‘Your gut.’ The slight disdain in Philippa’s voice was clear. Tom gritted his teeth. She’d always had a problem with Tom’s intuition and loved to make it clear that it didn’t replace good police work.
‘Okay, I’ll trust you on this one,’ she said finally, with something that sounded suspiciously like a sigh. ‘I’ll give verbal authorisation now so as not to delay things. Get the paperwork sorted and I’ll sign it. And where are you, Tom? It sounds as if you’re in a car.’
‘We’re on our way to north Wales. I’ll tell you about it when I get back.’
As soon as he ended the call, his phone rang again.
‘Yes, Lynsey. How are you doing at the DIY place?’
‘Their CCTV is excellent, sir. I checked the period immediately following the last time Scott Roberts’ car was picked up on ANPR. We were right – it was driven in and parked. The driver got into another car, leaving the one we were tracking here.’
‘Did you get the registration of the other car?’
‘Sorry, sir. It was parked behind the trolley store, and when he reversed out it was at the wrong angle.’
‘Bugger.’
‘But it doesn’t matter. I recognised him. I know who he is.’
65
He steps into the room, and now I see his face clearly.
‘Dominic?’
His expression is blank and I shiver. I have so many questions, but right now Brad Roberts is lying face down, unconscious, on the floor, and I fall to my knees by his head. I reach out my hand to his neck, and there’s a pulse, thank goodness.
‘Why did you hit him? Jesus, Dom, you could have killed him. He wasn’t going to hurt me. Call an ambulance, for God’s sake. I’ll explain to them that you thought I was in danger.’
Dominic crouches down and reaches into the pocket of his hoody. I think he’s getting his phone but he pulls out what looks like a piece of black plastic, yanks one of Brad’s arms from under his body, grabs the other one and pushes the plastic over his wrists. I realise it’s a cable tie.
‘What are you doing? Dominic, stop it. He’s not going to hurt me.’
He ignores me and takes out another cable tie to bind Brad’s feet.
I launch myself at him and try to push him away. Has he gone mad? But I’m half his size and he barely registers my attack. I stumble. He stands up and grabs my upper arm, hoisting me to my feet.
‘What are you doing here? How did you know where I was?’
Dominic makes a noise that sounds like a sad little laugh. ‘I always know where you are. You’re never out of my sight for long, no matter what you’re doing.’
‘What do you mean?’
Then I remember that he called me Spike, a nickname I have never shared with him. I hear again the voice on the radio. My mouth goes dry and I struggle to swallow as I realise why it sounded familiar. How many times has Dominic shown off his acting skills and had the children in fits of laughter with his accents – everything from Glaswegian to Russian? Welsh would have been so easy. He had phoned in to the radio programme and pretended to be Scott, knowing I would hear him. But why?
‘You’re just like my mother, aren’t you, Anna? You have to have your secrets. Did you really think I’d never find out?’
I shiver uncontrollably and lift my hands to rub my arms.
He leans in towards me, close to my ear, and for a moment I think he’s going to kiss me. But he doesn’t.
‘I watch you, you know. I stand where you can’t see me, and watch. But you know I’m there, don’t you?’
I jerk my head away from him. What is he talking about?
Dominic shakes his head and walks to the wall to look at the documents and pictures.
‘These are interesting, aren’t they? Don’t you look young and innocent in this one?’ He points to the picture that I thought only Scott had ever seen. ‘Or maybe not so innocent, eh?’ He points to the second photo of me, to the mound that was my stomach.
‘Ah,’ he says, indicating the most recent photo of me with blonde hair. ‘The lovely Saskia.’
I reach out a hand to prop myself up against the wall, unsure if my legs will hold me. He knows my other name, but how? Nothing of Saskia has ever come into our home. How did he get all these pictures?
I have no idea what I should do. Should I run? From my own husband? But I don’t recognise him, and a shudder ripples through my body. Is there anything he doesn’t know?
‘Why did you do this? Why did you bring me here?’ I ask, hating myself for the tremor in my voice.
He ignores me and points to the photos of Cameron and Jagger. ‘Such a pity the wrong man died, don’t you think? Or, I don’t know, maybe you had become quite fond of him. You saw enough of him.’ He spits out the last few words.
He has his back to me, and I reach out to touch him. Perhaps I can make him understand.
‘Take your hands off me,’ he snarls. ‘So many lies, so much deception. I have to hand it to you, you play a mean hand of poker.’
How does he know about the poker, about Cameron?
‘It’s over, I promise.’ I can hear the break in my voice but it has no effect on him. ‘I only did it so we’d be safe. You have to understand, Cameron’s a monster.’
‘Safe?’ He barks out a laugh. ‘Is that what you call it? I presume my “accident”, as we euphemistically call my mugging – although even that’s a misnomer – was keeping me safe, was it? You let me get beaten up, Anna, let them shatter my leg and my kneecap, and yet you said nothing.’
‘You don’t understand. I did it to save us all. They were going to take everything, Dom – our home, my mum’s home – and I didn’t think you ever needed to know.’
I can feel every beat of my heart, and it’s as if Dominic can too. He sneers at me, mocking me for my weakness, and I have to summon the strength from somewhere to keep him talking until I can work out what to do, how to end this.
‘Why didn’t you tell me you knew about the poker? Why bring me here – to Scott’s old home?’
‘Because I had to know what mattered most to you. With everything you’ve done, the lies you told, I was clinging on to one thing – that you love me and not the little shit you did all this with.’
Dominic flicks his finger at the sponsorship form, the raffle posters and the evidence of every other scam I ran with Scott. I have no idea how he found them.
‘I do love you, Dom. You’re the father of my children.’
‘As was Scott,’ he says quietly.
Does he know I lied about my baby? I can’t ask. I can’t talk about it.
‘Why would you think I still love Scott? As far as I knew, he was dead long before I met you.’
‘Ah yes, my sweet wife. But when you thought you heard him on the radio, saw all the reminders of your life together, it didn’t take you long to go running off to find him, did it? To arrange to see him again, to come to his childhood home?’
‘To stop him!’ I shout the words, but they are not entirely true.
I hear a groan from the floor. Brad is coming round, and I turn my eyes to Dominic’s.
‘Untie him, Dom. Let him go, please.’
He shrugs. ‘Collateral damage, my love.’
Dominic doesn’t care. I can see it now. He is completely indifferent to Brad’s pain, and I finally realise that nothing that’s happened has been Scott’s doing. He’s dead, as he has been for the last fourteen years, and I feel a new rush of guilt as I remember his last moments. It’s as if I have lost him all over again, and I was a fool to hope. And then the enormity of what Dominic must have done hits me.
‘You killed that man in the car, didn’t you?’ I’m whispering now, as if afraid to speak the words out loud. ‘You thought it was Cameron. I should have known it wasn’t Scott.’
‘Why, because he’s so perfect he would never do something like that?’
‘No, because he’d have recognised Cameron!’ I don’t know why I didn’t think of that before.
> ‘Cameron Edmunds had been bleeding you dry for months. He would have gone on doing it, and you’d have let him. I killed him for you, and I stuffed the bastard’s throat with money. I wanted the world to know what happens to greedy shits like him. But the police kept that little detail to themselves, sadly.’
‘Did you kill Jagger too? You weren’t at home with the children that night, were you?’
‘It was a complete pleasure after what he did to me. I couldn’t believe my luck when I saw that piece of pipe lying on the ground. I’d followed you into town. I heard every word the two of you said.’ Dominic smiles. ‘He had no idea what hit him. Just as you have no idea how much Dippy Della, as Bailey calls her, has been paid to keep quiet about my comings and goings. The poor woman is in our home more than you are. She thinks I have a secret job and I’m saving up for a big surprise for you. And here it is! Surprise!’
He shouts the word with fake glee, and I realise that he is completely insane. And that maybe I did this to him.
‘Ridiculous as it sounds, my darling wife, I did wonder for a while if the radio broadcast and Cameron’s murder would make you decide to tell me everything, to be honest with me, to admit to your sins. But you couldn’t do that, could you? Just in case Scott really was alive.’
His eyes glint in the harsh light, and for a moment we’re both silent. I glance back at the wall, not wanting to look at him. I don’t see how Dominic can let me walk out of here after all he has told me. I could run, but I wouldn’t even get to the front door.
My gaze lands on the map of Nebraska, the circle around Lincoln. It’s as if Dominic can read my mind.
‘Of all your sins, Anna – and let’s face it, there have been many – what you did in Nebraska is the worst. You lied from the very beginning about the one thing you knew mattered more than anything else in the world to me. You lied about what happened in Nebraska, and after that there was no going back, was there? The lies kept coming – some of them small evasions, others huge deceptions that sat between us in all their twisted ugliness.’
How can I deny it? If I had told him what happened in Nebraska, none of this would have happened. Lie upon lie, all to cover the first, the darkest of them all. But I was too ashamed to tell him the truth. I never wanted anyone to know what we had done.
66
Then
When Scott first suggested we went to America for the birth of our baby, specifically to Nebraska, I hadn’t entirely understood what he was thinking.
‘We need to find a state with flexible adoption laws,’ he said, his eyes bright with enthusiasm. ‘It’s not like the UK. They understand there that private adoptions work in a way that lets everyone benefit – in our case, financially.’
It had taken me a while to understand what he meant.
‘You want me to sell our baby?’
‘Stop being so bloody melodramatic,’ he said, but seeing the look of horror on my face his expression softened and he reached out a hand to hold mine. ‘Come on, Spike. You were going to have the baby adopted anyway, and this way two people get the child they desperately want, only they’ll be paying for it. It means our child will be brought up by parents who really value it, and they’ll have lots of money so it’ll have a fantastic life.’
There was that word ‘it’ again, and I had to wonder if to Scott our baby was nothing more than a route to financial solvency.
‘Is this actually legal?’
Scott looked sheepish. ‘The agency finds a family – which they have done already – and all our costs are covered. But we need more out of this arrangement, so I went to meet them, to check that you would approve of them. They paid for me to go – that’s where I was last week. Sorry I lied about the football tournament on the south coast.’
I wanted to say ‘not for the first time’ but it seemed trivial in the light of everything else.
‘Anyway,’ he said, grinning with self-satisfaction, ‘I negotiated a side deal. It’s private – just between us and the new parents. The agency doesn’t need to know.’ He pulled me into his arms. ‘As far as the agency is concerned, they fly us out there – Club Class, no less – and find us an apartment and pay the rent until the baby is born. They cover all the medical expenses, and that’s it. But this couple really want our baby, so they were prepared to negotiate over and above covering our costs.’
I had struggled to come to terms with giving my baby up for adoption, but had managed to convince myself it was the best choice for my child. It would be hard, but the thought of him or her being brought up in a happy home, perhaps with other children, maybe somewhere not too far away, had reassured me. Scott’s logic – that I was going to have the baby adopted anyway, so why not by a family with money – was hard to argue with, but yet it left me with a gaping hole inside. My child would be so far away, living a life I didn’t recognise. I wouldn’t be able to picture him or her growing up.
With British adoptive parents, I could imagine my baby’s first day at school, visualise the classroom, the other children, the swings and slides at the local park, the school uniform, the games they would play, the toys they would have. But in America he or she would live a life I couldn’t begin to imagine. I wouldn’t be able to picture what each day looked like, understand the pattern of his or her life. Every thread that bound my child to me in my mind would be broken.
It took me a long time to give in to Scott’s proposal. I kept believing that a miracle would happen, and another, easier-to-bear solution to our problems would appear, and all the time Scott was begging me to think about it – to realise that our baby would have a safe and happy life, and we could rid ourselves of the burden of debt forever. It wasn’t until Cameron sacked me from my job at the casino because my pregnancy was becoming obvious, as I had known he would, that I decided it was the sensible thing to do, convincing myself that Scott was right and it was little different to any other adoption.
The day I went into hospital in Nebraska to have my baby should have been joyful, but I was terrified. I wanted my mum. I needed to hear her voice, to listen to her telling me that it would all be fine, I was doing a great job; to feel her cool hand stroking the hair back off my forehead as she joked about my dad waiting outside, not able to cope with seeing me in pain. Even with Scott there, I felt isolated. The American accents seemed alien, the nurses brisk and businesslike, and I was so alone.
In the end, my beautiful tiny baby boy with his perfect hands and feet, ears so paper-thin and fragile, was mine for just twelve hours. I barely had time to learn every feature of his face, to feel the velvet softness of his skin and kiss his delicate cheeks before I had to hand him over to his Mom and Dad.
I didn’t want to let him go. He was my baby; he didn’t belong to this smartly dressed woman with perfect hair and make-up, although I couldn’t fault the tears of joy on her cheeks as she looked at his mop of dark hair and wide blue eyes, a bit of both his father and me. But it felt as if she had plunged her hand into my chest and ripped out my heart.
I was told it was best ‘for baby’ to form an immediate attachment to his new parents, and the final form for signature was pushed in front of me. I didn’t want to sign, but the adoption agent told me everyone felt like this. It was only to be expected, and I would be fine once it was done. I was nineteen, exhausted both emotionally and physically, and Scott was smiling his encouragement while the agent waved her pen, looking irritated with me. So I signed, not knowing then that I would regret the decision for every day of my life.
As his new parents left the room, my baby held close in his dad’s arms, his mom leaning over to lift his tiny feet into what she imagined would be a more comfortable position, there was a guttural scream of anguish that I realised was coming from me, and my baby responded with a cry of his own. He wanted me – I was sure of it – and I reached out my arms, shouting for them to bring him back. But they were quickly ushered from the room and I was left to sob alone.
I don’t know how I got through the n
ext few days in the cramped stuffy apartment that the adoptive family had provided. It was hot in Nebraska, and there was no relief from the heat on the small balcony. Even the flowers in the big planter out there had become dry and brittle, perhaps because neither of us could be bothered to water them. I was given sedatives to calm me, but I hated the way they made me feel. I didn’t want to avoid the pain; I wanted to feel it. I needed to feel it.
And then it was time to leave. Scott had packed for both of us – I didn’t have the energy – and our bags were by the door, passports and documents on the coffee table in a folder. That was when I realised that I couldn’t go. Not like this. I was desperate to tell Scott what I had decided, but he had gone out hours before. He was probably sick of me crying. He knew I blamed him.
What I had to say to him was going to make him furious, but it had to be said. I’d been sitting staring at the door for four hours, my arms still aching for my baby, wondering where Scott was, what he was doing, when finally he walked in. He couldn’t look at me. Maybe he was more sick of me than I had realised, or perhaps he knew what I was going to say.
‘Scott, where’ve you been?’ He couldn’t have missed the tension in my voice.
‘Walking.’
It was too hot outside to walk anywhere, but I no longer cared where he’d been.
‘I can’t do it,’ I blurted out, tears springing from my eyes. ‘I can’t leave my baby here, so far away from me. I want him back. We have to get him back, Scott!’
Scott raised his eyes to mine in horror. ‘What do you mean? You can’t have him back. They’ve paid us.’
I could hear the rattle of hysteria in my voice. If I didn’t control it, I would lose this argument. I swallowed it down.
‘It was a mistake. I’m sure they’ll understand. Surely there has to be a period for thinking this through, deciding if it’s what we really want? We’ll give them the money back, and I’ll promise to repay them for the apartment, the air fares, everything. I’ll raise the money somehow, but Scott, I want him back. I can’t bear to be without him.’
The Shape of Lies: New from the queen of psychological thrillers Page 27