by Daniel Hurst
In the end, I’m glad this is only a short journey in the taxi because, otherwise, I feel as if my head would explode with all the terrifying possibilities. Instead, the car is already pulling up outside my flat, meaning I now have something else to distract me.
I need to go inside and see if my daughter is safe.
I slam the car door behind me as I run up the path towards the entrance, my heart already racing long before my legs were. Tapping my electronic key fob onto the access panel, I pull the heavy glass doors open and rush to the staircase, taking the steps two at a time on my way up to the third floor.
Once there, I reach my front door and jam the key into the lock, turning it quickly and bursting inside, afraid at what I might find waiting for me on the other side but desperate to see at the same time. Will Louise come running towards me in relief, or will she be lying dead on the carpet with blood running across her lifeless face?
In the end, neither of those outcomes materialise, and I see no sign of my daughter as I step inside and close the door behind me.
‘Louise! Are you okay?’ I yell into my silent home, the stress of the situation threatening to overwhelm me at any moment.
But there’s no response. Oh, my God, they lied to me. They must have hurt her even with the code. But how badly?
‘Mum?’
The sound of her voice from behind my bedroom door is a welcome one, and I rush into the room to see Louise tied to the radiator, looking exhausted but alive.
‘You’re okay!’ I cry as I run towards her and wrap my arms around her slender frame.
‘Get me out of this,’ she tells me, pulling at her restraint, and I waste no time in rushing into the kitchen before returning with the scissors and cutting through the cable tie.
As she gets to her feet, I move in for another hug, and she doesn’t move or say a word as I squeeze her tightly. I’m just so glad to find her alive and well that her silence doesn’t even bother me for a minute. But then I eventually let her go, and only then do I notice the look in her eyes.
She isn’t scared. She isn’t afraid.
She is angry.
‘I’m so sorry, Lou. What did he do to you?’ I ask, reaching out to take my daughter’s hand, but this time she pulls away from me, and when she speaks, it’s not to say what I expected her to.
‘What did you do?’ she asks me, turning the question back around.
‘What?’
‘Why was there so much money in the safe? And jewellery too? Where did all that stuff come from?’
I realise that my daughter must have witnessed James emptying it out and is now well aware that there was a lot more than just £20,000 in there. But before I answer her, I turn and look towards the safe because I need to see it for myself. Even though I know it is empty, I have to confirm it.
Sure enough, the door is open, and there is nothing inside. But I don’t get to look at it for long because Louise grabs my arm and spins me around to face her. She wants answers, and she is entitled to them. I just have to figure out which ones I can give her and which ones I must still try to keep a secret.
‘Answer me,’ Louise begs, her voice cracking with the strain of what she has been through today.
‘I haven’t been honest with you,’ I confess, and despite everything that has happened today, this might be the moment when I feel the worst. The moment when I admit I have been lying to the only person in the world whom I love.
‘No shit!’ Louise replies. ‘Where did all that money come from? Did you rob those guys? Is that why they came after us?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘Then what did you do, because you sure as hell didn’t make that money working in an office.’
‘I’ve been working as an escort!’
There, I’ve said it. Maybe I should have said it sooner, but it’s out there now.
‘A what?’
‘An escort. Men paid me to go on dates with them.’
Louise looks like she doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
‘An escort? Like a prostitute?’ she asks with an expression of disbelief on her face.
‘No, of course not!’
‘Then what?’
‘We just went for dinner and drinks. Sometimes to the theatre. But that’s it. There was never anything sexual, I swear.’
‘Yeah, right. I saw all that money!’ she cries loudly, letting me know that she is going to need more convincing than that.
‘That’s all from the dates. I swear.’
‘It doesn’t make sense. Why would guys pay you so much just to go on a date?’
‘Because they’re lonely. Desperate. I don’t know. But I promise nothing physical happened with any of them. I never went back to any of their homes.’
Oh, how I wish that were true.
‘I don’t believe you,’ Louise replies, and it hurts me to see that she means it.
‘I’m telling you the truth,’ I insist. ‘They were just dates. I needed the extra money.’
‘And you told me you couldn’t give me any money to go travelling.’ Louise shakes her head in disgust. ‘Yet you had all that cash in there the whole time.’
‘Lou, please. I don’t want to argue. I’m just glad you’re okay.’
‘Yeah, I’m fine. I’ve just found out my mum is a liar and my boyfriend was only with me because he was planning to steal from us!’
Louise turns to storm out of the room, but I reach after her, unable to leave it like this.
‘Did he hurt you? Tell me what happened,’ I beg her, grabbing her arm and pulling her back.
‘Get off me!’ she cries, trying to fight against my grip, but I don’t let go. This is quickly turning into the worst argument we have ever had until suddenly Louise’s anger morphs into something else.
She begins to cry, and now I can see that it was all a front. She is scared and she is traumatised after what she went through. She was just trying to hide it with another argument. But now the walls have come down, and she is sobbing uncontrollably, which makes me feel dreadful because I know I’m the one who has brought this on my daughter.
‘Come here,’ I say as I pull her into me, and she buries her face in my shoulder as I hold onto her.
‘You’re safe now,’ I tell her as she weeps, and it breaks my heart to see my daughter like this. I haven’t seen her cry since she was a little girl.
It’s several seconds until Louise lifts her head from my shoulder and wipes her tear-stained eyes, and I guide her to the edge of the bed, where we take a seat beside each other. But I decide to let her be the one who speaks first for fear of pushing her away again.
‘We need to call the police,’ she says when she finally gets herself back under control. ‘They might be able to catch them.’
‘They’ll be long gone,’ I tell her, even though I know she is right.
‘You can’t just let them get away with it! They took everything! I thought he was going to kill me!’
I take Louise’s hand again before she can get too worked up. ‘I’m so sorry. But we can’t call the police.’
‘Why not?’
I take a moment to pick my answer carefully. ‘Because I don’t want them knowing about all that money,’ I say. ‘I hadn’t declared it. I can’t tell them how much was in there because they will know what I was doing.’
‘Who cares? So you weren’t paying taxes. I think robbery and attempted murder are slightly worse crimes to commit!
‘It wasn’t attempted murder,’ I say before instantly regretting it, and Louise pulls her hand away from mine and gets up from the bed.
‘You weren’t the one tied to the bed while a guy threatened you with a knife!’ she cries.
‘You’re right. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that,’ I try, but it’s too late. I’ve gone and said the wrong thing, and now my daughter is mad at me again.
‘What are you hiding?’ Louise asks me as she keeps her distance from me when I try to get her to sit down again.
>
‘I’m not hiding anything,’ I try. But she isn’t buying it.
‘Escorting would explain the money. But what about the other stuff that was in there. The watch. The ring. Where did that stuff come from?’
I think about trying to lie my way out of this one too, but I stop when I see how hurt my daughter is. After everything she has been through today, she doesn’t deserve that. Maybe I’ll regret telling her, and maybe I’ll get punished for it, but perhaps that’s what I deserve.
‘Sit down and I’ll tell you,’ I say, my voice low and my mood even lower.
Louise does as I ask, and I can feel my heart hammering in my chest as I prepare to reveal my deepest and darkest secret.
‘I was telling the truth when I said I didn’t go back to the homes of any of my dates,’ I begin. ‘But there was one exception.’
I take a deep breath before continuing. ‘There was one man who asked me to go back, and I did,’ I say, and Louise shakes her head at me. ‘But it’s not what you think,’ I quickly add. ‘It wasn’t for sex. He was much older than me. His wife had passed away, and he was all alone. He had become quite fond of me during our dates and took it badly when I told him that I was going to leave the escorting agency. So he offered me money to come back for one more drink.’
‘And you accepted it?’
‘It was a lot of money, and he was a lonely old man. I felt sorry for him.’
‘What happened?’
My brain is screaming at me to stop talking, but Louise should know the truth, so I press on. ‘At first, everything was fine. We had our drink, and he was a gentleman like always. Then I was preparing to leave. That’s when he changed.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He made a pass at me. I was shocked, not just because of the age difference between us but because he had never even hinted at wanting anything like that from me in all our previous dates.’
‘What did you do?’ Louise asks, and I can tell that she is afraid of my answer. By now she must have guessed that the jewellery belongs to this man, but I bet she’d never guess how I ended up getting it.
‘I tried to leave. He wouldn’t let me. He forced himself on me, and he was much stronger than I thought he would be.’
Just reliving that night in my mind is bringing back that terrible feeling when he had me pressed against the door in his apartment. That feeling of not being able to stop what was about to happen. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.
‘Oh, my God,’ Louise says, and this time she is the one to take my hand.
‘We fought. I hit him over the head. He didn’t get back up.’
The vivid nature of the memory in my mind means I can almost see his body lying in front of me right now.
‘Did you kill him?’ Louise asks.
I nod my response.
My daughter doesn’t say anything for a few seconds until my anxiety levels reach breaking point and I have to end the silence.
‘He was going to rape me. I had to do something. But I never meant to kill him. You have to believe me.’
‘Of course I believe you,’ Louise says, and it’s a relief to have her trust, even if it is over something as bad as this. ‘So what happened then?’
‘I was going to leave, but then I saw his safe across the room, just sitting there, wide open. It was full of money. I know I shouldn’t have, but I guess it was the adrenaline or the shock after what had just happened that made me do it.’
‘You took everything?’
I nod my head, feeling almost as ashamed about that as I do about the fact that I killed a man.
‘So the watch and ring were his,’ Louise says, piecing it all together. ‘That’s why you don’t want to call the police. If they catch them and find out where they got them from, they’ll know you killed him.’
I say nothing because there isn’t anything else that I can add that will make this situation any better.
‘So what do we do?’ Louise asks me.
‘I don’t know,’ I reply, and I don’t even need to think about lying for that one. ‘Maybe I can talk to my manager and ask him to redact my resignation. Or I can find another job. We’ll be okay.’
But Louise doesn’t say anything. I’m not sure if it’s because she is mad at me again or whether she has finally run out of questions to ask. It doesn’t matter. I’ve told her everything there is to know about this sorry situation now.
‘I’ll call my manager now and see what I can do about my job,’ I say, taking out my mobile phone and doing my best to stop the tears welling up in my eyes. I can’t believe I’m going to have to beg for a job I couldn’t wait to leave. I’m just about to locate his number on my phone when Louise suddenly sits forward.
‘Oh, my God. I think I might know a way of finding them!’ she says, leaping up from the bed and rushing into her room.
‘What?’ I call after her, but she doesn’t answer me until she returns with her laptop, which she quickly opens and logs onto.
‘My phone has that thing where you can check the location on it if you lose it,’ she tells me, shaking her head. ‘I can’t believe I didn’t think of it straight away.’
‘What does that mean?’ I ask her, still not quite caught up with her thought process.
‘James took my mobile! It means that as long as he still has it on him, we can see exactly where he is,’ she says, typing furiously on her keyboard.
‘Really?’ I ask, thinking that sounds too good to be true.
‘Got it!’ she cries, spinning her laptop around to show me the screen. Then she points at it so I can understand what I’m looking at.
‘I’ve just entered my number in here,’ she says. ‘And this is my phone.’
‘That’s James?’ I ask, watching the flashing red dot.
‘Yes!’ she replies enthusiastically. ‘As long as he holds on to my phone, then we can track him!’
This sounds too good to be true, but I don’t doubt what my daughter is telling me.
I see the map.
I see the flashing red dot moving across it.
And I see exactly where the man who stole my money is going.
40
STRANGER
The beer isn’t going down as well as I thought it would. I’ve never been a fan of drinking alone, but I don’t have much choice right now.
That’s because James isn’t here.
I check the time again and see that another ten minutes have passed since I walked into this pub and expected to find him sitting at one of the tables. I was surprised to beat him here and sent him a quick message for an update as I ordered two pints and carried them over to this table in the corner. But there has been no response, nor was there one when I called him a few minutes ago.
Now I’m starting to get worried.
I take another thirsty gulp of my frothy lager and try to quieten the gnawing sense of dread in the pit of my stomach that is telling me that James isn’t going to show. Of course he will show. This was the plan. Meet here. Debrief. Check in to the hotel around the corner. Head to London in the morning for the Eurostar. Enter France.
There’s no reason to think he has strayed from that schedule.
No reason other than the empty seat across the table from me.
With the alcohol not working on calming my nerves as well as I need it to, I pick up my phone and try James again. One ring. Two. Three. Four. I hang up after six, and now I’m even more anxious.
He told me he was out of the flat, so he should have been here by now. Did something happen along the way? Did the police catch up with him somehow?
Or has he done a runner with all the money?
It’s the last possibility that I deem to be the most likely, and it’s the one that causes me to leave my unfinished pint on the table and rush out of the pub and back onto the breezy Promenade.
I almost bump into an old man eating a bag of chips as I hurry down the road with my head buried in my mobile phone, typing out a message to my p
artner as I go.
“I hope you’re not doing something you’ll regret?”
I press Send but keep the phone in my hand as I walk, hoping that I’ll receive a message straight back any second now that will put my doubts to bed and have me scurrying back to the pub after learning this was all a misunderstanding. But the fact my phone doesn’t vibrate with any incoming messages keeps me headed away from the pub and in the direction of the flat at the corner of Jossels Road.
I recognise the grimy brown door from the last time I was here and put my hand against the peeling paintwork and knock hard three times. I’m not expecting James to be in this flat, but I’m hoping the woman who he was living with is. Her name is Christine, and James has been staying here with her after he got out of prison. She’s an ex-girlfriend of his from before he served time, but he was using her more as a free place to crash rather than to try to rekindle any past romance between them. It was at this flat a couple of weeks ago where I met James after my own release, and he told me about the teenager he had met online and the safe she knew of in her mother’s bedroom. Back then, this flat had been the place where our exciting master plan had been formed. But now I fear it may be the place where it all comes crashing down.
I’m just about to knock again on the ramshackle door when it suddenly swings open, and I see Christine standing there in her dressing gown. She looks like she’s just woken up, and maybe she has. James told me she worked nights at the casino down by the seafront. What a life. Spending all night serving drinks to the degenerate gamblers of this poxy seaside town and all day sleeping it off in this grimy flat that looks like it should be knocked down. But she isn’t my problem right now. The man she had allowed into her home is.
‘Have you seen James?’ I ask, cutting past all the pleasantries because there simply isn’t time for any.
‘I was hoping that it was him knocking,’ Christine replies, rubbing her bleary eyes and looking past me down the street as if she wasn’t aware that daylight was a thing. ‘You know you just woke me up. I’ve got work tonight.’