by Sibel Hodge
I sank to the floor, shaking violently. ‘I don’t believe it, either.’ I imagined what would happen to Alistair if he was convicted. A sudden heart attack or suicide in prison? Attacked by another inmate? That was the most likely scenario. Alive or dead now, Alistair was being silenced.
‘I also had a visit today from someone claiming to be a serving police officer. He’s disgusted with the deep-rooted cover-up going on and was told there would be no investigation into this ever. He said the orders to scrap any enquiries came from a very senior officer who told them it would be a major catastrophe to national security if it came out. He can’t go on record because he’s been threatened with the Official Secrets Act. If he blows the whistle on Alistair’s dossier he saw, he’ll lose his job, face prosecution, and possibly worse.’
I thought about the message from the man who’d bumped into me. The anonymous text.
I warned you to be careful!
Was it the same guy?
I chewed on my bottom lip so hard I drew blood. ‘They know about me. And they may know about Mitchell now, too. His niece has gone missing. All this time when they were supposed to be investigating, they were probably planning their attack.’
‘I really hate to say this, but nothing will ever be exposed through normal channels. They’re just too powerful to be touchable. You’re never going to get the truth and justice you want. Instead, you should concentrate your energy on trying to find a way to expose this yourself. Before it’s too late.’
It already was too late. Justice was a delusion. Laws didn’t protect the innocent.
But I’d started this, and I was damn well going to finish it.
I glanced at the clock for the millionth time.
It was 6.16 p.m. and still no call from Mitchell.
I had to go and get the evidence right now before Lee arrived. Before anyone else was killed over this. I had just about enough time to get to St Albans and back before he arrived.
My car was in Mitchell’s garage, where we’d stashed it after I’d followed him home the night my house had been broken into.
I picked up my handbag from the kitchen worktop and caught Mitchell’s wallet with the corner of the bag, sending it flying to the floor. The wallet skittered into the edge of the fridge, landing with its fold wide open.
And that was when I saw it.
Chapter 47
I pulled out the small photo from the clear plastic protector slot in the centre of the wallet fold, and the world started spinning.
He was a beautiful boy. Curly brown hair, blue eyes, and a round face like Mitchell, staring into the camera lens with a gappy-toothed smile, holding a big red balloon.
Alex. And I’d seen him before.
The other photo of him flashed in my head, as if the camera was right there in my brain.
Alex was on the floor at 10 Crompton Place. Naked. Head lolling to one side, his eyes half open, his face slack, as if he was drugged. Straddling him, with his hands around his neck, was Eamonn Colby, the children’s minister.
Alex was the other anonymous boy Jamie had heartbreakingly described in his diary. The boy sadistically raped and murdered in front of them all.
I fought the urge to be violently sick. I had no time for that. This had to end.
I wanted to call Mitchell and tell him I knew who had killed Alex, but I couldn’t do it over the phone. I left the photo on the worktop and willed the tremor in my legs to stop so I could get moving.
It was dark when I left Mitchell’s. I crawled through the rush hour traffic at a snail’s pace, wanting to scream at everybody to get the hell out of my way.
Fighting to keep the steering wheel steady, I kept checking the rear-view mirror, but so many cars were around it was impossible to see if anyone was following me.
When I got onto the dual carriageway, I drove fast. Erratically. Weaving in and out of vehicles.
My Nokia rang. I picked it up from the centre cubby box. It was Mitchell. ‘Thank God! What’s going on?’ I veered over to the kerb as I answered, quickly righting myself again with one hand on the steering wheel, one hand pressing the phone to my ear.
‘It was a…alarm.’
‘What? I didn’t get that.’
‘False…’
‘False alarm?’
‘Yes! She…bunked…college.’
‘She bunked off college? So she’s safe? It’s nothing to do with any of this?’
‘No…then…you?’
‘You’re breaking up! The signal’s really bad. Say that again.’ My hand clutched the steering wheel so hard my knuckles strained against the skin as I negotiated a roundabout.
‘…going? Where…you?’
‘I’m on my way to get the evidence and bring it back. I couldn’t wait around. They got to Alistair!’
‘…need to…a…copy!’
‘What?’
‘…get…’
A crackly burst of static sounded in my ear. ‘I can’t hear what you’re saying. Look, I’ll be back in about an hour. And there’s something else you need to know, and it’s…oh God, Mitchell.’ I hadn’t wanted to do this over the phone, but something made me blurt it all out. ‘I found your photo of Alex and…you didn’t look at all of the photos Jamie had in that box, did you? And you didn’t read his diary when he described the other boy who was murdered. They did it. It was the same people. There was a photo of Alex at Crompton Place with the ones Jamie got from Dave. They killed Alex like they did Moses. They killed him and then dumped his body.’
I heard a strangled sound down the line. ‘…Alex?…king joking?…sure?’
‘Yes, I’m positive. I can show you when I come back with the copies we made. I’m so sorry. So, so sorry.’
‘…now!’
‘What? I can’t hear you.’
‘…around…need…evidence.’
‘I know we need it! I’m nearly there.’ I turned off a slip road, onto a single carriageway, and spotted a marked police car in my rear-view mirror.
‘Shit! The police are behind me.’
‘…plates…marker…off…road!’
‘What?’
‘Your…plates…put…of marker…’
The number plates! Of course. Why hadn’t I thought of that? They’d probably set up some kind of marker or alert on them in their databases to find me. If the police checked the plates, they would pull me over.
If they pulled me over, they’d arrest me.
If they arrested me, how long would it be before I had an accident in custody?
‘…them…stop…’
‘I can’t hear you!’ I yelled, panic flooding through me as I tried to drive sensibly.
The police car was three car lengths behind me. I threw the phone on the passenger seat and gripped the steering wheel with both hands, my gaze manically darting from the windscreen to the mirrors.
A four-way junction was ahead with traffic lights on green.
The police car edged closer.
‘Go away! Go away!’ I muttered repeatedly.
I sped up, towards the traffic lights.
And then their blue lights flashed on and their siren started.
I held onto the steering wheel fiercely, wondering whether I could outrun them. How was I going to get away in the built-up area of the town? There was no way I would pull over for them.
They edged closer behind me.
I kept my eyes on the rear-view mirror…
And watched the police car suddenly veer around me and speed off, through the traffic lights. Watched the blue flashing lights dancing in the air as it sailed away from me into the night.
Chapter 48
I took the quiet back roads towards the church, hyper alert for more police cars. Even though they hadn’t been after me, I couldn’t take any chances.
I was breathing so hard when I parked the car in the quiet residential street opposite the church that I thought I’d pass out.
I picked up my phone from the seat, suddenly rem
embering I hadn’t hung up. I glanced at the screen, but Mitchell must’ve been cut off. I turned it to mute, tucked it in my jeans pocket, and crept out of the car, my head whipping around, checking for signs of anyone lurking nearby.
Warm lights glowed behind curtains in a few of the houses. The smell of wood smoke permeated the air from one of the chimneys. A cat fight erupted further down the road.
There were no gates to the church grounds, so I walked along the pathway, past the deserted building and around the back to the graveyard. In the distance, I heard a helicopter droning in the air. Was it a police helicopter? Who were they looking for?
It was a new moon. A thin crescent of white in an all-black sky that didn’t throw off any light. My eyes scanned the dark patch of trees along the border fences and the shadows in front of me, waiting for someone to jump out.
An owl to my right screeched into the night, making me duck momentarily.
As I approached Jamie’s grave, I turned on the small torch I kept in my bag. Maybe it was morbid, but my copies of the photos and video were stored on the flash drive inside a plastic, fake hollow stone buried under the earth at the base of his gravestone, the kind people often kept spare house keys in and left around their gardens. Here was the one place I was sure they would never think to look for it.
I sank to my knees, the cold, wet earth seeping through my jeans. I put the torch in my mouth and angled it towards the ground, digging with my fingers.
A memory hit me from nowhere then. It was disabling for a few moments, stopping me like a catatonic dummy. Jamie and I on my birthday, having a romantic dinner at Jamie Oliver’s restaurant, which was something I’d always wanted to do. It had been a surprise for me, and we were slightly drunk on wine and love. I’d asked him one of those silly hypothetical questions: If you were stuck on a desert island, what three things would you take? He’d thought about it for a long time, and I’d expected him to say something funny or profound, but in the end, he’d just said, You, you, and you. I don’t need anything else.
Then the helicopter blades chopped through the air, getting closer, pulling me back to the present. I carried on digging through the mist of tears.
The Nokia vibrated silently in my pocket with an incoming call. I ignored it and curled my fingers around the stone and drew it to the surface, turning it over and sliding the underneath section off. I retrieved the flash drive from a sealed bag inside and put it safely in my other pocket. Then I reversed the process, burying the stone and smoothing out the earth so it looked as good as new. Scattering a few leaves and twigs over it for good measure.
Another noise echoed into the night. Movement. Rustling.
I whipped my head around. No one was there.
The wind. It’s only the wind.
I power-walked back towards the entrance, around the building, towards the car, glancing up and down the deathly quiet street.
My phone buzzed again as I slid behind the wheel of the Jeep and started the engine. I pulled the phone out of my pocket and pressed the answer button.
‘Mitchell, you got cut off. Are you okay? I’m so sorry I had to tell you about Alex.’
‘I looked at the photos. I saw Alex!’ he yelled at me. ‘Those fucking cunts killed my boy. They were the ones.’ I heard the tears and despair and raging fury vibrating through his voice. ‘He was seven years old! Seven years old and he never hurt anyone! He didn’t deserve it. Didn’t deserve what they did.’ The line was clearer now. I put the phone on loudspeaker and put it in the centre cubby box as I drove.
‘I know. It’s heartbreaking,’ I said softly, tears springing into my own eyes. Tears which blurred my vision for a moment, so I didn’t notice a black van appear behind me at first.
Mitchell sniffed. ‘Where are you now? Are you okay?’ I imagined his jaw clenched as he ran a hand over his shaved head, pulling himself together.
‘Yes, I’ve got the flash drive, and I’m just leaving St Albans. I’ll be there soon.’ Rather than going through the town centre, I decided to take the smaller back roads and weave through residential streets.
‘You didn’t need to go there! I had my own copies.’
‘What? How?’
‘When we were making our duplicates, a copy of everything automatically got stored on my hard drive. I took them off that and hid them so we’d have another backup.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I waited for a Mini to go past at a junction and navigated onto a quiet lane.
‘It doesn’t matter now,’ he said impatiently. Angrily.
I glanced in the rear-view mirror as I manoeuvred onto a roundabout. That was when I realised my mistake. ‘I’m heading towards the North Orbital Road. I think I’m being followed. There’s a black van about four car lengths behind me.’
‘Shit. Okay…okay, stay on the line. I’ll look at Google Maps and try to work out a way you can shake them.’
Both sweating hands clutched the wheel as I sped up, my heart fluttering erratically in my chest.
The van sped up, too.
‘Okay, when you get to the North Orbital Road roundabout, instead of going straight on like they’re probably expecting, take the turn for the A414. Try to turn right there at the last possible moment without slowing down too much and giving away your next move. Then I’ll work out a further route.’
I leant forward in the seat, my shoulders rigid with tension. There was the roundabout up ahead. ‘I’m about to get to it.’
Five.
Four.
Three.
Two.
One.
As I lifted my foot off the accelerator and slowed a little onto the roundabout, I turned the steering wheel right.
But nothing happened. There was no response from the Jeep, and it carried on straight over the roundabout onto the dual carriageway of the North Orbital Road.
What?
I took my foot off the accelerator.
The Jeep didn’t slow.
I turned the wheel slightly left and right. The wheels didn’t follow. They just carried on driving, heading straight.
I tapped the brakes. The car still didn’t slow down.
‘What’s going on?’ Mitchell said. ‘Did you make the turn?’
‘No! Something’s happening to the Jeep. It’s not…’ I tried the brakes again. Nothing. The Jeep carried on at a steady seventy miles per hour. There was no hard shoulder, but I tried to steer it towards the small verge on the left, but again, the steering wheel wasn’t responsive. ‘I don’t know what’s going on. I can’t control the car! It’s like…it’s like it’s driving itself!’ I glanced in my rear-view mirror. The black van was still behind me. Tears sprang into my eyes as the hum of the wheels on tarmac vibrated into my bones.
‘What do you mean you can’t control it?’
I turned the wheel again, aiming for the outside lane.
Nothing happened.
Turned it towards the verge.
Nothing happened.
Slammed my foot on the brake.
Nothing.
Pumped the brakes.
Still no response.
The Jeep sailed at high speed over the next clear roundabout.
Except I wasn’t driving it.
Panic hit me full throttle. My limbs turned to ice while my stomach lurched around as if I was caught at sea in a violent storm. ‘The brakes don’t work. Neither does the steering wheel or accelerator! And the black van’s close behind me now.’
‘What?’
‘Should I turn off the engine?’ My eyes darted to the button on the dashboard.
‘I’m thinking, I’m thinking! If you turn off the engine, it might send you spinning out of control.’
The Jeep slowed slightly as I came up behind a Ford Focus driving sixty miles an hour in the slow lane.
Relief hit me. Maybe there was just some weird kind of electronic malfunction that was righting itself now. ‘It’s slowing down.’ I pressed the brakes again, but the Jeep still didn’t re
spond. Instead, it swerved out into the fast lane without me touching anything, then increased in speed back up to seventy miles per hour. ‘Now it’s speeding up again. Mitchell, what can I do? What’s going on?’
‘I think they’ve taken over the vehicle remotely and they’re controlling the car.’
‘How is that even possible?’
‘I don’t know, but I think they’ve hacked into your electronic system somehow.’
I glanced at the van behind. The driver and passenger were a featureless blur.
The traffic was light in front, and the Jeep swerved left into the slow lane, its speed gradually increasing.
I studied the road ahead. It was straight on this patch. If I took a chance and hit the ignition button to hopefully cut the engine, the best I could hope for was that the car might fishtail for a while before coming to a stop. The worst? Well, a deep embankment was running parallel with me now. After the embankment was a row of dense trees. The Jeep could lose control, hurtle down the embankment, possibly flipping over on the way, possibly hitting a tree at full speed, possibly breaking my neck.
Panic clawed at my stomach as the Jeep’s speedometer crept higher.
73 MPH.
75 MPH.
78 MPH.
My heart drummed to the beat of a rock concert beneath my ribs. ‘I need to do something! It’s going faster. Tell me what to do! Shall I turn it off and see if that works?’
‘Yes. Try to turn it off!’ Mitchell yelled, the panic in his voice matching mine.
80 MPH.
I pressed the ignition switch and…
No response.
83 MPH.
The night sped past me, my pulse booming in my ears.
I pressed it again.
85 MPH.
I gripped the steering wheel, even though I wasn’t in control, and stabbed at the switch repeatedly. The road curved in a sharp bend ahead of me.