One wrong turn, p.9
One Wrong Turn, page 9
My heart thudded. My mouth went dry.
The silver BMW was gone, which meant that I had an unobstructed view to my car.
And I could see that Paul was out there already, sitting in the back, gesticulating furiously at Samantha.
Saturday Evening
7.20 p.m.
Samantha went to her old bedroom at the top of the house, closing the door behind her. It was still decorated the same way, more or less. The same off-white walls, the same sturdy dark furniture, the same single bed with the white cotton duvet. Her old band posters had been taken down and replaced with generic coastal scenes, but otherwise, she could have been fifteen again.
Fifteen, with the curtains drawn and her duvet pulled over her head, curled into a rocking ball of anxiety and dread. Exam stress. The boyfriend who’d dumped her. The best friend she’d fallen out with. The sailing instructor who’d cornered her in the boat house and said things he shouldn’t have, and whom her parents had believed over her.
She’d crashed. She couldn’t cope. She’d seemed to lose all sense of herself. And so her parents had summoned the family GP and he’d talked to her quite sternly, and prescribed some medication, and recommended a therapist, and all of it had helped over time.
A little.
But whenever she came back here, into this room, she got the strangest sense that the real her had somehow been left behind here, trapped in these walls. Lost to the pills and the upset and the sadness.
Until Paul had rescued her.
He’d ignited a pulse of hope in her when they’d first met. She’d been thrilled by his charm and his devil-may-care attitude. The way he’d rolled the dice – in more ways than one – when she’d been introduced to him at the craps table at the pretend casino her marketing firm had put together for local businessmen on a pleasure boat in Bristol Harbour. Paul had lost all his chips that night, but he’d gone home with her. The biggest win possible, he’d said.
Now, sitting on her bed, she clenched her phone tight and dialled Paul’s number, but when he picked up she couldn’t bring herself to talk.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked immediately.
Because he got her. He understood her. He always had.
‘It’s Dad, he . . .’
And then Samantha took a breath and explained in a rush about his ultimatum. About how he wouldn’t give them the money unless she stayed behind with Lila.
‘But . . .’ Paul paused, and said the next part very carefully. ‘You do know that’s not possible, don’t you?’
She didn’t answer. She couldn’t. It would be too much.
‘What did you tell him?’ Paul asked her.
‘Nothing. Yet. I was scared about him calling the police. I went into the garden for a while, just to get some air, and then I came upstairs to call you.’
‘OK, I’m coming back. I’ll talk to him myself.’
‘No, don’t!’ She rocked on the bed, the mattress springs creaking in the same sad and familiar way they used to when she’d rocked here before. ‘That will just make it worse. Mum is with him. She’ll talk to him, I think. We just need a bit more time, please.’
‘We have to have that money, Sam.’
‘I know.’
‘Unless . . .’
Her heart skipped. ‘What is it?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe we can give them what we have already.’ He was talking about the seventy thousand hidden in the suitcase in their hire car. The money they’d been driving around with for days. ‘And maybe I can get more. Somehow. A way to buy us time.’
‘Time?’
Her head was getting dizzy. She hated that idea. She couldn’t stand to think of any of this going on for a second longer than necessary.
‘There has to be a way I can get us more money,’ Paul muttered.
‘But on a Saturday night?’
‘Maybe. Talk to your dad again. Tell him we want to stick together as a family. But do everything you can to convince him to give us that money, OK?’
20
‘Now what?’ Ben asked me.
I shook my head. I didn’t know.
My scalp prickled with unease.
The heating vents roared overhead.
Paul hadn’t spotted us. He was concentrating on Samantha, his face flushed and shiny, his hands describing sharp, abrupt gestures. He looked incensed and out of control, so animated that my car was rocking with his movements.
Samantha was leaning backwards against her window with her upper body angled away from Paul. I could only see the back of her head, not her face, but her posture suggested she was scared.
‘You need to get out there,’ I told Ben.
‘And do what?’
‘Calm him down.’
‘And if I can’t?’
‘Then we’ll call the police. But first we should separate them. One of them can stay out there and the other one can come in here. I’ll talk to the guy who works here, Gary. He said he was locking the doors at midnight but hopefully he’ll understand. He seemed like a good guy.’
Ben pulled a face as if he wasn’t convinced by my plan, but I knew we didn’t have time to waste.
‘Please, Ben. Just stop them arguing and get them apart for now.’
Ben hummed dubiously and rose up on his toes, squinting through the fog at my car.
I could understand his reluctance. Ben was fit from all his running, but he wasn’t big or muscly, and he wasn’t used to physical confrontations. In our time together, he’d always made light of his beta qualities. One of the things I liked most about him was that he didn’t try to act more manly than he was. And Paul was bigger than him, older than him, and apparently much more angry than him.
‘I’ll ask Gary to come out and help you,’ I said. ‘He’s big.’
‘How big?’
‘I’ll get him, you’ll see.’
‘Is he still in the back?’
I squeezed my hands into fists, looking behind and around me. The shop seemed somehow quieter than before. I backed up a few steps and scanned the next aisle, but it was as empty as everywhere else.
‘Hello?’ I called.
No answer.
I spun and looked towards the door that was ajar, expecting Gary to appear at any moment, the air inside the shop seeming to vibrate with an unnatural silence.
Then I looked outside again and my stomach knotted.
Paul was now leaning his upper body across the baby car seat, jabbing his finger in Samantha’s face. I didn’t think we could wait any longer.
‘He’s really losing it,’ Ben said.
‘Go,’ I told him. ‘I’ll head out the back and find Gary.’
‘Promise me you’ll bring him.’
‘I promise.’
Ben puffed out his cheeks, shaking his head, then he groaned and darted forward, the glass door sliding sideways ahead of him, breaking into a sprint as he crossed the forecourt.
‘Hello?’ I called, louder this time.
There was still no response.
I moved around the end of the counter towards the door into the back room, pushing it open a bit wider.
‘Gary?’
My voice sounded too small in the silence of the shop.
Glancing outside again, I could see that Ben had run around and opened the back door of my car where Paul was sitting. Ben then backed off and beckoned Paul out, putting some distance between them.
I switched my gaze to the feedback from the security monitor. In the bottom-right window of the screen, I could see Paul climbing out of my car and nodding his head repeatedly, raising his hands up by his shoulders in a placatory gesture.
I was torn between going out there or sticking with my plan to get Gary as backup.
Promise me you’ll bring him.
Placing the flat of my hand on the door, I pushed it fully open and stepped inside.
Saturday Night
10.11 p.m.
‘We don’t trust Paul,’ Samantha’s father said. ‘It’s as simple as that.’
‘Mum?’
Samantha couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She couldn’t understand why her father would do this to her. She’d spent hours talking with her parents, desperately reasoning with them, then nudging and cajoling them. She’d really thought they’d begun to understand.
The money was right there on the teak dining table they were standing around. It was neatly stacked inside a ‘bag for life’ from their nearest supermarket. One hundred and eighty thousand pounds in banded stacks of fifty-pound notes covered by a clean tea towel. It was such a ridiculously mundane way for her mum and dad to store the money. But it was the only mundane thing about the predicament she was in.
She’d thought about just taking the money and running. She definitely had. But if she did that, her dad would call the police. She knew him. She didn’t doubt that he would. And that was the one golden rule they’d been warned not to break.
If you contact the police, or tell anyone who contacts the police, she dies.
‘Sweetheart.’ Her mother reached for her cheek, smudging her tears with her thumb. Her touch was startlingly cold. ‘Please try to see this from our position. We just want to keep you both safe.’
‘But he’s my husband.’
‘More’s the pity,’ her father muttered.
‘Daddy!’
Silence in the room.
Samantha could feel the pressure building inside her, swelling out from her aching heart. The shakes were getting so bad it was as if she could feel herself trembling apart, bit by bit, piece by piece, scattering all over the floor.
21
The temperature was noticeably cooler in the back room. It felt for a moment as if I’d entered a walk-in freezer.
The walls were painted a bland, institutional grey. The floor was uncarpeted. There was a lot of heavy-duty metal shelving loaded with goods and supplies.
‘Hello? Gary? We need some help.’
Still nothing.
I was about to give up, turn back and hurry outside to join Ben when a small noise made me pause.
Tap-tap.
It was muted. Two fast, quiet knocks.
I stepped in further.
The noise came again.
Tap-tap.
I shivered.
It sounded as if it was coming from the back corner of the room, somewhere behind a run of shelving units.
Glancing behind me towards the main shop, I debated what to do, feeling a twinge of discomfort, but then I remembered my promise to Ben and I moved forwards.
And jumped.
Shit.
I clapped a hand over my heart, feeling a thudding through my chest.
For a second, I’d thought somebody was standing there, but it was just a thick brown jacket hanging on a hook alongside a hi-vis bib.
Next to the coat hooks were six metal lockers, one of them bearing Gary’s name, and next to that a mop and pail. The nearby shelves were stocked with bottles of cleaning chemicals and huge drums of toilet tissue.
Tap-tap.
The hairs on the back of my neck rose up as I turned to face the far end of the room.
In the foreground, I could see a small desk with a flat-screen computer monitor on it. The screen was divided into twelve windows, many of them displaying footage from additional security cameras. There were views from inside the shop and the stock room (in which I could see a ghostly rendering of myself), as well as the wider forecourt. I could no longer see the view of my car clearly because a drop-down menu was overlaid on top of it with a mouse cursor resting over the word ‘File’ at the top of the screen.
Tap-tap.
The noise was coming from a back door beyond the desk. It was trembling in the faint breeze from outside.
Then I flashed back to Gary’s yellow e-cigarette and suddenly it made sense.
He must have gone outside for a vape.
22
The door trembled again in the breeze – tap-tap – and a draught of freezing air wafted in from outside.
Sliding my handbag behind my hip, I pushed the door fully open and stepped out onto a sloped concrete pad at the side of the building.
It was dark and very quiet.
There was no canopy to protect me from the night fog and it instantly closed in around me, smelling dank and mouldy. The ambient glow of the forecourt lights pulsed in the mist around a corner to my right.
‘Gary?’
I stepped forward again and a security light blinked on behind me.
I spun and looked up. The silhouette of a security camera was just visible alongside the dazzling bulb.
Easy, Abi.
Everything was oddly hushed. I couldn’t hear any sounds from the forecourt. No shouts from Ben or Paul. Nothing from Samantha.
‘Gary?’ My voice wobbled. ‘If you’re out here on your break, can you say something? We really need you on the forecourt.’
A scuffing noise to my left.
I hesitated for a second, then ventured towards it, wafting the fog from in front of my face. A caged-off area gradually emerged from the gloom. It was filled with tall metal trolleys, recycling bins, a dumpster.
‘Gary? Are you out here?’
I couldn’t see him. There was no sign of him at all. No coloured glow from his e-cigarette. No chemical odour on the air.
One of the wheeled metal cages was jammed with torn and flattened cardboard packaging. Some of it rippled in the breeze. Was that the noise I’d heard?
Then the sensor light blinked off, plunging me into darkness.
You have to go back now. You have to help Ben.
But before I moved, the light blinked on again.
When I turned, Paul was there.
Saturday Night
10.13 p.m.
Samantha stared at her father, knowing how much what she said next might cost her, wondering if she dared.
‘Are you . . .?’ She gathered herself. ‘Are you trying to make me choose between you and Paul? Is that what this is? Because, Daddy, I’m sorry, but I’m not prepared to make that choice. And I really don’t think you want to hear the outcome if I do.’
Her father breathed out heavily, dipping his head, clenching the polished timber of the ladder-back chair in front of him. For an unsettling second, Samantha felt as if he was squeezing her heart in his hands.
‘He’s lied to you, Samantha. He’s put you in danger. He has you both running around who knows where? How did he even know to go to these people for money in the first place? Have you asked yourself that? Truly, Samantha, how well do you know your husband?’
23
Paul didn’t say anything. He didn’t move. But he was studying me intently, as if he was waiting to gauge my reaction or didn’t fully trust the one he was seeing.
Where was Ben? Why wasn’t he with Paul?
My knees trembled. I resisted the urge to take a step back.
Reaching for the strap of my handbag, I coughed drily and said, ‘You frightened me.’
Paul didn’t apologize. He didn’t speak. There was no trace now of the anger I’d witnessed from him just minutes ago.
For a dizzying moment, I had the bewildering sense that the two of us were standing at the precipice of something. I just didn’t know what that something was.
‘Where’s Ben?’ I asked him.
He delayed for a moment before answering. ‘He’s in the car. What are you doing out here?’
I could have lied or deflected. I could have asked him the same thing, but something told me that would be the wrong move to make. I wanted to ask him about the empty baby car seat, but again I sensed it wasn’t the time.
Paul’s drenched mackintosh shone like wet plastic in the glare of the security light. The lenses of his spectacles flashed brightly. His hair was soaked and flattened on his head.
I didn’t like that we were alone back here. I was painfully aware of how secluded the area was. Ben couldn’t see us from the car. I couldn’t see him. I really wished he was with me right now.
‘I thought I heard something,’ I managed.
Paul didn’t ask me what I’d heard or why it had intrigued me. And that bothered me. A lot.
This is not good. You need to get yourself out of this situation.
I had no idea where Gary was. I didn’t know why Paul had been yelling at Samantha, or why they’d lied about having a baby with them, or why Samantha had been signalling to me for help in my car.
‘We should probably get back,’ I said, taking a small step towards him. ‘Ben will be wondering where I am.’
Paul didn’t move. He didn’t step out of my way.
I faltered, choked by a sudden swell of dread in my chest.
The security lamp burned above us. We were only five or six metres apart.
‘Listen,’ I told him, raising my hand. ‘I don’t know what you’re doing, or what is going on, but I don’t like it. You’re acting kind of weird and—’
Scraaaaaape.
I jolted.
The noise came from behind me, from somewhere in the caged-off area.
An icy drop of fear hit my stomach and rippled outwards.
I’d heard it, and I could see that Paul had heard it, too.
I wanted to look behind me.
I wanted to identify the source of the noise and reassure myself it was nothing to worry about.
But I was scared about showing my back to Paul.
I wavered, and then I began a small half-turn, just a tiny pivot.
‘Don’t!’ he shouted.
A bolt of fear tore through me as I froze and looked back at him, my every muscle locked stiff.
He shook his head slowly. Just once. The muscle by his eye flickered again.
I backpedalled, liking this less and less, needing more distance between us, my legs stiff and unyielding, nearly tripping in my haste.
‘Stop!’
I didn’t.
Paul cursed and then his feet slapped tarmac as he rushed after me, but I’d already reached the perimeter of the cage by then, my hand grasping for the cold, damp metal, dragging myself around until I saw the dumpster, a recycling bin and—
