by Tudor, C. J.
“Yes. She’s here now. No, I don’t think her mother is coming back. I think she’s in some kind of trouble.”
A pause.
“About eight years old. Can you come quickly? Thank you, Officer.”
The police. The stupid old lady had called the police. Alice had to get out. Now. She ran down the stairs and darted to the front door. Locked. Crap.
From behind her, she heard a shout: “Alice!”
The old lady stood in the kitchen doorway. Alice looked around desperately and then spotted the keys on the hall table. She snatched them up and stuck them in the lock.
“Stop right there!”
“No. You called the police.”
The old lady moved faster than Alice had expected. She grabbed her arm.
“Listen to me—”
“Get off!”
Alice yanked her arm away.
“Come back here!”
Alice pulled the door open and stumbled outside. The old lady screamed after her: “Your mother isn’t coming back. She’s left you. Wait and see.”
Alice didn’t wait. Tears blinded her eyes. She had no idea where she was going. But she did what she had been told to do, trained to do.
Alice ran.
“Seven stitches. No major organs. You’re lucky it was just a graze.”
Gabe stared at the young doctor. Thin, with bright red hair and a dour northern accent. It was hard to tell whether she was joking or not.
“Err, thank you,” he murmured.
“Of course, if your friend hadn’t found you, you could be dead.”
“From a graze?”
“Shock and blood loss at your age can often lead to heart failure.”
“Well, thanks—again.”
She nodded briskly, satisfied he appreciated the magnitude of his near-death experience.
“Do I need to stay in hospital?” he asked.
She regarded his chart, obviously debating whether “near-death” really required taking up a bed for the night.
“I’ll get you some antibiotics to take home,” she said, and hurried away.
He lay back on the hard hospital pillows. Compassion, he thought, like everything else in the NHS, had been cut back to the bone.
His side throbbed and felt tight with the stitches. Lucky. He had been lucky, he reminded himself. And actually, the doctor was right: if the blonde waitress hadn’t been getting out of her car when he had stumbled out of the van, he could have lain there for vital minutes, the blood seeping out of him. But she had seen him and staunched the wound with her scarf, called 999. Then she had talked to him, trying to keep him conscious, until the ambulance arrived. Her name was Katie, she had told him. A pretty name.
He owed her his life. In fact, he was rapidly beginning to think of her as some kind of guardian angel, appearing at his hours of need. Or perhaps that was the painkillers talking.
He closed his eyes and, this time, he saw the man again, plunging the knife into his stomach, calmly walking away with his bag. The policeman from the coffee shop. It couldn’t be a coincidence. Either there was a blip in the Matrix, or he had been following Gabe, waiting for his chance. But why? The Samaritan’s voice echoed in his head:
“Forget you ever saw those words…don’t go anywhere near that shit.”
Could it be connected with the Other People? Had Gabe stumbled over something important? Something worth attacking him for? His ancient laptop could hardly be the motive, but what about the website? Or was it what was contained in the notebook or the Bible. The codes?
It seemed far-fetched, but then the last forty-eight hours had been a vertical plunge down the rabbit hole. The car, Harry, the photos. Not exactly his normal daily routine. And the worst part—aside from almost being killed—was he no longer had any of the things he had retrieved. The map, the notebook, the hair bobble, the Bible. They were all gone.
“Mr. Forman?”
He opened his eyes at the doctor’s clipped tones. She wasn’t alone. Another woman stood behind her, at the side of his bed. Late forties, petite, with cropped blonde hair and a weariness to her face. A face that said: Really? You expect me to believe that?
Gabe knew that look only too well. He had felt it levelled at him a number of times during the investigation into the murder of his family.
If it weren’t for the stitches and the drugs, he was pretty sure he’d have felt his stomach sink.
“Gabriel.” DI Maddock smiled thinly. “What have you got yourself into now?”
Katie wiped tables, collected empty mugs, filled clean ones, smiled, took money and gave change. At least, that’s what her body did. Her mind was elsewhere. It wandered around in circles but kept coming back to one thing: the sight of the thin man on the ground, leaking dark blood from his side. His panicked eyes. Déjà vu. It reminded her a bit too much of Dad. Except the thin man was alive. So far.
When people talk about dying, they often talk about peace and acceptance. That wasn’t what she had seen in her dad’s eyes. It was terror, shock and disbelief that life, this thing that we take for granted, that we kid ourselves is constant and fixed, could be snatched away, just like that.
We try not to think about death. And if we do, we view it as something distant and abstract. We never expect it to ambush us in our own garage one late-spring night. Just like we convince ourselves tragedy will never befall us because we are somehow special and immune. The worst that can happen only ever happens to other people.
She swiped viciously at a sticky mark on a table then gave up and stuck a menu on top of it. She kept wondering how the thin man was. Gabe. He had told her his name while they waited for the ambulance. She supposed she could call the hospital. Just check he was okay. She glanced at the clock. Only another hour left on her shift. The afternoon rush had subsided. Ethan (she was pretty sure this one was Ethan) was occupied at the counter, talking to a pretty female customer.
She stuffed her cleaning cloth in her pocket and hurried out to the staff room. She let herself in and grabbed her mobile from her locker. Hospitals, she thought. She supposed the nearest would be Newton General. She googled the number and hit call.
“Hello, Newton General Hospital.”
“Oh, hello. I’m just calling to check on a patient who was brought in this afternoon. He was stabbed.”
“Name?”
“Gabe.”
“Surname?”
“Oh.” She didn’t know his last name. “Sorry, I don’t know.”
“I’m afraid we’re not able to give out patient details without more information.”
“I just wanted to check he was okay.”
A pause. “I don’t believe we’ve received any fatalities.”
“Right. Good. Thanks.”
She ended the call and chewed her lip. She didn’t have any other way of contacting him. No surname. No phone number. No—wait. She did have his number. On the “missing” flyer he had handed her ages ago. The one with the picture of his daughter on. HAVE YOU SEEN ME? She was sure she still had it at home somewhere; she had felt bad about throwing it away. She just had to find it again. Well, she didn’t have to. She could just leave it. He wasn’t dead. That was all she needed to know, really.
But she couldn’t dispel a nagging feeling of disquiet. Worry gnawed away at the lining of her stomach. She didn’t believe in premonition, or any of that nonsense. The morning she had arrived at her parents’ house to find her dad crushed to death she hadn’t experienced one iota of foresight, not a shiver, not a cloud skimming the blue sky. Nothing. And yet, right now, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something bad was about to happen or was already happening. A seed of unease had been planted and she could feel it growing, stretching out its roots.
She called her sister.
“Hello.”
�
�Hi, Lou. Just wanted to check everything was okay?”
“Why?”
“Just. I don’t know.”
A heavy sigh. “The kids are fine. They’re watching Scooby Doo. I’m making fish fingers and chips for tea, like you instructed.”
“Right. Good. Thanks. I’ll see you later.”
She ended the call and then gave in to the paranoia and called her mum. It rang for so long she thought it would go to voicemail. Maybe she was still in bed, or already drunk. Then there was a click and she heard her mum’s voice snap: “Where are you? I called hours ago.”
She frowned. “Mum? It’s Katie.”
“Katie?”
“Who did you think it would be?”
A pause. “Is she there? Is that why you’re calling?”
“Is who here? I’m at work. Are you all right?”
“No, of course I’m not. She thinks she can just turn up here after all these years—” Her mum broke off. “Wait. The police are here. About time.”
“The police? Why?”
“I called them when she didn’t come back.”
“Who, Mum?”
“Your sister. Fran. I have to go.”
An abrupt click as her mum ended the call. Katie stared at the phone.
Fran? Fran had come back? No. Not possible. And surely, the last person she would go to would be their mum. The pair had always had a spiky relationship, even before Dad died. Afterward, neither felt the need to keep up the appearance of civility. It was no wonder, really, that Fran had wanted to get away, to cut ties completely. She had left for good on the day of Dad’s funeral.
But not before she had told Katie. About what she had done.
Katie tried to be rational. You couldn’t always trust what her mum said when she was drunk. She became paranoid, abusive. She had called the police before, convinced that her neighbors were spying on her, or someone was trying to break into the house, or there was a man watching her. It always amounted to nothing. But she hadn’t sounded that drunk today. She had sounded nervous, on edge. And why would she make up a story about Fran?
Katie slipped her phone in her bag. She couldn’t wait until the end of her shift. She had to know what was going on. Now. She shrugged on her hoodie, grabbed her bag and hurried out of the staff room.
The queue was growing. The pretty girl had been joined by a good-looking young man.
“Where’ve you been?” Ethan scowled at her.
“Sorry. I have to go. Family emergency.”
“Now? You’re leaving me on my own?”
“It’s only an hour. You’ll cope.”
“I should get extra pay.”
“Oh, I think all the change you steal out of the tip pot when you think no one’s looking is bonus enough.”
Katie smiled sweetly then scuttled out of the coffee shop, trying to ignore the feeling that, somehow, she was already too late.
“Tell me about the last time you saw your daughter, Mr. Forman.”
“I told you—it was in a beaten-up old car being driven north on the M1 between junctions 19 and 21.”
“We both know that’s not possible, Mr. Forman.”
“Do we?”
“You called your house at 6:13 p.m. You claim to have seen your daughter about ten minutes before this and yet we know that your wife and daughter were already dead by this point.”
“No.” He had shaken his head. The effort made it throb. A constant headache that had been festering for days. Pressure. All the pressure building up. Why wouldn’t they listen to him? They had got it wrong. All wrong.
“Mr. Forman. We appreciate how difficult this is.”
“No, you don’t. You keep telling me my wife and daughter are dead, but I saw her. My little girl is out there. There’s been a mistake.”
“There is no mistake, Mr. Forman. Now, can you tell us your whereabouts between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m. on April 11?”
Silence.
“You didn’t go into work that day. So, where were you? We can track your mobile, so you might as well tell us. Where were you when your wife and daughter were murdered?”
* * *
—
DI MADDOCK REGARDED him now with her pale, appraising gaze. Not an unattractive woman, but something about the insipid color of her eyes, platinum hair and pale skin give her a chill appearance. Like a stone angel, he thought. No soft edges or warmth. He could throw out the cliché about it being her job, but he suspected that her coolness had more to do with her personality than with her profession. He bet she even greeted her mother with a curt handshake.
“So,” she said. “I was hoping you might have taken that camper van of yours, hopped onto a ferry and gone somewhere hot and sunny.”
“Given up, you mean?”
“Moved on.”
“I do move on, every day.”
She looked him up and down. “And how’s that working out for you, Gabriel?”
He shifted. “I would have thought a knifing was a bit small-time for you. Or have they downgraded you from Homicide?”
“Nope. But some people I like to keep tabs on. When your name cropped up on PNC, it was brought to my attention and I thought I’d make a personal visit.”
“Gee. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” She took out a notebook. “So what exactly happened?”
He reached for the glass of water beside the bed and took a sip. His throat felt suddenly dry.
“I was attacked.”
“In your camper van?”
“Yes.”
“And your assailant ran off with your bag, containing your laptop, is that right?”
“That’s right.”
“Can you describe your assailant?”
“Mid-twenties. Short, stocky. Wearing a police uniform.”
“You’re saying a police officer stabbed you?”
“No. I’m saying he was wearing a police uniform.”
“Doesn’t sound like your typical opportunist thief.”
“I’m not sure he was.”
“How d’you mean?”
“I saw him in the café, before the attack.”
More note-taking. “Okay, I can ask some of the staff. They might remember him.”
“What about CCTV?”
“We’re looking into that, but if this was planned, your assailant probably knows how to avoid being caught on camera.” A keener look. “You think he targeted you? Why?”
Gabe stared back at her. Because of what he had found. Because he had got too close to the truth. To Izzy. And he was pretty sure if he said that, then DI Maddock would snap her notebook shut and walk out of here. On the other hand, what did he have to lose?
“I found something. Evidence that Izzy is alive.”
The notebook remained open. For now. But he sensed the effort it was taking for her not to roll her eyes.
“What evidence?”
“The car.”
“You found the car? Where?”
“It had been dumped, in a lake.”
“So why didn’t you call the police?”
“You never believed me before.”
“Not true. We believed there was a car. We even had witnesses who saw a vehicle matching the description you gave driving erratically on the M1 that evening.”
“So why didn’t the driver come forward?”
“Maybe they were drunk. Maybe they didn’t have tax, insurance. Could be any number of reasons. But the point is, it can’t have been Izzy you saw in it. Just another little girl who looked like her.”
“Why dump it, then?”
“Who knows? Maybe it was stolen.”
He felt the frustration rise, just like before. A feeling of helplessness, like a child trying to tell an adult that fairies really
did exist.
“There were things in the car. A hair bobble just like Izzy’s. A Bible with these strange passages underlined. And a notebook. It had something written in it. ‘The Other People.’ ”
Her gaze became keener. “The Other People?”
“You’ve heard the name?”
She continued to stare at him, evaluating. “These items,” she said slowly. “I take it they were in the bag that was stolen?”
“Yes.”
“I see.”
“No, you don’t. That’s why I was attacked. They wanted to destroy the evidence.”
A deep sigh, conveying a faint whiff of mints and a stronger whiff of skepticism.
“What?” Gabe challenged. “You think I’m making all of this up? That I attacked myself?”
She didn’t reply and, suddenly, he was sure that that was exactly what she was thinking.
He sank back into the pillows. “For fuck’s sake.”
“Okay,” she said. “Tell me where the car is and I can at least get someone to tow it out of the lake.”
He hesitated. If he told her where the car was, they would find the body and then they would ask why he hadn’t mentioned the small matter of the decomposing corpse before.
“I can’t remember.”
“You can’t remember?”
“No. Not exactly.”
“You miraculously find the car you have been searching for, for three years, and you can’t remember where, exactly?”
He didn’t reply. This time the notebook did snap shut. She shook her head. “Get some rest, Mr. Forman. We’ve finished here.”
No. He was close. So close to getting her to believe him. But he had nothing else, except…the photos. They were in his wallet, not his laptop bag. He still had the photos.
“Wait!”
His coat was slung over one of the plastic chairs. He swung his legs out of bed and reached for it, grimacing at the sudden hot burst of pain in his side.
“There’s something else. I have these.”
He fumbled in his wallet, pulled out the photos and thrust them at her. She recoiled slightly.