‘What about Cameron, Jagger, the debt?’
None of that seemed important any more. I didn’t care what they did – they could do their worst. I hadn’t known how it would feel to have a baby and then have him torn from my arms. Others might be able to cope – mothers who can’t support a child or think they’re too young, surrogate mothers, those who don’t want children – but I wasn’t like them. My baby was part of me and I couldn’t let him go.
‘Sod the debt. Sod Cameron. We’ll think of some way of getting the money. Or maybe we don’t go back. We could stay here, get jobs.’
Scott turned towards the window, no longer able to look at me.
‘No, Anna, that’s not going to happen.’
I couldn’t stop the cry of pain that burst from me. ‘He’s my baby – don’t you understand? I can’t leave him. I can’t bear to not feel him in my arms. I want to feed him, hold him against me, touch him, love him. I’m going to go and get him back. We’ll have to transfer the money back to them.’
Scott stomped past me out onto the balcony. I leaped up from my chair and followed him.
‘Just do it!’ I yelled at him. ‘Transfer the money back and let’s go and pick him up. Please, Scott. I’ve done everything I can to help you, but this is too much. Just give them the fucking money back!’
I was screaming, but Scott still wouldn’t turn to look at me. And then I knew. I shivered in the heat of the day. For what felt like minutes, neither of us spoke.
‘How much did you take?’ My voice was surprisingly calm.
He still didn’t face me. ‘It doesn’t matter. We can’t pay them back.’
‘You’ve lost it?’
He nodded and dropped his head. ‘I took some and thought I could maybe double it and that would be a nice bonus. But I lost, so I took some more.’
‘We already had a bonus. Including interest, you owe Cameron forty-five thousand; I owe him six. We got a hundred and fifty!’
Scott shook his head. ‘Dollars.’
‘So? It’s still more than we need.’
Scott looked at the floor.
‘What?’ I said, although I already knew. ‘Jesus, Scott, you didn’t?’
His voice took on the pleading note that I had come to despise, as if I were too controlling and he was just trying to be reasonable.
‘Cameron offered me some cash to tide us over. He said we’d probably find it useful.’
‘And you took it.’ It wasn’t a question.
Scott finally turned towards me. ‘I’m so sorry, Spike. I shouldn’t have borrowed more, but I thought I could win enough to cover it – and more. It felt as if all the stars were aligned today and finally I could make you proud of me.’
I felt nothing but disgust for the boy standing in front of me. Any love I had felt for him was subsumed in a blazing ball of hatred. My voice rose again, and he backed away, turning to lean over the balcony to stare blindly at the patch of dead grass four floors below.
‘I don’t care about the money! I just want my baby. I need my baby!’
I was choking on my sobs by then. I spun round to go back into the apartment, banging into the huge planter full of nothing but dead flowers.
‘You selfish, thoughtless bastard!’ I screamed as I ran into the room, the pain of my loss obliterating all thought. I closed and locked the door behind me. I didn’t want to see Scott or look at him for a second longer. He could roast out there for all I cared.
I moved around the room, getting the last of my things together. I could hear Scott banging on the glass, but I didn’t lift my head. I didn’t want to see him. He called out, but I wrapped my arms over my head and ignored him. Too bad if he was hot.
67
Now
Dominic is waiting for me to say something, maybe to apologise. But it’s too late for excuses.
‘I didn’t tell you the truth about my son because I was ashamed. Giving him up was the biggest mistake of my life. You told me how you felt when your mother left, and I couldn’t think how to explain it to you without telling you the rest – everything I’d done.’
‘I asked you for honesty.’ His voice was tight with anger.
It was wrong of me to lie, even though it had never seemed that simple. But right now I’m not sure it matters at all. Dominic has all but admitted to killing two people, and I have to get out of here so I can take my children and hide until Dominic is locked up.
‘I wanted a perfect family, you know, Anna, but I knew something was wrong when your mum had no idea about your first child – the one you told me was stillborn.’
I say nothing. He’s watching me for my reaction, but I’m going to do what I’m best at – bluff. I’ll let him think everything is okay and that there isn’t a fire raging inside me, feeding off my fury at what he’s done and terror at what he might do. Slowly, slowly, I will find a way to escape.
He’s still talking, and that’s good. He’s engrossed in his own thoughts, his own resentment of me, and I let his words wash over me.
‘I knew there was a lie somewhere in that story, because your mum said something about how calm you seemed for a woman having her first child. She was right. You were calm. Too calm for someone who’d had a stillbirth – and why would your mum not know about that? It took me a long time to piece it all together.’
I’m not really listening. Escape is all that matters, and I realise that Dom dropped the cricket bat after he hit Brad. It’s lying on the floor. It’s too far away though, so I turn my attention to the wall of documents and pretend to study it, moving step by step to the left, towards Brad, looking at each sheet of paper. I have no idea how Dominic got all this information, but right now I don’t care.
My eye is caught by the words on one of the sheets. I know what this is – it’s an email I sent to Scott when he was here, at home with his parents after Jagger had beaten him up the second time. Some of the words have been highlighted with a bright yellow marker:
My body aches for you…You have brought so much light into my life…I get butterflies when you smile at me, tingles down my spine when you kiss my neck.
I can feel Dominic’s eyes on me as I read.
‘You never said or wrote words like that to me, Anna.’
For a moment I want to try to make him understand that every love is different, that ours was solid, built to last a lifetime, whereas Scott was my first love and our passion burned fiercely. But it no longer matters what he thinks. If I die here and Dominic gets away, my children will be brought up by the madman standing beside me.
I inch further to my left. I have nearly reached Brad now, and the cricket bat is right by his side.
‘And finally, let’s talk about Scott’s death, shall we? His mum wasn’t totally gaga when I came to see her.’
My body jolts. I’m not able to control it. What does he mean? ‘How did you know where to find her?’
‘You had his passport, sadly now out of date. And his driving licence.’
Where did he find them?
‘The licence was handy – it had his address. I pretended to be an old friend from university. When I asked how Scott had died, she told me what the police in America had said when they phoned with the news. It explains a lot about you, Anna.’
I drop my head to look at my feet. What can I say? The truth about what I did has haunted me for fourteen years.
I had left Scott on the balcony, locked outside in all that heat. He was shouting at me, begging me to let him in. But I ignored him.
Then he screamed.
I turned and looked and was horrified to see that Scott was surrounded by yellowjacket wasps. More and more of them were rising from the planter that I’d kicked. There must have been a nest in it. He was waving his arms around, trying to bat them away, but was only making them more angry. He’d been terrified of them since he was stung two weeks previously. His leg had swollen badly, and the doctor told him to take care in future.
Scott banged on the glass,
begging me to open the door, but I was frozen to the spot. If I let him in, the wasps would come in with him. Not just one wasp, but hundreds of them. I had always hated wasps, but not so much as I hated Scott at that moment. He had allowed my precious baby to be taken from me, and I would never see him again. The agony he was feeling was physical. To me it was nothing in comparison to the emotional torture I was suffering. I didn’t move.
I saw red welts rising on the surface of his skin. He clutched his throat. He couldn’t breathe, and still I didn’t move.
When I couldn’t bear it any more, I rushed to the coffee table, picked up the folder with our tickets and passports and grabbed Scott’s wallet with the meagre remains of our cash and our useless credit cards. I heard something fall to the floor. I knew what it was but didn’t pause. I ran out of the apartment.
It’s a memory that has never left me. I can still hear Scott, feel the heat of the day, smell the stale air of the apartment. And hear the clatter of his EpiPen as it hits the tiled floor.
Dominic is laughing. He can sense how much the memory is hurting me. I killed Scott, and I’ve always known it. It was foolish to hope I had been wrong. I lift my head, unable to stop myself asking one question. ‘If Scott’s dead, who’s been watching us? Who drove you off the road?’
He laughs louder. ‘No one. I wanted to see how you would react if you thought he was close by, threatening us.’
I want to scream at him for frightening my children, but I need to focus. All that matters is that I get out of here. What he did and why he did it isn’t important right now.
I’m so close to Brad, and conveniently he groans. I drop to my knees at his side, not knowing what I can do to help him other than get out of here and call for help.
‘Can we not roll him over so he can breathe more easily? Or maybe you could get him some water. Please, Dominic. He’s done nothing to hurt you.’
Dominic doesn’t move.
I’m going to have to time this carefully. I can reach the bat now, and if I can grab it with both hands and spin round on my knees I could hit Dom’s bad leg and—
I cry out as I feel a fierce pain in my head. Dominic yanks at my hair and wraps a length around his fist to pull me to my feet.
‘Come with me, wife.’ There is nothing but bitterness in the word.
Taking my arm in a cruel grip, he pulls me round to face another doorway and pushes me forward out of the room.
The doorway leads to a kitchen. It’s a while since it’s been cleaned – perhaps since Mrs Roberts left – and there are flies everywhere.
Then I see a wasp and I freeze. My breathing is coming in gasps. It is too close. I need to get out.
Dominic twists my face round so he can look at me, and he must be able to see the terror in my eyes. This is one fear I can’t disguise, and he knows that as he pushes me forward again. I can barely walk, but when my knees collapse he pulls me upright once more with my hair.
Ahead is another door with a pane of dirty glass in the top. A section has been scrubbed clean, as if to allow someone to look into the room. He pulls open the door and pushes me inside. It’s dark and I can hardly see a thing, but there is a dank smell, as if this is an outhouse. The floor feels like earth. A chair sits in the middle of the room.
‘Sit.’
I ignore him, but he pushes me down.
‘Arms behind your back.’
Again I ignore him, and this time he reaches out and cracks me across the face with the back of his hand. I shriek, unable to believe this is my Dominic. He lets go of my hair and uses both hands to pull my arms behind the chair. I feel the plastic of the cable tie as it cuts into my skin.
‘Don’t do this, Dom,’ I say quietly. ‘For Holly and Bailey, don’t. Please.’
He reaches into his other pocket and pulls out a roll of parcel tape, ripping off a piece with his teeth and wrapping it over my mouth and around my head.
‘You deserve this, Anna,’ he whispers, close to my ear. ‘Not only for what you did to me – to our family – but maybe even for what you did to Scott.’ He laughs nastily. ‘It’s amazing what you can source in the deep dark recesses of the Internet these days.’
I don’t know what he means and I want to beg him to stop, to let me go, but I can’t speak.
‘Goodbye, my love. I’m going now to pick up our children, who are better off without you, to take them somewhere you’ll never find them. It’s all arranged.’
He has backed up towards the door, and I see him point a long pole towards something attached to the wall. He hits it once, drops the pole, then the door slams.
I struggle to try to free my hands, grunting for him to come back. And then I hear it.
It starts as a low buzz and builds to a crescendo as more and more wasps pile out of their nest, angry at being disturbed.
68
Becky pulled the car into a lay-by. They were at the point where the last ANPR camera had picked up Anna Franklyn’s car, and they still hadn’t received the requested telephony information. All they knew, thanks to Lynsey, was that Dominic Franklyn was the man in the hoody, driving a car that had been bought in the name of Scott Roberts. It seemed almost certain that Franklyn was the killer, but how was Anna involved?
‘Where do you reckon she’s heading, Becky?
‘I’ve got no idea. She could be going to see Mrs Roberts again, of course, and it’s all perfectly innocent.’
‘Or indeed she could be taking a day trip to Caernarfon Castle,’ Tom said, drumming his fingers on the dashboard with frustration.
They had driven here hoping that Anna would lead them to either Scott or Bradley Roberts, but now that their prime suspect was Dominic Franklyn, the priority had to be finding him. They had learned he was a stay-at-home dad, but although a team had been urgently despatched to his home, Franklyn wasn’t there. The children weren’t at school either. A neighbour was looking after them because she had been told they were going away for a surprise trip that afternoon, and their dad would be picking them up later. The children and neighbour had now been taken to a place of safety, and both houses were under surveillance.
Tom was about to suggest they find a café and grab a cup of coffee while they decided whether they would be more useful back at the incident room, when the call came through.
‘We have an approximate position for Anna Franklyn’s mobile phone, sir. It’s currently situated in a small country town, and there aren’t too many masts in the area. I can’t give you a precise location, so the coordinates will only provide a starting point. The phone’s stationary at the moment.’
Tom took down the details and thanked the officer. ‘Let me know if she’s on the move again.’
He turned to Becky. ‘It’s the town where Mrs Roberts’ old house is, but the local officers said there was no one there this morning. Why would she go to an empty house?’
Becky slammed the car in gear and pulled quickly out into the traffic. ‘Not a clue, but then I haven’t got a clue about much right now. So let’s go and find out, shall we?’
As they sped down the country roads, Keith called again.
‘Sir, we got the details of Dominic Franklyn’s car so I ran his plate through ANPR. He followed the exact route taken by his wife, but about forty minutes behind her. The car disappeared from the cameras at the same point as hers, which might suggest they were heading towards the same destination.’
Tom felt a pulse of excitement. Now it was getting interesting.
‘Thanks, Keith. Text me the registration number, and well done.’ He ended the call. ‘What do you make of that?’ he asked Becky.
‘No idea. Are they meeting somewhere, or is he following her?’
‘Just what I was asking myself. The evidence at the casino suggests she led a double life that involved Cameron Edmunds. So the question is, did Dominic attempt to kill Cameron out of jealousy? Is he an angry, vengeful husband? We mustn’t forget that he took a beating eighteen months ago too – was that Jagger? A
nna owed Edmunds money, so are she and her husband in it together for revenge? And where the hell does Scott Roberts fit in?’
Becky pointed out Anna’s car the minute they turned into the street.
‘And there’s her husband’s car,’ Tom said.
Becky tutted with frustration. ‘How do we know which house? There must be twenty along this stretch of road.’
‘Didn’t the local guy say Mrs Roberts’ house is up for sale? There’s one up there with an estate agent’s board,’ Tom said, pointing to a house about halfway up the road. ‘It was empty this morning, but that was nearly three hours ago. Give Keith a call to check the address, but I’ve got a feeling that might be the one.’
He didn’t wait while Becky made the call, getting out of the car and walking along the pavement to check that Anna’s car was empty.
‘You’re right,’ Becky said, catching him up. ‘It matches the address on Scott Roberts’ driving licence, so I asked Keith to call the local force to let them know we’ve arrived.’
‘Did you tell him we’re going in?’
Becky gave him a look. If she’d said that, they would have advised her to wait for backup. And Becky had worked with Tom long enough to know that he had no intention of waiting for anyone.
‘Come on then,’ he said.
69
I feel a wasp on my face – just the barest, lightest touch, like an itch that I would scratch if my hands were free. My body is rigid. Every joint is locked and my eyes are squeezed shut. My mouth is covered by the tape, but will the wasp investigate my nose? I’m scared to breathe in. There are wasps in my hair. I’m desperate to shake my head, but their buzzing is close to my ears and I can’t risk making them angry.
There have been times in my life when I have thought I wanted to die, almost all of them connected to the fact that I gave away my baby. But now, as I sit in this room, surrounded by hundreds if not thousands of the creatures that I hate and fear the most, I just want this nightmare to be over, one way or another. Maybe like Scott, one sting will be enough. It will be a terrible death, but it will be quick.
The Shape of Lies: New from the queen of psychological thrillers Page 28