No fast movements.’
The woman shifted to one side, still touching the gun against Samantha’s skin, making just enough room for Paul to lift the bag and force it between the front seats into the back. Samantha was shivering. She couldn’t stop.
‘Where’s Lila?’ she squeaked.
The gun was pressed even harder against her neck, making her cry out in pain and fear. She raised both hands instinctively as her heart seemed to shrivel in her chest.
‘Please,’ she begged. ‘We need to know that she’s safe.’
‘Drive,’ the woman told Paul.
‘But—’
‘Drive.’
Samantha trembled and looked up at Paul from her bent position as he gaped back at her. His pupils were blown, shining dark and luminous in the night, two desperate whorls of terror. His mouth was shapeless as he lifted his foot off the brake, and the car lurched and gathered momentum.
Lila.
Samantha whimpered. Was she dead? Her world was over if she was dead. Everything, all of it, for ever.
Coldness oozed out from where the muzzle touched her skin, seeping through her insides.
‘You got this from her parents?’ the woman asked Paul.
‘Yes.’
‘What about the police?’
A quick glance at Samantha and he coughed nervously. ‘They know not to contact them. We didn’t tell them about Lila.’
Samantha said nothing, her mind swamped by panic as she wondered if she should contradict Paul. If she lied and said the police were on their way, would that help them? Help Lila? What if she told the woman that her mother had worked things out for herself?
Would that make it worse?
But then, she thought, with a deep tremor of unease, how could it get any worse?
46
‘Paul?’ I said under my breath.
He didn’t answer me.
‘Paul, please.’
I looked over at him as I drove, but he wouldn’t look back at me. He was doubled over in his seat, covering his face with his hand. His shoulders heaved, and he gasped and then moaned, as if he was having a mental collapse right in front of me.
‘Talk to me, Paul.’
I reached out and touched his shoulder, but he flinched and moaned again, angling his body away from me, hiding his face.
‘I don’t think Paul’s in a chatty mood right now,’ Collette said. ‘But you and I can talk, if you like?’
I delayed for a moment before looking back at her, probing my lip with my tongue. I was scared and wrung out, my thinking muddled, my system wracked with sadness and anxiety. I really wasn’t sure I wanted to talk with Collette. It felt like a trap.
‘What have you done to him?’ I asked her.
Collette made a small, amused noise in her throat. ‘Only the same thing I did to you, more or less. Human nature is fascinating, isn’t it?’
Paul whined desperately, as if her words were hurting him deeply.
‘You manipulated him?’
‘If you like.’
‘The same way you manipulated me.’
‘Oh, you mean like this?’
I looked at her in my mirror, and suddenly she’d transformed again. She was the callow and scared woman she’d been before. Almost as if she’d shrunk. Then she blinked. Both eyes. Slowly.
I felt a stab of hurt as I pulled my gaze away, locking my attention on the road, not wanting to give her the satisfaction of seeing the impact she was having on me.
All I wanted right now was to stop my car and get out, run away, but one look at Paul told me that would be a huge mistake. He was more unpredictable than ever, and he still had the gun. I’d seen him shoot Ben. He’d used the gun to force me back in the car and make me drive. He’d killed Gary. He was dangerous and volatile, and Collette seemed to have no concerns about him turning the gun on her. I got the impression she was confident she could make Paul do whatever she wanted.
‘Oh, and there was this, too, of course,’ Collette said, and from the corner of my eye I saw her adjusting the baby blanket, tucking it in as if the seat was occupied by Lila. ‘It made you uncomfortable back at the hospital, didn’t it?’ She leaned forward in her seat, lowering her voice. ‘You didn’t want to look at the baby too closely, did you, Abi? That was probably a mistake, don’t you think? Care to tell me why?’
It was my turn not to talk.
‘Interesting.’ She sank back. ‘You said you hadn’t worked as a nanny for, what, six months?’
Again, I said nothing, but my unease grew worse. I didn’t like that she’d noticed so much about me. I didn’t like the feeling that she was toying with me, either.
‘Don’t want to talk about it? That’s OK. Because I have a theory. And, Abi? Believe me, I am so incredibly sorry for the pain you’ve been through.’
Bitch.
I whirled around, my cheeks flaming, only to instantly realize the mistake I’d made. Collette’s cruel laugh told me I’d given her just what she’d wanted.
‘. . . breakdown . . .’ Paul mumbled next to me, talking into his sleeve, using it to scrub at his eyes.
‘What?’ I asked him. ‘What did you say?’
He uncurled his body slowly, then sniffed and swiped at his nose with the back of his hand. When he looked at me, his face collapsed. ‘I said, it was the breakdown that changed everything.’
Saturday Night
10.47 p.m.
Samantha flicked her eyes repeatedly between Paul and the outside world, feeling trapped, scared. Her body was shaking uncontrollably. She was still contorted forwards in her seat by the press of the gun muzzle, but she could tell they were climbing a steep gradient, even though the bleak fog was nearly impenetrable.
Paul wouldn’t look back at her. She got the impression he couldn’t bring himself to do it. His gaze seemed to have gone inwards, as if he was tormenting himself by reliving every bad decision and mistake that had led them to this point.
Samantha whined through her nose and glanced outside again, desperately pining for some way out of this, something they could say or try, maybe someone they could signal to about the woman with a gun in the back of their car.
But there were no other vehicles. The country lanes they were travelling along would be quiet at this time of night in the best of conditions, and with the wintry weather and the heavy fog, it was possible they wouldn’t see another soul.
Perhaps when we get over this hill, she told herself.
Perhaps then.
But as they crested the rise there was a violent lurch from the engine, like a hiccup that jolted her forwards and then back against the gun again, and then there was an awful wrenching noise, followed by a clang, and then nothing.
