‘Stay where you are!’ Dominic shouts into the dark. ‘Stay exactly where you are!’
He runs past, just a few feet away from us.
I can feel the pistol digging into the small of my back, ridged metal against my skin. But even unloaded it’s better than nothing, better than bare hands. I count to three in my head and then move away from the corner.
I run headlong into the dark, Mia clutched tightly to my chest, turning through corridors, left and right, purely on instinct, lungs screaming, heart thudding, my foot a symphony of agony with every step. Going as far as possible away from the man with the knife.
A long glass window.There. A solitary car in an empty car park. The BMW.
Finally, the door. As I push my way through it another shout of rage echoes down the corridor. I turn right and run towards the distant street lights. Clutching Mia with one arm, I draw the pistol. The night air is cold and sharp, only a full moon and the weak light of a neighbouring warehouse throwing any illumination onto the car park. I’m on some kind of industrial estate, windowless blocky buildings looming up on both sides. No flats or houses.
‘Help!’ I shout. ‘Help me!’
My own voice echoes back to me on the night air.
I run on, cold air burning in my lungs, through the car park, towards a boarded-up security post with barriers lowered on both sides. Running, running, expecting a rough hand on my shoulder at any second. Barefoot, half-dressed, half-blinded from the blood running into my eye, one arm clutching Mia to my chest and the pistol in my other hand.
I dodge around the security barrier and run out into the road.
A pair of headlights approaches, twin halogens dazzlingly bright after the darkness of our escape.
I stop in the middle of the road and raise the pistol.
WEDNESDAY
13
Leon
So close. Close enough to touch. Close enough to reach out and grab her, if he needed to.
To be that close to her – for the first time – gave him a shiver of excitement, of expectation. But not there, not then; there were too many people around, too much potential for disturbance. Of course he had established certain facts already, facts that pointed strongly in this direction. But to have it confirmed gave him a glow of satisfaction. The switch on the train was a surprise, something he wouldn’t have predicted, but it didn’t change what needed to be done. If anything it made it easier, gave him more options. New options. And it added another twist, another layer of fascination. They would talk about this one foryears.
Leon didn’t grab her. Instead he had watched her walk out of the station and onto Melcombe Place, only half-aware of the tedious security man holding up a hand to him, ‘Sorry to trouble you sir but I’ve had a complaint about your behaviour,’ giving his little pidgin-English lecture on respect for other passengers and allowing people the personal space they need and ‘the lady says you were taking pictures without her consent’. Leon had stopped walking and studied the security guard, a small, thickset man with big hands and a heavy forehead that gave him the look of one of the cave-dwelling Morlocks fromThe Time Machine.He pasted on a concerned expression.
‘I’mterriblysorry,’ he’d said, putting on his best faux-Oxbridge accent. ‘Just a bit of a misunderstanding, I think.’
Little people – like this officious security guard, given a tiny bit of power and squeezing every last drop from it – were always impressed by a posh accent, whether they admitted it to themselves or not. A thousand years of hereditary monarchy and the oldest class system in the world had to be good for something. Leon wondered what it would be like to take the stun gun casually from his pocket, hold it to the security guard’s thick neck and give him a taste of 50,000 volts right there on the station concourse. He put his right hand in the pocket of his black leather jacket, fingers wrapping around the stun gun’s smooth plastic.
It was always comforting to feel the power of it in his hand. The pure elemental force of it, like having a bolt of lightning tucked into your pocket. But unleashing it there wouldn’t have been a smart move. Walking through the concourse he’d counted at least six cameras on this area, two pole-mounted, two on the shops and two more on the main exit – not to mention the smartphones carried by every passenger that would inevitably turn in his direction at the first sign of a confrontation.
So instead he had smiled, and nodded, and said sorry.
By the time he had finished apologising and shaken off the Morlock in the high-vis jacket, she was nowhere in sight. Leon hurried to the exit, his thin legs propelling him forward through the crowds of people. He checked left and right, then saw the taxi rank, a small queue of people waiting for black cabs. An old white-haired guy, tweed jacket and tie, was helping her into a taxi. Leon had glimpsed the first half of the number plate but the taxi was already pulling away, a bus coming up behind and blocking his view. Her cab turned right onto Great Central Street and was lost among the afternoon traffic. He had stared after it, still feeling the tingle of excitement.
She was gone, for now.
But it didn’t matter. He’d got what he needed.
14
The interview room is a small airless box, a table bolted to the wall and four uncomfortable plastic chairs. I thought there might be one of those two-way mirrors like they have on TV police shows, but there’s nothing like that. Just a thin window threaded with wire mesh, four tired grey walls and dirt baked into every surface. It’s gone midnight and the police station is quiet around me.
I’m shaking and can’t stop, the spike of adrenaline long gone, a crash that’s sent my energy levels plunging. My hands shake like an old woman’s when I try to pick up the Styrofoam cup of sweet tea. A jittery shake in my shoulders, my thighs, my tapping feet, one of them freshly bandaged by a softly-spoken paramedic. I sit at the small table in a faded blue sweatshirt I was given by the duty sergeant at the front desk. It’s rough blue cotton, slightly too big for me – a man’s size, probably – frayed at the neck, with slack cuffs and the ghost of a logo that tells me it has probably been washed a thousand times.
I can smell Mia on my skin, my hands, on the collar of my shirt. That sweet, clean, infant scent, a perfume of innocence. My arms feel empty and my skin itches with thoughts of Mia, of where she is, who’s looking after – have they fed her again, have they found Kathryn? They offered me a sandwich an hour ago but I couldn’t eat, couldn’t even force a mouthful down.
I can’t stop thinking about the scrawled note Kathryn left for me.
