by Kate Simants
There is solid traffic on Brislington Hill, as far as she can see. So she veers right, off the main drag of the A4, narrowly avoiding a L-plated moped that has been too close almost the whole way since James’s. She takes the back way through St Anne’s. The satnav tells her she doesn’t have a hope of making it to the hospital before they slice Suzy open, but she’ll be damned if she’s going to give up. Her twenty minutes dwindles into eighteen as she hurtles through the thirty limit, the sky draining from orange to pink. Past the defunct police station, riding the speed bumps, hyper-alert but smooth, somehow.
Calm.
He thought he could use her. The more she thinks about it, the straighter the line between all the points appears. How he’d practically petitioned her for an audience with Ashworth; how he’d plied her with booze, finding her weaknesses, using them against her, all to get hold of the evidence of what he’d done to Paige. Well, fuck him. So maybe she does have weaknesses. But if he thought he was going to lay her low by exposing that, he’d read her all wrong. It isn’t going to be something she’ll ever tell him, but he’s done her a favour.
There is a smooth run of clear junctions and green lights all the way down to Arnos Court, and she’d be forgiven for thinking someone is smiling on her. But all of that is about to change.
She’d wanted to drop the phone at the station before heading back to the hospital, but there is no time now. To make matters worse, as she pauses at a crossing, the engine coughs and complains. The fuel light glares – how long has it been on? The learner on the moped comes up right alongside her and scowls in through the window as she tots it up: she’s probably covered twenty miles since it appeared, meaning she’s running on fumes. She adjusts her route, heading to a garage with the pay-at-pump machines; a stop will cost her sixty seconds, if she just takes enough to get her to the hospital.
She pulls up on the forecourt, gets out and sinks the nozzle into the tank before she notices the sign: All Transactions To Be Completed In Shop. Bollocks – but she doesn’t have a choice. She takes the minimum five litres, simultaneously scrabbling in her bag for her card, then darts inside to pay and is back out in less than a minute.
Mirror, signal, out of there, past the moped at the pump right ahead—
Movement in her wing mirror, drawing her eye towards it. Someone running. Right towards her.
The rear passenger door opens, then slams.
‘Eyes front. Fucking drive.’ A muffled voice, close against her headrest. And more than that.
A fine finger of cold against her neck. Metal. A knife?
‘Turn left.’
She risks a moment’s glance in the rear-view, and a moment is all it takes. The rider of the moped is in the back of her car, black helmet obscuring his face, visor up only a fraction. And his hands are white, unnaturally so. He is wearing gloves.
Latex gloves.
‘Go left,’ he growls, and she jolts into action. Her knuckles bone-white on the wheel. Angry tears blistering in her eyes.
Her phone, even Paige’s phone – both are in her bag, on the back seat. Shit. Can she just open the door, slow down, roll out? No. Grab his arm? No. Just speed up, hit a wall, hope he’s knocked out? He isn’t wearing a seatbelt, sitting that far forward – that could work…
No.
She has to do what he says. There is no choice. But she will not cry. She will stay alive.
‘What do you want,’ she asks, flat and clear.
‘I want you to drive.’
Time, impossibly, compresses and stretches simultaneously. The minutes pass so quickly that, before she knows it, she is in a completely different neighbourhood, and yet somehow everything is heightened, playing in HD and super slo-mo. There is time to analyse every peak and trench of his voice, running it against some subconscious database of every voice she has ever heard, in the hope that she can identify him.
‘Please,’ she says, her voice brittle. ‘I need to get to the hospital. Just take the car, OK?’
In the rear-view mirror, there is a fraction of a second where he dips his head, and she lets herself believe that he will change his mind.
‘We can’t. Just drive.’
He pushes the metal harder against her skin and she rises from the seat with the pressure. But she is no longer thinking of what he is going to do, but why. We can’t?
This is no opportunist car-jacking. He’s been sent. There is only one person she knows of who’d send someone.
‘You can just take the phone, OK? Just take it and let me go.’
But he doesn’t respond. She presses her lips between her teeth and she instructs herself to stay calm, keep it together. Because she is 3.2, 3.3, 3.4 miles from the hospital, from putting things straight with Suzy. In a matter of minutes, she’s going to be a parent. And he is going to kill her, because James Yardley has told him to.
He continues to direct her, monosyllabically. First up to the St Philips Causeway and then off, north and then east and then she is lost. She keeps her hands on the wheel. An invisible fist at her windpipe tightens with each breath and her body, her skin, is alive with the sheer injustice of it. She wants to put this right. That is all she has wanted to do.
Does that filthy, privileged prick really get to win?
They come to a road that will take them under the M32. No houses, just a long high wall one side and a fence on the other, holding back a tangled mass of bramble and nettle.
A flood of darkness, a change in volume, as they pass under the thundering bridge, and then they emerge.
‘Pull in here.’
She turns, slowly. A gap in the green behind the fence, a flash of what it conceals.
The river.
The window is open, and she inhales deeply. Beneath the car fumes there is a rainy freshness there. Something sweet.
‘Stop the car.’
Honeysuckle? Yes. Growing wild somewhere. And conifers.
‘Get out.’
She doesn’t falter. The metal leaves her neck and she moves her legs, noticing for the first time the catch of the fabric seat against her clothes, the almost inaudible creak of skin loosening against plastic as she unpeels her hands from the wheel. She is almost weightless as they walk through scrub-land, no discernible path underfoot.
‘Down on the ground,’ he says, after a minute.
‘Will you leave them alone?’
‘Down on the ground.’
The sound of footsteps going back towards the car.
‘It’s in my bag. In the zipped bit,’ she calls to him.
The song of a single blackbird pierces through the rumble of the traffic above them. His footsteps sound on the rough, stony earth as he returns. On her knees now, the dampness seeps through her tights in a second and she thinks of the same thing from only a few days before. Melanie Pickford-Hayes, who gave her blue roll and was kind to her.
And then Wren opens her eyes.
Some people, they’ll manipulate literally anyone, Melanie said. Even the best-hearted children you’ll ever meet.
She knows who he is.
‘Luke.’
He is right behind her. She tries to get to her feet.
‘Stop,’ he says. ‘Stay where you are.’
But she can hear it now. His age, and his fear, his reluctance.
‘Whatever you’ve done, Luke, you do not have to do this.’
Something slack hits the floor just behind her. Her bag, she thinks. But she doesn’t turn.
‘Did you find what you wanted?’ she asks. She has to speak up to be heard over the boom of the motorway, but he says nothing.
‘You don’t have to help him. I know you were involved in whatever happened to her,’ she says, even though she hasn’t ever been sure, not until now. ‘But whatever you did, giving him that phone is not going to make it better.’
Still nothing. But he is still there.
‘He’s not on your side, Luke. He’s evil. Even his wife says so.’
She can hear him pacing
. She is too terrified to turn.
‘Do you know what’s on it? The phone?’
‘Yes,’ he spits. ‘Yes, I fucking do.’
And because Wren has nothing to lose, she asks, ‘Why do you want to destroy it for him, then, if you loved her? Why are you helping him?’
Then he is right next to her ear, so close she can feel the spit against her skin and the smell of him. Sweat and petrol and youth.
‘Because there is only one way to put this behind me. You think I want any of this?’ Venom in every word. ‘This is because of you.’
So he knows who she really is, too.
‘All Paige wanted was to know someone was there for her. That was your job. That’s what mothers are supposed to do.’
‘Please, just let me—’
‘No. You want to know why I’m here? You can fucking listen. Everything she did was because of that – that hole you left in her. You think anyone’s ever going to be all right after being dumped by her own mum like that?’
She takes her time. She will answer the question.
‘I was an addict, Luke.’ It is the first time in her life that she has ever used that word aloud to describe herself. ‘I made some really bad mistakes. Paige was the one who suffered. And I’ve been trying all this time to put that right. I just wanted to hand the phone in. If you loved Paige, you’d want to do that, too.’
‘Why did you steal it from Rob, then? Huh? Why did you make me go to your fucking house with that poor fucking woman there and, and—’ he breaks off, and there is a sound like a gasp. A sob, even. ‘Why didn’t you just give it to the police? I had a plan, all right? Get the phone, put everything right. But you had to go and steal it. Paying you, was he? James? Or did you have the same plan as my brother?’
‘No! That’s not—’
‘I’m not fucking stupid. You’re just like everyone else.’
Wren tries to force it all together. He is working for James, but he loved Paige. And: he hates James, yet he’d come for the phone, he’d even broken into her house for the phone.
‘I can’t trust you with it any more than I can trust Rob,’ Luke is saying. ‘I thought he cared about us. And Paige did. But all he wanted was his stupid plan. Even when it went wrong the first time, he just took the prison time so he could try again, blackmail him when he got out. No,’ he says, breathing hard. ‘I’m the only one that really cares about her. I’m the only one who wants to make Yardley pay for what he did.’
‘And so you set your own brother up? You put those clothes in his flat?’
A pause. ‘What clothes?’ Genuine confusion.
‘Paige’s clothes!’ Grief surges again.
‘I’ve got nothing to do with any clothes,’ he says. Something in his tone makes her sure it is the truth.
‘Let me help you,’ Wren begs. ‘I loved her, Luke. You can’t imagine how much.’
There is no answer.
‘Luke. Please,’ she says, her voice rising. ‘Luke!’ Where is he? She gets up and rounds on him, ready to take whatever she has to take—
She gasps, claps both hands to her mouth, unable to speak or scream or breathe.
He’s gone.
She stands there shuddering, forcing down each breath. After a few moments she takes her hands from her face.
Her bag is on the ground. She knows without checking that her keys will be gone. But next to it, there is something silvery.
She picks it up, understanding as she turns it over that this is what he’d been holding against her neck, in the car. But it isn’t a knife at all.
It is a pair of what look like pliers, but which she knows, upon expert inspection, will turn out to be diagonal cutters.
45
Before
Luke’s never seen anyone drive as carefully as Yardley is driving right now. It makes no difference that his knuckles are pressed white on the wheel: the needle might as well be glued to 29 mph. Not that Luke’s complaining. Considering the cargo they’ve got in the boot, he’s not exactly desperate to get pulled over either.
It’s close to one in the morning by the time they get into the car park near Crew’s Hole. Luke knows it like the back of his hand; he’s been here dozens of times since he was little. The car park is edged with trees, the tall narrow kind. They sway and twist, looking down on the single car, slowing to a halt.
‘You sure there are no cameras?’ Yardley asks.
Luke isn’t, because he’s never thought of checking before, but he gets out and peers into the gloom. Standing outside the car, he realises he’s never seen real night before. And instead of his eyes getting used to it, the blackness is crowding in on him, and he takes a step backwards without even meaning to, feeling for the door handle again.
Take it easy, he tells himself. It’ll all be over soon.
He tells Yardley he doesn’t see any cameras, although he doesn’t really know what he’s looking for. There’s nothing man-made there except a dog-shit bin.
Yardley shakes himself and gets out, then both of them are by the boot. Luke goes to open it, but he pauses, says again the thing that matters most.
‘I’m carrying her.’
‘Fine.’
‘I’m doing all of it. I don’t even want you looking at her.’
Yardley glares at him, his lips tight. ‘This is me helping you out here, Lukey. Don’t forget that.’
‘Is it?’ Luke plants his feet. ‘You can get the phone yourself then, can you?’ They both know Rob is already in custody, and that means there is no way Yardley has a chance of getting it. Only Luke. ‘If you want me to get it back, we’re doing this my way.’
And even though his heart is thundering, he keeps his eyes on him and he doesn’t look away until Yardley sighs, furious, and moves off around the front again.
The boot clicks open. Things have shifted around back there on the journey but the tarp he used to cover her with is still roughly in place. Her face is covered, which is the main thing. He lifts the canvas, and Paige is a little doll, eyes closed, her hands in loose fists. Luke’s never noticed how tiny her hands are before.
He leans in close, his lips right next to her ear. ‘We’re here,’ he tells her.
He takes a deep breath, steeling himself, and then he leans in again. Gets his arms round her, careful to keep her mostly covered. He gets low, bracing his knees, and does it in stages, but eventually she’s up on his shoulder.
‘Get the spade,’ he says to Yardley. ‘And don’t use the torch unless you have to.’
He makes Yardley walk ahead of him. They start on the path, then they come off it and snake through. Yardley’s got his arms up over his head, batting away branches. Luke’s struggling with the effort but he keeps going. He’s holding her in place with one arm, and the other is up in front of him, shielding her from the brambles and the twigs.
‘That way,’ he says. ‘Between those trees there.’ Yardley heads where Luke points, the spade over his shoulder glinting for a second as he turns. They come to the clearing just past where his mum was found that time, right up next to the river.
Luke finds a place. He kneels and sets her down, lying on her side. Yardley comes over, holding out the spade. Luke jumps up. ‘Don’t. Fucking. Look at her.’
The spade thuds to the ground. ‘Dig the hole then,’ Yardley says. He goes to the edge of the clearing, sits on a fallen log.
Luke turns back to her. He pushes the hair from her lips, pulls the tarp back around so it covers her from Yardley’s view but so that if he gets down really low, he can still see her face. Her mouth.
‘All over in a minute,’ he whispers.
And then he starts to dig.
46
Now
Wren sits motionless in the maternity ward’s waiting area. The concerned-looking receptionist had ushered her into a chair before somehow finding the time to get her a mug of sweet tea. Wren is to wait there while the midwife makes her way down from theatre.
Because she’s misse
d the birth, of course.
Once she’d found her way back onto a main road and located a cab office, and sat, shaking and catatonic, until someone arrived to take her to the hospital, by then Leo Wood-Reynolds was already being placed on his mother’s chest, cautiously opening half-blind eyes for the first time.
With the moment gone, the adrenaline of the journey has given way to a cold shroud of shock. The only evidence that might have helped to plot Paige’s last moments, that could have brought her some justice, has been lost.
She sips her tea, not tasting it. Tells herself again – I missed the birth of our child. But it still sounds like a punchline in a half-joke about a shit husband. Ex-husband. It won’t sink in.
The midwife appears through the double doors. She exchanges a few muted words with her colleague at the desk before coming to sit beside Wren.
‘You’d be surprised how often this happens,’ she says.
Wren attempts a smile, and is rewarded with a sympathetic pat on the back. ‘Well, the main thing is she’s fine,’ the midwife tells her. ‘Mum’s fine, baby’s fine. Lovely little chap, eight pounds exactly.’
Wren turns to ask if she can go up but the midwife, reading her mind, wrinkles her nose kindly and touches her shoulder.
‘Let’s give her a little while. She’ll be out of recovery within an hour. I can let you know when she’s settled?’
Wren nods. ‘Maybe I should go out, get some flowers and things,’ she says, half to herself.
‘I really think it’s probably best you stay in the building, don’t you?’
The hour passes torturously slowly. When at last the receptionist beckons her over and tells her she can go up, her legs are blocks of stone, entirely numb. She climbs the three flights to the floor where she will meet her son, and the only thought that she can keep in her head for more than a couple of seconds is that this could be it. This could be the end of them.
Suzy’s mother Shirley is on her phone in the corridor, but hangs up as soon as she sees Wren. She opens her arms and strides over. ‘Come here.’
Wren allows herself to be enveloped. Years have passed since Wren’s own mother died, and Shirley will always be the person she thinks of whenever she hears the word mum.