by Mia James
She felt around in her pocket. Thank God! Her phone was still there. She quickly texted Fiona.
Sorry, had to get away. Make excuse to Mum for me? Call later. xx
But the truth was, she felt better being on this bus, away from the wake and all those people - well meaning though they were - muttering their condolences. It was all so false, so tacky. She had been suffocating. And she was glad she had got away from Gabriel. The truth was he had frightened her. The look on his face when she had asked who had killed her dad was guilt, she was sure of it. And even if it wasn’t, he hadn’t denied it when she had accused him of being a killer. The bottom line was that he was keeping something from her. Too many people were doing that these days. Her mother, her grandfather, Gabriel, maybe even her father, if Silvia’s outburst was to be believed. Why did they think she couldn’t handle it? She wasn’t some little kid any more. They were happy to lecture you about sex and drugs, but thought you were incapable of handling the boring details of their screwed-up adult lives. Well, if Gabriel wanted to play that way, April could play too. She would call Detective Inspector Reece and tell him what she had seen that night. Everything. She picked up her phone and scrolled through the numbers. There it was: DI Reece. She pressed the ‘send’ button. Calling …
But then she suddenly stabbed the red ‘cancel’ button. What exactly would she say? ‘Hello, Detective Inspector Reece. Hey, you know how I told you on two separate occasions that I didn’t see anyone that night at the cemetery? Well, now I’ve changed my mind - the killer is my sort-of boyfriend.’
April smiled at the idea and imagined the policeman’s response.
‘So why are you telling me this now?’
‘Um, because I’ve just had a public fight with him? Does that sound convincing?’
April had to admit it wouldn’t have much credibility, and as Fiona had said, she really didn’t know Gabriel was involved. There was just something wrong about the whole situation. The murders, the school, the way everyone acted around her, it was just, well, weird. Hopping off the bus at Kings Cross, she ran down the escalator and squeezed onto the packed Tube, riding shoved up against a pushchair along the Piccadilly line. She jumped off at Covent Garden and instantly felt better. Covent Garden was April’s favourite station. She loved the old-fashioned green walls and the rickety lifts, the way they propelled you straight out into the middle of the hustle and chatter of central London. It almost felt like a conjuring trick. April had always looked forward to that part of the journey when her mum used to bring her here on shopping trips as a girl. But now, now she was on her own, and April felt human for the first time since the heavy iron door had closed on her dad’s coffin earlier that afternoon. No one telling her what to do, no one looking at her with curiosity or pity, no one refusing to explain anything, she was just another body being swept along with the crowd. Somehow the lights seemed brighter and the smells sweeter here; she remembered her mum saying something about the metropolis having an energy all of its own. She agreed with her about that at least.
Drifting down past the Opera House and skirting around the busy market, she saw her favourite patisserie and walked over. She loved peering through the window at the marvellous cakes and pastry confections; it was April’s version of Audrey Hepburn gazing at the jewels in Tiffany’s. She jingled the coins in her pocket, wishing she had enough for a hot chocolate, her fingers pressed against the cold glass.
‘I knew I’d find you here.’
April whirled around, her mouth open. It was Gabriel. He had found her.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
She pressed back against the window, her eyes darting around like a trapped rabbit’s. Gabriel saw her expression and stepped forward.
‘Hey, April, it’s okay, don’t be frightened,’ he said, his hands outstretched. But April was already moving. She turned and ran, banging into a lady carrying a takeaway coffee which exploded on the floor in a spray of milk and foam.
‘Hey!’ shouted the woman angrily, but April couldn’t hear anything except the wind rushing past her ears. She glanced behind and could see him following her. No! She pulled up her dress and her feet pounded the pavement, once again glad of her flat shoes, and she swerved to avoid tourists and shoppers. She dashed across a road, barely missing a black cab, and plunged into a narrow alleyway. How close is he? she wondered, not daring to look back. Little shops with cute Dickensian bow windows whirled through her vision as she looked for an exit. She skidded to a halt just as a bus whooshed past her nose in a red blur. Left or right, left or right? her brain screamed.
‘April! Stop!’ Gabriel’s voice was close behind her. Too close. She went right, sprinting up the street, veering across and into another alley, hoping to lose Gabriel in the tangle of tiny streets. She plunged through a dark opening and along a narrow lane, no more than a pathway really, which hooked right and back onto the road. Where now? She followed the tide of people flowing downhill - where there were people there was safety, right?
She ran out into the road amid blaring horns and dazzling headlights. But then she was on the other side and to her right was the wide-open space of Trafalgar Square. It was teeming with tourists and pigeons, but it was too open, too exposed for safety. Besides, she had to stop, her legs, her lungs wouldn’t take any more. She hurried as best she could up some wide white steps to her left and hid behind a pillar. It was a church, or a courthouse or something equally grand, but all April cared about was that she couldn’t be seen. She slumped against the stone, gulping in air and trying to calm herself down. She ducked her head out and stared back the way she had come, scanning the crowd, looking for Gabriel in hot pursuit. Maybe I’ve lost him, maybe he gave up, she thought.
But no, there he was, walking casually towards her as if nothing had happened. How did he get here so fast?
‘April, I’m sorry if I scared you back there. I didn’t mean to freak you out, I just want to talk,’ he said, both hands held out, palms down, as if he was trying to calm a skittish animal. ‘Don’t run, please.’
Out of the corner of her eye, she could see some tourists coming down the steps from the church, cameras in hands. So she screamed. A long high-pitched Hammer Horror-style scream. Every head within earshot turned in her direction and April took full advantage of it, quickly backing away from Gabriel, shouting, ‘Help! Help me! He stole my purse and now he’s trying to get my phone!’ She waved her mobile to underline the truth of the claim.
A middle-aged fat man in a puffer jacket stepped between April and Gabriel.
‘Hey, buddy,’ he called in a gruff New York accent. ‘You bothering this lady?’
‘She’s my girlfriend,’ said Gabriel, not taking his eyes from April.
‘I am not!’ cried April.
‘Hey, pal, why don’t you give her some space, huh?’ said the New Yorker. ‘I don’t think she wants you around right now.’
‘Yeah, leave her alone!’ shouted a black lady.
‘I’m calling the police!’ yelled someone else, stepping between them.
And April was off and running again, blindly taking the first road she came to, sprinting between towering white buildings, then taking a sharp left into an alleyway. As she ran she scrabbled with her phone, clumsily scrolling to Reece’s mobile number and pressing the ‘call’ button.
‘Come on, come on,’ she panted, holding the phone to her ear without breaking stride.
‘This is Detective Inspector Ian Reece …’
‘DI Reece! This is April … April Dunne,’ she gasped desperately.
‘… leave a message after the tone.’
Dammit! Voicemail.
As the tone sounded, she tried again. ‘DI Reece, this is April Dunne, I’m in …’ She looked around her desperately. ‘Somewhere in London, near Trafalgar Square, I think I’m being foll—’
And then she was talking to the air. Her phone had been snatched out of her hand. She twisted around, stumbled and fell, landing on the ground with a jolt. Gabrie
l was standing over her, peering at the phone.
‘Who were you calling? The police?’
April opened her mouth to scream again, but Gabriel was too quick. He jumped forward and before she could do anything, his hands were on her. This is it, she thought, strangled at sixteen. But to her surprise, he simply lifted her back onto her feet.
‘What are you doing?’ he said to her angrily, barely out of breath. ‘Why are you running away from me?’
‘Because you’re a murderer!’ shouted April and kicked him as hard as she could in the shin.
‘Ow, Jesus!’ he cried, doubling over, and April ran. She ran as fast as she could go. At the end of the alley were some wide steps where the lane became an arched tunnel and she jumped down them three at a time, her footsteps echoing, her breath rasping. Ahead of her she could see some people and she shouted out to them.
‘Please help me! Please, he’s after me!’
The first of them caught her as she ran into him. ‘Hey, hey!’ he said, laughing. ‘What’s the rush? Who’s after you, love?’
The man was in his twenties, dressed in an expensive-looking polo shirt, his hair slicked back. His three companions were also young men similarly dressed in flashy retro trainers and short-sleeved shirts, despite the cold. One of them had tattoos running up his arms.
‘Him!’ gasped April, pointing to Gabriel, who was now standing at the top of the stairs, silhouetted against the light inside the tunnel.
‘Who’s that, your boyfriend?’ asked one of the other men, sniggering.
‘Or her pimp,’ shouted another and they all laughed. April could now smell the booze on their breath.
‘Having a domestic, love?’ said the first man, the yellow light of the tunnel shining on his hair. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll sort him for you.’
‘Let her go,’ said Gabriel, walking towards them. ‘I won’t tell you again.’
‘Oo-ooh!’ mocked one of the men, to more raucous laughter. ‘He won’t tell us again.’
Slick Hair stepped forwards and another of the men grabbed April’s arms from behind.
‘Well, how about I tell you something, pal,’ said Slick Hair.
‘She’s with us now. We’ll take good care of her, won’t we, boys?’
‘Yeah!’ They all laughed and the man holding April twisted his head around to leer at her.
Slick Hair reached into his pocket and, with a flash of metal, he produced a knife.
‘So unless you want some of this,’ he began, waving the blade in front of Gabriel’s face, ‘I suggest you—’ But he never got to finish the sentence. Faster than the eye could see, Gabriel grabbed his hand and twisted. There was a sickening crack that sounded horribly loud in the tunnel, followed by an even louder scream. The next few seconds were a blur: the man holding April tossed her to one side and she dropped to the floor. Then she heard a terrible guttural roar like a charging wolf and the man flew past her, his head cracking against the sloped wall of the tunnel. There were more thuds and another scream and then it was over; all of the men were lying on the ground and Gabriel was bending over April to help her up.
‘It’s okay,’ he said softly, ‘it’s over now.’
‘Get away from me,’ she screamed, scrabbling along the ground until her back met the wall.
‘April, they were going to hurt you,’ he said, bending down towards her, but before he could touch her one of the men got back to his feet and grabbed Gabriel’s coat, shouting obscenities. April spotted the knife, lying on the floor by her leg. She quickly reached out, grabbed it and stuffed it into her coat pocket as she clambered to her feet and ran up the steps, but Gabriel caught her at the top and pushed her into a doorway, his face cold with anger.
‘You have to believe me, I had nothing to do with your father’s death.’
‘Why should I believe you?’
‘Okay, you want to call the police?’ he said, handing her back the phone. ‘Go ahead, call your Detective Inspector Reece, ask him where he was when your father was killed.’
She looked up at him, then down at the phone. With shaking fingers, she dialled Reece’s number.
‘April?’ said Reece urgently down the line. ‘Where are you? What’s happened? I tried to call you back, but it went to voicemail. Are you okay?’
‘Yes, I’m fine,’ said April. ‘Look, I know this sounds crazy, but can I ask you something? Where were you when my father was killed?’
There was silence at the end of the phone. ‘What’s this about, April?’ he asked suspiciously. ‘Are you in trouble?’
‘Please, DI Reece, can you just tell me? It’s important.’
She could hear the policeman take in a deep breath and let it out. ‘I was interviewing a witness,’ he said. ‘A lad from your school, actually, Gabriel Swift. Had to cut it short when Carling got the call about your dad on the radio. Listen, what’s going on? Aren’t you with your mum?’
‘I’m just going home now,’ she said, looking at Gabriel. ‘Hang on, he was a witness? To my dad’s murder?’
‘Another case,’ said Reece. He paused for a moment. ‘Isabelle Davis, in fact. He saw something that night too. Listen, April, do you need me to—’
‘Sorry, Detective Inspector, I’ve got to go,’ she said and hung up, immediately turning towards the Embankment Tube entrance only metres away.
Gabriel grabbed her arm, but she pulled it free. ‘Let go of me,’ she hissed, gripping the knife in her pocket.‘Do you want me to scream again?’
‘Okay, okay,’ said Gabriel, holding his hands up in surrender. ‘But at least let me explain.’
‘I’m not interested in anything you’ve got to say,’ said April, turning back towards the station.
‘I can tell you what’s been going on.’
That stopped April in her tracks. She looked back at him. Was he telling the truth this time? He’d promised to explain before but hadn’t followed through. Okay, so he wasn’t there when her dad died - and she was more relieved than she thought she’d be about that - but he could still have killed Isabelle and he still obviously knew something he wasn’t telling her. And April had to know. She had to.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘You’ve got two minutes.’
Gabriel nodded towards the little park next to the station. ‘Maybe we’d better go somewhere a little more private.’
‘No, first tell me why you’re suddenly a police witness for the Isabelle Davis case,’ said April.
Gabriel could see she wasn’t going to budge and sighed. ‘I called the police anonymously that night to tell them I’d found the body - and I didn’t tell them you were there - I later found out that you didn’t tell them I was there either. I’ve never thanked you for that, by the way.’
April shrugged. ‘You’re welcome,’ she said, with slightly more sarcasm than she intended. ‘But why were you talking to Reece when my dad was killed?’
Gabriel paused before answering.
‘I called them again, told them I’d thought of something else. I wanted to help them catch Isabelle’s killer.’
‘But what made you wait a week? Why did you suddenly get all public-spirited?’
‘Because of the party,’ said Gabriel. ‘Because I saw what they were doing, what they were going to do, and I thought I might be able to help stop it.’
‘Stop what?’ said April. ‘And who are “they”, exactly?’
Gabriel glanced around him. ‘Listen, I’ll tell you whatever you want to know, but I can’t talk about it out here. Come on, I promise I won’t hurt you,’ he said, walking backwards towards the park as he spoke.
April shrugged and followed. What was the worst that could happen? He could kill you and eat you, said a voice in her head. Considering how her day had been going, that didn’t seem so bad to April right then.
‘So what have you got to tell me?’ said April impatiently as they walked through the gardens. ‘You can start with that night in the cemetery. What exactly happened to Isabelle Davis? And what wer
e you doing there?’
‘I know you have no reason to believe anything I say,’ he said slowly, ‘but she was killed by a vicious animal and I was there trying to protect you.’