Tom Douglas Box Set

by Rachel Abbott

  The children can’t believe how lucky they are to be living this close to the beach every single day, and not just for holidays. It pushes everything else to the backs of their minds, and they will have had three or four months of this before the reality of winter takes the shine off. Perhaps by then I will be able to send them to school. But I don’t know. While Robert is on this earth, I am not sure we will ever be safe, because he has made it very clear that he isn’t prepared to live without me.

  For now, though, I feel secure. There is nothing to guide him to us here, and gradually I am beginning to relax.

  39

  ‘Liv? Oh thank the Lord for that. I can’t tell you how relieved I am to hear your voice.’

  Sophie hadn’t realised that she had been holding her breath.

  ‘Are you okay, Soph?’ Liv asked. ‘I’ve been worried about you. You’re usually so prompt. I nearly called you, but I didn’t know for sure if it would be safe. Are you okay? Is your mum okay? I thought maybe she’d had another fall, or something.’

  Liv was rambling, and Sophie knew she had to shut her up. But she didn’t know how to tell her what had happened. Thank God she had left her special pay-as-you-go phone – or ‘Liv phone’ as she called it – in the car when she’d unpacked the shopping. At least Robert hadn’t got his filthy hands on it.

  ‘Listen – I don’t want you to panic, but he was here. Robert. The arsehole was here. In my fucking house.’

  Sophie could have kicked herself. She didn’t mean to sound so angry. She had planned to be calm. But as soon as she mentioned his name her anger and hatred boiled over. She heard a gasp and realised how stupid she’d been. Liv had so much to worry about and she didn’t need to add to her distress.

  ‘Oh Sophie, no. Oh God, I’m so very sorry. What did he say?’

  How could she tell her that it wasn’t so much what he said?

  ‘He’s not going to give up, Liv. I’m sorry, but you’ve got to believe me. He was mental, incensed, practically foaming at the mouth. Look, I’d spare you this if I could, but he’s going to move heaven and earth to find you. Are you sure you’re safe?’

  ‘Never mind me, what about you? Did he hurt you? Is your mum okay? Please tell me Robert didn’t hurt her? I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean you to suffer.’

  Sophie heard a sob from the other end of the phone, and screwed her eyes tight. Bugger.

  ‘Mum’s fine. Don’t worry. We’re both fine – but Liv, are you sure you’re safe?’

  ‘I think so. I don’t know how he could find us here. There was one little slip at home, but Robert wasn’t paying much attention. We’ll be fine. But it’s you I’m worried about. How the hell did Robert find you? Why did he even come looking for you?’

  ‘Listen, I need you to calm down because I’ve got quite a bit to tell you. So, first of all, where are the kids? Are they okay?’ Sophie asked.

  ‘They’re fine. Actually, they’re having a whale of a time.’ There was a pause from the other end of the phone, and Sophie could practically see her friend trying to pull herself together. ‘They’re playing on the beach. I’m sitting on a bench nestled in the sand dunes, watching them. If it wasn’t for everything else, I’d feel like I was in heaven. I just need to watch the waves for a moment and listen to them gently whooshing on to the shore, and I’m calm again. It’s amazing how soporific it is.’

  Sophie relaxed. Liv clearly felt she was in a safe place, and right now that was the priority.

  ‘Well, don’t fall asleep on me. I need to tell you what’s been happening. First of all, Robert knows I’m the one who’s been staying at Mrs Evans’ place in Anglesey.’ Sophie waited, expecting an explosion of sound from Liv.

  ‘Oh,’ was all she got. She waited to see if Liv would say more, but it seemed to take her a while to gather her thoughts. ‘How did that happen? Do you know?’ Liv said with remarkable calm. This wasn’t supposed to have happened.

  ‘I think I’ve worked it out. There was a dreadful couple staying at the place. The wife never had her stupid camera out of her pudgy little hands, and I’d been dodging around for a couple of days to avoid the silly cow. Anyway, I was coming out of the front door, and she got me. I turned back quickly, but apparently she’d managed to capture my profile. She sent the photo to Mrs Evans at the guest house. God, I’m a stupid idiot. I should have snatched the camera and thrown it in the sea. I’m so sorry, Liv.’

  Sophie couldn’t help thinking that she’d let Liv down.

  ‘Sophie, darling, please don’t apologise for anything. You’ve been amazing. You’ve done more than I could ever have asked of anybody. Just tell me what happened.’

  ‘Your creep of a husband came a-calling.’ Sophie told Liv the rest, leaving out anything to do with tying to chairs or knives in wounds. Liv listened without saying a word.

  ‘Then finally, he asked me where you were.’

  ‘And what did you say?’ Liv responded quietly.

  She couldn’t tell Liv she had passed out at that moment so wouldn’t have been able to answer even if she had known.

  ‘Well, I don’t bloody know where you are, do I, so I didn’t tell him anything. You made the right call there. I wouldn’t have told him, but it’s better that I really don’t have a clue.’ Sophie paused. She was now going to have to explain about the police. But before she did, Liv started talking.

  ‘But how did he know where you live, Sophie?’

  Sophie sighed. Liv had still failed to completely grasp the depths of Robert’s early obsession, in spite of all that had happened since.

  ‘Liv – listen to me. Robert wasn’t just some guy who had a crush on you all those years ago. He was as obsessed then as he is now. You came with me to see my mum lots of times, and Robert being who he is, there’s more than an outside chance he was following you, watching you. It’s what he does. So he would know exactly where my mum lives. He couldn’t have known I’d be here, but he had a pretty good idea that she might actually know where I was – and I guess he just hit the jackpot.’

  ‘Did he know about your visitor in Anglesey, though?’

  ‘Yes – that bit worked as planned. Of course, because it was me and not you that was staying there, it didn’t have quite the result we’d expected. I had to talk to the police too. They found me from the picture, but I think I handled that okay.’

  ‘It’s fine, Soph. We knew they would be looking for me and the kids. What did they say?’

  Slowly Sophie went through her conversations with the police, making sure she didn’t slip up and mention the hospital.

  ‘So did they ask about your visitor?’

  ‘Yes, of course they did.’

  ‘And what did you tell them? I really need to know.’

  ‘I told them it was Dan.’

  40

  The choice of Alderney as my hiding place came about by chance. I needed to find an island because I wanted the children – Billy and Freddie at least – to believe that they were still in Anglesey. Silly, really, because Anglesey is so big that I’m not sure they were ever aware that it is an island. But still, that was how my fevered brain was working. And there is something safe about an island. Particularly one with no car ferry service. Surrounded by water, it feels as if the sea is protecting us from harm. One minute the water shimmers calmly in warm sunlight, but the next it can be raging, boiling, as if to ward off invaders.

  I knew I wouldn’t be able to fool Jaz about where we were, but I came up with an explanation that I thought would satisfy her. I’d been talking to her a lot about her real father, ever since Robert took her and the boys from me two years ago. I wanted her to know about the other half of her life – the other culture that her father had loved so much. I had learned that Jaz was making up all kinds of stories about Danush, as if he were still a part of her life, as if any day now she was going to be with him. This worried me. Whatever actions I was prepared to take, I needed Jasmine to understand how things stood with her father. I had to teach her about
him, make her understand who he was and why he couldn’t be with us – without telling her everything, naturally. She was too young to grasp the harsh realities.

  I had to explain Alderney to her in such a way that she would keep it a secret. I told her we were going to spend some holidays on a different island – one that I had been to with her father when we had been happy. But she wasn’t to tell a soul. She understood she couldn’t talk about her father if Robert was around. She’d tried once or twice, and Robert had gone berserk, shouting that he was her father. He was the one who was paying for her upbringing. He was the only father she had – and she'd better believe it.

  After those incidents Jaz had never mentioned her father again in front of Robert. I told her we were coming here – to Alderney – so we could remember things about her father together, in a place where I had my best memories of him.

  I’m ashamed to say that this was a lie. I hate the fact that I have lied to my beloved daughter, but Jasmine can read – she knows Alderney isn’t Anglesey. Hopefully the two words are close enough for the boys. Billy is six, but his reading hasn’t been going too well and the school were talking about testing him for dyslexia next year.

  So yes – I’ve lied. But the lies are necessary not just for me, but for my children. Especially for my children.

  The biggest problem I had to overcome was the travel. We couldn’t fly, because the boys would have been so excited they would have been bound to tell Robert. So we had to drive as far as Poole, where we left the car and picked up the boat I had chartered. Of course Robert would check my mileometer, as he did every week, and Poole is considerably further than Anglesey, but I managed to make up stories to account for the extra miles. I even took the children to one of the ruined forts on Alderney and told them it was Caernarfon castle. I don’t think Robert has ever been, so if their description on our return was a little wide of the mark it would have passed him by even if he were listening; but he would know that Caernarfon was at least an eighty-mile round trip from the guest house.

  The children were conscious that the journey took longer, but Robert knew Cemaes Bay was further away than Moelfre, and when the boys said it took ages and ages, he put it down to the ‘Are we nearly there?’ syndrome and didn’t take much notice.

  The boat trip was harder to explain, but easier than an aeroplane. I researched some tourist boat trips around Anglesey, which made it less problematic than I’d first feared. I told Robert about the tours when we spoke on FaceTime, so that when we got home and the children mentioned their sea journey, it was old news and Robert just tuned out.

  It was a huge risk, but we couldn’t just turn up on Alderney on the very day that we escaped. We had to appear familiar to everybody. And for that, we needed to establish ourselves.

  Thanks to Sophie, I have various pieces of documentation in my new name, Lynn Meadows, including a fake passport. Not so hard, it turns out – especially as it was never going to have to pass muster at border control.

  By now I’m sure our real passports will have been found. I wonder if Robert will believe that I went to Iran? I hope so, but what he believes doesn’t matter so much. It’s what the police believe that counts.

  It was hard to contain my excitement after our first trip here in October. I didn’t want to leave. I just wanted to move everything along more quickly and establish our new lives, but I couldn’t. There was too much to plan. Too much to organise. And it had to be perfect.

  I found a house to rent that is sufficiently isolated. Nobody will notice our comings and goings. Not that anybody would think much about it anyway. It turns out that a lot of people come and go all the time. The house is right by the beach and, best of all, it has a ready-made escape route for the children. I am sure we won’t need it, but it gives me an added sense of security.

  During the October and Easter visits, I made sure we were as visible as possible. I had to avoid any children-only events, of course, until my three are confident in their new names. But we joined in some of the group activities such as the Great Shark Egg Hunt at Easter, although the children were more interested in finding the chocolate varieties than the real thing. And we made a point of regular visits to the main shopping street, stopping off for a drink at the busy café and choosing a prominent outdoor table, smiling and nodding a greeting to anybody who looked our way.

  And now, here we are. We can relax. I may have left everything we owned behind us in Manchester, but one thing I am sure of is that there is nothing to connect us to Alderney.

  41

  ‘Alderney,’ Tom said in amazement. ‘Why the hell do you think that’s where she is, Gil?’

  ‘And where on earth is Alderney anyway?’ Becky added.

  ‘It’s one of the smaller Channel Islands,’ Tom answered. ‘I think it’s the closest one to France, if my memory serves me correctly. What’s led you there?’ he repeated.

  Gil tutted in a most irritating way.

  ‘Can we be clear that I am not saying she’s there. Until last Wednesday, somebody using Olivia Brookes’ email address responded to FaceTime messages from Robert Brookes. It doesn’t necessarily follow that this person was Olivia, or that she’s still there. However, you asked me to track down the IP address that she appeared to be using. You may remember I told you that most likely she’d purchased an IP address, and that it was a fake.’

  Tom gritted his teeth. He knew he was being bad tempered, but he just wanted an answer, not a lecture.

  ‘Yes, I remember.’

  ‘Well, I managed to contact the company. Fortunately they’re not one of the more difficult organisations that make you go through hoops to get any sense out of them. Their service is intended for people who want to hide their location from the general public, not for criminals.’

  Tom wanted to tell him to get on with it, but he resisted.

  ‘So, they’ve confirmed the real IP address, and the Internet service provider is a company in Guernsey. I contacted them to get the physical address of the user. However…’ and once more Gil paused for effect, ‘it turns out she was using the Wi-Fi signal from the airport on the island of Alderney.’

  Tom was disappointed that they couldn’t pinpoint her address, but at least now they knew where Olivia was. Or where she had been, which was not necessarily one and the same. Or, indeed, where somebody had been – as Gil had pointed out. What appeared to be great news and a real breakthrough could be yet another wild goose chase. If only he could shake off his grumpiness and feel more positive about their progress.

  What progress? Tom felt the weight of their failure to find these children pressing down on him. Every apparently excellent lead seemed to be a dead end. And what did they really know?

  They knew for sure that the blood on the study wall wasn’t Olivia’s, but they didn’t know anything else, other than the fact that the blood was from a male. If somebody had been killed in that room, they couldn’t just assume that Robert Brookes was the guilty party. But if he were and he had killed once…

  There was no body, but according to Jumbo there was no doubt in his mind that there was one somewhere. There had been so much blood, and when Tom saw the photographs of the luminol he had been horrified by how far the blood had spread.

  He had stood in that very room with Robert Brookes, not knowing that behind him, splattered across the wall, was some poor bugger’s lifeblood. He felt he should have known, should have sensed something, but he knew he was being fanciful.

  Given Jumbo’s assertion that a body was either still on the premises or had been transported to an unknown location, the forensic team had taken both of the family cars to be tested. If a body had been taken from the scene, there was every chance that it was moved in one of the boots or even on the back seat, although either would be quite unlikely in the Beetle.

  Becky was looking puzzled. Something was obviously not adding up in her mind, and Tom realised that he hadn’t really been listening to Gil for several minutes. He had been thinking ab
out the logistics of moving a dead body.

  ‘That can’t be right,’ Becky said. ‘She can’t have been at the airport when she spoke to Robert on FaceTime. He would have known she wasn’t at home. Surely he would have recognised an airport?’

  ‘I can assure you, DI Robinson, that it is right. And I’m not sure he would recognise this particular airport – it’s not exactly a cosmopolitan hive of activity,’ Gil said. ‘I’ve seen photos. But then it certainly doesn’t look like somebody’s bedroom either.’

  Tom felt he had to interrupt.

  ‘We can’t trust a word that Robert Brookes said, and we know that Olivia wasn’t home last week. The only thing we do know is that according to his call logs, somebody responded to him on FaceTime up to Wednesday, and whoever it was – whether Olivia or not – was connected via this IP address, which bizarrely leads us to Alderney airport. But I do tend to agree with Becky that if it was Olivia, it would have been difficult for her to have these conversations from the airport itself.’

  ‘Quite,’ Gil responded. ‘Which is precisely why I made some further enquiries. Apparently this particular Wi-Fi signal can be picked up in several places around the island – so people use it all the time. She could have been anywhere.’

  ‘Terrific,’ muttered Tom.

  ‘Sir,’ Nic was standing behind Becky waving a piece of paper in the air. ‘I heard you mention Alderney, and I’ve been checking it out on Wikipedia. Less than two thousand people live on the island, so she’s going to stick out like a sore thumb if she’s just arrived with three children in tow. Somebody’s going to know where she is.’