Finally we arrived back at the van, tumbled in, fired it up, and started driving in any direction.
The road is unlit and the moon’s gone in. It’s pitch dark. We’re on the outskirts of Bridling, and after that there’s nothing but suddenBlair Witch-style woodland. The sides of the road rise up ten feet high on either side, the tarmac sunken between them. It feels like we’re driving into a grave. I imagine unknown figures lying ahead of us in the dark, waiting for our headlights.
‘Al.Al.’
‘Huh?’
‘Can you slow down a bit? There’s nobody after us.’
I ease off, and the needle creeps down from sixty to a slightly less suicidal forty. But at the first turning I see, I brake hard, drag the wheel round, nearly overturn the van hauling it off the road, and switch off all the lights.
‘Al? What the hell was that, you could have …’
‘That was very inconsiderate, I have an over-plastic collarbone …’
‘Who taught you to drive, Vin Diesel?’
‘Shh.’
We’ve stopped on a little farm path, which I can see runs about twenty feet before collapsing into spring mud. Nobody’s going to be taking this exit tonight.
We stay there for a minute, then two, waiting. I’m looking back along the road as if the tarmac’s about to rear up and eat us. And behind all the surface stuff there’s a thought nagging at a corner of my mind, but I’m so tense and exhausted and shocked I can’t locate it.
‘Al, I really think—’
‘Shutup. Just wait.’
Time passes. Nobody overtakes us.
‘OK. OK, we’re probably safe for the moment.’
Elle speaks. ‘What the hell happened back there?’
Em fills her in. I’ve thought of a question I can hardly hold back until she’s finished:
‘Jonny. You said he was in Dubai. Why wasn’t he in Dubai?’
‘I don’t know,’ says Jonny.
‘You said you had flight data! Did you not check if he’d got on the plane? Why wasn’t he in Dubai where he should have been?’
‘Obviously he was in hiding,’ Em snaps. ‘He was waiting in a dark house with a gun. Clearly he thought someone was coming to kill him. Naturally he would have thought it was us.’
‘But we weren’t.’
‘No,’ she says, as if explaining to a kid. ‘We weren’t. So we’re going to be all right.’
This feels optimistic.
Em keeps talking. ‘Obviously we can’t go back. There’ll be someone in the house by now. We must have scared the killer off when he was at the door, but by now he might have—’
‘Or she.’
‘What’s that, Jonny?’
‘The killer. You assumed it was a he. Could have been a she.’
‘Thanks, Jonny. Always good to get a lesson in everyday sexism from an unexpected angle.’
