‘I had your phone, remember?’ He shrugs. ‘Your whole life was on there, birthdays, addresses, diary, messages. She was your most frequent contact. I’ve been keeping tabs on you.’
The sound of a car engine rises up from the ramp below and Dominic’s eyes flick to me, then in the direction of the sound. He slides back into the space between the two big SUVs. The new arrival, a small white Volkswagen, pulls into a vacant spot below us and we both watch as a young woman gets out and hurries to the stairwell at the centre of the level. While Dominic is distracted I circle around and further away from him, putting me a few feet closer to my own car.
He emerges from his hiding place once more, moving closer, cutting off my line of escape again.
‘Just ask yourself how you’d feel,’ he says, his voice low. ‘If something happened to one of those little boys.’
Noah, Lucas and little Charlie. A cold stab of fear slides between my ribs.
‘Is that a threat?’
‘It’s a hypothetical. Someone’s come after you twice already, who’s to say they’re going to stop? They found you once, why couldn’t they find you again?’
‘You lay a finger on any one of them and I’ll—’
‘Me?I’m not talking about me. I’m talking about whoever’s doing all this.’
‘Leon Markovitz?’
‘Possibly.’
‘If not him, then who?’
‘You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. All I can say is that I think we both want the same thing, you and I. But I’ve run out of options. You’re the only one who can help her now.’
He comes closer and for the first time I notice a desperation in his eyes, an anguish, that I hadn’t seen on Tuesday. His big shoulders slump and his chin drops, the dark circles heavy under his eyes. He looks exhausted, bone tired.
‘Will you help Mia?’ His voice is barely above a whisper now. ‘Will you help me?’
It occurs to me that he’s never actually told me what his interest is in all of this. In the handful of hours we spent together on Tuesday, I assumed he was Kathryn’s ex-husband or rejected boyfriend, out for revenge. But I didn’t ask for the truth, and he never offered it.
‘Who are you, Dominic? Tell me, and I’ll think about it. Tell me the truth: is Mia your daughter, are you not allowed to see her anymore? Is that what it is, a restraining order? Are you Kathryn’s ex, denied access to your own flesh and blood?’
He looks at me for a long time, his eyes filled with a plunging sadness I’ve not seen there before. Eventually he shakes his head.
‘No,’ he says. ‘Mia’s not my daughter. And she’s not Kathryn’s either.’
41
‘So who are you?’ I say, trying to recalibrate everything according to what Dominic has just told me, to assemble all the different fragments of this puzzle. ‘And if Mia’s notyourdaughter, who is she?’
‘It’ll be easier for you if you don’t know. All you need to know is that she is in terrible danger, she’s out there, she’s defenceless and we have to get a warning to the people looking after her. You have to get her back. You’re the only one who can help me, because you’ll be able to get close to her. They won’t let me anywhere near.’
‘Then you should tell this to the police, they can—’
‘We can’t trust the police!’ There’s a sudden fury to him, anger crackling like a surge of electricity. He gestures to the car park around us. ‘Haven’t you got that yet? You’re not listening to me! Why do you think I’m like this, why do you think I’m constantly looking over my shoulder? Why do you think I have to bring you up here, to check you weren’t followed, to check you’re not working with them right now? The police messed up everything from the start. If it wasn’t for them none of this would have happened. Their investigation was screwed from the beginning and then they tried to fit me up, tried to make me take the fall for it because they couldn’t do their jobs properly. Suchbullshit.’
I swallow hard on a dry throat. All the calm, the fatigue in his posture has gone. Instead there’s a furious tension in the set of his jaw, in the ridged knuckles of his clenched fists. Can he even distinguish the truth anymore? Can I trust anything he says? The wrench still clutched in my right hand feels small and light and useless against his anger, and I’m suddenly aware again how close we are to the edge of the roof. He could probably pick me up with one hand if he decides to throw me off.
‘Kathryn said that too,’ I say quietly. ‘About the police.’
‘Damn right,’ he growls. ‘She had a gut feeling for what was going on.’
I need to calm him down, avoid setting him off again. Keeping my voice soft, I say, ‘Is that why she ran?’
‘She’s a smart girl, she knew Mia was in danger. It’s been days now since I heard from her. She’s not answering her phone, she’s not been back to her flat.’
‘You think something has happened to her?’
