The Choice

by Lake, Alex

  Sometimes it’s better to say nothing, he said. It’ll pass.

  She had assumed he had guessed, and had given her the message he wasn’t interested as kindly as he could.

  After all, he was going out with Heather Stanford, who was five foot ten tall and looked like a model.

  So she had moved on, and the crush had dissipated, and they had become friends. She liked having him as a friend – he was smart and handsome and charismatic and had something mysterious about him.

  And now it turned out he’d been in love with her all along.

  She could barely believe it. How had she missed it?

  How had he hidden it? How had he managed to conceal something so powerful it had led him to this?

  No – she was missing something. When he came back she would talk to him, calmly and rationally. She would ask him to explain and she would tell him the truth and he would see the mistake he was making.

  And he would let her go.

  She sat on the edge of the bed, her legs suddenly too weak to support her. He had to let her go. She couldn’t allow herself to think otherwise.

  Because the alternative was too awful to contemplate.

  1

  She is where she has always belonged. Obviously she is a little bit fragile, for the moment. She’s been through an emotional time, even if it is what she has been wanting.

  She is also upset at how I did it. I can understand that. Perhaps I should have revealed myself immediately, then she would not have been hurt. I think this has turned her against me, for now at least. But she will come around. What’s that trite saying people like so much? Love conquers all? Perhaps it is true.

  And then we can get on with our lives.

  It will be hard, of course. She will have to stay hidden, isolated in the lake house for quite some time. We can hardly go swanning around London together!

  But, eventually, I will tell my friends I’ve met someone. I’ll describe dates at the theatre and meals at smart restaurants. I’ll show them photos of us together.

  And one day they’ll meet her. I know her name already – Angelica.

  Angelica. Meaning: angel, or angelic.

  She has always been my angel. And I have always been hers.

  I’ve wanted to tell her for years, but the time was never right. When we first met I lacked the confidence – ironic, given how everyone saw me, but that was all a front – and couldn’t face the fear that she would reject me.

  Because I loved her from the moment I saw her. I don’t know why; I knew that she was the piece that would complete me, and that I had to wait for the right moment to make her mine.

  She’ll be surprised when I tell her how I waited. She thinks – like everyone – that I’m confident and sure of myself. Arrogant, even. I am, now – I’ve made myself that way – but back then I wasn’t.

  I was weak and nervous. I didn’t let it show, but I was.

  Hardly surprising, given what had been done to me by my bitch of a mother.

  She drove my father away with her constant nagging, and then married Richie.

  Richie. Just remembering his name makes me furious. I could kill all the world. Burn it down.

  He had what they called a ‘thing’ for young boys.

  Me included.

  After the first time – I was twelve – he explained what he would do to me if I told anyone. It involved pain, and humiliation.

  But I did tell someone, a year later, after fifty-two weeks of Richie coming to my room once or twice or three times a week.

  I told my mother. I had to escape, so I told her.

  And she did nothing. She called me a liar. Said I had never liked Richie and was making it up to split them apart.

  So I had no alternative. Richie had to go. He was the first person I killed, and I did it from necessity.

  The strange thing was that I found I enjoyed it. We went sailing on the River Dee and he fell overboard when I capsized the boat with a well-timed gybe.

  He was not a swimmer, especially when encouraged to slip under the surface by the blade of an oar. The autopsy uncovered the bruises, but they were easily explained. He had banged his head in the chaos.

  Killing him made me happy, because he was gone. It also made me calm, for the first time in my life.

  Every time I’ve needed that calm I have been able to find it that way. I am not a serial killer – I am not tawdry like that, I do not need a fix – but I have a right to peace of mind, don’t I? And all – well, most – of the people I have killed have deserved it.

  My mother deserved it more than most. It was fitting that she died in the same way as Richie. A boating accident, which her young son survived.

  A ‘cruel irony’ the local press called it. Poetic justice was the phrase I preferred. I made sure she understood that, before I pushed her head under the water.

  They sent me to live with my uncle. I hated it, but then, a year later I met Annabelle. She was perfect.

  She was my salvation.

  I should have told her, but I was too weak. I let her slip away, and then she met that fool.

  I never understood why she married him, but then she told me. He made her do it. I always knew he must have. Coercion and blackmail.

  That was the message from the first book.

  In the second she asked me to rescue her. The third; well, that could hardly have been any more obvious. And the latest? That was the final piece of the puzzle.

  That one said, ‘it’s fine to do this. Put aside your doubts, and do it now.’

  And I have her. We have each other.

  Of course, there will be a problem with her meeting people if she looks like she does now. Someone will recognize her. It’s inevitable, in the modern world. Stuff gets all over social media. The only way to stop it would be to hide her away forever, and neither of us want that.

  We might be exceptional people, but we want to live a normal life together. We want the world to witness our love.

  So she will have to change her appearance. I have a plan for that, though. It will be hard and painful, but she will accept it.

  Great love requires great sacrifice.

  She knows that.

  She may protest, but that is just proof of how great the sacrifice is.

  Of how great our love is.

  She will see it, in the end.

  2

  Now, to deal with her fool of a husband. I call him.

  ‘Matt? It’s Guy. Any news?’

  ‘No.’ He sounds depressed, as he should. I’m looking forward to hearing it get worse. ‘The police lost the van. They think the kidnapper switched to a different vehicle.’

  My plan worked. Useful information, and not the first useful information he has given me. The text messages immediately after the handover were vital – I had not anticipated a drone. If this idiot hadn’t told me about it, I would have stuck to the A roads to get to the van.

  And they would have followed me and seen what I had done.

  As it was, I took the motorway. Thanks, Matt, you useless clown.

  ‘Jesus. I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘What next?’

  ‘I don’t know. I really don’t.’

  ‘Can I help?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ A pause, heavy with emotion. ‘Not at this point.’

  ‘OK. Well, I’m in the office. Don’t hesitate to let me know.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘And the kids? How are they?’

  ‘Holding up, just. But it’s going to be a tough road. They miss their mum.’

  ‘I’ll bet.’

  She won’t be missing them, though. That was the message of the fourth book, This Is Not the End. She told me how to do this.

  A mother who didn’t want her offspring. No surprise, given they came from the man who had forced her into marriage. Yes, in the book she changes her mind, but that was for public consumption. It was not part of the message. The message was that there was no reason to leave her there, trapped in her l
ife with this fool. She didn’t want the children. I was free to act.

  And the title: how much clearer could it be?

  There’s a knock on my office door.

  ‘I’ll call later,’ I said. ‘And good luck, Matt.’ I put the phone down. ‘Come in.’

  The door opens. It’s Jenn. She joined a few months back, working in foreign rights.

  She fucking annoyed me back then. She was nondescript. Brown, curly hair, a plain face. Nothing special about her at all.

  And the bitch turned me down, a week after she started here. I was bored. I am often bored. I decided to use her to alleviate the mood, so I suggested a drink after work.

  I have a boyfriend, she said.

  Imagine: her turning me down.

  It fucking pissed me off.

  It’s only a drink, I said. To say welcome.

  The damage was done, though. I had asked her out and she had said no. I was enraged. It was humiliating. She should have been grateful; instead I was feeling like a fool.

  And who was she to make me feel like that?

  I taught her a lesson, though, not that she knows it was me.

  ‘Hi, Jenn,’ I say. ‘Good weekend? Any news?’

  Her face is narrow and her eyes sunken. She’s lost quite a bit of weight in the last three weeks. That’s what worry does to you.

  ‘No,’ she says.

  ‘Still no word from him?’

  It feels so good to twist the knife. A knife I had put there, with great pleasure.

  ‘No.’ She shakes her head. ‘He’s disappeared.’

  ‘People don’t just disappear,’ I say. ‘Something must have happened.’

  ‘Or he got fed up of me. But he could have said something.’

  ‘Jenn,’ I say, ‘there’s no way he got fed up with you. You’re amazing.’

  She gives the ghost of a smile. ‘Thanks. But I’m not sure that’s true.’

  Lovely. A bit of insecurity, accentuated by the fear that he simply left her because she is worthless.

  He didn’t, though. He is in the boot of his car, his neck snapped in two, in the corner of a scrapyard. Of course, I told him why he was going to die before I did it.

  Because your stupid girlfriend didn’t give me what I want, I said. And I am a man who gets what he wants.

  And I do. I always do.

  Matt

  Matt put the phone down.

  ‘Who was that?’ DI Wynne said. She and DS Dudek had arrived at his house a few minutes earlier.

  ‘Guy Sanderson,’ Matt said. ‘He’s Annie’s agent.’

  Dudek made a note in his notebook. ‘Might he know if there’d been a problem with a fan?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Matt said. ‘But he would have mentioned it by now.’

  ‘You never know,’ Dudek said.

  ‘We’ll interview him,’ Wynne said. ‘Do you have his contact details?’

  ‘I’ll write them down. He lives in London. That’s where his office is.’

  ‘We can call him,’ Wynne said. ‘If he knows anything, we can go to see him.’

  ‘He’d come here,’ Matt said. ‘He’d probably want to see me and the kids anyway.’

  ‘Is he a friend? As well as an agent?’ Wynne said.

  Matt nodded. ‘We go back a long way.’ He pointed to a photo of Norman’s christening. ‘That’s him.’

  Wynne looked at it. ‘I see,’ she said. ‘Give us his details.’

  ‘In the meantime,’ Dudek said, ‘we need to make a list of people we should be talking to. Your colleagues, friends, family. We have to follow every possible avenue.’

  ‘I understand,’ Matt said. ‘Where do you want to start?’

  ‘How about your colleagues?’ Wynne said. ‘Could you give us their details?’

  Wynne

  1

  DI Wynne and DS Dudek sat at a table in a conference room, a china cup of coffee on the table in front of each of them. There was a plate of biscuits; Dudek picked up a pink wafer and dipped it in his coffee.

  ‘That’s disgusting,’ Wynne said.

  ‘It’s not,’ Dudek said. ‘It’s the only way to eat biscuits. Keeps them moist.’

  ‘When you finish there’ll be bits of biscuit in the bottom of the cup.’

  ‘That’s a price I’m prepared to pay.’

  Wynne sighed. ‘They’ll think we’re savages.’

  The door to the conference room opened and a tall woman in her fifties walked in. She was wearing a red skirt and red wedge shoes. She sat opposite them.

  ‘I’m Valerie Cobb,’ she said ‘We’re very concerned to hear about Annabelle. Do you have any updates?’

  ‘Not at the moment,’ Wynne said. ‘Thank you for meeting us.’

  ‘Of course. Whatever we can do.’

  ‘We’d like to meet with Mr Westbrook’s colleagues,’ Dudek said.

  ‘What exactly would you be looking for from us?’

  Dudek sipped his coffee. ‘We’re looking for any information that might lead us to a motive. A reason someone would do this.’

  ‘Someone who had something against Matt?’ she said. She smiled. ‘I think you might be barking up the wrong tree, to coin a phrase. I can’t think of anyone who doesn’t like Matt.’

  ‘A client?’ Wynne said.

  ‘Matt does mainly small-to-medium-sized commercial transactions,’ Valerie Cobb said. ‘He has a group of clients he’s been working with for years. I think they’re all happy with his counsel.’

  ‘Maybe he got something wrong,’ Dudek said. ‘And a client suffered a loss because of it.’

  ‘I would have heard,’ Cobb said. ‘At least, I think I would. I suppose it is possible.’ She smiled again. ‘But very unlikely.’

  She steepled her fingers.

  ‘We – I included – will do whatever we can to help. Matt is a deeply valued colleague and an even more deeply valued friend. But I have to say that I don’t expect you’ll find what you are looking for in his professional life. I can’t imagine how he would have hidden something of this magnitude.’

  ‘You’d be surprised what people can hide,’ Wynne said. ‘For years. Decades. It used to surprise me. But not any more.’

  ‘I suppose you have more experience in this arena than I do,’ Cobb said. ‘But please. Ask whatever you want, of whomever you want. We are at your disposal.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Wynne said. ‘We appreciate it.’

  2

  Valerie Cobb was right. Wynne and Dudek talked to a procession of Matt Westbrook’s colleagues and they all told the same story. He was kind and honest and well-liked, and none of them had any idea who would have anything serious against him, let alone something that could provide a motive for anyone to kidnap his wife.

  They left in Dudek’s Astra. He sucked his top lip.

  ‘Nothing there,’ he said.

  ‘Nothing anywhere,’ Wynne said. ‘I’m going to call Sanderson. The agent.’

  She dialled the number Matt had given her.

  ‘Hello. Guy Sanderson.’

  ‘Hello, Mr Sanderson. My name is Detective Inspector Jane Wynne. I’m working on the Annabelle Westbrook case. Would you be available to answer questions?’

  ‘Of course. I was thinking you’d call. Matt mentioned you wanted to talk to me. That’s why I answered, actually. Normally I don’t pick up if it’s a number I don’t recognize. And you can ask me whatever you like.’

  Wynne winced. She wished Matt Westbrook hadn’t said anything. Even when the person she was talking to was not a suspect she didn’t like them to have time to prepare.

  ‘Thank you. I understand you are Mrs Westbrook’s agent? But you have known her since you were at university?’

  ‘Longer. I met Matt at university – Birmingham, in 2004 – but I’d known Annabelle since I moved to Richmond – the one in Yorkshire – when I was fourteen. We were at school together.’

  ‘Were you friends?’

  ‘Yes. Not super close. We became better friends at Birmin
gham.’

  ‘Why was that?’ Wynne said.

  ‘I don’t know. I think just because when we arrived we knew each other. We did quite different things, though.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I was involved in theatre. She spent a lot of time with Matt.’

  ‘How would you characterize your relationship with Mr Westbrook?’ Wynne said.

  ‘We’re good friends. Very good friends. He’s one of the people I’m closest to.’

  Wynne looked out of the window. It was starting to go dark. It was how she felt about the investigation.

  ‘I know this may be an awkward question …’ she said.

  ‘Go ahead,’ he said. ‘Ask me anything.’

  ‘Did you and Annabelle Westbrook ever have a romantic relationship?’

  ‘Before she met Matt?’ he said. ‘No. We didn’t.’

  ‘And after she met him?’

  He laughed. ‘No, Ms Wynne. We did not. I am very fond of Annabelle, but we have never been interested in each other in that way.’

  Wynne pursed her lips. In her experience, it was near impossible for a boy and a girl and then a man and a woman to be friends for the length of time Guy Sanderson and Annabelle Westbrook had been friends, and for there to be no romantic spark between them.

  But she would have to take his word for it.

  ‘Were you aware of any fan who may have behaved … unusually towards Mrs Westbrook?’ Wynne said.

  He made a noise as though he was blowing out his cheeks. ‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ he said. ‘It’s an obvious place to look. But there’s nothing that comes to mind. Really nothing.’

  He paused.

  ‘Could I call you back?’ he said. ‘You’re breaking up. I’ll use my desk phone?’

  ‘Yes,’ Wynne said. ‘Please do.’

  Bumbling plod will see my number and know I’m in London. That’s what I want – establish distance between me and the events that she’s supposed to be investigating.

  Although she has no clue what’s going on. I was worried the police might be able to figure it out but they are just as useless as I expected.