The mirthless laughter from behind made Leo’s blood turn to ice.
*
Tom turned round on the computer chair and looked at Pat’s dazed expression.
‘It’s all there. There’s no doubt about it, I’m sorry to say. Mimi has been setting up false identities on Facebook. She’s the Chloe that the police have been looking for. She knows her way around this stuff somehow, because she’d hidden her tracks pretty well for an amateur. She’s disguised her IP address, and erased most of the files completely. I couldn’t understand why some files were still there when she had been so careful about everything else. But she’d set her files to be wiped on restart, so it was either a mistake or she forgot to shut down.’
‘That would be my fault, I guess.’ Patrick admitted. ‘She started the shutdown process as she was going out, but I interrupted it so I could log onto BBC Sport.’
Tom stood up.
‘I need to make a call, I’m afraid.’
Pat ignored Tom. He looked totally baffled. ‘Why would she do this? Why would she pretend to be somebody called Chloe so that she could be friends with Abbie Campbell? It doesn’t make any sense. And why all those other fake names too?’
‘She had to seem real to Abbie. What do you know about her past?’
Pat couldn’t quite meet Tom’s eyes.
‘Not much. I wasn’t that interested. I had a senseless fling with her that lasted about five minutes. I was feeling sorry for myself. Pathetic. But what could a woman like Mimi want with a young girl like Abbie? Do you think she was in cahoots with a man?’
‘I don’t know, Pat. It’s very unusual for a woman to abduct a child, so she could have had an accomplice. And I imagine we’re not going to know until we find her. I need to get the police here.’
Tom fished around in his pocket for his mobile while Pat continued to talk.
‘I wish I’d never met her. If Georgia hadn’t found out, everything would’ve been fine. But she got some anonymous text. Mimi swore it wasn’t her, but now we know differently I suppose. I never asked Mimi much about herself. If she hadn’t been pregnant, I was going to move out this week.’
Tom was getting slightly sick of Pat feeling sorry for himself. This wasn’t about him and Georgia.
Where the hell was his mobile?
‘Sorry, Pat, but I need to phone the police and I need to do it now. You’ve got to stop thinking about what might have been, and think about where Mimi might have gone. And where she came from,’ Tom said.
Tom tried his other pocket, attempting to stem his irritation at Pat’s feeble behaviour. In the end, he gave up the search.
‘We have a problem. I must have left my phone in the car. We can’t use yours because we mustn’t alert Mimi. Do you have any idea at all where she is, because if she comes home we’re going to have to keep her here until the police arrive.’
‘She went out at about six, and I haven’t seen her since. We weren’t speaking. She was mad about something, and I just assumed it was something that I’d done. I didn’t bother to ask.’
‘Right, well, you wait there and I’ll go and get my phone.’
*
‘Drive, Leo, or I’ll kill you now.’
‘No you won’t. If you didn’t need me, you’d have killed me already.’
Leo could feel Mimi’s sweaty body as she manoeuvred herself farther into the gap between the front seats. She felt hot breath, fetid with nerves, settling damply on the side of her face, and the knife was pressed harder against her throat. Leo knew she was going to die, but not yet if she could help it.
Mimi’s voice had turned brittle with emotion.
‘All you smug bastards did everything possible to break me and Patrick up, didn’t you? He wasn’t part of the plan, but he was a bonus — until I found out what he’s really like. But if Gary hadn’t wrecked everything, I could have made it work — all of it. Me and Patrick. Me and Abbie. I could have seen my Abbie in secret. She’d have liked that.’
Abbie? What could this possibly have to do with Abbie?
‘You didn’t know, did you? None of you guessed that she was mine. My little girl. I was going to make it up to her, all of it. She was my baby. I just wanted to see her — to show that her mother isn’t a monster. It wasn’t my fault Jessica died — none of it was my fault. I wanted her to understand.’
Mimi was Abbie’s mother? Leo had no idea who Jessica was, but she knew that time was running out.
‘Abbie liked me when I was Chloe. But the real me wasn’t good enough, was it? Not good enough for Abbie, not good enough for Jessica, not good enough for Patrick. She said she hated me, do you know that? She screamed when I tried to touch her. I wish she hadn’t done that.’
Leo could sense a blistering anger, tinged with the heartbreak of a woman who had no illusions left.
‘Get moving, Leo, or I’ll enjoy every moment of watching you die. You won’t be the first person I’ve killed tonight.’ The knife was prodded harder, and Leo felt a new stab of pain as the point penetrated farther into her flesh.
‘I’m not driving anywhere with a knife pressed against my neck. If I go over a bump in the road, you’ll slice through my carotid artery. Move the knife, and I’ll drive you wherever you want to go.’
There was a pause.
‘Hands on the wheel. The top. Hold it tight, and lean your head against your hands. Now, Leo.’
She felt a new stab of pain as the knife twisted in the open wound. She did as she was told. But she wanted to keep Mimi talking.
‘Why Sean? Why did he have to die?’ Leo asked, her voice muffled as it rested on her arms.
The knife never leaving her neck, she felt a shuffling, and realised that Mimi was climbing through the gap in the seats and into the front. If she could just time it right …
‘Don’t move a muscle — I know what you’re thinking,’ Mimi growled as the knife jabbed harder. Leo winced in pain, but Mimi was too busy talking. ‘Sean was a case of mistaken identity. I was sure Ellie was screwing that cold-blooded, murdering bastard Gary, and only she could deliver him to me on a plate. It was Gary I wanted. He knew I was there. He knew I was the one that had taken Abbie.’
Mimi had only needed seconds to climb into the front seat, and the pressure on the knife never eased up all the time she was talking. Had Mimi slipped, Leo knew it would all have been over.
‘Sit back. Seat belt on,’ she said.
‘Why?’ Leo asked.
‘I keep telling you, I’m not stupid. You can’t leap out of the car at traffic lights if you’ve got your seat belt on. And I’ll be watching. You’re my insurance if we get stopped.’
The position of the knife was adjusted so that it hovered over Leo’s hand as she fastened the seat belt.
‘Where do you want me to drive to?’ Leo asked.
‘Put the car in gear, and leave your left hand on the gear stick. Just get off this crummy estate, and then I’ll tell you.’
Leo put the car into reverse, and felt a piercing pain as the knife cut into the thin skin on the back of her hand. Steering one-handed and without looking to her left for fear of seeing the madness in those watching eyes, just inches from her own face, she backed out of the space using mirrors and a lot of hope. She knew beyond doubt that as soon as she had driven to whatever destination was chosen, she would be dead.
She had to think.
Then she remembered something that Tom had said to her when they left his house earlier this evening. She had one chance. It was going to hurt, but there was only one thing she could do.
She put the car into gear, and slammed her foot hard on the accelerator.
*
Tom had only taken two steps towards the door when they heard the sound of a car revving loudly and accelerating down the road. The noise lasted no more than five seconds before there was an explosion of sound as metal hit brick with considerable force.
He finally knew what it meant when somebody says their heart leapt into their t
hroat, and he was out of the door and running in an instant. All he could see were the taillights of his Jeep, and smoke pouring from the bonnet, which was buckled to half its size against the brick wall that marked the entrance to this part of the estate.
“Leo!’ he shouted, fear giving him speed he didn’t know he still had.
‘Pat, call an ambulance. Don’t just stand there. Call a fucking ambulance,’ he yelled over his shoulder as he ran. And yet he knew that Pat would be standing watching, open-mouthed.
Fortunately the noise had brought other people from their homes, and out of the corner of his eye he saw a more alert neighbour grab his phone as Tom covered the four hundred yards to the car. He raced towards the passenger door. That’s where he’d left Leo. He gulped back of cry of dismay when he was still fifty yards away. He could see that she hadn’t been wearing a seat belt, and with no airbag her head was protruding through a hole in the windscreen, her neck at an odd angle that in Tom’s experience meant only one thing.
‘Oh no,’ he whispered. ‘Oh God, no.’
He made it to the car and scrambled onto the twisted metal of the bonnet. He could see little but the upper half of a body, and blood. He was blocking out the light from the street lamp behind him, and he tried to pull himself round, sliding all the time on the hot surface. He needed to move so that the light shone on Leo’s face, so he could get to her and check if she was alive. Then he saw it. The hair covering the face was blond and limp, not Leo’s thick dark tresses. He knew instantly who this was, and a brief hope flared in his chest.
He slithered across the bonnet and dropped down at the driver’s side, frantically pulling on the handle. The door wouldn’t budge, but he could just make out Leo’s crumpled form behind the steering wheel. She wasn’t moving, and her head had lolled forward onto the now deflated airbag.
Tom tried the rear door. It only opened inches, but he yanked it as hard as he could, and slid in through the gap. He heard his shirt rip, and felt a sharp sting of pain as a piece of exposed metal tore into the flesh covering his ribs, but he barely noticed. Climbing onto his knees on the back seat, he leaned forward very gently so as not to disturb Leo’s body or the seat in case her spine was injured.
He held onto the grab bar with his right hand to steady himself, and with his left hand felt for Leo’s neck, and her pulse.
51
I’m awake. I can’t speak, but I can hear sounds — people talking, and I can feel soft hands stroking my arm. I know I’m going to get better.
I still have dreams, though. I dream about Jessica and the day she died.
We’re on our own in the room. The Mother has gone out and we’re making a den. But Jessica is frightened.
‘It’s okay, Jess — it’s just a den. It won’t be like the cupboard, I promise. We’ve got to play quietly or we’ll be reported.’
I don’t know what that means, but I think it’s bad.
Jess is crying. Her arm is sore. The Mother doesn’t like it when we cry. She pushed me down the stairs the day before, and now my arm looks funny and really hurts. But it’ll get better. It did last time. I won’t cry again.
I hear her coming, and know that we have to be very, very good. I pull Jess close to me.
Then we’re in the cupboard. We’ve been good, but it doesn’t matter — we still have to hide away. Jess doesn’t look right. There’s something wrong. And suddenly I’m kicking, kicking, kicking.
Somebody is screaming. I’m being dragged across the floor by my ankles. The fat, greasy man is pulling the tape off Jess’s mouth and sick is pouring out. Jessica isn’t moving.
The man is getting dressed — and nobody’s helping Jess. I try to shout, but he runs out of the door as if he’s being chased by The Bogeyman. The Mother is wrapping Jessica in a dirty sheet. I try to scream, ‘Help her, help her,’ but I can’t. My mouth is taped shut.
I can’t run for help. My legs are tied together, but The Grunter’s left the door open, so I roll towards it. The Mother sees me.
‘Come here, you little bastard,’ she shouts.
I can hear somebody on the stairs. The Mother drops Jessica, my little Jess, on the floor and runs towards me. She’s got my feet, and she’s pulling me away from the door. But she’s too late. Somebody’s got hold of me. Somebody’s taking the tape off my mouth and hugging me close to their body. There is only one word that I can say.
‘Jessica.’
I remember now. I remember it all. Each time I dream about Jess and what happened, Mum tells me I’m safe. I’ll never hear that voice again.
But I did. Chloe’s mum. It was her.
In the end, it was the voice that I recognised.
I thought I’d escaped, but then she was here — here in the hospital where I was safe. That voice — again, whispering in my ear, so close to my head.
‘My little Abbie. I didn’t want to hurt you — I wanted to be friends — our secret.’
I couldn’t speak, but I wanted to scream and scream.
‘I shouldn’t have come for you on Friday. I got greedy. Chloe could have been your best friend, and as long as we never met, you would never have known it was me.’
A hand reached out and stroked the hair back from my face. Those dry lips brushed my forehead. I was trying to cry out, but I couldn’t. I knew the sounds weren’t coming out.
‘And each day when you told me what you were doing, where you were going, I could have watched you. I’ve been watching you for months, but you never saw me.’
I tried to move my body, to turn away from those horrible hands. The voice turned harsh.
‘You didn’t want me, though, did you? You wouldn’t let me explain. You were just like everybody else, judging me and finding me wanting. You’re the reason I went to prison, but I forgave you for that. Now it’ll be just like last time. You’ll tell lies about me, won’t you? You’ll say that I abducted you — but that’s not true. We were friends, you and me.’
I felt a pillow being yanked from under my head.
‘You left me no choice, Abbie. You should have loved me. It wasn’t much to ask.’
Suddenly there was a lot of noise, a breeze as the curtain was whisked back, and then she was gone.
Or that’s what I thought.
I heard a voice saying, ‘Be still. Be quiet.’ A hand was stroking my head. I knew it wasn’t the same voice, but for a moment I thought she was back. I thought The Mother was back.
52
Two weeks later
A Single Step: the blog of Leo Harris
Going all the way
Forgive me for my recent silence. An injury has prevented me from typing, but today I have a scribe — my beautiful sister, Ellie — and I feel compelled to write about truth, because ‘truth’ surpasses all other qualities in terms of its importance within a relationship.
How often have you excused a small omission, a white lie, or a twisted version of the truth on the grounds that ‘what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him’?
This is not just about lies. It’s about the absence of truth. Failing to be open and honest at any level is as damaging as a lie; secrets and deceit will ultimately undermine a relationship’s stability, durability, and longevity.
Friedrich Nietzsche said, ‘I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you.’
Honesty and trust go hand in hand. Once a lie has been told, deception practised, or truth omitted, trust is destroyed. Some say that love is giving someone the power to break your heart, but trusting them not to. So without trust, what happens to love?
Never hide the truth from someone you care about. It is an act of cowardice that serves only to weaken and damage.
“There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting.” Buddha
For the first time since the day of Sean’s death and Leo’s accident, Ellie felt the remnants of her optimistic nature fighting their way back to the surface. Perhaps it
was because Leo was showing signs of returning to normal. This was the first time she’d displayed any interest in updating her blog since the accident, and her words were so appropriate that Ellie couldn’t help wishing that Leo had written the post sooner — and insisted that they all read it.
Or perhaps the improvement in the weather was making her feel more cheerful. It had been vile — constant rain, and not what anybody could call summer. But today, for a change, the sun was shining. Ellie took two cups of cappuccino out into the garden, and put one down on the table close to Leo’s right side. Her left arm was in a sling. As Mimi had catapulted forward through the windscreen, her knife had gone straight through Leo’s hand and the damage still needed some further treatment.
‘Did you manage to sleep any better last night?’ Ellie asked her sister.
‘Not really. I don’t want to start taking sleeping tablets, though, because I’m sure I’d get hooked and we know what problems that can cause. I’ve never been the world’s best sleeper, so while I can I’ll doze on and off throughout the day. I’ll be fine.’
‘Does your hand hurt much now? I can probably get Sam to prescribe you something for the pain, if you like.’
‘Yes, it hurts. But it does serve as a reminder that I actually killed somebody, and I think I need that.’
Ellie looked at her in astonishment.
‘Leo, what you did was incredibly brave. Mimi would have killed you. You didn’t have a choice. She’d already murdered Sean, and tried to kill Gary. And we mustn’t forget that Mimi had already killed one daughter, and got pretty close to killing the other one.’
‘Do you think she really would have killed Abbie? I know she managed to get as far as her hospital bed — but would she have gone through with it?’
‘I guess that’s something we’ll never know. She had a lot to lose if her daughter lived, and apparently Abbie had made it abundantly clear that she was horrified at the thought of having Mimi back in her life.’
‘At least Abbie’s recovered,’ Leo said. ‘Do you think she’s going to be okay?’
‘She’s traumatised, and not for the first time in her young life. Kath says she was terrified when she found out who ‘Chloe’s mum’ really was. She’d been told she would never have to see her birth mother again after her tortuous early years. And if that wasn’t enough, then that bastard Gary knocked her over.’
Tom Douglas Box Set Page 79