In quiet tears, the woman kept her eyes on her son as she moved and opened the boot. ‘Don’t hurt him,’ she said.
‘Sharon, this is ridiculous,’ the man protested.
‘Shut up, Brian,’ the woman told him. ‘What choice do we have?’
Fernandez smiled. He liked a spirited woman who knew her place.
When she had opened the boot of the car and took a step back, Fernandez placed the child inside and withdrew his gun, pointing it almost casually at him. He said, ‘I will get in the boot with him. Once you are parked on the ferry and the ferry is in motion—not before—you will open the boot and your son will still be alive. Sir,’ he said, ‘get into your seat now.’
The man hesitated and his wife said, ‘Do it, Brian.’
Fernandez said to her, ‘You will close the boot once I am inside, okay?’ She nodded. ‘Do you have the capacity to understand the death of your child?’
She closed her eyes, tears running the length of her cheeks, and opened them again. It was, in Fernandez’s mind, an acceptance of fate.
He climbed inside the boot and lay down, hugging the child closely to him, the gun pressed against the boy’s side. ‘If anyone else should open the boot, if you tell an official or the police, I will kill the child. Remember, when the ferry is moving, you will let us out—only you. Do we have an understanding?’
She nodded again, and closed the lid of the boot, trapping a killer inside with her son.
‘Stop crying, Sally,’ Sharon said. She had gotten into the front passenger seat, closed the door, wiped her eyes, buckled her seatbelt and stared straight ahead.
Brian looked at her.
‘Just drive, Brian,’ she said. ‘Get on the ferry. We’ll stay in the car until it’s moving, then we’ll let him out.’
‘You can’t be serious,’ Brian whispered.
In a voice void of emotion, Sharon said, ‘He has a gun pointed at our son. I have never been more serious in my life.’
‘I won’t do it.’
‘Then I’ll drive.’
Brian sighed. ‘Fine. But if any harm comes to my son—’
‘Are you going to blame me for this?’ Sharon asked, staring him in the eyes for an honest answer.
Brian closed his eyes, started the ignition, and didn’t answer her. ‘Stop crying, Sally,’ he said instead.
They boarded the ferry without incident and took up their place in the car hold. The official who had waved them in told them they needed to make their way immediately to the upper deck.
‘We’d like to sit here for a little while, if you don’t mind,’ Brian said. ‘My daughter’s seasick already.’ He attempted a weak laugh.
‘No puedo,’ the official said. ‘There is no waiting in the cars.’
‘Jesus,’ Brian breathed. ‘Now what?’
‘I’ll sneak back down once we’re moving,’ Sharon told him.
‘No, I’ll do it.’
‘The man said I had to do it. I’ll be fine. Come on, Sally, honey, let’s go.’
As soon as they were upstairs, Brian spotted a sign that read ‘Security Desk’ and he took his wife’s arm. ‘Let’s tell someone before this gets out of hand.’
‘No,’ Sharon said, standing her ground. ‘I’m not endangering the life of our child any more than is necessary. Let’s get our cabin and as soon as we’re moving, I’ll go down and let them out. Once we have Will back, we can tell anyone and everyone about the lunatic with a gun onboard. He’ll have nowhere to hide.’
Fifteen minutes later, when the ferry was beginning its slow move away from the dockside, Sharon told them to lock the door behind her. She kissed her husband and hugged her daughter and promised she’d be back in a few minutes. She came out of the cabin, closed the door, and sobbed once before composing herself as best she could and making her way along the corridor to the stairs.
At the entrance to the car park—a graveyard of empty vehicles, she thought—she had to wait an eternity for one of the officials to make final checks and leave. When the coast was clear, she stepped out between two forty-foot lorries and looked around, allowing her sense of bearings to override her fear.
She walked purposefully to their car and, double-checking she was still unobserved, pushed the key into the lock rather than activating the central locking mechanism. She said, ‘It’s me. I’m letting you out now. I’m on my own.’ She opened the boot and sobbed again when she saw her son was still alive.
The man kept the gun pointed at Will as he climbed out and held onto the boy. ‘Your cabin,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’
Walking through the busy ferry was risky, but Fernandez knew he could trust the woman as long as he kept a tight grip on the child. She was bright enough to know how to act in the face of adversity.
She stopped at a cabin door, took a deep breath, and knocked. Instantly the door was opened and Fernandez pushed his way inside, still carrying the boy.
The woman closed the door behind them and asked Fernandez, ‘Now what?’
Fernandez smiled. He made sure the gun was visible and said, ‘Now we have twenty-four hours to get to know each other.’ He sat on the edge of one of the twin beds, the boy on his knee, and said, ‘No one leaves this cabin until we dock in England. And when we do, we will do the Spaniard-in-the-boot trick again. Then I am gone and you can have your boring lives back.’
‘We’ve seen your face,’ the man said. ‘You won’t let us go alive, will you?’
‘I suppose that’s a risk you will just have to take,’ Fernandez said.
The man made a turn for the cabin door and Fernandez was quickly on his feet, dropping the boy to the floor and stepping over him. Before Brian had a chance to open the door, Fernandez thrust his full force into him, he smacked his head against the wood and his legs buckled. Fernandez grabbed his shirt, spun him around, and struck the butt of his gun on his temple. He dropped to the ground and Fernandez kicked him in the face.
‘No!’ the woman screamed. ‘Stop it!’
The kids were crying.
Fernandez went down on his knees, gripped the man by the throat, and pushed the barrel of the gun against his forehead. ‘I said no one leaves this cabin. Are you understanding with me now?’
‘Yes,’ the man said, his eyes clenched. ‘Yes. I understand.’
Chapter 6
Clark had taken a kitchen chair and placed it out on the wooden porch to drink her morning coffee and watch the world amble by when Scott joined her. He was wearing a pair of cut-off jeans and a loose-fitting yellow T-shirt that proclaimed him to be 98% Full of Complete Awesomeness (2% Bullshit).
Clark laughed and Scott said, ‘Katherine’s idea of humour.’ He sat on the floor beside her, elbows on his knees, and stared out across the garden. ‘Those birds never stop singing,’ he said.
‘I love it,’ Clark said. ‘All I hear in the mornings are car horns and sirens.’ Her sigh was heavy and full of thought. ‘I envy you. Living in the countryside seems so idyllic.’
‘Not when you’re living a lie,’ Scott said.
‘You’re not living a lie,’ Clark told him. ‘You’re living a life. It doesn’t matter what name you use, you’re still alive. Enjoy it.’
‘I’m grateful for the life you’ve given us,’ Scott said, referring to their witness protection, ‘but I can’t help thinking about the past.’
‘That’s only natural. It’s when you start talking about your past that I’ll have to kick your skinny arse from one side of Yorkshire to the other and back. Twice.’ She finished her coffee and put the mug on the floor beside her chair. ‘You’ve been given a clean slate,’ she said. ‘Lao Tzu said something like, “When you let go of who you are, you become what you might be.” You just have to roll with life the way it comes.’
‘Ever the wise owl,’ Scott said. ‘What time do you go back to London?’
‘Are you in that much of a hurry to get me out of your life again? You think if you pack me off, you’ll stop thinking about your past an
d start looking to the future?’
Scott laughed. ‘That’s not quite what I meant, but yeah, basically.’
Clark smiled, folded her arms and stretched out her legs in front of her. ‘I’ll probably leave after dinner.’
‘What are you hiding from me, Ann?’
‘I’m not hiding anything.’
Scott turned to face her fully. ‘I told you yesterday, I know you better than that. You’re withholding something and it scares me.’
Clark refused to look at him, keeping her eyes focused on the distant trees. ‘It’s nothing.’
‘Is it about that Fernandez guy? The whole thing in London?’
She looked at him at last. ‘No, you’re safe, Scott. I told you that. It’s nothing about the case.’
‘What then? You come here with a photograph of a man we’ve never seen before and make like that’s the best excuse you’ve got. It seems a bit flimsy to me.’
‘Scott, please.’
‘Come on, Ann. Don’t keep me in the dark, it’s a scary place to be.’
She sighed, looked back out across the garden. ‘I’ve been suspended from the force.’
‘Suspended? What for?’
‘Can I get away with saying it was a rookie mistake?’
‘Rookie?’ he scoffed. ‘You were born a pro. What happened?’
‘I can’t go into detail,’ Clark said. ‘It’s an ongoing case. But I made a mistake and they suspended me for it.’
‘You let your heart get in the way again. How long have they given you?’
She shrugged. ‘As long as it takes them to investigate. Couple of weeks, probably.’
‘What kind of mistake?’
‘I can’t answer that,’ Clark said. ‘Can you leave it now?’
Scott shrugged. ‘Okay, sure.’ He stood up, dusted off the seat of his cut-offs and watched a car pull into the bottom of the long driveway. ‘In that case, you can stay another couple of nights. You still owe me a Chinese and a bottle or two of wine.’ He grinned and playfully punched her shoulder.
Clark laughed. ‘You have a memory like an elephant.’ She stood beside him and watched the car approach. ‘Although maybe you don’t—you haven’t forgotten about another date, have you?’
‘I don’t think so,’ he said.
Jesse pulled the car up and waved through the windscreen. Conscious of the T-shirt he was wearing, Scott waved back and folded his arms across the slogan.
When he stepped out of the car and took his sunglasses off, Jesse said, ‘I took the liberty of checking the rota. I saw you weren’t working so figured we could maybe do something?’
‘I haven’t even showered,’ Scott said.
‘Then you’d best get to it,’ Jesse laughed.
Scott shrugged and smiled. To Clark he said, ‘Now even my colleagues are making demands of me. I’m blaming you for that.’
As he went inside the house, Clark said, ‘You have no one to blame for your laziness but yourself.’
His voice carried out from the darkness within. ‘I heard that.’
Clark settled back in her chair and Jesse sat on the steps. ‘Where are you taking him?’ she asked.
Jesse grinned, a wide, honest smile. She liked him. ‘Don’t tell him, but I’ve packed a picnic. We’ll take the horses out across Harrogate and find a nice spot somewhere.’ He paused. ‘Unless you think he wouldn’t like that? You know him better than I do.’
Clark smiled back. ‘I think he’d love that.’ She chewed the inside of one cheek for a moment, weighing up how to say her next words. Eventually, she said, ‘Be nice to him, Jesse. I know it’s only your second date—first if you don’t count dinner with me and Katherine—but just…be nice to him.’ She couldn’t put it any other way without it sounding like a threat. Which it was.
Jesse smiled again, a faint blushing heat rising in his cheeks as he lowered his eyes from her. ‘I will,’ he said. And he sounded like he meant it.
He sat in the passenger seat and breathed in the smell of wet dog. It was one of those heady smells that was equal parts pleasant and unpleasant. He and Ryan had often talked about getting a puppy, although they could never agree on what breed—he’d wanted a golden retriever, Ryan had wanted a great Dane.
At the thought of Ryan, here in Jesse’s car, Scott mentally berated himself and sucked his lower lip into his mouth in a sulk. He had been grieving since London, and while it had only been a year and a half since his death, he had concluded a couple of months ago that no matter how much he wept or how much he reminisced, nothing would bring Ryan back from the dead. He knew he’d always carry him in his heart—nothing could replace the totality of the love they had shared—but he now knew that, one day, he might love again. He just had to remind himself to look beyond the past.
Jesse had been largely silent on the car journey, refusing to tell Scott where they were going in an attempt to cloak the day in mystery, and so to break the silence, Scott now said, ‘What kind of dog do you have?’
‘I’ve got two completely insane chocolate labs but they stay at my mum’s. Einstein and Nietzsche.’
Scott laughed. ‘Sensible names,’ he said.
‘I couldn’t have picked worse names for them, they really are mental.’
‘Well, Nietzsche had a mental breakdown, and just looking at Einstein shows he was clearly insane, so maybe it’s not such a bad fit after all.’
Jesse raised an eyebrow. ‘Look at you,’ he said, clearly impressed. ‘They had history books in Ireland?’
Scott slapped Jesse’s leg and said, ‘Cheeky. We even had electricity. And they recently introduced that Eighth Wonder of the World: running water.’ He had noticed the direction they were heading in—towards work—and now that they pulled onto the country lane leading to the Silverwood Centre, he said, ‘Where are you taking me?’
Jesse beamed. ‘I called Sylvia this morning. She has Blossom and Lea tacked and ready for us. As long as we have them back by six, we can go where we like.’
When they had parked up and Jesse had transferred some things from his car to the saddle bags on Blossom that Sylvia had placed there at his request, Scott pulled on the riding boots he kept in the office. He swung his leg up over Lea and tipped an invisible hat to Sylvia.
‘You boys have fun,’ she said. ‘None of that Brokeback Mountain stuff out there, you hear?’
‘Sylvia,’ Jesse laughed. ‘How dare you!’
Scott looked out across the land. ‘Let’s find a sunset,’ he said, raising a chuckle from Sylvia.
Jesse spurred his horse forward. ‘This way into the night.’
‘Have them back by six,’ Sylvia called after them.
When they trotted off the grounds of the Silverwood Centre and out onto the country road, Scott asked, ‘Which way?’
‘We’re on a potholed strip of tarmac that cuts through a landscape of fields and hills on either side. I don’t think it really matters which way we go.’
Scott smiled and shrugged. Nudging Lea to the right, he said, ‘Let’s get lost then.’ And Jesse followed.
Lea was a magnificent silver dapple—her coat a light chocolate brown, flecked with paler patches, her mane and tail a long, flowing silver. The silvering hair around her eyes and muzzle made her appear aged, but she was only four years old, used at the school for some of the more advanced riders.
In stark contrast to Lea’s sleek chocolate coating, Blossom was piebald, a random splatter of black and white, as though a modern artist had picked up a paint tin, closed his eyes, and slung the paint around.
As they walked nose to tail behind one another along the stretch of road, they talked lazily about their respective childhoods. Scott was reticent at first to offer up anything that may give his true identity away, but the more he spoke, the easier his words flowed. He enjoyed Jesse’s company and was able to speak freely without being too specific about place names and people. He talked about his father’s disappearance when he was three years old, how most of the m
emories he had of his dad were second hand from his mum. She raised him singlehandedly and raised him well. He didn’t say that his mother was also dead and Katherine was an imposter. He talked about school and about friends, but he avoided any reference to Ryan Cassidy.
Perhaps it was a nervous energy, but when Jesse began talking about his own life, he seemed to flit from one story to another like the flick of a switch in his head. ‘And then in secondary school when I was sick of all the taunting and bullying, I just came out with it. Told them all I was a big screaming homo and if they didn’t like it they could pretty much just fuck off.’
‘Ouch,’ Scott said. ‘I’m guessing they didn’t take it too well?’
‘I was the one who didn’t take it well. Cracked rib, fractured elbow and a broken nose.’
‘Jesus,’ Scott breathed.
‘It could have been worse,’ Jesse said. ‘Once I was back from hospital, one of the bullies—this massive fart of a fifteen year old—decided he wanted to experiment on me, if you know what I mean. Didn’t last long, thankfully. Anyway, I had a run of abusive men over the years and decided to go celibate about two years ago.’
‘How’s that working out for you?’ Scott asked.
‘I’m getting itchy.’
When their laughter had died, Jesse looked around, reined in Blossom, and said, ‘This’ll do.’
‘Do for what?’
As he swung down off the horse, he said, ‘For lunch.’
He opened the saddle bags and pulled out a small blanket, spreading it on the grass, followed by a couple of Tupperware containers, two plastic beakers, and a bottle of red wine.
‘Why, Mrs Robinson,’ Scott declared.
Jesse raised his slender brows. ‘Benjamin, I am not trying to seduce you.’
Scott smiled. He hadn’t seen The Graduate in years. ‘Shame,’ he said quietly.
It felt wrong. He didn’t want it to, but it did. Lying there on the blanket, shoulder to shoulder with Jesse and staring up at the feathery clouds as they wandered lonely, the only thing he could think about was Ryan.
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