The Passengers

by John Marrs

  Over the following weeks, more texts and calls appeared from both men and women, all claiming to have been directed from other dating websites specialising in extramarital affairs. Sam scrolled through them all looking for clues. Some were heterosexual hook-up sites, others gay or bisexual, along with those catering for eye-opening extreme fetishes. In the end, he stopped answering phone numbers he didn’t recognise, and eventually the calls faded away. But his concern remained as to who knew his truth.

  It was only now as a Passenger that he recalled how, at around the same time, Heidi had begun putting pressure on him financially.

  “What do you think of these?” she’d asked, sliding a brochure under his nose while he made breakfast. It contained kitchen designs, and high-end ones from what he could determine by the option of materials.

  “They’re nice,” he replied. “Why?”

  “Why do you think? We need a new kitchen.”

  “What’s wrong with this one?”

  “It’s at least twenty years old. Two of the cupboard doors are falling off their hinges, one of the hobs doesn’t work, and the layout is impractical. Let’s start enjoying some of this money you’re working all hours to earn.”

  “I’ll think about it,” he replied. Sam was anxious to change the subject. Had his salary been allocated only to their household, he could easily have afforded a top-of-the-range kitchen. But every penny was accounted for and split evenly between the needs of two homes. Heidi, however, wasn’t ready to be fobbed off.

  “You’ll think about it, will you?” she said. “And who made you the master of the house?”

  “That’s not what I meant . . .”

  “Sam, you’re barely here while me and the kids spend all our time under this roof. And as well as a new kitchen, we need to start thinking about the family bathroom because the shower’s leaking again, the window frames are rotting, and the conservatory needs replacing. This house is falling apart and you haven’t even noticed. This weekend I’m going to start sifting through all our accounts to see where we can move some money around.”

  Sam panicked. “No, no,” he said a little too quickly. He didn’t want his wife poking around his secret finances, or she would likely discover the joint bank account, mortgage, and other two credit cards he had in his and Josie’s names. But carrying out all the work she was listing would break him financially. “Let’s take it one step at a time,” he conceded, and reluctantly took another look at the kitchen brochure.

  A week passed before an email arrived. “Your Wives,” read the subject heading. Sam wanted the ground to swallow him whole as he raced to open it. It contained two embedded images, one of Heidi and their children on holiday in Blackpool and the other of Josie and their offspring playing with water pistols in the garden. Everything Sam had worked so hard to conceal was hanging by a thread.

  “Who are you?” he typed quickly, his heart caught in his throat. “What do you want?”

  A week later, a second email arrived. “I can make this go away,” it read.

  “How?” he replied instantly.

  Another seven days passed before he received a reply. “It will cost you £100,000.”

  The wait between emails was crippling, but there was nothing he could do to speed up the process.

  “I don’t have that kind of money!” he typed.

  “You own a construction business.”

  “I can’t just take money out of it. That’s fraud.”

  “So is bigamy.”

  Sam imagined both wives’ reactions if they discovered the truth. Heidi hated liars—so much of her job was spent trying to decipher fact from fiction that she had no time for it when she left the office. Sam imagined her flying into a rage, then having him arrested for knowingly marrying two women. Meanwhile when Josie found out, she would be devastated and crumble. The pressure was already upon her looking after two children, and a mother with dementia. It would kill him to cause her more misery.

  He was caught between a rock and a hard place. If he reported the threat to the police, Heidi would likely learn about Josie, and his marriages would not survive. He had spent too much of his childhood being treated as a pawn by his parents in their own dysfunctional marriage to watch it happen to his children too. But by paying up, he might break his business.

  “If I manage to get the money, how do I know you’ll not want more later?” he typed.

  “You don’t,” he read after another seven-day delay. “You’ll have to trust me.”

  “Okay,” he replied.

  “I want it in cash and delivered one week from now. Next Tuesday morning I will give you instructions on where to leave it.”

  Sam barely closed his eyes the night before drop-off. As Josie slept soundly, he curled himself up behind her, draping his arm over her stomach and breathing her in as if for the last time. He had drained the business account of all but pennies. His only hope was that the overdrafts and credit cards he had applied for over the last few days would be accepted and keep his business solvent. It might take him years to pay them off though. It was an added stress he didn’t need, but it would be worth it to protect the status quo.

  Before he set off on his journey earlier that morning, he brushed against Heidi on the doorstep and took the opportunity to cup her chin and kiss her.

  “You’ve done something, haven’t you?” she asked, eyeing him up and down. “You only ever kiss me like that when you’ve done something you shouldn’t have.”

  “You have a suspicious mind, DS Cole,” he replied, and slipped his hold-all containing the cash into the space behind his passenger seat. “See you on Friday.”

  It was only now with all the pieces slotting together that it began to make sense. Dark clouds of guilt filled the sky above him when he thought of how much hatred Heidi must have had for him to go to such extremes. The pain of her husband’s infidelity would have been all-consuming, the need to punish him fierce. And today he added insult to injury by trying to take her votes and her life as they competed for survival.

  He hoped that she could see he had only behaved that way because he had four children who needed him, not just the two.

  Nevertheless, Sam had never felt more worthless in his life.

  CHAPTER 48

  That brings us to our penultimate Passenger,” began Fiona. Heidi’s image dominated the centre screen.

  Aside from her glistening eyes, she offered no obvious expression of emotion. Fiona gave her the once-over and tutted. “I’m at a loss as to know what I can say about her. If I was her brief, I wouldn’t put her in the stand because I’d struggle to persuade a jury to warm to her.”

  “I find her every bit as deceitful as her husband, if I’m being honest,” said Muriel.

  “That’s as may be, but can you even begin to imagine what it must’ve been like to discover something like that about your husband?” said Matthew. “Having an extramarital affair is one thing, but marrying another woman behind your wife’s back requires an extra level of deceit. God knows what he put her through.”

  “Oh good Lord,” sniffed Jack from his side of the room. “Can we put this into some kind of perspective, please? The idiot fell in love with two women at the same time, more fool him. It happens. In fact, didn’t it happen in your precious Bible, Muriel? Lamech, if my memory serves correctly. He was married to two women.”

  “He was also a murderer, and his two wives deserted him before he was made an outcast by society,” said Muriel. “If you’re going to use the Bible to help make your case, at least get your facts right. And I would like an explanation as to what the Hacker meant when he said Heidi had blackmailed her husband.”

  “Don’t hold your breath,” said Libby. “It’s another vague accusation where we’re left to fill in the blanks.”

  “But what do we actually know about Heidi?” said Fiona. “I don’t have any idea
what makes her tick or why I should give her my support.”

  “This is becoming repetitive.” Jack yawned and shifted in his seat. “There are two Passengers left. You either offer Mrs. Cole your vote or throw it away on a vagrant who was planning to top himself anyway.” Libby shot him a glare. “Have I said something that’s factually incorrect?”

  “I’d have liked to hear more passion from her, begging us to save her life so that she can see her children again,” said Muriel.

  “You sound almost disappointed,” said Jack. “If one didn’t know better, one might assume you enjoyed playing God.”

  “That’s not what I mean,” she protested. “I can only base my judgement on appearances alone because that’s all she’s given us.”

  “Have any of you given thought to what kind of wife she was?” asked Jack. “Perhaps she drove her husband into an affair.” He looked to Matthew. “Sometimes one person isn’t enough to satisfy all your needs.”

  “Then leave the marriage,” said Matthew. “How many times have you done that now, Jack?”

  Jack laughed. “Do you really want to go there, Matthew? At least I haven’t driven a spouse into the arms of another man.”

  Matthew’s expression soured as he pushed his seat back to rise. Libby took hold of his arm before he could get to his feet. “Leave it,” she said quietly but firmly. “This is what he wants.” Matthew remained where he was.

  “Do as she tells you, there’s a good dog.” Jack smiled with narrowed eyes. “Now let’s return to the ice maiden. Perhaps if she’d displayed a little more femininity, it might have helped her cause.”

  “Is it all women you have a problem with, or just strong women?” asked Libby. “She’s a full-time working mum of two, and whatever she’s done to bend the law or torment her cheating husband, well, I think there will be a lot of people out there who’ll identify with her and back her.”

  “Including you?” Jack asked. “Surely your conscience dictates that you should give someone like Mrs. Cole your vote over Mr. Harrison? Or are you going to follow your heart and condemn her to a somewhat grisly death by voting for a dead man walking? It’s not too late to reconsider your position with Mr. Cole either. He might be lacking when it comes to integrity, but you cannot deny the man has passion and something to live for. Mr. Harrison has what? By his own admission, nothing. Not even the attention of the nation’s sweetheart is enough for him to want to remain on this mortal coil.”

  Libby felt the heat from her reddening face. In that moment, she had never loathed anyone like she loathed Jack Larsson.

  “You know what?” interrupted Fiona. “You’ve just swung it for me, Jack. I don’t care what Heidi did or didn’t know, I’m voting for her. And you can roll your eyes as much as you like, it makes no difference to me what you think.”

  “All you’re doing is splitting the votes between husband and wife. Side with me, and their children will at least see one of their parents return.”

  “Why do I have to change my vote? Why can’t you?”

  “Mrs. Cole has two children. Her husband has four.”

  “If you are so concerned about kids, then why didn’t you support Shabana—a mother to five?” asked Libby.

  Jack sighed. “Here we go. More diatribe from a bleeding-heart liberal . . .”

  “More bullshit from the bleeding heartless racist.”

  “Enough!” warned Fiona. Her raised voice took Libby by surprise. “This is not a playground! Please remember we are being watched by the world. We have just twenty minutes left to make our decision. Now, is there anyone else who will join me in supporting Heidi?”

  “I will,” said Matthew suddenly.

  “Heidi is now in the lead with two votes, Sam has one, and Claire has one.”

  Libby’s heart both raised and sank, a second apart. It meant that unless the public sided with her too, Jack would be correct. Jude was a dead man walking.

  CHAPTER 49

  HEIDI COLE

  Heidi couldn’t muster the strength to hate her husband any longer—much of it had been used up when she first learned of his double life. And after the emotional battering of the last two hours, the fight had been knocked out of her. She didn’t even have enough energy to release the tears gathering behind her eyes.

  Alone in her car, it was the first time since discovering Sam was leading a double life that she felt something other than the need to make his life as miserable as he had made hers. It was grief. She was beginning to mourn the loss of the man she thought she knew inside and out.

  Being held against her will was a great leveller. It gave her the clarity to see what she had done was a foolish and irrational move and completely out of character. If she could go back, she would have confronted Sam, kicked him out of the family home, and removed him from her life the moment she first found out. It was the advice she would have given her friends were they wearing similar shoes. Instead, she had gone on the attack with a burning desire to hurt him. Where had it got her? Here, facing a very public death.

  With two votes to her name, there was still a chance she might survive the ordeal. But then she would have to face a different set of problems, including dismissal from her career. The Independent Office for Police Conduct would discover a corrupt police officer who was attempting to gain money by fraudulent means and who had used official resources for personal benefit. They wouldn’t care that she had been driven to it because she was hurting.

  Discovering Sam’s second family had happened quite by chance. It was a day that began like most others. Sam was working two hundred miles away, and Heidi had taken annual leave, looking after the children while the school closed for teacher training. She had strapped them into her car and programmed it to drop them off at an activities day in a country park. As she awaited their return, she sat in their neglected conservatory, cursing its leaking roof and broken panes of glass. Using her tablet, she logged on to Facebook and a forum where local posters recommended reliable tradesmen. But an innocuous flick through her friends’ video clips changed everything.

  It involved a viral craze to raise money and awareness for a mental health charity. Participants had buckets of water thrown at them followed by bags of flour to create a “sticky snowman.” “Over my dead body is that happening to me,” she muttered as she watched a friend picking sticky, glue-like lumps from her hair. Suddenly, she spotted the name “Samuel Cole” tagged in a video under the heading “People you might also like to watch.”

  It puzzled her. Months after their wedding, Sam had made a big song and dance about deactivating all his social media accounts. “These companies know too much about us,” he moaned. “It makes me uncomfortable. Besides, I don’t have time to read about everyone else’s lives when I barely have enough time to be a part of my own.” She couldn’t argue with that. However, Sam must not have understood that while his Facebook profile was no longer active, he could still be tagged by other users.

  Curious, Heidi clicked on his name, and a handful of thumbnail videos appeared. They had been uploaded by a Josie Cole, and each with Sam’s name attached. Heidi couldn’t recall a family member with that name, at least not one whom she had met. The first video featured her husband along with a boy and girl she didn’t recognise. They giggled as they threw cups of water at him before caking him in flour. “I’m a sticky snowman, and I nominate Andrew Webber and Darren O’Sullivan,” Sam spluttered.

  “Do you want a towel, Daddy?” the girl interrupted.

  “Yes, please,” Sam replied.

  Heidi froze—she must have misheard. She rewound and watched it again. “Daddy,” the girl said. She played it again. And again. And again. Heidi repeated the word at the same time as the child. “Daddy.”

  It didn’t make sense. The man on the screen can’t be Sam, she thought. She played the video at half speed, her eyes dissecting each part of his physicality. But h
is face, frame, slight paunch, pattern of chest hair, mannerisms, and voice were all identical to Sam’s. How could it be him? If he’d had a family before they met, she would have discovered it before now. However, this video was recent because the man had the present Sam’s appearance. Has he got an identical twin he doesn’t know about? No, that’s ridiculous. But so was her thinking the man on her screen was her husband.

  The camera angle made it difficult to see the tattoo of Beccy’s and James’s names on Sam’s left arm. Nervously, she turned to the other videos he’d also been tagged in. They featured the same two children in a garden, although this time, a woman accompanied them. And in the penultimate clip, her arm was wrapped around his waist before she kissed him on the lips. Heidi was struck by their similar appearances, from their hairstyles to their smiles. Then, in the final clip, the family were holidaying in a caravan park she immediately identified as the one in which she and Sam had first met in Aldeburgh.

  And when he stretched out his arm to steady himself as he walked across the pebbled beach, her greatest fears were realised. His arm featured the tattoo. There could be no other explanation—Sam had a second family.

  Heidi’s tablet fell to the floor. Her police career had trained her to examine all the evidence before reaching a conclusion and never to let emotion get the better of her. She took a deep breath—she must treat Sam like any other suspect.

  Anxiously, she played each Facebook video again, desperate to learn more about Josie Cole. She compared the dates the clips were uploaded to the digital family calendar on the kitchen wall. Each time one appeared on Facebook, Sam had been working away from home. He spent three to four nights a week in an inexpensive bed and breakfast in Halifax, close to his office. At least that was what he’d told her and Heidi had no reason to question it until now. She ordered her online virtual assistant to call each B and B listed and find out if they had a record of him. None had. Sam must have been playing happy families with Josie Cole instead.