by Tim Adler
Overhead lights switched on.
"What the hell are you doing?" asked Dad. It took a moment to adjust to the light as spots faded before my eyes. Dad was wearing the dressing gown I had given him for Christmas, and he looked even older and thinner than a week ago when I had last seen him.
"Dad, I can explain. Somebody tried to kill me today."
"What do you mean, somebody tried to kill you? What are you talking about?"
"Remember the black Range Rover they spotted outside Alice's house? Well, I went up to the Lake District to try and find Mole's parents. Turns out her father killed himself, and her mother is living in Wales. So they didn’t died after all, at least not together. So that was another lie. The whole thing's been a tissue of lies. The Range Rover followed us out of the village and forced us off the road. I could have died." I was gabbling, my nerves getting to me. Calm down, Hugo.
"What do the police say?"
"They're searching for the car. That's why I need your gun. For protection."
"Put that gun back where you found it."
The shotgun stayed in my hands. "I went up to Mole's school. Turns out she and Alice were schoolmates. This whole thing was a set-up, Dad. Right from the start. The kidnapping, the ransom, everything. Mole was in on it from the beginning, she must have been."
"Do you think she had anything to do with the death of that girl?”
"I don't know. All I can think is that something must have gone wrong. That's why she's run away. The point is, Dad, that she has my money and she has my daughter."
"And you think that whoever was driving the car is coming back for you?"
"Whoever it is knows where I live. He followed me on to the Woolwich ferry this afternoon. Next time he could come for me with a knife or a gun."
"What makes you think it's a he? It could be her." The idea that Mole could be driving the Range Rover had never crossed my mind.
"You could always stay here," Dad said. "The police will find the car."
"Who's to say he's not watching the house already? It's me he wants, Dad, not you."
Dad looked thoughtful. "Pointing a shotgun at anybody is usually enough. Have you ever used one before?"
A memory. Lying face down on a rainy school shooting range, trying to hit paper targets in the distance. None of my shots was even in the circle.
"Don't go back to your flat," Dad said. "Stay with a friend, or check in to a hotel." Pause. "You're going to need some shells," he said, reaching into the gun rack. "If you're going to point a gun at somebody, it means you're not fucking afraid to use it."
For a moment I wondered if I would ever see Dad again. We paused in the hall while I set the shotgun and holdall down, and there was a moment of awkwardness before we embraced. I realised how difficult it was for him to show his emotions.
"Be careful, son," he said.
"If somebody comes at you with a hammer, you show them a knife. If they have a knife, you show them a gun. It's the East End way. You told me that."
"You be careful, and phone me first thing. I never sleep."
By the time I got home it was three in the morning, and I was aching with tiredness. I thought about checking in to a hotel and decided against it. I wanted my own bed – that and a stiff drink. There wasn't any time for that, though. There was still something I needed to do before I set off again at first light. My tool kit was under the kitchen sink, and I lugged the metal box onto the floor and started rummaging through it: rusty screws, nails, an old fuse. There, on the bottom level, I found what I was looking for: a hacksaw. I tested the blade, hoping the teeth were still sharp enough. I wrapped the barrel with duct tape and rested the shotgun across two kitchen chairs. Putting my foot down on the barrel, I began sawing away, just as I had seen in the movies. It was hard going, and I could imagine my metalwork teacher tutting at my handiwork – practical tasks had never been my strong point. Sweat popped on my brow as I kept sawing. The ends weren't quite straight, but eventually half the barrel clanged to the floor. Finally I picked up the sawn-off shotgun and unzipped the nylon holdall to see if it fitted. Just.
By now I was weaving with tiredness. I plumped up my bedroom pillows to make it look as if there was somebody asleep in our bed and pulled the duvet over. Again, something I had seen people do on TV. Then I went back into the sitting room and sat down in an armchair, draping the sawn-off shotgun across my knees. My eyes closed and the day's events kaleidoscoped around my mind: bracing myself for impact as the taxi plunged down the hill, examining Emily's school photograph, and clinging for dear life to the rising platform as my fingers slipped to the edge ...
Whoever came through that door, I would be ready for them.
Chapter Thirty Four
I held my finger down on the entryphone. The gynaecologist’s surgery where Mole had her tests done should have been open by now. Come on, come on. I looked at my watch, which read half past nine in the morning. Cyclists swarmed round cars at traffic lights while I waited for somebody to answer. I had spent an uncomfortable night in the armchair waiting for an attacker who never came. Eventually I told myself to stop being so ridiculous and crawled gratefully into bed, luxuriating in clean sheets. Still, sleep would not come. On top of everything else, there was another thing that kept rankling me: why had Doctor Forget not said anything about my wife being on the pill? Surely he must have known. I mean, it would have come up on her tests. Yet he made her undergo that gruesome procedure, sticking a catheter inside her. I remembered Mole searching for my hand while she winced with pain, and then how he pointed out her womb on the X-rays, how matter of fact he had been tracing his finger over the ghostly cross-section. Rather than go to straight to Wales, I needed to confront him first.
A woman's voice asked how she could help. "Doctor Forget, please," I said loudly. "My wife's a patient of his."
"I'm sorry, but Doctor Forget is not here," she said.
"Please. I need to speak to somebody," I said. I could hear conversation in the background.
To my surprise, the woman Mole had met in the department store answered the door. What was her name, Fiona, Fionnula, something like that? She stood with the door ajar, looking just as surprised to see me.
"You," I said. "I had no idea you worked here. When we met, you didn’t say–"
"I'm sorry? I'm Doctor Forget's new assistant. I thought you knew."
"I mean, my wife never said she knew you from Doctor Forget’s office. When we met, I mean," I said stepping inside the entrance. Phones rang as the clinic geared up for the day.
Forget's assistant led me into the hall. "I only knew her briefly. She showed me the ropes just before she left. Please tell her how grateful I was."
"What do you mean, 'before she left'?"
I gripped the woman's wrist and held her tightly. Her eyes widened and she looked for help. What was this crazy man doing in the clinic?
"Are you saying she used to work here?" I realised how aggressive I sounded, and I relaxed my grip. "I'm sorry," I said. "I've been under a lot of stress. My wife– I didn't sleep last night. You see, my wife disappeared four days ago with our baby. I haven't heard from them since. I need to speak to Doctor Forget. There's something I have to ask him. Please could you tell him Hugo Cox is in reception and needs to speak to him? Urgently."
The woman didn’t move. "We don't know where he is. He hasn't been in the surgery for days. His wife just called as well asking if we had any news."
"So you're saying that Doctor Forget has gone too?"
"Yes, we haven't heard a word."
"I just need to be clear about this. You're saying that my wife used to work here?"
Felicity (yes, that was her name!) looked at me mystified. "Your wife was Doctor Forget's secretary before I was. Didn’t you know that?"
Colour drained out of the room as it all finally came together. I grasped for something to hold on to. The reality was that Forget and my wife were in this together. They had to be. It was the only explanation.
Right from the start, they had set out to ruin me. All that hand-wringing anxiety about sperm counts and ovulation dates ... really, it was risible. They had been laughing at me, plotting and scheming, and I could picture the two of them luxuriating in their corruption. All those appointments when she said she was seeing him: instead I pictured them pawing at each other in a hotel room, Mole writhing in pleasure on the bed. But why? What had I ever done to either of them to make them want to destroy me like this?
"Are you all right? I think you had better sit down," Felicity said. Receptionists wearing headsets looked up at this unexpected visitor.
"Is there somewhere we can talk in private? I need to speak to you alone."
"All right," she said hesitantly.
We stood in the corridor, and I waited until a brisk blonde carrying a sheaf of reports walked past before I began. "When my wife and I came to see Doctor Forget, he told us she could never have children. Something about her immune system being too healthy. Then I found these ..." I presented her with the crushed contraceptive box.
Felicity scrutinised the prescription label.
"They're from this clinic," she admitted reluctantly before handing them back.
"Don't you see? Doctor Forget must have known there was nothing wrong with my wife. He lied to me. They both did. Emily never told me she worked here, never mentioned it once. Now she's gone off with my child, and Forget’s disappeared too. Funny that, isn't it?"
"Look, I'm really sorry, but I just work here. If you need to speak to Doctor Forget, I suggest you wait until–"
"Let me see my wife's medical records. Please. That'll show whether she was infertile or not.
"I can't do that. Patient records are confidential. I could lose my job."
"All I'm asking is for you to show me a bit of paper," I said as quietly as I could. "I feel as if I'm going out of my mind."
"I'm sorry, but there are procedures. We can't just go round letting anybody see patients' records."
This time I gripped her wrist hard. She yelped and looked round the corridor. "Perhaps I didn't make myself clear. I'm a desperate man, and I am capable of desperate things." I relaxed my grip. "For Christ's sake, I paid the bill. I have a right to know."
Felicity checked to see if anybody was coming. "All right. Two minutes. What was your wife's married name?"
"I told you. Cox. Emily Cox."
The filing room was directly opposite where we were standing. We slipped in to a store room groaning with hanging files. Felicity went to a filing cabinet and pulled open the bottom drawer. These were just the A to Cs, she explained, as nothing was computerised yet. The surgery still used an old-fashioned filing system. She riffled through packed manila folders and brought out a paper-clipped file. "Here. Quickly. You must never let anybody know." I looked through her patient notes, most of which were written in Forget's almost indecipherable fountain-pen scrawl. Just as I suspected, there was no mention of infertility, just repeated prescriptions for contraceptives. Neither was there any mention of IVF treatments, nor of recommending us to a surrogacy clinic either. It was as if I had invented going down the surrogacy route myself. There were also a couple of X-rays at the back of the file, black-and-white images of Mole's pelvis.
"Here," I said, handing them to her. "Can you see anything wrong here?"
"I'm not a doctor. You need to discuss this with Doctor Forget."
"But you see enough patient X-rays to know when something is wrong, right?"
Felicity studied the first plastic sheet, then the other. "They're both clean," she said, squinting. "There's nothing unusual here. Your wife doesn't have anything wrong with her ovaries. As I said, you really need to speak to Doctor Forget about this."
Felicity was about to say something else when the filing room door opened. I pulled her towards me. Now we were both standing behind the door, too scared to move. She could lose her job if we were caught. The crisp blond receptionist I'd noticed earlier bent over a filing cabinet, and neither of us dared breathe. Surely she must be able to see us: we were almost right in front of her. The blond slammed the cabinet shut and walked out again.
Felicity's shoulders slumped with relief. "Please. You must go. There's nothing more I can tell you."
"One more thing. Forget's home address. Perhaps I could speak to his wife."
Felicity paused for a moment and nodded reluctantly. I followed her back into the brisk jumble of the secretaries' front office. She scribbled an address on a Post-It note and handed it to me.
Forget lived in west London, in one of those big Victorian villas in an anonymous street in Fulham. I paid the taxi driver and noticed a line of parked BMWs and Mercedes outside the houses. Being a fashionable gynaecologist certainly paid well; Forget was living cheek-by-jowl with the bankers and lawyers whose wives I guessed were his clients. I was looking for number forty-three. I walked past the plane trees, appreciating the solidly built bankers' houses with their imposing gates and CCTV cameras. Walking up the garden path, I noticed the empty driveway before I rapped on the front door with its heavy knocker. I watched somebody approach through the coloured glass. A toddler in a grubby tee-shirt and a nappy looked up at me as the door opened. His mother stood over him, probably wondering who this stranger was.
"Hello?" she said. "How can I help you?"
"You don't know me, Mrs Forget, but my wife is a patient of your husband's."
"My husband is not here. You'll need to telephone his clinic." She started to close the door.
"I've just come from there. Mrs Forget, may I come in? You don't know where your husband is, do you?"
"I'm sorry. You really must contact his place of work."
"Mrs Forget. I believe that your husband is having an affair with my wife."
That brought her up short.
"Listen, I'm really sorry," I blustered. "You see, my wife has taken my daughter with them."
Mrs Forget did not look shocked, and I suspected this was not the first time somebody had told her that her husband had been unfaithful.
"Perhaps you had better come in."
The hall was full of the happy chaos of childhood: a spinning top, overturned bricks and a plastic train. I followed Mrs Forget into the kitchen, beyond which was a garden with a climbing frame. "Nice house," I said.
"Do you want some coffee?" she said. "I was just making some." I noticed how thin and unhappy-looking she looked compared to the strong, confident woman in the photograph on Forget’s bookshelf. Suddenly a wail went up from the sitting room, and she dropped what she was doing. "George, are you all right?" she called.
Mrs Forget returned carrying her overweight toddler on her hip, the child gulping as he fought to get his tears under control. With her free hand she gingerly carried over my coffee.
"Here, let me help you," I said, taking the cup from her.
"Sorry, do you take sugar?"
I shook my head. "This doesn't seem to be exactly news to you."
"You're not the first person to suggest that my husband is having an affair, no."
"And you don't find it upsetting?"
She slid her toddler down to the ground and encouraged him to run off and play. Mrs Forget waited until he was out of the room. "It's funny, Mr–?"
"Hugo Cox."
"It's funny, Mr Cox, but when you first meet somebody, you think they're dangerous and dark and exciting, yet almost immediately you want to change them. I knew what I was getting into when I met Jean-Marc. After a while you get used to it. My husband has what's called Prince Rupert's disease. He always thinks there's another conquest round the corner." She smiled ruefully.
"There's always a door," I said. "I mean, you always have a choice." In a way I felt sorry for her. She was a prisoner of this house, of her lifestyle. I wondered whether he knocked her about, and even if he did, I suspected she would put up with it for the sake of her toddler. It was a cruel thing to think, but that was how I felt.
"What option do I have? Look around you. A
s long as he doesn't bring it home, I don't care. You said your wife is a patient of his ..."
"Not exactly. She used to be his secretary. Perhaps you know her ... Emily Givings?"
Mrs Forget's mouth tightened. "That woman. Oh yes, I know her quite well."
"Go on, I'm listening."
"She was the only one who came near to touching our marriage. She was the only one he was cruel to me about. He told me once that when they made love she purred like a cat." She gave a little laugh that was more like a grunt.
"When did you last see your husband?"
"The day before yesterday. I've left messages, but he hasn't returned my calls."
"Has he ever done anything like this before?"
"He's gone away with one of his girlfriends, yes."
"So you haven't reported him missing?"
"Not yet, no."
There was one more question that I had to ask. "What kind of car does your husband drive?"
Mrs Forget looked at me as if she hadn’t quite understood the question. "A black Range Rover, why?"
Chapter Thirty Five
I parked my car opposite the row of cheaply built cottages in the Welsh seaside town. The satnav told me I had arrived at my destination: the address where my mother-in-law was now living. The rain had turned to a light drifting mist, and dampness penetrated my bones. Was there anything more depressing than a British seaside resort out of season? Well, what did you expect in north Wales in April?
The locking system chirruped as I pocketed my keys and, pulling my raincoat tighter, I crossed the road. My flesh shivered beneath the thin wool of my suit. I faced a long wait if Mrs Givings had gone away. At best, I could stay overnight. Otherwise my trip would have been wasted. I would have to return to London without getting the answers I was looking for.