The Good Samaritan: A heart-stopping and utterly gripping emotional thriller that will keep you hooked

by C J Parsons

  Carrie considered the description of Peter’s symptoms: the lack of impulse control and frustration with social situations. Her own childhood had been spent bouncing from one mental health expert to the next – an army of psychiatrists, psychologists and therapists, all determined to label and fix her. Then later, after they’d given up, came the group sessions, where she’d learned techniques for working around her condition, seated in rows or circles with her fellow travellers on the road less taken. The road no one wanted to take.

  And Peter’s symptoms sounded all too familiar.

  ‘Has your son been tested for underlying physiological issues?’

  Tara nodded against her knees. ‘He has ADHD and some other stuff I hadn’t heard of and won’t bore you with, since the doctors seem to change their minds about it every two minutes.’

  Carrie leaned sideways to take a proper look at Tara, who remained balled up with her arms around her shins.

  ‘If that’s the case, his condition isn’t your fault. Any more than my condition is my parents’ fault.’

  ‘But it is my fault. Because instead of helping Peter learn to cope, I retreated into depression.’

  ‘Depression was an understandable and appropriate emotional response to the sudden death of your child.’

  ‘That’s no excuse.’

  ‘Yes. It is.’

  Tara met her eyes for the first time since they’d sat down. There was a tear coasting down her cheek. But she smiled.

  ‘Thank you.’

  Carrie didn’t know what the ‘thank you’ was for – she’d only stated a fact – but she was pleased to have helped somehow, so didn’t say anything as Tara freed her legs, stretching them out in front of her. ‘Your mobile’s ringing.’

  ‘Oh.’ Carrie took the buzzing handset from her pocket and saw, with a pulse of surprise, that it was DCI Campbell.

  The policewoman didn’t waste time on hellos.

  ‘Carrie. I need you to listen very carefully to what I’m about to tell you.’

  Josh was so nice. Sofia had woken from a nightmare about lions that could fly and gone downstairs for a Mummy-hug. Instead, she had found Josh standing in front of the sofa looking out the window.

  ‘Where’s Mummy?’

  ‘She’s outside.’

  Sofia walked over to stand beside Josh. The sky was making a sunset and she could see Mummy and Tara standing at the bottom of the front steps.

  ‘What are they talking about?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  She watched Mummy and Tara walk down the path and turn onto the street. They were probably going to the corner shop to buy some food. Maybe they were going to make sandwiches for snacks. The thought gave her a tummy rumble.

  ‘I’m hungry.’

  ‘What would you like to eat?’

  ‘A peanut butter and jam sandwich.’

  ‘OK, let’s make one.’

  ‘Really? Even though it’s night?’

  ‘Yes. Even though it’s night.’

  Sofia clapped her hands in excitement. She hadn’t really thought Josh would let her have peanut butter and jam after bedtime when her teeth were already brushed.

  ‘I’m going to pretend I’m at a sleepover and this is the midnight feast!’

  Josh took Sofia’s hand and led her to the kitchen, where he began taking things out of the cupboard and putting them on the counter: bread, strawberry jam, peanut butter. A plate and a big knife.

  Josh fetched Sofia’s special chair from the dining table, placing it in front of the counter. Then he lifted her up so she was standing on the seat, making her almost as tall as Josh. They made two sandwiches together – him doing the peanut butter and her doing the jam.

  When they were done, Josh held up his palm and she high-fived it as hard as she could.

  ‘Ouch!’ he said, waving his hand in the air, making a pretend hurt face.

  Sofia looked back towards the door, worried Mummy and Tara would come back and make her go straight back to bed without the sandwich. Josh must have been mind-reading her, because he said: ‘Why don’t we sneak out the back door and eat in the car, so your Mummy doesn’t catch us?’

  ‘You mean like a picnic?’

  ‘Yes.’ Josh gave her a big smile. ‘Exactly like a picnic.’

  ‘We’re on our way over to bring Josh in for questioning,’ DCI Campbell’s voice said. ‘New evidence has come to light opening up the possibility that he was behind Sofia’s abduction.’

  The policewoman’s words surged through the phone, slamming into Carrie with the force of a blow, momentarily knocking the world out of alignment. The cherry tree at the end of the park duplicated itself and slid sideways for a second before snapping back into place. Carrie closed her eyes. Breathed in. Breathed out. She got up and walked to the middle of the grass. Stood facing the empty road next to it, leached grey by streetlight.

  No, she told herself firmly. DCI Campbell was wrong. She had to be wrong, because there was proof, wasn’t there? Solid, irrefutable proof of Josh’s innocence.

  ‘It can’t have been him. He was at work when Sofia was taken. You told me so yourself.’

  ‘Yes, I know we told you that, but – turn right here, Alistair, the motorway’s backed up.’ Carrie could hear the swish of traffic, then a distant horn. The sound of the police moving inexorably nearer, closing in on her home. On Josh. Nausea rolled through her stomach. ‘I’m sorry, Carrie, but we’ve only just discovered there’s an external fire escape linking Josh’s office to the neighbouring street, which means there’s a chance he used it to avoid being spotted leaving the building.’

  ‘A “chance”.’ Carrie grasped at the word. ‘How big a chance?’

  ‘Difficult to say at this point. We’re still waiting on the CCTV from that street, to see if it shows him going out and coming back around the time of Sofia’s disappearance. And Zoe’s. But there is also compelling new evidence pointing in a different direction. So, as things now stand, we have two viable theories, both of which are being taken very seriously. Normally I wouldn’t speak to you about this until we knew one way or the other, but given your current living situation, I took the view that you should immediately be made aware of any potential risk to Sofia’s safety.’

  ‘This chance,’ Carrie said, clinging tight to the word, refusing to let go. ‘It would help me if you could put it in numerical terms. Are you able to do that?’

  The background hiss of traffic travelled through the phone in the pause that followed. Then DCI Campbell said: ‘Fifty-fifty.’

  Fifty-fifty.

  The flip of a coin.

  Heads, she was living with a thoughtful, intelligent man who adored Carrie and Sofia and wanted to protect them.

  Tails, she was harbouring the monster who had terrorised her child.

  No, it just couldn’t be true.

  ‘None of this makes sense. Why would he go to all the trouble of abducting Sofia, only to return her two days later?’

  ‘Because taking her was never his ultimate goal.’ DCI Campbell said the words slowly, enunciating each one, as though English were Carrie’s second language. ‘It may have been you he wanted all along; Sofia was just a means to an end.’

  ‘I don’t understand what you mean. Explain to me?’

  ‘I have a theory. And to be clear, right now it is just a theory, that Josh became fixated on you at the awards ceremony. And when he failed to get your attention through work, he decided to try something more . . . extreme. Osman mentioned your devotion to Sofia during his magazine interview at Wescott. So when Josh saw the photo on your desk showing the pair of you in Granger Park together, he came up with a plan to exploit that devotion, win your gratitude and gain entry to your life.’

  Carrie closed her eyes as the words crashed into her like storm waves, washing away the ground beneath h
er feet – ground on which her life was now built. She fought back, throwing up barricades of logic.

  ‘The motive you’re ascribing to Josh wouldn’t apply to Zoe. You have already concluded that both girls were taken by the same person, using the same method. But Josh had no motive for taking Zoe.’

  ‘Yes, he did.’ Tara’s voice – from right behind Carrie’s shoulder – set off a jolt of surprise. Either she’d crept up silently or Carrie had been too absorbed in the call to register what was going on around her. Tara moved nearer, aiming her words at the phone. ‘I was his motive. Josh wanted to shift suspicion onto me.’

  ‘What the . . . Is that Tara? What the hell is she doing with you!?’

  ‘She came by to tell me something.’

  Carrie sidestepped along the grass, trying to put distance between them, but Tara moved with her, still talking towards the handset.

  ‘And another thing: I don’t think deflecting blame was his only reason. I think Josh wants to end my friendship with Carrie so he can have her all to himself. I could swear I saw him following me last week just before I went to Tudor Park. I tried to go after him, but it was Regent Street, packed with tourists as usual, and he disappeared into the crowds.’

  ‘Carrie, listen to me. Tara should not be anywhere near you or Sofia right now! She is just as much a suspect in this case as Josh is, so you need to tell her to leave immed—’ The word stopped halfway, but Carrie knew the signal hadn’t dropped, because she could still hear traffic in the background. Then DCI Campbell’s voice returned. ‘Did Tara just say she saw Josh on Regent Street?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can you put me on speaker phone? I need to ask her something.’

  ‘OK.’

  Carrie held the handset in front of Tara as DCI Campbell’s voice emerged, made tinny by the speaker.

  ‘Tara, were you shopping when Josh saw you?’

  ‘Yes, but the important thing is: I went to Tudor Park for lunch afterward. So he could have followed me and seen where I like to sit.’

  ‘Did you buy anything? On Regent Street?’

  ‘What? Um, yeah. But I think you’re missing the point. I went—’

  ‘What did you buy?’

  Tara’s brows drew together, deepening the crease already carved between them.

  ‘What did I buy? Does that matter?’

  ‘It might.’

  Tara lifted a shoulder. ‘A stuffed bear. From Hamleys. A “Benjy Bear”, if you must know. My niece has an imaginary friend named Benjy and her birthday’s coming up so . . . Anyway, that’s what I’d just bought when I saw him.’

  ‘Do you still have it? If we went to your house right now, would it be there?’

  ‘No, it’s in the post, on the way to Hong Kong. Why?’

  ‘Carrie, please take me off speaker phone. I need a word with you privately.’

  ‘OK.’

  She returned DCI Campbell to her left ear, conscious of Tara, rigid and alert on her right, the two of them making her feel flanked.

  ‘Tell Tara she needs to go home now.’

  ‘Why did you ask about the bear?’ Her mind was working fast, filling in the blank spaces in the scene Tara had described: Josh watching her enter Hamleys. Following her inside. ‘Do you think he went back and bought the same bear as Tara, to use in Zoe’s abduction?’

  A sense of unreality washed over her as she said the words; she felt disconnected – as though she wasn’t really here, and all of this was happening to someone else.

  ‘It’s too early to jump to that conclusion,’ DCI Campbell said. ‘Because it is equally possible that Tara did use the bear to abduct Zoe and is now fabricating stories to implicate Josh and cover her tracks – playing along with my theory that he would stop at nothing to become the most important person in your life.’

  The storm inside Carrie had reached hurricane force. Relationships she’d built, secrets she’d shared, memories she’d cherished – all were being whipped away, until finally only one true thing remained. The most fundamental truth of all, solid and immutable.

  ‘He could never become the most important person in my life. That will always be Sofia.’

  The policewoman made a ‘hmm’ noise.

  ‘Yes, but Josh wouldn’t necessarily realise that, given that his own mother was . . . well. She took a different view.’

  ‘He does realise that. I told him.’

  There was a pause. She could hear a snatch of music from a car passing in the background. Then DCI Campbell spoke again.

  ‘When did you tell him that?’

  ‘Last week, after we got back from the hospital.’ She heard a male voice mumbling, but couldn’t make out the words. It must be that man she often worked with, the Irish one.

  ‘Carrie, where is Sofia right now?’

  ‘In bed.’ She turned and walked quickly out of the park, heart hammering. ‘I’m going to her.’

  Her legs scissored along the pavement. She hadn’t thought twice about leaving her daughter alone in the house with Josh. He’d always taken such good care of her. She told herself that this phone call didn’t change that. Sofia was asleep in bed and Josh was working in his study. Everything was fine. But she broke into a run as she turned onto her street, the mobile still pressed against her ear, dimly aware of Tara’s footsteps echoing behind her.

  ‘We’ll be arriving shortly to question Josh,’ DCI Campbell said. ‘A separate car has been dispatched to bring in Tara. Meanwhile, you are to stay away from both of them, do you understand? Station yourself in Sofia’s room. Because as things now stand, we have two equally plausible theories and two equally likely suspects. And I don’t want you or Sofia anywhere near either of them.’

  Carrie reached her house, dragging fingers through her hair as she approached the door, letting the nails rake her scalp. Some small part of her hoped she wouldn’t feel it, because this was all just a dream. A terrible dream. Any moment now she would wake up and find herself in bed with Josh asleep beside her, solid and reassuring. The nails dug into her skin, leaving stinging furrows.

  This was no dream. Either her lover had abducted Sofia, or her best friend had.

  Heads, you lose. Tails, you lose.

  ‘Carrie?’ DCI Campbell’s voice prodded. ‘Do you understand?’

  She took out her door key. ‘Yes. I understand.’

  ‘Good. We should be with you in’ – another pause, another male mumble – ‘eighteen minutes. If Josh approaches you, don’t let on that there’s anything wrong. And it goes without saying that you’re not to warn him we’re coming.’

  ‘If it goes without saying, then why did you say it?’

  ‘It’s just a . . . Never mind. I’ll see you soon.’ And the line went dead.

  She shoved the phone back in her pocket and was about to slot her key in the lock when she heard running footsteps closing in from behind. Tara. Carrie turned to find her dashing up the front path, pulling to a halt as she reached the steps and saw Carrie standing at the top, facing her.

  ‘Tara, I need you to go home now.’ For once Carrie’s voice matched the way she felt: flat and numb, as though all the emotion had been gouged out, leaving her hollow. ‘Please.’

  Tara opened her mouth, as though about to speak. But then she closed it again. Nodded.

  ‘OK,’ she said quietly. ‘I’ll go.’

  Her footsteps were loud against the silence.

  Carrie rushed inside and had already put one foot on the bottom stair when her mind processed what her eyes had just seen.

  While she’d been outside, something had changed. Sofia’s chair was in the kitchen and there were dishes and containers on the counter. As she moved closer, she saw what they were: a loaf of bread and an open jar of peanut butter. A knife lay beside it, the blade red with jam. Her stomach did a slow turn.

 
Peanut butter and jam sandwiches. Sofia’s favourite.

  Somewhere deep inside her, an alarm went off. She dashed up the stairs, ears straining ahead for the sound of Josh moving around, going through his nightly ritual (glasses off, face washed, teeth brushed, next day’s clothes laid out). But the silence was complete.

  When she reached the corridor, she saw, with a fresh jolt of alarm, that her daughter’s door was wide open. She ran across the threshold, heart banging.

  The curtains were half-open and a fat slice of moonlight lay across the floor. It picked out the rope ridges of the circular rug and the bedtime book (Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus) splayed face-down on the floor. It threw shadows across the duvet, recasting the pink unicorns in shades of grey. Carrie stood staring down at the rumpled folds of cloth, lying against the mattress like the abandoned cocoon of a butterfly. No sleeping figure reshaping it, no gentle rise and fall of a child’s breathing.

  Sofia was gone.

  Thirty-five

  ‘It’s going straight to voicemail,’ Carrie said, shoving her mobile into the back pocket of her jeans. She looked up and down the empty street, consumed by helplessness. ‘Now what do we do?’

  Tara had been standing on the corner, waiting for her Uber to arrive, when Carrie had come barrelling down the pavement, shouting that Sofia was gone. Tara’s eyes had gone round and her mouth had stretched wide: a cartoon image of surprise that even Carrie could read.

  She had cancelled the Uber immediately.

  ‘Now we call the police,’ Tara said now, turning on her heel and marching back towards Carrie’s place. ‘Talk to that DCI again – Campbell – tell her what’s happened.’

  Carrie jogged alongside her, past the house second from end: number seventy-eight, with its neatly clipped hedge. The old woman’s voice whispered in her memory.

  Anyone can see he’s not right in the head.