The Passengers

by John Marrs

  “Please, stop,” she begged, her voice trembling. “Please, I’m sorry. I’m begging you, just tell them to leave me alone. I know I’ve done wrong, I just want to die in peace.”

  She let out another shrill cry, this time as bottles containing flaming rags and liquid shattered against the windscreen, side windows, and doors. Eventually the car accelerated away from the crowds, like a blazing comet.

  CHAPTER 46

  Haunting images of Sofia’s burning car driving itself through the streets dominated the inquest screens, black and grey plumes of smoke trailing in its wake.

  Drones nudged each other mid-air, competing to get as close as possible to Sofia’s car to capture her horror through the windows. Eventually one managed to catch a glimpse of the fallen star, revealing a terrified woman shielding herself from the flames outside and covering her dog with her coat. The Hacker had cut the sound feed, giving her silent screams additional gravitas.

  “What they’re doing to her is barbaric,” said Libby, horrified by the public’s behaviour. “They’re no better than the Hacker. No matter what she’s been accused of, she’s still a seventy-eight-year-old woman.”

  “I’m afraid her age doesn’t come into it,” said Matthew. “She’s at the mercy of mob mentality.”

  “But what pleasure are they getting from this?”

  “I don’t know if it’s pleasure or if they’re just getting caught up in the moment. When people are part of a mob, they stop being individuals, their inhibitions disappear, they don’t follow their normal moral compass. Would any of them have turned up alone to hurl a brick or a petrol bomb at Sofia’s car? It’s unlikely. But when they’re surrounded by like-minded people, they don’t see themselves as violent individuals; it’s the group that’s responsible for the violence, not them personally.”

  “Thank you for that fascinating insight, Doctor,” Jack said with a sigh. “Or perhaps she deserves it. Her chickens have come home to roost.”

  “Ignore him,” Libby urged.

  “I’m only vocalising public opinion.”

  “Is that what’s happening on social media too?” asked Libby.

  Matthew nodded. “Humans are gregarious and we look for people like us to associate with. Nowadays, the easiest way to find that is online. Under ordinary circumstances your average person doesn’t post on Twitter demanding the death of a pensioner. But mob mentality and the anonymity of being behind a keyboard means people are braver when they’re together.”

  A fire truck following Sofia’s car swapped places with an armoured vehicle ahead. Firefighters clambered from windows while others hung on to the harnesses and aimed jets of water at her vehicle to dampen the blaze until the final flame was extinguished. It did little to reduce the knot in Libby’s stomach.

  “Time is once again our enemy, ladies and gentlemen,” warned Fiona. “We really need to start discussing the next Passenger, Sam Cole.”

  “Ah, the bigamist,” said Jack. “Compared to a murderess and a paedophile, it’s hardly the crime of the century, is it?”

  “Try telling that to his wife,” said Fiona. “I cannot possibly imagine the level of deceit required to lie to someone for such a long period of time. Maintaining two separate lives without either wife knowing about the other . . . surely whatever satisfaction it gave him was tainted by the fact he could never really relax for fear of letting something slip?”

  “I say he should be applauded for having got away with it for so long,” said Jack. “Aside from his questionable morals, is what he has done enough to send him to his death?”

  “By not choosing to vote for him, we aren’t sending him to his death,” corrected Muriel. “It just means there are other Passengers I would prefer to lend my support to.”

  “You interviewed him and now you’re not supporting him. Your lack of loyalty says much about your depth of character.”

  “I have the same loyalty as you do to Claire,” she retaliated, and Jack gave a derisive snort.

  “He doesn’t get my vote because of the very obvious way in which he tried to manipulate us,” said Libby. “He played the poor, hard-done-by dad at his wife’s expense. He’s a disgusting human being.”

  “Have his infidelities hit a raw nerve with you, Miss Dixon?” asked Jack. “You and Matthew have much in common; perhaps you should swap numbers when this process is complete as I doubt you’ll be sailing off into the distance with Mr. Harrison.”

  Libby held herself back from hurling her bottle of water at Jack’s head.

  “Sometimes, desperate times call for desperate measures,” he continued. “We cannot condemn Sam for his will to survive. Who knows what any of us might do in his circumstances? And in my view, he didn’t say anything that was factually inaccurate. Men do get a much rougher deal than women when it comes to relationships with their offspring.”

  “Oh, Jack, don’t give me that rubbish,” said Fiona.

  “You seem to be conveniently putting to one side the fact that his wife is just as accomplished a liar as he is. And as a police officer, she is expected to be honest beyond reproach. If she can’t keep her own house in order and has blackmailed Sam, I wonder how many other times she has bent the law to serve herself?”

  “We don’t know how much she knew,” said Matthew.

  “That’s as may be, but I am still awarding Sam my vote,” said Jack defiantly. “Is anyone else with me? Matthew? Fiona?”

  “No,” Fiona replied, followed by dismissals from Libby and Matthew. “Then the tally so far stands at Claire with one vote and Sam with one vote.” Fiona added Sam’s name on her tablet. “There are four votes left and two Passengers. Who’s next?”

  CHAPTER 47

  SAM COLE

  It was her. It was Heidi all along. Your wife—the woman you love—has been making your life a living hell.

  Sam’s mind raced in all directions, like someone had ignited a pile of fireworks inside his head. During the many sleepless nights he’d endured over the last few weeks, he had dissected each person in his life to figure out if one of them could be his blackmailer. However, he hadn’t been able to settle upon a name or a reason. The last person he expected to be the culprit was one of his two wives.

  He stopped listening to the jury debate whether to save his life and failed to register that he had received a vote of support. Instead, he was consumed by pinpointing the moment Heidi might have discovered his double life. How had he slipped up? What had she learned? Had it all begun with a name?

  “Who on earth is Josie?” he recalled Heidi asking one evening. On the other end of the phone, Sam’s stomach dropped forty flights.

  “No idea, why?”

  “Because you just called me Josie.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Yes, you did. You said, ‘I’ll be home around eightish, Josie.’”

  “It’s the bad reception. I said around eightish, honey.”

  “Honey? When did that become a thing?”

  It hadn’t, at least not with Heidi. It was a name he used with his other wife. “I’m trialling it,” he bluffed. “You call me babe, so I’m giving honey its day in court.”

  “Overruled. And why are you whispering?”

  “I’m still on-site as there’s a problem with removing an old staircase; I have us all working overtime.”

  “Okay, well don’t be there too late tomorrow night. It’d be nice if you could come home and stay awake for more than ten minutes . . . honey.” Heidi chuckled as she hung up.

  Sam replaced his phone inside the pocket of his jeans, slipped a padded oven glove over his hand, and punched the kitchen wall three times. “Shit!” he mouthed. How could he have made such a careless mistake?

  “Why are you angry at the wall, Daddy?” came a voice from the doorway. He turned to see his son James.

  “I’m not, mate,” he replied with a
contrived smile.

  “Then why were you hitting it?”

  “Sometimes it’s good to release a bit of excess energy.”

  “What’s going on?” Josie asked, squeezing past their son to reach the fridge.

  “Dad’s being weird.” James picked up a hand-held games console from the kitchen table and shuffled out of the room.

  “How are you being weird?”

  “The kids think anyone over the age of eight is weird.”

  Josie stood behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist, resting her forehead upon his neck. “What time do you have to leave in the morning?”

  “I’ve set the alarm for five thirty. The car is charged and the roads should be quiet.”

  “Do you still think you’ll be able to take a couple of days off work for our anniversary?”

  He nodded. “Yes, I don’t see why not. I have meetings in London earlier that week but after that should be okay.”

  One of the many things Sam had failed to mention to his second wife was that while he was in the capital, he would be celebrating his tenth anniversary with his first spouse. Throughout almost a decade, he had learned simplicity, not elaborate lies, was the secret to maintaining two families who were completely oblivious to each other. It was why, when Josie gave birth to a daughter a year after Heidi had done the same, he insisted they name her after his late sister. His sister wasn’t dead, nor was she called Beccy. But his daughter with Heidi was named Beccy.

  And when, by chance, he and Josie’s second child was a boy like his and Heidi’s, baby James inherited the name of his half-brother. Sam knew that if he kept both family set-ups as identical as possible, his chances of making mistakes were reduced. It didn’t stop the occasional errors from slipping through the net, like calling his first wife by his second wife’s name.

  It was two days after he and Heidi had returned from their honeymoon when the results of his Match Your DNA test arrived by email. Sam had taken the test long before he’d met and fallen in love with Heidi the traditional way and before the security breach that almost destroyed the company’s reputation. And by the time he’d received a notification to say he and Heidi were not genetically made for each other, they were already married.

  However, as content as he felt with his new bride, Sam could not rid himself of a nagging doubt—who was the greater love waiting for him out there? After much toing and froing, he reasoned it would do no harm to find out and requested the details of his match.

  Within minutes of meeting near her home in Halifax, almost two hundred miles from his in Luton, Sam knew that Josie was the one. It was more than love at first sight; the intensity of what he felt for her was multiplied countless times. He likened it to a thousand small, but pleasurable, explosions going off in his body all at once. And he knew he was in trouble.

  On appearance alone, Josie was a dead ringer for Heidi. But when it came to their personalities, they were worlds apart. Josie was homely and sweet-natured and gave him her undivided attention. Meanwhile, Heidi was confident and ambitious and wore the trousers in their relationship. Together they’d have made the perfect woman.

  Josie had assumed that, like her, Sam was single, and he couldn’t bring himself to correct her and risk losing her. But as much as he wanted to explore what they might potentially have between them, he had a wife. Both he and Heidi had come from broken homes and had witnessed the trail of devastation divorce could leave behind. He was not strong enough to put himself through that, especially as he still loved Heidi deeply. So he decided to remain with them both instead.

  “I’ve been offered a new contract,” he announced to Heidi back then over dinner at their local pub. “And it’s a big one.”

  “How big?”

  “Really big.”

  “Oh, babe, that’s amazing.” Heidi beamed and reached across the table to squeeze his hand. “What’s it for?”

  “The grounds of a new university. I tendered for the refurbishment of nearby student housing—an entire halls of residence needs a refurb and a rebuild. It’s the biggest contract we’ve ever won.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything earlier?”

  “Because there’s a catch—it’s up in Sheffield. They want me to set up an on-site base, which means I’ll be working away from home three or four days a week.”

  “Oh,” she replied, her elation curbed. “How long will it take to get there?”

  “About three hours. I appreciate it’s not ideal, but if it means we can afford to start doing all the things we’ve talked about, then isn’t it worth considering?” Sam put his free hand over hers. “We can move out of the flat and buy a house, then think about filling it up with kids much sooner than we planned. But look, if you really don’t want me to go for it, then I’ll turn it down.” Inside, he was counting on her broodiness to override her irritation at his part-time absence. Eventually, she agreed.

  “I’ve got some good news,” he told Josie in Halifax later that week. “I’ve been offered a contract for university student accommodation refurb, but it’s down in Dunstable. It means I’ll only get to be up here three or four days a week.”

  As Sam explained the non-existent tender, he could tell her elation for him was tainted by the distance they’d spend apart. He didn’t think twice before the words left his mouth. “Will you marry me?” he asked. And ten months after walking down the aisle with Heidi, he made his way down another one with Josie.

  Holding together two marriages and two families became an acquired skill. He lived his life constantly on a knife-edge, questioning whether he had said the right thing to the right wife. On the rare nights his sleep was unbroken, he’d wake up in the morning scared that he might have sleep-talked and given something away unconsciously. Some nights that same conscience kept him awake as he worried about the present and the future. What would happen when he retired? Which wife would he pick to grow old with? What if he were to die suddenly? If he wasn’t at either home, who would the authorities inform first? When his children discovered they had a half-brother and half-sister, would they forgive him? Would Heidi or Josie ever understand what it was like for him to love two people at once?

  As both families grew, Sam rotated his time between his homes; three days with Heidi one week, four days with her the next. But there were many sacrifices to be made. He shied away from holidays abroad with either family as it created too many potential complications such as emergency contact and unexplainable suntans. On his phone, he kept hidden two calendars on two apps so he knew where he would be sleeping each night and wouldn’t forget anniversaries, birthdays, and appointments. Sam painted, redecorated, and renovated two almost identical properties in almost identical ways. Toolboxes contained the same equipment; sheds the same brand of lawnmowers, hedge trimmers, and edgers. Everything that could be replicated, was.

  More flexibility was required when the children fell ill with colds and bugs, and he’d lost count of the times he passed on germs from one family to the other. Christmases were the trickiest times to negotiate, so he’d spend Christmas Day with Heidi and Boxing Day with Josie, then rotate the following year. To explain his absence, he would tell both families he was visiting his mum who now lived alone in Portugal. His whole life was a balancing act.

  Another by-product of his deceit was the cost of maintaining two growing families. Keeping on top of the bills meant he often worked fifteen-hour days, and as a result, both wives complained about how little time he spent with them.

  Against all odds, Sam maintained his double life until one telephone call two months earlier. He was sitting in the audience with Josie and James waiting to watch Beccy perform in a school production of Guys and Dolls when his phone rang. Assuming it was work related, he slipped in his earbuds and found a quiet corridor.

  “Is this Sam?” a male voice he didn’t recognise began.

  “Yes, how can I help?
” he replied.

  “It’s Don.”

  “Don?”

  “Yeah, from the Guy 2 Guy app? Remember? You gave me your number and told me to call you later this evening for some phone fun.”

  “I’m sorry but I think you have the wrong number, mate.”

  “I saved it from your profile into my phone.”

  “I don’t know what Guy 2 Guy is. I think someone’s messing you around.”

  “Time-waster,” Don muttered, and the line went dead.

  A text arrived as he slipped his phone in his pocket. “Sexy pics m8,” it read. “Want 2 trade?” Three photographs of what appeared to be the same erect penis taken from different angles followed it. Two more texts of a similar nature arrived, so he turned off his phone, perturbed.

  Sam waited until they returned home and Josie and the kids were in bed before switching it back on. Dozens and dozens of similar texts and emails flooded his in-boxes. A link took him to a gay dating website for men who wanted to cheat on their partners, and to a page accredited to him and his number, but with some else’s photos and genitalia. “Sam Cole, 40, Halifax, Sheffield, Dunstable, and Luton, looking for no-strings phone, cam, and in-person good times. Can’t accom. Willing to do groups. Nothing out of bounds.”

  “What the hell?” he said aloud, and followed another link to try to shut down the profile. But without a password, he was out of luck. Suddenly, his heart leaped into his throat—this was much more than a prank.

  Halifax, Sheffield, Dunstable, and Luton.

  Friends who knew him and Heidi from Luton had been told he was working in Sheffield. Those who knew him and Josie in Halifax thought his company was based in Dunstable. If someone knew about Halifax and Luton, then they knew about his double life.