One wrong turn, p.15
One Wrong Turn, page 15
If it was working.
If I was pressing down hard enough.
And if the driver following me even noticed.
Please notice.
I coughed again, covering my mouth with my hand, and as Paul frowned and looked away out of his window, my left foot tapped down on the brake once again. Three rapid-fire bursts. I was so anxious, it was possible that I was much too quick. A frenzied tap-tap-tap that might have blurred into one long pulse.
Followed by three longer bursts.
Taaap-taaap-taaap.
Suddenly, a pale wash of lights oozed through the rear window, rippling across Paul’s shoulders and face as the car drew closer to us. I stayed very still as he tilted his face to look into the side mirror.
Tap-tap—
‘Wait,’ he said, spinning back. ‘What are you doing?’
I froze. Fear curdled in my stomach.
‘Nothing.’
Paul stared at me, angling his gun up towards my face. The space between us seemed to contract. I knew I had to say something, I just didn’t know what.
‘I’m just really nervous and upset.’
I nodded to my right hand on the steering wheel, drawing Paul’s gaze towards how my knuckles were fluttering, my wrist quivering. It was all true. I hadn’t stopped shaking since we’d left the petrol station.
Maybe he also noticed my leg moving. The way it was jiggling up and down, much like his leg had pumped up and down earlier.
But if he did, he didn’t register that my foot was jiggling on the brake. He didn’t see what I was actually doing.
Forget SOS.
Now I was sending out a constant tap-tap-tap-tap-tap. Just an endless stream of rapid flashes to the car travelling behind, urging them to see something, react, help.
I shivered involuntarily, making a show of it, the convulsion passing through my shoulders and torso, and then – finally – I allowed my gaze to flit to the rear-view mirror again.
A breathless second.
The headlamps were even closer now, shining brightly in my eyes. They were coming right up behind us.
. . . -tap-tap-tap-tap-tap . . .
Raising my hand to tilt the mirror, as if to shield my eyes from the glare, I watched as the vehicle began to drift out as if it might overtake us before immediately jinking back in again.
A dose of relief flushed through me.
They can see.
They’ve noticed.
My head went light, the same way it had over the past week or so whenever I’d stood up too quickly. It had been another little hint that I was pregnant.
Hold it together.
They’ll help you.
I feathered the brake even faster, picking up my rhythm, my entire body now visibly shaking so badly that even my lips were trembling. Maybe they’d call the police and they would stop us. Maybe I could get help to Ben . . .
. . . -tap-tap-tap-tap-tap . . .
‘What are you doing with your leg?’ Paul asked me.
‘Nothing. I’m—’
‘Let me see.’
He reached up and flipped on the map light overhead, then snatched for my left wrist and wrenched my arm out of the way, staring down at my leg.
‘Are you touching the brake? What are you—?’
But he was interrupted by a sudden, dazzling flash from behind.
The vehicle following us had switched to full beams.
I stared at Paul. He stared at me.
A split second of uncertainty hovered between us.
Then there was a loud and raucous blaring as the driver behind leaned on their horn, before swerving aggressively out and overtaking, the vehicle’s engine noise surging as they roared and vaulted by.
41
Paul stared aghast at the car that had overtaken us. It didn’t slow, didn’t hesitate. The driver swerved aggressively back into the road in front of us and began to pull away.
My stomach dropped.
I reached for my control stalk to flash my lights at them, but Paul grabbed hold of my fingers, bending them back hard.
‘No!’ he yelled.
‘You’re hurting me.’
He didn’t ease off.
The other car continued to put more distance between us, streaking into the dwindling fog until all I could see were its red lights dimming and winking away into the dark.
Hope dwindled in my chest. My pulse pounded behind my eyes. The ligaments in my fingers were beginning to strain and creak.
Come back.
What had the driver been thinking? Why hadn’t they guessed that I was in trouble?
‘Paul, please let go.’
I wrenched my hand away, a bit surprised by how easily it came loose from Paul’s grip, then I curled and uncurled my fingers, testing their movement. My fingers ached, but not as badly as they might have done. He could have broken them if he’d wanted to.
The other car had gone now. We were alone again. The driver had probably thought that I was a young and reckless teenager, fooling around with some friends. Or old and nervous about driving in the fog. Or maybe they’d been worried about being tricked into stopping by someone who meant them harm.
Someone like Paul.
I shuddered.
‘That was stupid,’ he told me.
I could feel the anger coming off him, could hear the stress and frustration tightening his vocal cords. A blunt aroma of body odour emanated from beneath his coat. He was breathing harshly, clenching the gun in his hand.
My fear ratcheted up another notch.
‘Do you want to get yourself killed? Is that what you want?’
‘No,’ I whispered, trying to make myself as small and unthreatening as possible.
‘What were you thinking?’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Are you?’
‘Yes.’
He gave me a hard look under the glow of the interior light, as if he didn’t believe me for a second. I was scared he might hurt me again. But then he grunted, and backed off, and reached up to switch off the light.
Just before he did – in the split second before the bulb was extinguished – I saw him cast a quick, darting look into the back.
For a sickening moment, I felt as if he was pressing his gun into my throat again. I almost choked.
It was only a there-and-gone glance over his shoulder.
But I didn’t think he’d been looking at the baby car seat. He’d been looking at Samantha. And there had been something odd about the expression on his face. Something out of place, somehow.
I wasn’t sure, at first, what worried me about it.
I guessed maybe he was concerned about Samantha and wanted to check on her. Or perhaps he was ashamed of everything he’d done, and of how aggressive he was being with me.
But it hadn’t seemed that way. The look he’d given Samantha had been more of a cagey, nervous glimpse. Almost as if he was checking something with her, or as if—
Oh, shit.
A surging current snapped and arced through my veins, lighting my nerves, igniting my thoughts.
I bolted upright in my seat. My skin writhed with a prickling intensity. My heart flooded with cortisol and pumped once, very hard.
Something was different.
Something had changed.
By trying to signal to the other driver, I’d somehow upset the balance inside the car.
The balance between Paul and Samantha.
I drove on in the humming silence, but my driving was on autopilot because I was listening and thinking intensely, my body crackling with adrenaline, my mind whirring and churning, desperate to understand what was going on.
I was thinking about how Paul and Samantha had interacted since we’d picked them up, and about how Samantha wasn’t saying anything or doing anything to intervene or help me, and about what exactly that might mean.
She hadn’t placed a 999 call.
She hadn’t texted for help.
She hadn’t warned us about how dangerous Paul could be.
She hadn’t told Ben to get away when he was sitting in the back of my car with her at the petrol station.
I looked up into the mirror and, again, her gaze was focused somewhere outside her side window, staring into the night.
I think she’s the weird one, Ben had told me. When I was filling up the car just now, I was standing right next to her and she sort of covered up her face with her hand.
Wait.
The fog outside my windscreen hurtled towards me. My hearing went funny. An intense and sickly heat crept up from my waist to my scalp.
At the time, I’d told Ben she’d covered her face because she’d wanted to discourage him from talking to her. I’d thought it was because she was trying to shield us from Paul.
But what if I’d been wrong?
Not just about that, but about everything.
Because it hadn’t just been Paul who’d been uncomfortable about stopping for fuel. Samantha had tried to talk us out of it, too.
And perhaps they both had the same reasons for that. Perhaps Samantha had been every bit as conscious of the security cameras as Paul had been.
He can’t see us, Paul had said when the old man had started to approach our car. I won’t let him see us.
Us.
US.
I nearly gagged as I glanced up sharply, my eyes darting to the rear-view mirror, something dense and spongy lodging in my throat.
Samantha must have sensed the change that had come over me because slowly – too slowly – she turned her head and held my gaze.
Something in her eyes.
Something new and disturbing.
A dark and glittering light.
‘I don’t know why you keep looking at me for help,’ she told me. ‘I’m not who you think I am.’
42
Ben
Ben tossed the road map to one side, staring blindly ahead, willing the junction he was looking for to emerge from the fog.
‘Where are you?’
Nothing.
‘Please, where are you?’
There.
The turn appeared out of nowhere. Ben braked and fumbled with the gearstick, raising the clutch much too sharply as he indicated to swing left onto the country road to Fowey. The car shuddered and lurched, throwing him forward against his seat belt, his hand slipping off the steering wheel.
Shit.
He grabbed for the wheel and veered around the corner, the little car wobbling and rattling, his shoulder banging against the side pillar.
He was out of control.
Everything was.
The absolute dark and the smothering fog, the unfamiliar car and his own frenzied heartbeat.
This has to work.
Driving back here had seemed like a risk worth taking. A logical move. The kind of strategy he could have presented in one of the meeting rooms at his offices, explaining his reasoning to the other solicitors in his team, calmly outlining why – if you set aside emotion – it was the right way to go. Because he hadn’t known if he could catch up to Abi, or where exactly Paul was taking her, but he had known where they’d been.
All of which made sense. Logically. If you could set emotion aside.
Which he absolutely couldn’t, and the fear that he’d screwed up was tearing him apart.
Come on.
The radio was on, tuned to a local station. The news was full of the major traffic accident near Redruth. There was nothing yet about what had happened at the petrol station. Nothing that could tell him where Abi might be.
Ben’s head ached. Not as badly as before, but the swelling around his eye was spongy and spreading, obscuring his vision.
Would he have taken the decisions he’d taken if he hadn’t banged his head? Maybe he had a slight concussion. Maybe he’d lost all perspective.
There should be police at the petrol station by now, surely. They should have found Gary’s body, at least.
An image blared in Ben’s mind of the bloody scene he’d witnessed, and he hunkered over the steering wheel, pushing it away.
The country lane narrowed. The hedges crowded in on him from either side. The fog seemed so much worse here now, nearly impenetrable, swarming in the night.
Abi.
He hated that he’d left her alone with Paul. If anything happened to her, he’d never forgive himself.
They didn’t know why she’d lost the last two pregnancies. Abi’s doctor couldn’t tell them. There was nothing to indicate a specific problem, her doctor had said. It happened. They should try again.
But Ben knew that Abi had been afraid to try. They’d both been anxious. They’d avoided discussing it. And now that she was pregnant, what impact would the stress and trauma she was experiencing have on her body?
She hadn’t told him she was expecting, and that cut him deeply. He was an idiot for working this weekend. Why had he let work get in the way of their relationship? What had he been thinking?
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, into the dark. ‘I am so sorry, Abi.’
Leaning forward, he squinted through the windscreen, the wiper blades flapping from side to side as the headlights pawed at the darkness.
The road twisted to the right, then the left. It rose and fell. The engine revved wildly, but he was nervous about letting go of the steering wheel to change gear, so he didn’t. He was scared of pulling his attention from the road – even for a second – and crashing.
‘How much further?’ Ben muttered. ‘It can’t be much further.’
Abi could be anywhere by now.
She could be dead.
‘Come on.’
Another corner. A new, much steeper gradient.
And then, finally, he glimpsed hazard lights blinking amber in the murk, somewhere off to the right.
‘Oh, thank God.’
He could barely see the lay-by and he had to slow all the way down until it was safe for him to steer abruptly across the road and stop almost where they’d stopped before, only this time he was facing in the opposite direction.
There was no question that the fog was even denser than it had been earlier. The Mercedes was almost completely invisible.
Yanking on the handbrake, Ben made a grab for the multitool and unclipped his seat belt, then scrambled out onto the road and ran hard into the mist.
Please don’t let this be a mistake.
Please let me find something.
Abi had told Paul and Samantha that she only had a small boot. She’d made them bring the bare minimum with them. Hopefully that meant they’d left other belongings in the car that might tell him where they were heading, who they were. Perhaps he might find a hire agreement for the car that would give him their full names. He could tell the police.
The hazard lights flashed lazily as the outline of the car began to slowly reveal itself to him. First he saw the front bumper and the raised bonnet, then the wing mirrors and the wheels.
Grit slid under his shoes and he stumbled and slipped. The frosty air burned his face and hands.
The Mercedes waited, its hazard lights painting his lower legs a vibrant orange as he veered towards the driver’s side of the car.
The instant Ben got there, he grabbed for the handle of the driver’s door, but of course it was still locked. The car rocked and trembled as he pulled on it. Moisture shivered on the paintwork. The deeply tinted windows were slick with damp.
He fumbled with the multitool, struggling to find the button for the torch in the dark. The bulb came on, shining directly in his eyes, and he swung it downwards, blinking, then ducking towards the driver’s window, cupping his hands to the glass.
A jolting, half-second of disbelief as he played the beam inside.
A spasm of horror.
And then Ben screamed.
43
I’m not who you think I am.
What did she mean by that? What could she mean?
Something shattered inside me, jagged fragments spreading out, cutting me on my insides.
I tore my attention away from Samantha and looked back at the whispery fog and the grey tarmac zipping towards me in the light of my headlamps.
My head pounded sickeningly and I suddenly found that I didn’t want to look at her again. I was afraid of what I might see if I did.
The interior of my car seemed to get darker, smaller. Everything was too contained, too cramped.
‘Abi,’ Samantha said, ‘are you all right? You look awfully pale.’
‘I don’t understand what’s happening.’
‘Don’t you?’
She’d changed.
Everything had.
It was there in her voice and her attitude. There was a sly confidence about her now. A secret authority.
Finally, I did look in the mirror and what I saw there stunned me. She looked like a completely different person.
Gone was her meekness and her cowed nature. A taunting smile played about her lips.
As I watched, she straightened her shoulders, sitting upright in her seat and smoothing her hair, brushing the dampened curls clear of her face. In the glow of the satnav, I noticed a slight imperfection I hadn’t spotted before. A tiny scar carving through her eyebrow.
‘Paul told you his wife was hurt, that she needed a hospital.’
His wife.
Shit.
‘I’m Collette. Not Samantha. Samantha is Paul’s wife.’
I looked over at Paul. He seemed somehow broken and reduced. Just as Collette had emerged, chrysalis-like, Paul had slumped. He was breathing so hurriedly he was almost hyperventilating, and he was physically shaking, his leg jiggling up and down even more furiously than before.
‘Where is she?’ I asked him. ‘Where’s your wife?’
Paul blinked rapidly behind his spectacles and shook his head hopelessly, looking like he might cry.
‘Tell me.’
‘She was . . .’ His voice cracked. ‘She was in the car.’
Saturday Night
10.31 p.m.
Samantha felt as if her entire world was wobbling on a wire as Paul sped out of the driveway of her parents’ home, gravel spitting up from the tyres of the car. The drenching fog twirled in the twin beams of their headlamps. The wipers swept from side to side.
