‘You tell me he had your daughter?’ he asks.
‘Yes.’
‘That’s how you got her back, then? You shot at him?’
‘Yes,’ she says.
‘He tried to take her while you were there?’ he says in the same accent as the handler.
Simone sighs at his misunderstanding, looking at the highway, the church, the gun.
‘He took her yesterday, then sent an anonymous message.’
A pause. ‘A kidnap,’ he states. ‘So he sent a ransom.’
‘Yes.’
‘He wanted money? Look,’ the sheriff adds, perhaps defensively. ‘I just have to get the story straight before I come down there.’
‘He …’ Simone looks around. The bag is right there, full of cocaine. She could hide it, she could put it in the rubbish bin just down there, but could she?Shouldshe?
‘He … he asked me to meet him to get her back.’ Simone is no liar but, when it comes to it, she finds she can’t say it. Something about the drugs is so very illegal, crossing the border, the value of them … she wants the sheriff here. Wants to explain it to him in person.
She might want a lawyer. She told the truth too quickly about the shooting. She’s always been the same. But now the only witness is possibly dead.
She avoids the question. ‘We met up and he was – he was violent. Things escalated,’ Simone answers. Next to her is the bag of cocaine. She can’t hide it. But neither can she mention it.
‘Right,’ he says. ‘OK, well, we’re attending. Stand by,’ he says. And there’s a beat. A loaded beat, and just as Simone begins to wonder if it’s full of doubt, he seems to confirm it. ‘But I got to say, you’re talking about duress, right? You were forced to act. It’s a defence to any crime, and people know it. We get that a lot.I was forced to,I was threatened, when it’s all made up. I’m not saying you have,’ he tells her. ‘But … if this was just a hit-and-run, a disagreement by the side of the road, say now.’
Simone’s blood turns hot, throbbing like a wound. What is she supposed to do now? She will look impossibly guilty.
‘If this is just a dispute …’ he says.
‘No,’ she replies, her eyes on the cocaine. ‘Just the kidnap.’
She dry swallows. How will this look? Maybe they could get rid of it. Drive it somewhere. Bury it. No. She will explain fully when he arrives. ‘You gather your evidence, right, about the kidnap? And we’ll talk.’
‘OK,’ she says meekly.
You gather your evidence, right?
Something dark is descending around Simone.
Evidence.
Evidence.
Evidence.
She is ringing off, taking off her T-shirt, balling it up, holding it right against the hole left by the bullet to try and save the man who ruined them.
But, inside, she is thinking. She is thinking what the police are likely to believe.
She reaches once again for the kidnapper’s pulse. What was a soft flickering before is harder to find. She digs around in his neck. It’s fleshy and warm, but there’s nothing. She presses harder and harder, desperate to feel it. But it’s gone.
Simone sits back. She is a murderer.
And shelookslike a murderer.
