“Cameras?” I say impatiently. “I didn’t think we’d need them. Not with a police guard outside.”
“Police?” He sits back, frowning as he puts his phone away. “Really? I didn’t see any.”
“Sorry, what?” I stare at him in confusion for a moment, then my heart starts to hammer against my chest as I take in his casual demeanor, his unwillingness to give chase to whoever attacked the cottage.
Craig asked whether I saw the officer’s ID last night. I didn’t, nor did I get to speak to DS Clarke to confirm he was Sergeant Rogers’s replacement. I wonder where he is, and why neither officer has returned for the morning shift. I wonder if the stranger sitting in front of me knows full well there’s no point chasing any assailant: because it was him.
Reaching for Nick’s hand, I try to think fast and assess our options, glancing up in panic as Adrian skids into the kitchen. I open my mouth to call out a warning for him to stay away; the words dry in my mouth when he bounces up to the man and tugs on his arm.
“Can we go home now, Dad?” he whines. “I’m hungry.”
“Wait. No. Are you . . . ?” I look between the two of them, and something about their eyes, the round shape of both their faces, triggers a mental slideshow of the family photos in Beth’s house. She told me her husband was working away, and I believed her. But I saw his boots in the hall—muddy Timberlands—the same ones he’s wearing now . . .
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
“You’re Mike Atkins. You’re not a policeman at all.” My voice is a croak. My throat has closed up, not just from smoke but from a sudden raft of fear that squeezes as tight as the asthma in Nick’s lungs. Did Beth’s husband throw that rock—did he try to set fire to the cottage? Is he Suspect A?
“Policeman? Me?” Mike’s eyes widen in surprise. “Not likely. Who said I was?”
“I saw you. Last night. You were outside the cottage. You were watching us.”
“Oh, right. Yeah, sorry. That was me. I hope I didn’t scare you. I just came over to—”
“There’s a real police officer out there,” I interrupt him. “And more on the way.”
“Good. I hope they get a move on. See if they can catch whoever did that.” He nods toward the hallway, the drift of smoke still meandering through the cottage.
“It wasn’t you, then?” I stare at his boyish face, confusion mingling with fear now.
“Sorry? No way! Like I said, it was probably kids. Why on earth would you think it was me?” He turns to Adrian, who has climbed onto the counter to hunt in the cupboards for food. “You were right, son. They really do seem to have it in for our family.” He turns back to me with an accusing scowl. “Why is that? What’s my boy ever done to you?”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” I turn to look at Nick, wondering if he’s as baffled as I am. His cheeks are blotchy and mottled. He’s used a lot of his inhaler, I realize; a panic attack now could be fatal. I reach for his hand. “Come on, sweetheart. We’re leaving.”
“Stay.” Mike reaches out and grabs my arm. “Please,” he adds with belated politeness. “There’s clearly been a misunderstanding. We need to talk.”
“Let go of me.” I pull my arm away. “I told you, the police are on their way. You can’t keep us trapped here. You’ve played that trick once already.” I remember the cellar full of taxidermy equipment, the drugs . . . and the knife found in the woods. It must have been his.
“What? Look, I’m sorry I didn’t introduce myself properly. I didn’t exactly arrive in the best of circumstances.” Mike huffs and rolls his eyes. “But I thought you recognized me. Your Beth’s friend, aren’t you? Mrs. Brookes. Izzy.”
“New friend,” I qualify. “And no, I didn’t recognize you. I’ve never met you before.”
“Sorry,” he says again, his manner disingenuously meek now. “Of course. You’re right. Well, in any case, I came here in good faith. To talk to you about your son.”
I glance at Adrian. “Don’t you think we should talk about yours first?”
“My son isn’t a bully.” Mike’s voice hardens again, his eyes narrowing. “You tell her, son. Tell her what you told me.” He nods at Adrian.
“He’s a bully.” Adrian’s finger shoots out like an arrow toward Nick. “He was going for me just now, Dad. I only came to see he was OK. I wanted to ask if we could make up.”
“Make up?” I can’t believe what I’m hearing. “You were the one who tricked him into those woods!”
“Nick wanted to do it,” Adrian says tearfully. “He said he wanted to show everyone he wasn’t a wimp. How was I to know he’d change his mind?”
“You’re lying!” Nick yells, hammering the kitchen table with a fist.
“I’m not. Honest.” Adrian shakes his head, his pink cheeks and wide eyes reminding me of his baffled innocence on Saturday morning. “I knew you’d say this. You’re always trying to make me look dumb. Like forcing me to buy that dirty magazine.”
“You got that magazine,” Nick shouts at Adrian. “You said it was your dad’s. You said your mum would be upset if I didn’t hide it for you.”
“My son doesn’t tell lies.” Mike leans forward, eyes fixed on Nick. “You were taunting him, weren’t you? At his own sleepover. Come on, admit it.”
“That’s rubbish,” I snap. Resting my hand reassuringly on Nick’s back, I glance at the window, watching for the police. Frustratingly, all I see is trees. The closest properties are some distance away; not even the homemade explosive has alerted anyone’s attention.
“You did the right thing texting me, son. Last Friday and last night.” Mike nods at Adrian. “I know your mum means well. She’s just too trusting. She shouldn’t even have invited this boy into our house. But don’t worry. I put her straight. And you, my lad—”
“Honestly, there’s been a mistake,” I say quickly, as I see Mike’s fists clench. “Nick has never bullied anyone. He’s been picked on his whole life.” I’m annoyed to hear my voice crack, longtime pain and a baffled sense of injustice leaking out.
“I’m not stupid. I know my own child.”
“I’m sure you do.” I deliberately aim for a conciliatory tone now. “But they’re growing up so fast, aren’t they? We don’t always know everything they get up to. Look at how Adrian bunked off school to come here today. And he obviously looks up to you. I guess it’s understandable that he lied about Friday night—so you won’t think badly of him.”
“I don’t.”
“But he almost killed my son.”
“She’s making it up, Dad!” Adrian leaps down from the counter. “Nick wanted to go into the woods. He wasn’t scared. I haven’t a clue who tied him up. I just went with him to the shed. I didn’t lock it. It was meant to be for a laugh. A game. You saw us. You know.”
“It was you. In the street.” Nick’s eyes are wide as he turns to look at me. “It was him!”
I glare at Mike. “Did you take my son into the woods? Did you lock him up?”
“Of course not!” He looks genuinely affronted. “Listen, I’m not the bad guy here.” He holds up his hands, as though in surrender. “Honestly. I got a load of texts from Adrian last Friday night. He said he was being picked on. I went to check he was OK. That’s it.”
“That’s it?” I stare at him in disbelief.
“He was horrible to me,” Adrian chips in. “It was my sleepover. He ruined it.”
“He only went with Nick into the park to try to sort things out between them,” Mike says pleadingly. “Like all good friends should.”
“That’s really what Adrian told you?” I give his son a sharp look; he might have fooled his dad, but he’s not fooling me.
“Yeah. I was worried, obviously. But kids need space to fight their own battles, don’t they? Like I said, though, I checked they were OK. I went to the house to talk to Beth—fine, to give her a piece of my mind,” he admits.
“You were inside the house. On the night of the sleepover.” I glance at Nick, suddenly recall
ing him saying that he’d heard hammering on the front door that night, and Adrian’s mum arguing with someone downstairs. It must have been Mike.
“Yeah. But I left my boots in the hall, you see. They were muddy, so I changed into some old ones. Things got a bit heated with Beth, though, and I forgot to pick up my boots on the way out. When I went back to get them . . . well, that’s when I saw the boys in the street. I watched them head over to the park, then I decided to head straight off and get my boots another time. They seemed fine when I left. Boys need adventures, after all.”
“Adventures.” My head swims at the understatement.
“Absolutely. God knows, life’s dull enough when you’re a grown-up. Schlepping up and down the motorway. Flogging software to companies that don’t want it. Beth calls me useless. She’s the one who wanted another kid just so she could stay home and play house. I told her, ‘Get off your backside and do something!’”
“Charming.” No wonder Beth pretended her husband was working away. She was obviously too embarrassed to admit the true state of their marriage, and by the time the lie was out of her mouth, it probably felt too late to come clean about Mike having been there.
“Yeah, well. She didn’t like that, either. Told me to get the hell out—of the house I’m still paying for, for Christ’s sake. Look, all I mean to say is, kids need to have fun. I checked they were OK, then I went back to my hotel. Ask the police if you don’t believe me. They’ve already confirmed all this with the night manager. He knows me. I’ve been living there, pretty much out of a suitcase, for six months. Seriously. I’m telling you the truth. I swear it on my son’s life.”
I stare at his hunched shoulders and weary expression and think of the list of jobs Beth said she had waiting for him. Mike Atkins doesn’t look like a murderer. Then again: what does a would-be child killer look like? I suspected Jason; I fully believed it could have been Sean Newton. And I have no idea if this pent-up but ordinary-looking man is anything more sinister than a frustrated, rejected husband with a severe case of parental denial.
My thoughts spiral deeper, but one keeps floating to the top: if Mike truly isn’t DCI Maxwell’s Suspect A . . . Who is?
“I just don’t get it,” I say, staring at him. “You saw Adrian and Nick going off together in the dark, in the middle of the night, and you didn’t stop them?”
Even if he is telling the truth, I’m furious as I recognize what a missed opportunity that was. Nick may well have insisted he was all right. He was delirious, hallucinating. He ran toward this man who could have helped him. I don’t care if Mike believed my son was a bully; he should have put that to one side to help a child in obvious danger, just as I fought through the smoke to look for Adrian.
“I should have. I realize that now. Of course I do. And I’m so sorry.”
“It’s a bit late for apologies.” I’m all out of sympathy.
“Sure. But you’ve got to understand, I was angry. Your son was picking on mine.” He jabs the air with a finger in childish emphasis.
“Adrian’s the bully,” I say firmly. “Not Nick.”
“Well, it seems to me it’s his word against Adrian’s. And I know who I believe. I was worried about your son, though. I hung around your house a couple of times. Just to see if he came home. I even called you. Then I got cold feet and hung up.” He shrugs and sighs. “I followed you to the press conference instead, but they wouldn’t let me inside.”
“You came to my house. You followed me to the TV studio. The black Range Rover trailing me . . .” I think back to all the little incidents I put down to paranoia. “That was you?”
Mike shifts awkwardly. “I just wanted to know what was going on, OK? The police wouldn’t tell me anything. Oh, they checked me out. Poked around in my business. Then that was it. I have no ‘parental responsibility’ anymore, you see. Beth made sure of that. So I had to find out for myself what was going on.”
“By spying on me.”
“It seemed like a good idea at the time.” His hands rasp over his face. “I went to the hospital. I even asked the doctors about Nick. Not one single person asked me about Adrian—how he was coping. The nightmares. Whispers at school. Ade told me what the kids were saying about him last week. Calling him a murderer.”
“Really?” I wonder if that’s a lie, too. Another example of Adrian courting his dad’s sympathy. “Well, he almost was,” I point out tersely.
“When are you going to get it? Nick wanted to go into the woods. He was trying to prove himself. Show off, I don’t know. Get attention.”
The irony of it takes my breath away. “Your son was filming Nick. At your house. Then here. Filming us. Me. He—”
“I’m sorry you can’t accept the truth about your child. But I won’t have mine suffer as a result. I went to the hospital to ask after Nick. Then, sure, after he got better, I thought I’d make sure he knew I wouldn’t let him get away with intimidating my son again.”
I think of his face at the window. “You came here last night to warn him. Nick texted Adrian yesterday that we weren’t at home. That we were here. He was trying to put Adrian off visiting him, but Adrian wouldn’t let it go. He texted you. Asked you to sort it out.” I feel sick as I piece it all together. “So you came here last night to scare Nick off once and for all.”
“Well, ‘scare him off ’ is a bit harsh.” Mike screws up his face, looking embarrassed now. “I didn’t want to frighten him. Just have a quiet word, you know? I realized I’d spooked you, though. Looking through the window like that. I’m really sorry.”
“You could have just come to the door! Introduced yourself. Why didn’t you?”
“I was going to. But there were these two blokes chatting round the front of the house. I thought they must be friends of yours. Didn’t fancy explaining myself to them.” He grimaces. “One of them was built like a tank.”
“He’s a police officer,” I say pointedly, realizing that I was right: Mike appeared at the back of the cottage exactly at the point Sergeant Rogers was switching shifts with his colleague. It was an easy mistake to make, I console myself.
“Right. Anyway, I managed to leg it before they spotted me. I realized it was best to come back in daylight. Only when I got here someone had literally dropped a bomb on you. And here we are.” Mike sits back, arms folded but expression a little sheepish now.
I think it all through, trying to see it from his point of view, realizing that, furious as I am, I do—finally—believe him. But while I accept that Mike didn’t come here intending violence, it doesn’t lessen my fear. If he wasn’t complicit with his son, or using him as a puppet to carry out his own agenda, I’m still certain that someone else was—and that they’re outside right now.
“Yes. Here we are.” I look around the kitchen, spotting a set of knives on the counter, wondering if I should grab one.
Mike follows my gaze. “Look, please don’t do anything rash. I got a bit carried away trying to be clever, sure. Sneaking around. But I didn’t lob a rock through any window. Or try to burn this place down. Or hurt you. Or Nick. Truly. I just wanted to make sure he knew not to mess with Adrian again.”
“But you’ve got the wrong boy!” A voice in my head reminds me how badly I misjudged Jason. Only I’d witnessed his bossiness many times, with my own eyes; Mike condemned Nick entirely on the word of his own son. And there is no one so blind as a guilt-ridden parent, I have come to realize . . . But I know he won’t believe me until he hears the truth from Adrian’s mouth. “Tell him, Adrian. Please. Be brave now, and tell the truth.”
I spin around to appeal to him one last time. The kitchen is empty. Adrian is gone, and so is Nick. A second later, I hear the front door slam shut.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
My lungs are on fire. They drag in icy air and blow out raw, exhausted sobs. My feet pound the footpath twisting between sleepy island homes, now curtained behind afternoon shadows. Disoriented in the fog, I run chaotically, first one way then the other, final
ly retracing my steps toward the bridge, suddenly fearful that the boys have headed to the river.
Jason died down there, by the boatyard. DCI Maxwell said it wasn’t suicide, and if the person who killed him isn’t Mike Atkins, and it wasn’t Sean Newton, who does that leave? Who else knows my son—knew he was going for a sleepover—knows where I live, and how to find this isolated cottage? Whoever Suspect A is, they have managed to stalk me and elude the police for seven days and nights with almost military stealth . . .
Suddenly I think of Nathan Baxter—the father Jason feared; the man Adrian said would kill him if he saw him. He’s always been jealous of Craig. Possessive of his wife; violently controlling of his son. Looking fearfully around me as I run, I imagine his eyes glowering behind every tree. I picture again the knife the police found in the woods—an army knife? And while Katie returned from the coast, she said Nathan had gone AWOL . . .
“Nick! NICK!” I scream at the top of my voice, straining my ears to catch any reply. Behind me, I can hear the erratic tattoo of Mike’s boots; I can’t tell which direction he is running in, until I hear him shout out to his son, too.
“MUM!”
It’s my son who finally answers, Nick’s terrified shriek cutting through every nerve ending. I run even harder, faster, looking all around to find something, anything—a stone, a piece of wood—that I can use as a weapon. But I see nothing other than occasional lumps of dirty, melting ice pockmarking the grassy verge along the path.
The snow is all but gone now, the air turned damp and fetid by the murky haze rolling off the river. It catches in my throat; it will be filling Nick’s lungs, already clogged by smoke. I listen for the sound of his cough, but all I hear is the low rumble of a boat’s engine, the steady slap of water nearby.
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