And then, yes, there was my father himself.
He had the means to do it. And I knew as well as anyone that he was callous enough. And although I’d looked into his eyes and told him more than once that I’d had nothing to do with Alana’s death, it was possible that he still didn’t believe me and had decided on this as a make-or-break attempt to make sure he knew the absolute truth before he died and left me money in his will.
But in the end, I didn’t buy it. I was still my father’s flesh and blood. Whatever his faults – and by God he had enough of them – I didn’t think he’d do this to me. And I didn’t think he’d killed David either.
Before David’s murder, I’d never spoken a word to my father. After his death, though, when I’d woken up from my coma, disorientated and alone in my own private hospital room with a guard outside, he’d been my first visitor.
I’d only seen him once before in the flesh, almost two years earlier in the coroner’s court. Then his expression had been cold and unyielding. Now it had softened, and he was looking at me with genuine pity in his eyes. He cared for me, I could tell.
We’d talked. It had been awkward. He’d sat by the side of the bed but kept his hands down by his sides, as if he wasn’t sure how much affection he should give. He was the first person to explain what had happened to David and to me, because at that time I really couldn’t remember. I recall him promising solemnly that it had been nothing to do with him, and that my near-death experience had made him realise that it was time to start afresh.
I was distraught at David’s death, but pleased to have my father come out and say for the first time that he was actually interested in developing a relationship with me.
As I slowly recovered, he visited me regularly in hospital. We talked more frequently. We even spoke occasionally about Alana, and I shared my memories of her, saying how distraught I’d been at her death. I always assumed he’d believed me.
Because David’s killer hadn’t been caught, my father made sure that I was guarded by private security during my stay, and when I was finally well enough to be discharged, several months later, he paid for me to stay in a hotel in Knightsbridge, again providing security.
But I was never going to live like that for long. After everything that had happened, I realised that I wanted to get away from England, to travel. And when I’d told my father this, he’d agreed that it was the right thing to do and that it would be safer for me as well.
So I’d gone. I’d seen the world for the first time, spending the best part of a year circumnavigating it, immersing myself in adventures in a bid to assuage the grief that burned within me, until finally I arrived in Sri Lanka and realised that this was the place I wanted to call home.
That had been fifteen years ago now. Life had been good, if a little empty. My father had visited once but hadn’t really enjoyed it. He wasn’t a huge fan of the heat. I’d visited him over the years a handful of times too, but there’d always been a distance in our relationship, as if we both knew the events of our past were never going to be fully resolved.
And now, with our time finally running out, I’d walked straight into a trap. Both my father and I should have known that my homecoming was going to cause ripples among those who’d always wished me harm. But we’d underestimated the threat, and now here I was at their mercy, which meant I had no choice but to try to escape before my kidnapper came back.
So it was with a sense of déjà vu that I sat back on the side of the bath again, and rubbed the plastic restraints frantically up and down the Perspex shower screen to wear them down.
I worked fast. It’s incredibly motivating to know that if you don’t do something, there’s a good chance you’re going to die, and soon I could feel the plastic fraying fast. I accelerated the pace of my rubbing, conscious of a bead of sweat running down my face, knowing I was nearly there. I paused, stood up, and yanked my arms up behind my back in a single rapid motion, as if trying to hit someone behind me, driving my wrists apart at the same time. I felt the cuffs give but not go completely. I also pulled a muscle in my shoulder. I was weak. I needed to stop. But I was close, too, I could feel it, and now was not the time for weakness.
I tried the same yanking motion a second time. It didn’t work and my shoulder spasmed painfully. I wanted to cry. This was all getting too much, and once again, as so often in my life, I was utterly alone with no one to help me. But I wouldn’t let the tears come. I’d been through too much for that. Instead I waited until the pain subsided. Then I took three deep breaths and tried again, putting everything into it.
The cable snapped and suddenly my hands were free. It was an ecstatic feeling and I almost cried out with pleasure as I pulled the blindfold up over my eyes, finally able to see again.
The room was so dark I hardly needed to blink. There was no natural light in there at all. I could only just make out the bathtub and the radiator. But I didn’t care. I could see. My wrists were sore and stripped of skin where the cables had been cutting into them, and I blew cool air on them before going down on one knee to examine the chain.
It was wrapped several times round my left leg and kept in place by a heavy padlock, while the other end was looped tight round a pipe leading to the valve of a standard radiator, which was attached to the wall, and again held in place by a padlock.
I sat back against the toilet seat and grabbed the chain in both hands, pulling hard as if I was in a one-woman tug of war, hoping to wrench the pipe away from the wall. It didn’t budge a millimetre. There was only one way I could escape and that was by getting the chain free of the radiator, but as I crouched down in the near-total darkness and felt around the pipe, I realised that that would mean pulling the whole radiator from the wall, and there was no way I had that kind of strength.
But then, as I felt further along the pipe, I found the fat plastic thermostat valve at the end. I began unscrewing it, and a few seconds later it fell off and landed on the floor. This was too good to be true. The chain was still tightly wrapped round the pipe, but slowly, ever so slowly, I was able to move it along. It was a hard job and made my forearms burn with the effort, but eventually there was only an inch left to go.
And that, unfortunately, was when I heard the car pulling up outside.
48
Matt
‘I don’t want to look at what’s on it,’ I said.
Forty-five minutes had passed since we’d fled Laura’s basement flat. Geeta was concerned that her own apartment might be compromised, so we stopped there only briefly to pick up her laptop and were now in the car park of a Burger King just off the A40. The flash drive was plugged in and ready to be opened.
‘Don’t you want to know what this is all about?’ she said. ‘Because I do.’
I took a deep breath. ‘I do, and I don’t. Piers obviously wasn’t just selling this drive. He also sold something to Kate – it looked from the photo like an A4 file. If the information on this drive is the same, then it’s obviously something she wants to keep secret.’
‘It seems like all you two have is secrets,’ said Geeta. ‘You knew nothing about her meeting with MacDonald. You didn’t know that her father was a multimillionaire who clearly cares enough about her to send a gunman after you. Right now, Matt, it just looks like you’re a pawn in this whole thing. And if you want to move beyond that, then the key to your survival is information. And I’m betting there’s information on here.’
She was right. She always was.
Even so, I was hoping the drive was encrypted so we wouldn’t be able to read what was on it. Unfortunately, it was not to be. When Geeta opened it up, a dozen or so audio files appeared on screen. They were all entitled Session, Client 271, followed by different dates. The first was dated 28/11/01, with each subsequent one roughly a week, or in some cases two weeks, apart, with the last one dated 07/03/02.
Without looking at me, Geeta double-clicked on the first one and we waited the few seconds it took for the file to load before pressing
play.
There was a long pause, with the slow crackle of background noise, then the sound of a door opening and shutting, and a chair scraping.
‘Hello, Nikki, pleased to meet you, I’m Dr MacDonald,’ said the man I’d killed this morning.
‘Hi,’ said a nervous female voice that I immediately recognised as a younger version of Kate. ‘Pleased to meet you too.’
So it seemed I didn’t even know my fiancée’s real first name. ‘That’s Kate,’ I told Geeta.
She paused the file. ‘Are you sure?’
I nodded slowly, wondering where this was going. ‘Absolutely.’
Geeta resumed the recording. Dr MacDonald offered Kate a seat and then asked what he could do to help her. His tone was calm and reassuring, just as you’d expect a psychiatrist’s to be, and so very different to his demeanour this morning when I’d confronted him with a knife. It felt both strange and depressing to listen to him now, knowing that I’d killed him only hours before. I would have to live with that knowledge for the rest of my life, whatever happened in the coming hours.
Kate took a long time to answer MacDonald’s question, but when she did, I felt a pang of pure emotion that made me shiver. Whatever anyone might accuse me of, I loved this woman.
‘I’ve been having terrible, terrible nightmares, and I feel suicidal,’ she said, in a soft voice. ‘I feel so alone. I feel as if the whole world’s grinding me down and I don’t know what to do about it.’
‘Well, you’ve done something about it already by coming to me. And that’s a very positive thing because I’ll be able to help. Tell me what the nightmares are about.’
And so it went on. She described her nightmares, which seemed to vary, but included a recurring one where she was being chased through a forest before coming to a cliff edge, knowing she had to jump or face whatever it was that was pursuing her. Occasionally Dr MacDonald would make a comment or ask a question, but in general he just let her talk, which Kate seemed to be happy to do, and it was clear she was unburdening herself. But nothing she was saying was in any way incriminating, either to her or to anyone else. I said as much to Geeta.
‘No,’ said Geeta, pausing the recording, ‘but it’s interesting what you read about Dr MacDonald earlier. That one of the reasons he was struck off was because he was blackmailing clients. Because he should never have been recording them like this. It’s a complete breach of the patient–doctor relationship.’
I stared down at the laptop screen. ‘I don’t understand why he would have recorded his sessions with a woman barely in her twenties for blackmail purposes. Unless he knew that her father was Sir Hugh Roper. But how would he have known that? Even now, his Wikipedia page says that Roper only had one daughter and she died in 2001.’
‘The same year as this recording,’ said Geeta.
I nodded. ‘Then there’s got to be some connection.’
She closed the audio files screen and went back to Roper’s Wikipedia page. ‘So the daughter who died was called Alana,’ she murmured, clearly thinking aloud as she googled Alana Roper death. A long string of articles came up, as well as a photo of a young woman of about twenty with short, spiky black hair and a pretty elfin face. ‘I remember reading about this at the time,’ she said, opening up one of the stories, ‘but I didn’t realise it was Roper’s daughter. Alana fell to her death from the roof terrace of her flat in Bristol in June 2001 when she was off her head on booze and drugs. You said earlier that MacDonald practised his psychiatry in Bristol?’
‘That’s right,’ I said, watching as Geeta started putting things together.
‘Alana’s death was ruled an accident,’ she continued, ‘but there was some controversy about it. She was at the flat that night with her boyfriend, who was convicted of supplying the drugs, and another friend . . .’ she continued scrolling down the screen until she found what she was looking for, ‘a nineteen-year-old girl called Nikki Donohoe.’
She turned to me, and there was sympathy in her dark eyes. ‘This isn’t a coincidence, Matt. Your fiancée and Nikki Donohoe have to be one and the same . . . which means she was there when Alana died.’
I didn’t ask if she was sure. I don’t believe in coincidences that big either.
Geeta’s fingers continued to rattle across the laptop’s keys while I stared out of the window into the night, feeling like a fool. I’d fallen in love with a woman I didn’t know at all and suddenly, out of nowhere, her past was causing my whole world to collapse. Everything could have been so good. If we’d just stayed in Sri Lanka, none of this would have happened. I opened the window a little, breathing in the cold air, wishing I could get out of the car and start running, and never stop.
‘This is interesting,’ mused Geeta, her fingers easing up on the laptop keys. ‘David Griffiths – the man who supplied the drugs to Alana – was murdered two years later, in August 2003, during a suspected home invasion. His girlfriend at the time, one Nikki Donohoe, was seriously injured in the same attack. The case remains unsolved, but it doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to guess that it had something to do with what happened to Alana, and that it was likely her family were behind it.’
I shook my head, trying to take in this last twist. ‘Jesus Christ. But if the police think her dad had something to do with that, then why is he trying to find her now?’
Geeta shrugged. ‘I really don’t know. But either way, there appear to be people out there who still wish her harm. And who want to get hold of these audio files.’
‘So you think there’s a confession to Alana’s murder somewhere on one of them?’
‘All I can say is someone wants to get hold of them pretty badly.’
‘It would explain why MacDonald was blackmailing her,’ I said uneasily. It was still hard to believe that kind, gentle Kate, the woman I loved, who treated our staff with generosity and respect, who was proud of all she’d achieved, could have killed someone. But then again, it was obvious that I didn’t really know her at all.
Geeta sighed. ‘From what Laura told us, MacDonald was touting this information to other interested parties. And if these other interested parties already blamed Kate for what happened to Alana, and they found the confession on here, then they’re not going to let her go, are they? They’re going to kill her.’
I took a deep breath as I considered the ramifications of this. ‘So the minute I deliver this drive, I effectively seal her fate. But that still begs another question. MacDonald handed over a copy of this flash drive to the man he met this morning, so why does that man want the master copy? He only needs one drive if he’s looking for a confession, and he should already have it.’
‘I don’t know, Matt, but we’re both out of our depth here. It may be best just to go to the police now. I’ve still got friends in the force who could help.’
I looked at my watch. ‘It’s too late, Geeta. It’s eight thirty now. He’s given me until nine at the latest to get hold of the drive. I wouldn’t even have time to explain the story to the police before the deadline passes.’
‘It’s your funeral, Matt.’
This was probably true. But in that moment, I made a decision. ‘I’m going to get her back, Geeta.’
She looked at me sceptically. ‘How?’
‘By standing up to him for once.’
This time she didn’t say anything and we sat there in silence with our Burger King coffees as the car’s heating blasted out warm air. It was strange. Like the calm before the storm. I almost felt myself drifting off to sleep.
And then the car horn ringtone of the kidnapper’s phone started.
I looked at my watch: 8.40 p.m. He was early. I pulled out the phone, staring at the words No Caller ID on the screen. ‘It’s him,’ I said.
‘Don’t agree to do anything until you’ve spoken to Kate. It’s essential you make sure she’s alive and unharmed. And when you deliver the drive, you do it as a straight swap. Her for it. Understand?’
I nodded, suddenly terrified, knowing th
e endgame was approaching fast.
I took a deep breath and hit the green button.
He started speaking immediately, the voice disguised. ‘Are you alone?’
I wasn’t expecting that question, but I didn’t miss a beat. ‘Yes.’
‘Have you got the drive?’
‘Yes, I have.’
‘Have you looked on it?’
This time I didn’t lie. ‘I took a quick look.’
‘And what’s on there?’
‘Audio files.’
‘Have you listened to them?’
‘No. I was going to, but I’m not sure I want to find out what’s on them. Sometimes it’s best not to know.’
‘Very wise. So now it’s time for you to deliver it.’
‘Not until I’ve spoken to Kate. I need to know she’s still alive.’
‘Log on to Tor browser link in fifteen minutes.’
‘That’s not good enough. I need to speak to her.’ I looked at Geeta, and she nodded in encouragement.
‘No,’ said the kidnapper just as firmly. ‘The Tor link. Take it or leave it.’
The moment of truth. Did I capitulate once again or finally stand up to the man who’d tormented me all day? Instinctively, and uncharacteristically, I chose the latter. ‘Put her on the phone to me or the deal’s off,’ I told him. ‘Because if you can’t do that, I’ve got no choice but to believe she’s dead. And then there’s no way in hell you’re getting hold of this drive.’
‘Then the deal’s off,’ he said, cutting the line.
I stared at the dead phone, riddled with self-doubt.
Kill A Stranger: the twisting new thriller from the number one bestseller Page 20