‘You.’ He pointed a finger at Collette. ‘You did this to me.’

  ‘Me?’ Collette said in mock astonishment. ‘Oh, Abi, don’t you hate it when men play the victim? Especially when they’re not.’

  59

  Ben

  Ben drove recklessly around the outskirts of Bodmin, hurtling through the night. The engine of the little Hyundai screamed and shook. Fog swirled and danced in his vision.

  He drove faster still.

  Because all that mattered right now was finding Abi, catching up to her. Hoping he could. He didn’t know where she’d gone, where they’d taken her, all he knew was the rough general direction they might have headed in.

  Plymouth.

  Maybe.

  If it hadn’t been another one of Paul’s lies.

  The mobile phone he’d found in the broken-down car buzzed and droned in his hand. He was cupping it upright in his palm, bracing his knuckles against the steering wheel. The call was on speaker because he couldn’t afford to stop and pull over to talk. He’d had his doubts about calling in the first place. A battery icon at the top of the screen told him the phone only had 11 per cent battery left.

  ‘Emergency. Which service do you require?’

  It was a different operator from the one Ben had spoken to earlier. Male, this time. A Cornish accent. He sounded older than Ben by a decade or more.

  999 was the only number Ben could call on the password-protected phone. He couldn’t access any other information on the mobile apart from the lock-screen image that had upended everything, making him more and more terrified about the danger Abi was in.

  ‘It’s Ben Simmons,’ he shouted. ‘I called about the shooting at the petrol station earlier. Have you found my girlfriend, Abi?’

  There was a pause that seemed to speak volumes.

  ‘Ben, I’m one of the supervisors here. Where are you now?’

  Could they trace his call to get his position? He didn’t know, but he imagined it was possible. It had to be if they had enough time.

  He flew over a hump in the road, the suspension flexing and compressing, the phone jiggling in his hand.

  ‘What about Gary?’ he asked. ‘Did you find his body?’

  No answer. Not right away.

  But Ben didn’t need one.

  He was vaulting across the roundabout near the Stop’n’Go, plunging onto the A38, the car rocking and twitching on the greased road surface.

  The petrol station was obscured by the landscaping that surrounded it, but he could see the blue flashing lights of emergency vehicles pulsing against the blanket of fog that was draped over the area, like the stutter of lightning inside storm clouds.

  ‘We have officers on scene now, Ben. They’re waiting to talk to you.’

  ‘They need to find Abi. Are there teams out looking for her car? Did you try calling her or locating her phone?’

  ‘That’s something you can discuss with the officers on scene.’

  ‘No!’

  Because Ben could imagine how that would go. They’d found a dead man. Ben had fled the petrol station after dialling 999. Maybe they knew he’d taken Gary’s car. Maybe they didn’t. But they’d treat him as a suspect, no question.

  ‘Look, I’m a lawyer, I’m not a criminal. I’m looking for Abi. It’s like I told the operator I spoke with before, I think the people who carjacked her were making her drive towards Plymouth, possibly.’

  ‘I understand, Ben.’

  ‘Do you? I’m not sure you do. Because I think they’re going to kill her.’

  Ben choked on his words, shocked to hear them aloud. He’d been trying so hard to convince himself there might be a way out of this for Abi, but in his heart he was terrified there wouldn’t be.

  Another pause from the operator. Ben wondered if he’d signalled to a colleague, perhaps the woman he’d spoken with earlier. Maybe there were police officers there, or a team of people listening in, trying to get a sense of where he might be.

  ‘What makes you say that, Ben?’

  ‘Because I’m calling you on a dead woman’s mobile. I just found her body, back at the broken-down car where Abi and I picked Paul and Samantha up. You need to send police and an ambulance there, too. It’s on the main road into Fowey.’

  This time, the pause was much shorter. ‘Is that where you are now, Ben?’

  ‘No, I already told you, I’m trying to find Abi. Just promise me you’ll look for her. Get some police cars on the road.’

  ‘OK, we’ll look into that for you, Ben. But right now, I need you to tell me exactly where you are so I can send a team to meet you. We need to be sure that you’re OK and then you can explain things.’

  ‘You’re wasting time.’ He couldn’t believe they weren’t getting this. He moved his thumb over the little red icon to end the call. ‘And I’m running low on battery. I’ll call you if I can think of anything else.’

  60

  ‘You tricked me,’ Paul said, striding towards Collette. His face was taut and his body was shaking. ‘You lied to me. You murdered my wife.’

  He stopped by the open door to my car, closing his hand into a fist, clenching it hard. I watched his knuckles whiten. I saw him step backwards, and then forwards again, as if he didn’t know what to do.

  I felt like my life was hanging from a thread. It could end any second.

  ‘I told you there would be risks involved,’ Collette said evenly. ‘Your wife was a risk.’

  ‘You didn’t have to kill her!’

  ‘Didn’t I? Tell me, Paul, how would it have worked otherwise? Do you think Abi here would have stopped for all three of us? And suppose she did stop, do you think Samantha could have kept it together? Because I don’t. It seemed to me she was really quite delicate by the end.’

  Paul was silent for a rueful beat, his breath hissing through his teeth. ‘We could have waited.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For Jason to pick us up.’

  Jason.

  Collette clucked her tongue and shook her head in warning at Paul as my mind scrambled to understand who he might be. An accomplice, I guessed. And not one Paul should have mentioned by name, judging by Collette’s reaction.

  ‘We didn’t have time for that,’ she told him. ‘You know we didn’t have time. Are you suggesting we could have all stayed in a broken-down car for an hour with Samantha? In those circumstances? With the state she was in? Without her beginning to see you were a part of this? Maybe if you hadn’t run off—’

  ‘I ran off because you shot Samantha!’

  And what would have happened if I’d stopped for him? I asked myself again. How might things have been different?

  I looked between them, gripped by terror and uncertainty, trying to get a handle on how exactly they were involved with one another. Collette had told me Paul wasn’t a victim in this. She’d said he was a part of it. And he’d proven that by shooting me. He’d shot Ben.

  Engine noise behind me. Headlights bathed the interior of my car. My heart beat desperately fast as a white van tore by without stopping.

  Paul turned away to hide his face, clasping a hand to his forehead, bracing his other hand on his hip.

  We waited in silence for the van to speed on. My arm throbbed with pain. My head thumped dully. Only when the van was in the far distance did Paul turn back.

  ‘You kidnapped my baby,’ he said, and for the first time his voice began to fail him. ‘My baby.’

  ‘No, Paul,’ Collette said coldly. ‘I saw a way to maximize our returns, that’s all. I was able to ask for more money because I took Lila.’

  ‘She was never a part of our discussions.’

  ‘No? Well, that’s strange, because I seem to remember you were happy enough for us to make threats against her. You were happy for us to take pictures of her, creep into your home, take her out of her crib.’

  I shuddered, clamping down on my lip against the pain from my arm. This was so much worse than I’d imagined. Paul was in much too deep. I was starting to understand why he hadn’t gone to the police when Lila was taken. He couldn’t go to them, because he was complicit in what had happened, even if it had gone far beyond what he’d anticipated.

  ‘And maybe, Paul,’ Collette went on, ‘I put kidnapping Lila on the table because I saw something you didn’t. Maybe I understood from everything you’d told me about Samantha and your in-laws that they wouldn’t give you the money unless Samantha was sufficiently motivated. She had doubts about you, Paul. I think you know that she did.’

  Paul fell silent again, his features contorted, turning it over in his mind. He grabbed for the rim of his door, muttering darkly, looking away down the road.

  My eyes strayed to my rear-view mirror. More headlights were approaching. I wet my lip with my tongue. Could I do something, try something? Maybe while Collette was distracted by Paul.

  ‘Just for the record, I’m not a total monster,’ Collette said, returning her attention to me along with the gun, instantly stopping me in my tracks. ‘Paul had debts. Almost fifty thousand pounds. From gambling, mostly. And let me just say, when I first approached him, I was prepared to be reasonable about that. I was willing to work out a payment schedule. Something. But Paul didn’t want to follow that approach. He told me he wanted to get out from under his debts in one go, give his daughter a future. Then he mentioned Samantha’s savings. How wealthy her parents were. It really burned him that he couldn’t get at any of that money.’

  ‘Don’t!’ Paul spat, turning away again just as a saloon car blasted by.

  The chassis of my car dipped and swayed in its aftermath. This time, Collette didn’t wait as long before continuing.

  ‘So we talked,’ she said, louder now. She was still addressing me, but I got that really she was talking for Paul’s benefit. ‘And between us we began to see a way forward. A way to settle Paul’s debts and make us both some money. The key was Samantha. We didn’t just need her to know that Paul had got mixed up with some very nasty people. We needed her to believe that those people would come after her and her family. Smoke and mirrors. So much of life is about perception, wouldn’t you say?’

  I didn’t answer. All I wanted was to get out of this. But I didn’t doubt that Collette would shoot me if she needed to.

  ‘The poor thing got quite scared, quite fast,’ Collette went on. ‘And obviously her parents needed to believe it, too. They weren’t fans of Paul’s, you understand. So suspicious. We had to get quite inventive. Jason and I – I know you already caught Jason’s name, Abi – well, some of it we could do ourselves. Threatening photographs. Anonymous phone calls. And naturally, Paul could do anything around the house that we needed him to do. Sometimes he left doors open or unlocked. He keyed his own car. He knew all of Samantha’s passwords for email, Facebook etc., so that made things simpler. Also, Jason, he doesn’t just look scary. He is scary. So we broke into Paul’s home together and we took Lila from her cot, and we waited for Paul and Samantha to come downstairs to find us in their kitchen with her. We’d agreed it would be this whole big scene.’

  ‘And that’s where it should have stopped,’ Paul told her, spinning back.

  ‘It could have,’ Collette conceded. ‘I agree. But do you know your problem, Paul? You were never ambitious enough. So I gave you a little nudge. I took Lila and I upped your money. Enough to get you out from the rock you were under and make you more than whole again. Enough to make it worth my while, too. A fifty-fifty split of 250K. You’re welcome, by the way.’

  Two hundred and fifty thousand pounds.

  ‘What did you want me to say?’ Paul asked her. ‘I’m welcome? For taking my baby? For killing my wife?’

  ‘And what would have happened if I hadn’t killed her? Were you going to hide the money you had left after paying off your debts, Paul? How would that have worked, exactly? And suppose you did manage to hide the money from Samantha, do you really think she would have stayed with you after all this was over? She would have left you, Paul. Divorce. Custody hearings. Her parents would have funded the best lawyers money can buy. You would have lost Lila, without me.’

  I could hear more engine noise. Another car.

  With my good hand, I reached out very slowly and felt around next to me for the handle of my door.

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t do that, Abi,’ Collette said, casually aiming the gun at me again. ‘I think you should stay exactly where you are, don’t you?’

  61

  I obeyed Collette and stayed where I was. I didn’t move a muscle. But my mind was spinning. I was thinking really hard about everything they’d said, and about the two hundred and fifty thousand pounds in cash that was apparently in my car, and about the ways they’d been arguing, and if things were about to get even worse.

  ‘If anything happens to Lila . . .’ Paul warned Collette, his voice choking up.

  ‘Threats? Really?’

  ‘I mean it – if I find out you’ve harmed a hair on her head . . .’

  ‘Paul, Paul.’ Collette sighed. ‘Why don’t you get back in the car and stop all this posturing? Let’s go and get your daughter before somebody else drives along this road and sees you standing out there like an idiot, shall we? That’s what you want, isn’t it? Didn’t you tell me this was all about Lila’s future?’

  Paul ducked his head and weighed Collette with his eyes, looking at her with a mixture of loathing and reluctant hope. At last, he sagged, and growled, and then he dropped down heavily into his seat, whipping the tail of his mackintosh clear of the door, slamming it closed behind him.

  A few seconds later, another car drove by.

  ‘How’s your arm?’ Collette asked me, once it was gone.

  ‘It’s . . .’

  I didn’t know what to say.

  It’s agony. It’s ruined.

  ‘Can you drive? The reason I’m asking, Abi, is because if you can’t drive, that changes things, understand?’

  I swallowed thickly.

  I understood.

  She’d said she wouldn’t kill me here, but she could. She’d also told me I was more useful to her alive than dead for now. It could be that was because she wanted me to drive them. Maybe her hand would make driving difficult. Maybe she didn’t trust Paul behind the wheel. But I had the unsettling feeling that there was something else to it, another reason I wasn’t dead yet.

  ‘Oh, and one more thing.’

  As I watched, Collette set the gun down in her lap and reached into a pocket of her padded coat, removing a small, stubby item with silver accents. She raised her fist and then I heard a greased swish as a blade flipped out.

  Fear rushed through me.

  The knife must have been in her pocket all this time. Had Paul known she had it with her? Perhaps he’d been painfully aware of that when she’d been sitting behind him as I was driving them both.

  ‘Stay very still for me, Abi, won’t you?’

  I shrunk away from Collette as she slipped the knife between my waist and my seat belt, slicing into my belt with her blade.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Patience.’

  The blade must have been razor sharp because there was a ripping, splitting, tearing sound, like tarpaulin being shredded by a stiff breeze.

  With a soft grunt from Collette and a final, taut plucking noise, the belt was cleanly severed, and then it whipped upwards across my chest, flapping uselessly over my shoulder, retracting into the plastic housing in the door. The waist part of my belt loosened, curving up above my thighs.

  ‘This is just in case you get any more ideas about driving recklessly,’ she told me. ‘Now, let’s go.’

  I didn’t move.

  ‘Seriously, Abi. I’d hate for things to turn unpleasant between us.’

  But I still didn’t move.

  I couldn’t, somehow. I couldn’t engage my brain or summon the energy to do it.

  Strange to say, but it was as if my belt being severed had severed something inside me, too. Maybe my last thread of belief that any of this could turn out OK. I knew that if I crashed now, I could be killed. I also understood there was every chance Collette would kill me if I didn’t do as she said.

  ‘Do we have a problem?’ she asked me.

  Collette slowly twisted the knife and raised the blade into my eyeline, bringing it towards my face.

  ‘I said—’

  ‘She’s pregnant,’ Paul blurted out.

  The world stopped spinning.

  Everything went very, very still.

  ‘Is that true?’ Collette asked me, easing the knife back a fraction. ‘Are you pregnant?’

  My mouth had gone dry. I struggled to think what to do, what to say, wishing the blade wasn’t near me, that it didn’t exist.

  There was no way of telling if my being pregnant would make any difference to Collette, though somehow I suspected it wouldn’t. She’d had no qualms about snatching Paul’s baby. Why would she worry about mine?

  ‘I saw the test stick in her handbag,’ Paul explained. ‘It was positive.’

  ‘So you only just found out? Did Ben know?’

  She hadn’t stabbed me, but she might as well have.

  An imaginary blade pierced my heart, lodging in deep.

  Tremors passed through my body, travelling down through my legs and up to my jaw, my lips. All my muscles seemed to be cramping.

  ‘How far along are you?’

  I shook my head, but I couldn’t stop my tears. They were running down to my lips, getting inside my mouth. I swallowed, and it was as if a lozenge of despair slipped down the back of my throat, cracking open inside me.

  ‘Collette?’ Paul’s voice wavered.

  ‘How. Long?’

  I shook my head again. I really didn’t want to say.

 

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