‘Yes. Earlier,’ Simone says, feeling slightly sheepish, though Lucy doesn’t seem to notice any secret keeping.
‘It doesn’t tell you. You have to go to the website. Look,’ she says, holding the message up. It says:No CCTV.
Simone sighs. ‘Damn.’
‘Should we ask if there everwasany?’
‘No. That would be too obvious. I’m surprised it’s even still being listed.’
‘Anyway. The only way out is through,’ Lucy replies, and begins typing. ‘We now knowsomething. We’re going to get help. A lawyer can definitely help us to find him.’
Simone hesitates, worried. Just worried – about everything. About paper trails, about police, about Damien, about Lucy seeing the news, too, and, of course, that the British man isn’t their target.
But she agrees, and lets her do it.
Lucy types again for several moments, then flashes the phone at Simone, her eyebrows raised. ‘There’s a lawyer in Terlingua called James Moody who specializes in wrongful convictions.’
‘Moody.’
‘Right? A hero’s name.’
She pauses then, scrolling again, just as Simone is considering it. ‘Look at this,’ Lucy continues, holding the phone up. ‘He says if you have been convicted of a crime you didn’tcommit, to come to him, and in some cases he will work for free. We can tell him about the man. Everything we know about him. Surely a lawyer will be able to find out who was on a coach and what they were called.’
‘Is he …? Can he not hand us in?’ Simone asks, and Lucy shrugs.
‘Or should we not hand ourselves in now, and make the police find him?’ Simone continues, cringing at seeking answers from her daughter.
‘No, that is the exact wrong order to do things in. We get a lawyer, we find him,thenwe go to the police. Look! Oh my God, this is a sign!’ Lucy says, showing Simone the phone again.
On Moody’s website there is a small symbol towards the bottom that says:My Other Site: See My Rentals Here.
‘This could not be more perfect,’ Lucy says. ‘A lawyer with an interest in wrongful convictions and a house to rent. Let me make an enquiry. I’ll use a fake name.’
‘Fine,’ Simone replies, and Lucy types some more, then shows her the house she’s enquired about.
It’s a salmon-pink two-bed short-term rental, rolling week by week. Doesn’t state he requires ID.
‘We could get some advice from him, then, if he thinks we would get off, or if we find this man, we contact the local police there. In Terlingua.’
Simone shivers. She gets that feeling again. A prickling kind of unease. Something about this next phase, their lack of options … How do you prove a crime, even if you find the perpetrator? The man is so unlikely to have left any evidence, was meticulous not to.
‘We can’t stay on the run forever,’ she says by way of an answer, even though she knows that it isn’t.
‘No.’
‘But I can’t imagine handing ourselves in.’
‘I know.’
Later, Simone lies in her crispy sleeping bag, just thinking. Hoping that this British man is a breakthrough, and musing, too, on Damien. And maybe it’s because she’s been cooking. Maybe it’s because they have some forward momentum. She doesn’t know why, but she suddenly realizes what that Instagram post is.
Damien is telling her something. All is not as it seems. It’s a herring, smoked red.
Once Lucy is asleep, she reopens Instagram and uses the restaurant account to reply to its own message. She sends a few simple words that could be anodyne:Can I book an outdoor date?To anyone reading, it’ll look like an Instagram glitch maybe, an enquiry gone wrong.
But Damien will know what it means. Their walks outside, their picnics. Their outdoor dates that they started in the pandemic.
It’s read immediately, possibly by Simone herself; she can’t work it out. Messaging your own account is confusing.
