But I was never going to leave it at that. When Mum died a few weeks after telling me the story, leaving me all alone in the world, I knew I was going to try to build some kind of relationship with the man who’d rejected me all these years.
And so I came up with a plan.
My father had two other children. A son, Tom, four years older than me, and a daughter called Alana, eighteen months older.
Alana, oh Alana. I can still picture her now. Short and petite, with a round little face beneath a spiky cloak of dyed black hair. Like a goth fairy, with twinkling green eyes that promised adventure, and a deep bass laugh that shocked everyone when they first heard it because it emanated from such a pale, small thing.
God, she had such charisma. Even now, all these years later, I still missed her.
When I’d first found out I had a half-sister growing up barely fifteen miles from me in vastly different circumstances, I’d felt a mix of excitement and anger. I’d never enjoyed being an only child, and was perpetually jealous of children from big, loving families. I would have loved a sister to confide in growing up – a role Mum had never adequately fulfilled – and to realise I’d always had one but had never been told felt like a terrible injustice.
I began researching everything I could about her. It wasn’t hard. In 1999, the Internet, though not the all-encompassing Big Brother it is today, was still far enough advanced that you could mine it for information if you were prepared to look hard enough.
It turned out Alana hadn’t had it easy either. Her parents had divorced acrimoniously in 1990, when she was only nine years old. There’d been a court case and accusations about our father’s adultery (which came as no surprise to me), and Alana and Tom had remained with their mother in the family house. At the age of eleven, Alana had been sent away to a girls’ boarding school, from where she’d been expelled four years later, but had still managed to get into Bristol University, where she was studying politics.
I remember finding a photo of her online for the first time. It wasn’t a particularly good shot – a reproduction from a local newspaper showing her and a friend who, at the time, were raising money for a school in Malawi. The friend looked dumpy and dour, but you could see the magnetism coming out of Alana as she gave the camera a sly, knowing smile. Even then, she was effortlessly cool and wise beyond her years.
I’d stared at that photo for a long time, trying to find resemblances between her and me but unable to see any obvious ones. No one would ever guess we were sisters. There was a gulf between us, not only of breeding, but of something else I couldn’t put my finger on. A vague feeling that while I was somehow empty, she was somehow full.
The photo made me jealous. Everything about her made me jealous, I’m sad to admit now. But at the same time, I decided that I was going to meet her and she was going to be my friend. She would be my introduction to my father and a new life beyond.
I’d just turned eighteen, and Alana was beginning her second year at university, when I moved to Bristol. By that time, thanks to some prudence on my part, as well as my father’s ‘generosity’, I had close to five thousand pounds in the bank, so had no problem finding a decent place to live. It all felt like a big adventure, the first I’d ever had. A new life where I could reinvent myself as whoever I wanted to be.
It took a couple of months before I first saw Alana in the flesh. It was at a bar called Basement 45, where they often had live bands, and the place was busy. I recognised her instantly. Her hair, spiky and wild, bordered her white face with its bright green eyes, and she wore the kind of short black cocktail dress that would have been perfect in Paris in the fifties yet still managed to look just right in a sweaty student club. There was something unique about her that stood out a mile, and for a moment, I couldn’t speak. Here I was looking across the room at my half-sister, barely ten feet away, and she didn’t even know of my existence.
Well, that was going to change, I thought, as I watched her join a large group, holding a drink precariously in one tiny hand, the sound of her raucous laugh reaching me across the room. From the energy she was exuding and the way she wasn’t quite steady on her feet, I thought she was drunk or stoned, and I noticed she spent quite a bit of time clinging on to a good-looking guy with long dark hair, who appeared to be a couple of years older. I asked the girl I was with if she knew Alana, but she just shook her head, and I remember her saying that she looked like trouble.
I won’t bore you with all the details about how we became friends, but I worked out pretty fast that Basement 45 was Alana’s hangout of choice, and so the logical way forward was to get a job working the bar there, which I duly did.
Yes, of course I’m conscious that it might look like I was stalking her, but what else was I meant to do? I couldn’t walk up to her and tell her that I was her long-lost sister, not without coming across like some kind of nutjob. The whole thing had to be done slowly and methodically, so that when I finally broke the news, it would have the desired effect.
And we did become friends. Great friends. Though we might not have been that good for each other: she got me into drugs. Not just dope, which I’d had a few times before, but other stuff too. Coke, ketamine, Ecstasy, but especially coke. I taught her how to be harder, how to get rid of hangers-on. And how not to be so . . . vulnerable.
It could have been so different. It could have been wonderful.
But it wasn’t. And that was why all these years later I was trapped in a dark, cold place, with no idea what was to become of me.
And that was also why I couldn’t just sit here waiting. I had to try something. My options were limited, but I did have some. I was certain the kidnappers were no longer in the vicinity. I hadn’t heard anything from them for several hours now, which meant I wasn’t being closely guarded. My first priority was to get out of the plastic restraints round my wrists. They were the cheap, easy-to-get-hold-of kind, and the material was probably no more than half a centimetre thick. I’d tried brute force – leaning forward, then yanking my arms up in the air behind me – hoping to break the plastic. But that hadn’t worked, so I’d moved on to using the limited freedom the chain afforded me to explore the room, searching for a sharp surface to rub the cuffs against, hoping to create enough friction to wear away the material.
I struck lucky. The bath still had an intact Perspex shower screen above it, and so for an hour or two – it was impossible to tell how long – I sat on the edge of the tub running my wrists up and down its edge until it felt like every nerve ending from my shoulders down to my hands was on fire. But when I ran my fingertips along the edge of the cuffs, I could feel the plastic thinning.
Occasionally I tried to use brute force again, before having a couple of minutes’ rest. The fact that I was actually doing something was finally giving me some hope. I can be very determined when necessary and there was no way I was giving up without a fight. I ignored the pain. I ignored my raging thirst. I ignored the fact that I couldn’t see; that my wrists were so sore they were probably bleeding. I just kept going because I was on my own. Like I’d been for most of my adult life.
The plastic began to fray as the edge of the screen cut into it. It was close to breaking and I felt a sudden surge of elation.
And then I heard it. The sound of a door shutting downstairs.
Someone was back, and as I stood there, very still, I could hear footsteps coming my way.
Fast.
26
Matt
‘Who the hell are you?’ I demanded, breaking the silence in the car.
I’d been driving for about ten minutes, following the barked instructions from the man in the balaclava in the back seat. To be honest, I was still pretty shell-shocked, but somehow I managed to keep my hands steady on the wheel, conscious that we were on the main road to Oxford.
‘Well, right now it seems like I’m the only person who believes your story,’ he replied evenly. ‘No one lies when they’re about to get kneecapped. Especially if they
’re a civilian like you. You might be an actor, but you’re not that good.’
‘How do you know I used to be an actor?’ I asked.
‘I remember you from Night Beat,’ he said, and I thought I detected a hint of humour in his voice.
It’s incredible. Even at that moment, after all that had happened, I was still flattered. ‘Really?’
‘Yes. I thought they wasted your character. And I did wonder what had happened to your career after it ended. I guess I know now. You landed on your feet, Matt, didn’t you?’
I didn’t like the way he said that. ‘I don’t feel like I’ve landed on my feet right now.’
‘No, I bet you don’t,’ he said, pulling off his balaclava to reveal the face of a black man in his thirties, with a strong jaw and a confidence in his eyes that told you he wasn’t the sort of person to be messed with. ‘All right, pull over,’ he ordered.
We were travelling along a rural stretch of road, and there was an empty bus stop up ahead, so I did what I was told, wondering what on earth was coming now.
He told me to turn off the engine, then reached forward and removed the keys from the ignition before pulling out a walkie-talkie-style contraption from his jacket. It made a low humming sound as he moved it round the interior of the car. He then stepped outside and crouched down on the passenger side so he was out of sight of anyone driving past.
It took me a few moments to realise what he was doing, and when he stood up a few moments later and threw something into the bushes, my suspicions were confirmed.
‘That was a tracking device, wasn’t it?’ I said as he got back in the car.
He shot me a knowing half-smile. ‘Well done, Sherlock.’ He threw the keys back and told me to drive. ‘And put your foot down. They might be following already and we need to put some distance between us.’
‘Who’s “they”?’ I asked, pulling out into the road and accelerating away. I figured that right now it was best to do what I was told, and to find out all I could from the man sitting behind me.
‘My colleagues,’ he said. ‘Including the one who just threatened to kill you.’
I was totally confused. ‘If you people aren’t anything to do with Kate’s kidnapping, then please can you just tell me who you actually are?’
The man regarded me with what I’d describe as professional interest. ‘How much do you actually know about your fiancée?’
‘I thought I knew a fair amount,’ I said wearily. ‘But obviously I know less than I thought.’
‘I’m assuming an intelligent man like you is aware of who her father is, though?’
‘Only that he’s some businessman Kate hasn’t had much to do with over the years. I know she was brought up by her mum, who died some time ago. She was talking about the possibility of me meeting her father while we were in the UK, but there was nothing in the diary.’
‘He’s not just some businessman, Matt. His name’s Sir Hugh Roper and his net worth is around two hundred and fifty million pounds. He’s a very powerful man and definitely not one you want to cross.’
That caught my attention. Jesus. Two hundred and fifty million pounds. The number was so big it didn’t even sound real. And I was sure it couldn’t be right either. I knew Kate had some money. She effectively owned the hotel in Sri Lanka, even though there was a nominal Sri Lankan co-owner, and it had to be worth a few hundred grand at the least. Even when the place wasn’t doing well, there always seemed to be cash in reserve. But this was something else entirely, and for the first time since this nightmare had begun, I felt real fury. It seemed like I was being manipulated by everybody. Even my own fiancée.
‘I didn’t know he was worth that kind of money,’ I said bitterly. ‘She never said anything about it. And I suppose you work for him, do you? The dad?’
‘Well I did. I don’t think I’ve got a job now.’
‘Why did you rescue me?’
‘Because I’m not prepared to see someone get shot. I’m employed to provide security for Kate’s father. The job sometimes requires some strong-arming of people, but not that. My colleague, on the other hand, is less discerning. I believe he would have shot you. We were instructed to find your fiancée and to take whatever steps were necessary. The bonus for finding her is a hundred thousand pounds in cash. And that’s just for me. My colleague is head of security for Kate’s father, so he’s going to be on course for a lot more. People will do some extreme things for that amount of money, especially if they’re that way inclined, as my colleague is.’
‘How did you people even know Kate was missing?’ I asked him.
‘Because a firm of private detectives have been watching the two of you from the moment you came back into the country. Apparently the one on duty last night was meant to check in by phone just before the end of her shift. When she didn’t, the alarm was raised.’
Something struck me then. ‘Jesus, was she a brunette in her thirties with glasses?’
‘I never met her, but I do know she was a female freelance private detective. Why? Do you know what happened to her?’
It was a huge risk telling this stranger anything, especially if it incriminated me. But for some reason, I trusted him, and right now he was the only person in the world I could talk to. So I told him how I’d come back after an evening in London and discovered a woman’s body in our bed, and then how the whole nightmare had panned out. ‘I know how it all sounds,’ I added, ‘but you’ve got to believe me. I had nothing to do with Kate’s disappearance. She’s my fiancée. She’s pregnant with our child.’
‘I do believe you, Matt. As I said, no one’s that brave when they’re about to get kneecapped. But you’re also a killer, and it doesn’t matter whether it was self-defence or not, because that presents me with a very real problem.’
I looked at him in the rear-view mirror. ‘Why?’
He stared right back at me. ‘Because,’ he said, ‘I’m a police officer.’
27
Matt
I didn’t say anything, because really, what was there to say to that?
‘I’ve been working undercover for the last eight months,’ continued the man in the back. ‘And you’ve just blown the whole thing.’
‘I’m sorry about that,’ I said, looking at him in the rear-view mirror, ‘but since I don’t know what the hell’s going on, forgive me for not feeling too guilty. And anyway,’ I added, sceptical now, ‘I thought you said her dad was some rich businessman. And a “sir” too. So what on earth are you investigating him for?’
‘He might have got a “sir” before his name, but Hugh Roper is a real lowlife. And I think your prospective wife knows more about his crimes than she’s letting on.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Just keep driving, Matt. You’ll find out everything in due course.’
I didn’t like the sound of that. ‘Where am I driving to, exactly?’
He shot me a confident smile. ‘Where do you think? You’ve killed one person, and unlawfully disposed of the body of another. I’ve got no choice. I’m going to have to take you in.’
I froze, then stared back at him, desperate. ‘If you take me in, my pregnant fiancée dies. It’s that simple.’
‘If I don’t take you in, I won’t just lose my job, I’ll end up charged with assisting an offender. I’ll do prison time. And even if I did decide to go rogue and help you, there’s absolutely no guarantee we’re going to get your fiancée back. We’re going to have a lot better chance of finding her with police resources. I mean, how were you planning on tracking her down?’
I debated telling him that I had the phone of the man I’d killed and was going to use that to find the flash drive Kate’s kidnapper wanted so badly, but stopped myself. He might have had a point about the police being in a better position than me to locate her, but I had my doubts about their abilities. Anyone who’s watched documentaries showing how they really solve cases knows that it’s nothing like CSI. The police work steadily
and methodically. They go for the obvious leads, and Kate’s kidnapper wasn’t leaving any. The police weren’t going to catch him quickly – and certainly not before the 9 p.m. deadline.
Something else stopped me too. If I went with this guy now, I’d be going straight to a prison cell and there was a good chance I wouldn’t be getting out of it any time soon. And if Kate was killed, or worse still, simply made to disappear forever, then no one was ever going to believe my story. I’d probably end up charged with her murder, spending the rest of my life in prison.
‘I don’t know how I was planning on finding her,’ I told him. ‘I was just hoping I might be able to convince the kidnapper to spare her life. So far, I’ve done what I said I’d do for him.’
‘So how come he hasn’t released her then?’ For the first time, I noticed a hint of scepticism in his tone.
‘I’m waiting for his call.’
‘On this phone?’ He took it out of his pocket and examined it. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll be able to trace his location when he calls. We can do it in real time.’
I knew that this sort of thing was possible, but I doubted the kidnapper would make such an elementary mistake. ‘Are you sure there’s no way he could disguise his location? This guy’s no fool.’
‘It’s possible, but very few criminals have got that sort of expertise. Look, we can help you, Matt. There’s a service station up ahead. I want you to pull in there and we’re going to wait for my colleagues, okay? And don’t try anything. It won’t help. It’s going to be a lot better for you just to cooperate with us. We’ll get your fiancée back.’ He was speaking more calmly now, like I’d expect a police officer to do. As he did so, he took another phone from his pocket, pressed a button and put it to his ear.
The service station appeared up ahead, a riot of bright yellow and green against the dull backdrop of the day.
‘It’s Astra. My cover’s been blown,’ he said into the phone, gesturing me to make the turn into the service station. ‘I’ve got a potential murder suspect with me and I need to file an urgent missing persons report.’
Kill A Stranger: the twisting new thriller from the number one bestseller Page 11