‘Fucking hell, Simone.’ A pause. ‘You …’
‘I what?’ Simone replies, spoiling for another argument.
‘You always do things alone,’ he finishes quietly with a deadened truth that could shatter Simone’s heart. Yes, she wants to tell him. Yes, since my parents let me down, yes, yes, yes, I was forged this way, unfortunately. She thinks of night after night in foster care, reading books from the library she went to alone, with the card she took out in her own name – the librarian had to putN/Afor ‘parent’ – and thinks,Is it any wonder?
‘I know. I’m sorry,’ she says, and she almost, almost tells him a kind lie, almost passes him a perfectly formed package,a compromise, almost tells him she wishes she had told the police, but, so far, she doesn’t. ‘I’ll call you when I know anything, OK?’ she says. ‘Believe me, I am trying to help everyone. I’m trying to help you,’ she tells him. ‘But … thank you.’ Her voice chokes. ‘I don’t feel alone, actually, knowing that you’re here.’
‘I am here,’ he says. ‘I can …’ He pauses too, and Simone wonders if there are tears in his eyes as well as hers. ‘If you need me,’ he says, both an incomplete and complete sentence. And then he finishes it. ‘If you need me, I will be there. Any time. Any place,’ he says, and he is crying properly now, and so is Simone. She drops to a crouch by the side of the road, one hand on the phone, one hand a balled and dusty fist at her eye, rubbing furiously, thinking,Fuck that man who took Lucy and ruined everything, fuck the bad luck, fuck it all.
CHAPTER 15
Sometimes when in a crisis, Simone finds comfort in things that are precise and useful. What Three Words is just that; it tells her exactly where the bag is.
The sun is momentarily behind a rare cloud, the light matt and milky, and Simone is glad of the break from the searing heat as she stares at the run-down premises she’s about to enter.
It looks like a garage, one storey. Plants creep slowly around the building, strangling the roof. Plants she doesn’t recognize, hardy leaves, dry, that remind her of where she is.
Apparently, the bag sits towards the back of this building.
The only way in is a roller shutter door, which is open about a foot at the bottom. Simone stares at it like it is a spider she is afraid to catch. It’s so dark inside the garage that nothing is revealed to her by looking, even when she ducks down and peers in at the complete obsidian blackness.
She can’t go in there. That is what she thinks, looking at it. Who knows what could be waiting in there for her? These are criminals. Professional kidnappers. They could be setting her up. They could be undercover police. She could be killed. If she went inside, the shutter door could drop, trapping her. She kneels down again on the street and gets the torch out on her phone, but it seems only to illuminate objects she can’t make out and swirling dust. She tries to wrench up the roller shutter to reveal more, but it won’t move.
She sits back on her heels and wonders if she will look back on this moment, the beat before she headed on in there, in trauma. She wonders if she will ever talk about it to Damien, to a therapist. To the police.
Simone doesn’t usually put things off, but she does right now, her whole body alert. She can’t go in there. It is as claustrophobic to her as a coffin.
She walks a little loop around the garage. There’s a brick section to the side, which she runs a hand along. It comes away grubby, the surface already hot in the morning sun. A small green door forms the entrance to the adjoining garage, and she peers in the window at the top of it, but it’s too dirty to see anything. She wipes it and reveals a lean-to full of gardening equipment. A lawn mower, a pair of shears, two containers full of some sort of mulch. She steps back after several moments.
She’s got to go in. She’s come this far; she has to complete her task. She tries the shutter door again, but it won’t move, even when she uses both hands and all her body weight, and rages at that horrible kidnapper who chose two small women as his targets.
She checks behind her, looking for any clue, anything, but there’s nothing, only cracked, uncared-for pavements, cat’s cradles of overhead power cables, a steel trash can down the street and houses with satellite dishes next to their front doors.
She’s got to do it. She takes a breath, starts crawling in, leaving the sunlight behind and heading straight into the darkness, and it is as though somebody has turned her eyes off but has dialled up her other senses. The distant sound of traffic. A smell: metallic, fresh. A dripping. Simone stands up in the darkness, waiting for her sight to adjust, alone.
CHAPTER 16
Half the room is in total darkness, the bottom half in bright, white-hot light. Simone can see the concrete floor, her own legs, and nothing else. She waits, trembling, thinking that anybody could be standing in here with her. A drugs baron. The mafia. A hitman, hiding in the shadows with a sniper gun.
Shapes emerge slowly, blocky and large, the detail filling in late. A table, perhaps, then clarity: a workbench. A stainless-steel sink along the back wall, not unlike those at the restaurant. An old fridge, a few toolboxes and, there at the very back, a rifle, hanging still and silently by itself. Simone’s breath catches as she sees it. Maybe they’re normal here, but to her it’s an omen, both that she’s in the right place but also in danger. For the first time, she wishes she had a gun herself.
She turns in a slow circle. Sure enough, the bag really is to the back of the garage, right in the very corner, tucked away in the darkest point of the room.
A sports bag. She didn’t think this through; how is she going to get that back? She will have to sneak it on to the coach, but she came with no luggage … and she specifically said she didn’t have any. She winces and wishes she’d brought a rucksack to transfer the items into, but, really, who could be thinking straight to have done that?
A noise outside, a flutter, only a bird, but it still makes her jump. This garage wasn’t locked. Nobody would storeanything of value in an unlocked garage, so it must mean it’s being watched;she’sbeing watched.
She hesitates, then goes to the back of the room, kneels down almost reverentially in front of the bag. She looks up and around, above and behind her, but there isn’t any CCTV that she can see.
Finally, the moment. What is in this bag?
Really, it doesn’t matter what is inside. She will take whatever it is to get Lucy back. She stops, her fingertips on the zip. The bag is new; it has the rubbery smell of sports equipment.
Somehow, itdoesmatter what it is. She needs to know the risk she is taking. Don’t they expect her to check?
Another glance, this time at the bright underside of the door. She expects to see legs, shoes, men coming for her, but there’s nothing, no one, not yet anyway.
She undoes the bag, zip sliding easily, and, for just a few seconds longer, this is Schrödinger’s sports bag; its contents could be anything. Identities. Passports. Money. Guns. Anything. Until she knows.
