The man called Jonathan beamed at her.
‘That’s wonderful, thank you. It sounds just like them. Can you tell me where the house is?’
And so she had. And because of that she ended up being forty-five minutes late in getting home. Her father was now in a mood, and when he deigned to respond to any of her questions, he was monosyllabic at best. She needed to make amends for her thoughtlessness.
As she left his bedroom, having received his order for a sandwich, the phone in the hall started to ring. She wanted to answer it, because she so enjoyed chatting to other people – people other than her father, that would be – but she couldn’t. First things first, she needed to at least make him a cup of tea.
She stood in the kitchen waiting for the kettle to boil, but she could still hear the message being recorded on the machine. She recognised Pam’s voice – somebody else she hadn’t seen for weeks. Pam no doubt wanted to know if they could get together for coffee one morning. Chance would be a fine thing. But as she added the water to the teapot, she thought she heard Pam say something about the police.
Abandoning her tea-making, she went into the hall.
Her face flushed with distress as she listened to the full message.
Oh goodness. What have I done? she thought.
54
I’m too stunned to move. How is it possible? How has Robert found us? I know I didn’t leave a single scrap of evidence in the house, and even though he now knew we had not been to Anglesey, I can’t think of anything that would have led him here. I’m almost dazed.
A shout from the children jolts me out of my contemplation. Jaz is pointing towards the road behind me and shouting.
Oh, God – no. Please don’t let it be Robert.
I never gave the children any hint that they should be scared of their father. I didn’t want them to live in terror, and I didn’t think he would harm them as long as I was the dutiful wife. But when I understood the depths of his obsession and acknowledged the full extent of everything he had done, I finally started to believe that we could never be safe with him.
As I turn to see what Jasmine is pointing at, I’m relieved to see that it’s nothing more than a couple of horses going by. She loves horses, and I’d always thought we could arrange riding lessons when things have settled down.
I have to force myself into action.
I need to get the children to safety and call the police. I can’t call them now; it would take too long to explain.
As I stand up, my phone starts to ring, but I ignore it. Nothing matters except getting my children away from danger. I’ve been inactive for less than thirty seconds but it feels as if I may just have risked their lives through my inability to move.
‘Jaz!’ I yell. ‘Come here quickly.’
I run down the beach as fast as I can and grab Freddie, swinging his sturdy little body into my arms. I shout to Billy who is at the edge of the sea, filling his bucket with water.
‘Leave your bucket. Leave it – don’t argue. Just run as fast as you can back to the path.’
I can see that I am scaring them, and Freddie starts to cry.
‘Sorry, darlings,’ I say in a slightly calmer voice, although kids pick up so easily on emotion. ‘It’s a practice for the invasion. I need you all to go to the bunker. You need to hide from the enemy.’
I try my best to smile.
The kids trudge up the beach – not as fast as I would like, but the sand is soft, and it’s not that easy to run.
We stumble across the dunes at a half-run, and past the bench. I pick up my bag and hear my phone still ringing. I don’t have time for that.
As we reach the path that runs along the back of the house, I hear the worst sound in the world echoing through the empty house and out through the open dining-room window. It’s the sound of a ringing doorbell.
The children look at me. But for a second I am glued to the spot. Billy tugs on my hand.
‘What’s the matter, Mummy?’ he asks, confused by my sudden tension.
I crouch down and pull Jasmine towards me.
‘Okay – enemy soldier alert. You’re in charge for this practice, Jaz. You know where to go. Take the boys and run. Stay there until I come for you – okay?’
Jaz looks at me in horror.
‘Aren’t you coming with us?’ she asks in a shaky little voice.
‘I’m going to follow. Let’s see how well you’ve learned the drill. Go on, darling – you’re a brave girl, let’s see what you can do.’
I turn her round and give her a small shove. The boys are looking a bit confused, but my smile tells them everything is okay.
I can’t go with them – he will be round the back of the house in seconds, so they need to go, and I need to head him off.
Jaz glances over her shoulder at me once, and I try to paint a fun, happy face for her, but I don’t think she’s fooled. She knows the enemy is real.
I can’t help wondering if I will ever see my children again.
*
I turn back to the house. He has stopped ringing the bell, and I hope and pray he’s looking through the front windows and isn’t on his way around the back. I need to delay him. If he comes round here now, he will see the children who are not moving nearly quickly enough.
I run at full pelt towards the back door, fingers sticky and struggling with the lock. Finally it’s open, and I race through the kitchen to the hall where I see the outline shape of a man through the frosted glass of the front door as he rears up from where he was trying to peer through the letterbox. I would recognise the shape of that head anywhere.
‘Just a moment,’ I shout, trying to sound chirpy and relaxed.
Anything to give my children time to get away.
I grab a tea towel, as if I’ve been drying my hands, and pull the kitchen door closed behind me. I want him to think the children are here – playing in the garden or on the beach. My heart feels as if it’s going to punch through my chest, but I can’t phone the police. He would be on to me in a second, and his patience will be running out. I’m sure the only reason he rang the bell is because he can’t be one hundred per cent certain that I’m here. If somebody has given him this address, it can only be a ‘maybe’ in his mind so, if he doesn’t want to be reported to the police himself, he will have to pretend to be civilised. At least until he knows for sure.
Finally, I take the key from where it hides on top of a cupboard – too high for little fingers to grab and unlock when I’m not looking. I take a deep breath as I turn the key, draw back the bolts and pull the door towards me.
There he is: his face a white mask, his arms hanging by his side, hands clasped into hard fists.
‘Hello, Robert,’ I say as calmly as I’m able.
But Robert isn’t calm at all. He pushes me with both hands and I slam backwards into the newel post at the bottom of the stairs, trying to suppress a scream. Because if I scream, he will expect the children to come running. And he mustn’t know they’re not here.
He steps into the hall and kicks the door shut with such force that it springs open again and crashes into the hall cupboard.
Still he doesn’t say a word. He just stares at me, and I stare back. His mouth is pinched into a hard line and his eyes are burning.
We stand like that for almost a minute – a precious minute. I’m not prepared to break the silence – the longer it goes on the safer my children will be. And then he utters a single word.
‘Why?’
He says it with such anguish that if somebody didn’t know the truth about Robert, didn’t know what he really was, they would feel sorry for him.
I say nothing. Delay, delay, delay. That’s all I can think of.
He walks towards me and reaches out his arms. I think he is going to try to hug me, and I feel sick. I feel sick because of all the times I let him hug me after I knew what he was and what he’d done – all so that I could get my children safely away.
But he’s not going to
hug me. He’s going to strangle me.
His hands go round my neck and he shakes me. I am coughing, spluttering, and I think I’m going to die. As soon as he’s started, he stops. His hands drop to his side, and he seems almost defeated for a moment. I hope so.
‘No, Olivia. I’m not going to kill you. You know I can’t do that. But I don’t know how you could do this to me – leave me, without a note, without telling me where you were. Do you know the police think I’ve already killed you? They’re probably digging up the terrace this very minute. They will have had crime scene guys crawling all over the place – all because you didn’t tell me you were leaving.’
I can’t help the feeling of satisfaction. Cruel, but nothing compared to Robert’s cruelty.
‘Are you coming back to me?’ he asks.
I put my hands up to rub my neck, and don’t reply for a moment. There are no words I can use that would describe my utter loathing for this man, and I think that maybe by now the children have had long enough to get away.
‘I’ll never come back to you.’
I want to tell him that I’ve seen beyond his mask now. I know what he’s done, and I know who he is. I want to tell him he’ll never see any of us again, but I’ve said enough.
His moment of weakness has passed, and he’s laughing at me now. He thinks it’s funny. Then his face settles into an expression that I know has been there all along, but I’ve never seen it myself. His chin drops towards his chest, his eyes turn into hard pebbles and his mouth opens slightly to display clenched teeth. It’s the face of evil. He pushes me again, but this time to get past me. He’s looking for my children.
I can’t stop him. I don’t have the strength. If I’d thought about it, I would have left weapons around the house – something to hit him over the head with, or stab him in his gut. But I never thought he would find me. The war games exercise with the children was the ultimate precaution, but I didn’t believe we would need it.
I want to run, but I can’t run towards my children and I can’t run away from them either. The magical isolation of this house has one drawback – I can’t run to a neighbour for help. I wouldn’t get more than a hundred metres before Robert would catch me and, anyway, I mustn’t take my eyes off him. I need to follow his every move, because I can’t let him find my children.
I want my phone, but it’s in the kitchen.
It doesn’t take more than seconds for Robert to search the downstairs rooms, and he pushes past me and takes the stairs two at a time to check the bedrooms. I hear wardrobes opening, and a bang as he sinks to his knees to look under the beds. I race to the kitchen while he is upstairs, but my phone has gone. Robert has taken it.
I know he’s in my bedroom when I hear a bark of brittle laughter. He has discovered the decor, which I haven’t had time to change yet.
‘Very clever, Olivia. I underestimated you,’ he shouts, as I hear him dash into the next room.
There’s a crash of a door being flung open, as he discovers the balcony, and I have a terrible thought. I never checked the viewing distance from up there. Will he be able to see the children running away?
I’ve got to interrupt him, so I race upstairs and shout to him. ‘Robert!’ He can’t miss the urgency in my voice. ‘They’re not here. I swear to you, they’re not here.’
He spins round and stares at me. Time stands still for just a second, then he starts to walk towards me, speaking slowly.
‘Where are they, Olivia? I’m going to find them, you know, even if I have to torture the truth out of you.’
I stand up tall, my back ramrod straight.
‘Do you think for one minute you could do anything to me that would make me tell you where my children are?’ I spit the words out at him. ‘That I would sacrifice their lives to save myself some physical pain?’
I goad him. I need to get him out of this room, away from that window. I turn round and start to walk down the stairs. He follows, grasping my long, dyed-brown hair, winding it round his hand and twisting it to get a firm grip. He yanks it backwards so that I nearly fall over.
As we reach the hallway, he wraps my hair more tightly and pulls me through the kitchen into the dining room. I try to reach for him and grab at his arm, but each time I do he pulls harder at my hair. He’s dragging it downwards so I have to walk bent over double, and I can’t reach him to defend myself. He is unbuckling the belt of his jeans as he strides towards the dining room, and in that horrifying moment, I know he’s going to rape me.
Still tugging my hair down low so that I am practically crawling, he kicks my legs from under me, and I crash to the floor. I brace myself for what seems to be inevitable. While I am still struggling to get off the floor, he plants one foot heavily on my stomach to pin me down and hauls my hands over my head. He wraps his belt tightly round my wrists, and fastens it to a radiator pipe. I am helpless.
He grabs a chair and turns it around so the back is facing my head, with the four legs on either side of my knees so I can’t kick him. He straddles the chair and leans towards me, his crazy eyes staring at me.
‘Where are they, Olivia?’ His face is hovering over me, and I notice his lips are swelling and spittle is collecting in the corners of his mouth. I pray that when he rapes me, he doesn’t try to kiss me. I feel myself shudder. He leers at me. ‘I wouldn’t have believed it possible, but at this moment, my darling wife, I want you more than ever. You have never really submitted to me, have you? I should have tried this before.’
I want to be brave and shout obscenities at him, but I don’t want anything to accelerate the inevitable. The longer it takes, the more chance that my children will be safe.
‘I will fuck you one last time, Olivia. And it will be like never before – something you will remember for the rest of your life. But first, you’re going to tell me where the children are.’
I close my eyes. I can’t bear to look into his demonic expression.
‘Let’s see how brave you are, shall we?’ he says. He takes his Swiss army knife – a present I bought for him last Christmas – from his pocket, and opens it to a serrated blade. He pushes the chair out of the way, and jumps on me – one knee on each side of my thighs to keep my legs under control – and leans forwards.
He runs the blade of the knife down the exposed skin of my inner arm, from my elbow to my armpit. Bubbles of blood burst through, and I feel a sharp stinging pain.
‘A taste of the agony to come. I don’t want to do this to you, Olivia. But because of you we can never go home, so unless you get the children and come away with me right now, I’m going to fulfil my promise. The one I made to you two years ago. I told you what would happen if you left me. So where are they?’
I will never tell him. Never.
But then I hear the worst noise in the world. The door from the kitchen into the dining room is slowly opening, and I hear a tearful voice. It’s Freddie.
‘Where are you, Mummy? We don’t like escaping the enemy soldiers without you. Where are you?’
I don’t make a sound, but over Robert’s shoulder I see my three children framed in the doorway, watching.
55
Becky was becoming increasingly anxious. She had called Sophie, who said she had finally managed to make contact with Olivia to warn her. She had tried to get an address too, but as soon as she had mentioned that Robert was on the island, Olivia had ended the call. That was about twenty minutes ago, while Becky and Tom were still en route. But nobody had managed to get through to her since. That didn’t feel right.
The sergeant was doing an excellent job of giving them a tour of Alderney. They were working their way around any properties that might fit the few details they had.
‘The problem is,’ he said, ‘a lot of these properties are owned by people who only come to the island a few times a year. If they’re rented privately, we might not know about it. So it’s going to be difficult. We can knock, but if we get no answer does it mean that he’s holding her hostage, or does it
just mean the house is empty?’
They pulled into the drive of a lovely stone house, and Becky could see immediately that the back garden stretched almost to the sea. How wonderful to live somewhere like this. They knocked, but there was no answer. Tom disappeared around the back of the house and was back in seconds.
‘I don’t think it’s this one. The beach isn’t sandy, and I’m sure Mrs Evans said Robert was muttering about the colour of the sand,’ he said. ‘Olivia may have shown him the view from her window, but it certainly wasn’t a view of Cemaes Bay.’
‘You’re right, Tom. I should have remembered that.’ Becky could have kicked herself. They may not have known the significance of the colour of the sand, but it was definitely the sand that Robert was interested in. Mention of the bench hadn’t proved to be as helpful as they had hoped. There were benches dedicated in loving memory of husbands and wives all over the island.
They climbed back in the car, and set off for the next property – this time focusing only on those close to sandy beaches.
‘As a matter of interest,’ the sergeant said as he overtook two cyclists, ‘what do you see happening if we find Mr Brookes?’
‘We’ll arrest him on suspicion of murder,’ Becky answered.
‘Sorry, Inspector,’ the sergeant said with a slightly pained expression. ‘You have no jurisdiction here. You can’t arrest him, and I can’t arrest him on your say-so.’
‘Shit,’ Becky muttered quietly. Did that mean if they found him, he could just walk away?
‘It’s okay, Becky,’ Tom said, turning round in his seat and giving her a reassuring smile. ‘I knew about this. When you were chasing everybody to get things done as we boarded the plane, I made a call and asked for a warrant to be issued. Somebody’s on it. They’re going to have to deliver the original here. What happens then?’
Tom looked at the sergeant.
‘We have to present it to the Chairman of the Court of Alderney. When do you think your warrant will arrive, Chief Inspector?’
‘Tomorrow at the earliest – and call me Tom, please. This is Becky.’
Tom Douglas Box Set Page 107