‘I’m going inside now,’ Sara said. ‘You’re frightening me.’
‘You should be frightened,’ Wilson said. He cocked his head, thought for a moment, and then gave her a clumsy shove. Sara stumbled backwards. The back of her knees connected with the low garden wall, and she fought to keep them from buckling. ‘Maybe if you were scared, you wouldn’t stick your nose into other people’s lives.’
‘I get the message,’ Sara said.
Wilson moved towards her. ‘I thought you got the message at my flat,’ he said, his voice starting to strain. ‘I thought you got the message when I let Stanley loose at this fucking car.’ He banged the Mini’s side for emphasis. ‘And yet there you were again, trying to fuck with my life.’
‘I’ll leave you alone!’ Sara blurted.
Without further warning, Wilson punched her. It was a sharp jab to the ribs, and it sent a shockwave through Sara’s torso. She staggered backwards. Gasped for air. Wilson moved forwards.
Despite being winded, Sara cried out as loudly as she could. ‘Help! It’s Dr Jones. I’m being attacked!’
‘Shut up!’ Wilson yelped and made a grab for her hair. It was too short to grasp, but he managed to pinch a tuft of spikes between his thumb and forefinger. He yanked; Sara felt her neck wrench and her ears pop. With his other hand, Wilson covered her face and shoved. As Sara fell, her perceptions sharpened. It was as though she were moving in slow motion. She connected with the edge of the low garden wall. The bricks cleaved the small of her back like a hatchet. Sara couldn’t tell if she was bleeding as she rolled onto the pavement, but her garbled thoughts told her that she’d have one hell of a bruise. She squinted upwards. Wilson advanced, blocking the dying sun, kicking out, his sneaker connecting clumsily with her abdomen. Sara felt herself double over on the pavement. She heard herself release a whoosh of air and gasped to replace it. Her lungs felt like a vacuum, unable to draw the next breath.
‘You think I’m going to kill you,’ Wilson growled. ‘Maybe I should. Haven’t decided yet.’
Suddenly, Sara’s lungs cooperated, and she sucked in deeply. Pain exploded in her ribcage. At the same time, Wilson stomped downwards, his foot landing on her right thigh. Sara used her newly drawn breath to release a wail.
Then, suddenly, she heard a car in the distance. It roared towards them, then screeched to a halt. Jamie! she thought wildly. It’s Jamie and he’s come to rescue me.
‘Stop it!’ someone cried.
The voice was not Jamie’s.
Still looming over Sara, Tim Wilson froze.
‘What are you doing?’ the voice cried shrilly. ‘You promised you wouldn’t hurt her!’
Sara twisted her head, feeling the muscles in her neck ring like high-tension wire. In a blaze of pain, she peered upwards and saw Philip Berger staring down at her.
‘Oh, Christ,’ he said. Without looking at his new boyfriend, Berger commanded, ‘Get in the car.’
Wilson looked at the older man, then turned his gaze back down to Sara. ‘Maybe next time, yeah?’ he said, then lurched away without further comment.
As soon as he moved, a blast of low orange sun blinded Sara’s eyes. She squeezed them shut. ‘Help me up, please,’ she whispered. ‘Take my arm. Gently, though. Then I’ll try to grab the wall …’
Berger did not reply. The next sound Sara heard was his car door clunking somewhere over there, on the street. The engine of Philip Berger’s car roared, and then trailed into the distance, as he drove Tim Wilson away from the scene of his latest violent crime.
Tim Wilson is going to kill me.
Sara lay in a deep bath of cold water. It made her shiver badly but numbed the contusions to her abdomen, back and right thigh. She also had neck strain by hyperextension – probably caused when Wilson had pulled her hair – and may have suffered fractured ribs, too. It hurt to inhale.
Sara forced herself to take short, frequent breaths. In the air was the mild aroma of cinnamon; despite the piercing pain, Sara had searched her drawers for an old scented candle as her bathwater ran. She’d set it on the edge of the tub. Now, the flickering flame made shadows dance against the white tile walls. Once, Sara had surrounded herself constantly with this dim glow, this warm scent. It had always soothed her with memories of her early childhood, a time before the upheaval of her parents’ deaths. But after Eldon Carson had been killed and Rhodri revealed as their parents’ murderer, the smell of cinnamon had taken on very different associations. It had made Sara think only of her time in Penweddig, and of death after death, and of her own culpability.
But now – alone, beaten, shaking, and without Jamie to comfort her – Sara once again desired that scent, and what it used to stand for. It was like the return of an old friend.
He said ‘maybe next time,’ she reminded herself. Wilson’s decided that killing me is an acceptable option. If Philip Berger hadn’t intervened, I could be dead right now.
And there it was, she told herself – yet another blind spot in Sara Jones’s psychic powers. She had foreseen Berger’s murder, but not her own. She had been a psychiatrist for long enough to know when someone was telling the unvarnished truth. Tim Wilson had not been speaking rashly when he’d threatened to kill her. He was revealing his to do list.
Before easing gingerly into the frigid water, Sara had thought about ringing Jamie. She knew he’d have come home if she had. He might even be here now, she thought, depending on where he’d been hiding. But what, Sara had asked herself, could she tell him? If Jamie learned that the client who’d previously attacked her had come here, to her home, and beaten her again – not to mention threatened murder – he would have rung the police. Without knowing the whole story, it would seem the sensible thing to do.
But the whole story was something Sara could not tell him.
I’ll have to stop Tim Wilson alone, she thought. And the ways I’ve tried to protect myself so far aren’t going to be enough.
Sara had always relied on her secret syringe of pentobarbital for a feeling of safety. The truth was, it had seldom done her any good. She had failed to have it to hand for either of Wilson’s attacks, and it would not solve her current predicament either. Sending someone into a thick slumber might halt one out-of-control moment, but it would not deter a psychopath who kept coming back. As Sara lay in the tub, gently running her fingertips over her contusions and the goose bumps that covered them, she allowed her imagination to wander.
If I can’t use pentobarbital, then what? she wondered. How? And to what end?
By the time Sara drained the water and climbed slowly from the tub, she had devised an impossible plan. In truth, it was less of a plan and more of a daydream – a ridiculous notion she would never entertain seriously in any other situation. And yet, this was not a circumstance Sara had ever experienced before. After towelling herself gingerly, she found a ball of gauze and set about wrapping her ribs. It was safer to leave fractured ribs unbound, but she needed to be able to move. Sara found a summer dress she could easily wriggle into, and sandals she was able to slip on without bending. She picked up her purse and car keys and left the flat.
In the hallway, Sara caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. Her clothes were inappropriate for the time of year, she looked haggard and pale, and moved in a staccato shuffle. She wondered whether her dreadful appearance might actually help her with the conversation she needed to have next.
It was a short drive down Brixton Hill to Coldharbour Lane, where Sara parked on a side road. She baby-stepped her way to the fringes of Brixton Market, her head swooning, hoping to stay upright. She stopped in front of a burger bar and scanned the street life. Soon, she’d found her man standing on a corner across the street. He looked for all the world like someone with time on his hands, a dawdler enjoying the passing parade. Sara watched him carefully for several minutes. She needed to make sure she wasn’t mistaken about who he was. But, really, she’d known from the moment she saw him. Sara wasn’t blind enough to overlook the sharp focu
s of his thoughts.
The man noticed her, too, and after a while made direct eye contact. ‘The fuck you want?’ he shouted at her.
She smiled and moved cautiously across the road. He took in her inappropriate clothing, her fresh bruises and shuffling gate.
‘I think you know exactly what I want,’ she said.
Sara was already suffering from a form of buyer’s regret. She looked at the baggie of white powder nestling in her palm. What exactly did she intend to do with this bloody stuff? In desperation, she had concocted a bold and reckless plan. It was one she knew she didn’t have the backbone to carry out. And even if she were able to summon up the foolhardy courage required, she would have to wait until her bruised body had healed. She was not cut out for this, she told herself.
Flush it, Sara. Get rid of it now.
Sara’s mind flitted back to the vision she’d had on the night Rhodri died … her brother murdering their parents, revealed to her as though through Rhoddo’s own thoughts. What had he felt? At that moment, there had seemed an inevitability to his actions. A grim logic. Daddy had to go, and Mummy – in the wrong place, at the wrong time – couldn’t witness what had happened. Then again, Rhoddo had been stoned, and young, and under the sway of a bolder personality. On the other hand, Sara was sober, mature and …
And threatened by a deranged young man who plans to beat me to death.
Sara’s mobile rang. Its light cast a pale glow over the ceiling and walls of the bedroom; Sara realised she had not even switched on a lamp when she’d arrived home with her illicit package. She found herself both hoping and fearing it was Jamie. She picked up the phone and checked the screen. Then she tapped it and said, ‘Nos da, Ceri.’
‘Are you hungry?’ her friend asked.
‘Now?’ Sara said. For a panicked moment, she worried that Ceri had arrived unexpectedly in town, and would soon come over and see her like this.
‘I mean, hungry in general.’
Sara hesitated. ‘I don’t even understand the question.’ ‘Well,’ Ceri said, ‘I just learned there are three and a half thousand restaurants on the island of Mallorca. So, if you’re hungry, it’s definitely a good place to go.’
Sara sighed. ‘You’ve been Googling facts about Mallorca.’
Ceri chortled. ‘The first foreign settler there was the novelist Robert Graves,’ she said in confirmation. ‘You liked I, Claudius, didn’t you?’
‘Never read it,’ Sara said. ‘I know The White Goddess, but that has nothing to do with Mallorca.’
Ceri snorted. ‘Neither does I, Claudius,’ she said. ‘Are you absolutely sure you can’t get time off work?’
A pang of shame pulsed through Sara, as though she had been caught in a lie. Everything had happened so fast, she had not yet told Ceri about losing her job. How to break this news remained a concern, and one that Sara had not yet given thought to. Certainly, she did not want to reveal Vos’s attempt at blackmail, since that would require admitting things about the night of Rhoddo’s death. However, Sara could probably share her concerns regarding Jamie and his association with Thorndike. Maybe she could tell Ceri about how she had confronted Vos over his dark past, and how Vos had forced Andy Turner to withdraw funding from the clinic -
‘Sara? Are you still there?’
‘Sorry; I was thinking,’ Sara replied. Suddenly, she surprised herself by adding, ‘Ceri, I really don’t know about Mallorca, but I could probably take enough time off for a quick visit to Wales.’
‘Sara, that’s wonderful!’ Ceri said. ‘When?’
‘Err – I’m not sure.’
‘But soon?’
Sara calculated. She did not want Ceri to see her in this condition. But, she wondered for the second time in minutes, how long would it take her wounds to heal? If Sara stayed in London, the chances were greater of confronting Tim Wilson again. Maybe running to Wales was the safest thing she could do.
Sara knew she tended to be obstinate, and usually liked to see things through to the bitter end. She had a nose-to-the-grindstone perfectionism common to all Type A personalities. But there was a rarer, perhaps wiser, side to Sara that could sense when a situation was unwinnable. It tended to announce itself whenever the act of pressing ahead might actually push her further behind. That is what had happened a few years back, when a single altercation with Rhodri had led her to sell her Pimlico flat and flee London. That spur-of-the moment decision had been taken during another telephone call to Ceri.
‘Oh, hell, why not?’ Sara heard herself say. ‘I’ll leave late tomorrow morning.’
Still on the line to Ceri, Sara moved decisively to the bathroom and dumped the contents of the small baggie into the lavatory.
‘I should be with you in time for dinner,’ she said.
NINETEEN
On Friday afternoon, Gerrit Vos sat next to Nicole at a table in the main bar of the Royal Festival Hall. They had come for a lunchtime concert. Vos had already had a meeting today, and had arranged more for the afternoon. He needed to hang around anyway; this evening Thorndike’s Investor Team was holding what they called a mingle at a wine bar in the City. Vos was expected to be there and make pleasantries with the company’s investors. These ranged from people who managed pension funds right down to financially savvy individuals. The evening was relatively informal, so Vos had suggested that Nicole come too. Pretty wives tended to charm a certain type of shareholder. Plus, Nicole would keep him from getting too bored or too drunk.
Vos stared at a piano, which sat alone in the performance space. The instrument, and all those who watched it, waited for the arrival of a Croatian composer whom Vos had never heard of. As far as he was aware, the star of the show would be sharing his own composition about the Adriatic. Or at least something like that; Vos had forgotten precisely what Nicole had told him. Still, he mused, the performance couldn’t be any more excruciating than the Norwegian dance troupe she’d made him sit through last January, or that Turkish poet whose reading he’d endured at Conway Hall. That guy had insisted on writing in English, even though he couldn’t make his couplets rhyme.
‘Check the app for me, would you?’ he said to Nicole.
‘I checked it when we got here,’ she reminded him.
‘Do it again. Keep checking.’
Resignedly, Nicole withdrew her mobile. ‘You do know Sara hasn’t used her car since she was sacked, don’t you?’
‘Humour me,’ Vos insisted. ‘Do you want me to enjoy the performance or not?’
Nicole smirked. ‘You won’t enjoy it anyway,’ she said. ‘You’re a Philistine.’ She thumbed the app, which was linked to the tracker under Sara’s car.
A handsome man with a mane of curly dark hair strolled towards the piano to polite applause. ‘My God,’ Nicole breathed.
‘What?’
‘Sara.’
‘Sara what?’ he repeated.
At the next table, a woman in a Salvation Army uniform cleared her throat and twitched her hand towards the stage. Vos half-turned and offered her an apologetic smile, mouthing the words, Fuck yourself.
‘She’s on the move.’
‘Sara?’ Vos snapped. ‘Shit! Where?’
The pianist opened his set with a slow rising glissando that might have been meant to sound like a wave, or perhaps a leaping fish. Nicole focused on the screen. Her eyes widened. ‘She’s at Reading Services,’ she said.
The Salvation Army woman sighed and looked towards heaven. The music began to roil and crash.
‘On the M4?’
‘Westbound,’ Nicole confirmed.
‘Fuck. She’s heading to Wales,’ Vos said. Their constant checking of the tracker app had paid off, and also changed everything. Suddenly, things were serious. Vos leapt to his feet. ‘Come on,’ he barked.
‘What? Where –’
‘Sorry,’ Vos said aloud to people at the surrounding tables and headed towards the exit. Nicole rose and scurried after him.
‘Gerrit,’ she called, ‘you’
re getting worked up over nothing. If Sara’s going to Wales, surely that’s a good thing. She’ll be out of your hair. You’ll have Jamie all to yourself.’
Vos stopped at the glass doors. ‘Don’t you see?’ he snapped. ‘She’s going straight to her friend. That cop, Inspector Lloyd.’
‘I suspect she is,’ Nicole agreed. ‘Who else would she visit?’
‘It’s not social,’ Vos stated flatly. ‘She's up to something. She’s chosen the cop she trusts most.’
‘For what?’
Vos looked at her with a frown of contempt. ‘She’s going after me.’
He pushed his way out the doors and onto the walkway that paralleled the river. From behind him, Nicole said, ‘You’ve been working too hard. It’s making you paranoid.’
Vos turned. ‘Nicole, this is serious. I told you what Sara believes about me – about what happened in South Africa. She’s plotting a way to use it against me.’
‘Why would she do that?’ Nicole asked. ‘What you’re saying doesn’t make sense.’
Vos shook his head stubbornly and said, ‘It makes perfect sense.’ His expression tightened. ‘There are things I haven’t told you.’
Nicole narrowed her eyes. ‘What things?’
Vos gazed out across the river. ‘I’m pretty sure Sara Jones murdered her brother,’ he said.
Nicole stared at him, eyes widening. ‘That’s crazy.’
‘You think?’ Vos asked. He took her arm and led her towards a bench. From his leather case, he retrieved his iPad. He called up the file with the security images from nearly three years before. ‘These are from the night Rhodri Jones died,’ he said. ‘He was still alive when they were taken.’
Nicole peered down at the screen. Her lips parted. ‘Sara was there?’ she gasped.
‘She was indeed.’
‘But Rhodri Jones killed himself,’ Nicole stated.
Vos shrugged. ‘Then Sara watched him do it,’ he concluded. ‘Think of that … she watched her own brother die. Didn’t bandage his wounds, didn’t even ring 999.’
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