by T. M. Logan
Listen to this furtive conversation, Ed!
I’m on the phone to Dani!
We’re going to meet in secret, in our ‘usual place’ on Sunday!
Ed had lapped it up, as Ryan knew he would.
The stupid bastard had been so obsessed with his GPS tracker that it never occurred to him there was one on his own car too. So excited to let himself into Ryan’s house that he couldn’t seem to get his head around the idea that the favour had been returned, when Ryan planted the Google searches on Ed’s browser suggesting he was looking for a lonely place in the Peaks to end it all. Finding the unopened packs of amitriptyline stashed in Ed’s study had been an unexpected bonus.
Up here, up on the Dark Peak, squeezing out a few tears at the right moment had been the clincher. He’d been acting his whole life but he was particularly proud of that moment. If the usual techniques didn’t work, a sharp fingernail in the nostril was usually enough to get his eyes watering.
And then Sunday evening had been non-stop, working with the help of his three good friends from the lockbox under the spare bed: Modafinil pills to keep him awake, amphetamine sulphate to keep him motoring – the latter supplied at surprisingly high purity by his dealer Stephen, on the Bestwood Estate – and the night-vision goggles to give him eyes in the dark. The goggles had cost a small fortune from a website selling US Army surplus stuff, but they were worth every penny: you could see a person’s heat signature out to almost five hundred yards. The moors at night, under a cloudy sky, was the blackest place he had ever known. There were parts up there with so little urban light pollution that it was like walking around with your eyes shut.
Pure, true black.
Ed seemed to have picked out his clothes that day to be as anonymous as possible – all dark blues and greys – which had been a big help in terms of the next stage. Because after finishing the digging and composing a couple of heartfelt text messages as he waited for dusk, Ryan had hiked back down off the moors wearing Ed’s baseball cap, jacket and rucksack, driving Ed’s Peugeot the four miles to Ladybower Reservoir, bypassing the tourist trap laybys near the weir in favour of the deserted pull-in at Rough Wood. By the time he had removed his GPS tracker and embellished the scene in the car, scattering the empty blister packs and the nearly-empty vodka bottle from Ed’s drinks cabinet in the footwell, squirting half a syringe of George’s blood into the boot and hiding the crowbar, it was already almost 11 p.m.
At one point during his planning he’d considered using an inflatable to cross the narrow point of the reservoir to cut a mile or so off his journey, but in the end decided against it – being out on the water he’d be in a highly exposed position without a good reason for being there, whereas if he hiked the extra distance up to the next crossing point, he was just another hiker. He would blend in, even though it was late. So he’d walked along the bank to the crossing below Hagglee Ford, up through a steep plantation of conifers and down the other side, passing the route of the old Roman road and skirting a couple of farms down to the railway line, which took him all the way back into Edale by the most direct route. He picked up his car from the car park, applied two inches of carefully placed black tape to his number plates to confuse any ANPR cameras, and taken the country route home to Nottingham via B roads and back roads.
Obviously it was much smarter to do all of that with his phone switched off. Better to explain a day out of contact to his wife – my battery died – than leave a trail for the police to follow. Maybe a bit awkward, but not proof of anything other than a lack of foresight. He’d booked the day off work a couple of weeks previously, when he decided what needed to be done. Explaining to Abbie had been slightly more awkward, but she understood. She would always understand, when he said he had to be away for work. She wasn’t one of those needy women who bombarded you with questions about where you’d been and what you’d been doing.
It was one of the things he liked about her.
After that it had simply been a case of sweeping up the breadcrumbs he’d left behind, getting rid of the trail that had drawn Ed in.
He deleted the fake Facebook profile for Danielle White. It was a shame to have to get rid of the photoshopped images he’d used to create the profile picture of her standing next to the sign at Jacob’s Ladder – so good it was indistinguishable from the real thing, even if he did say so himself – but the image had done its job and now it was time for it to disappear. He’d created the profile using a pay-as-you-go mobile so there was no fixed IP address to come back to trouble him. It was unlikely to be connected to him anyway, or to Ed, but it was better to tie off the loose ends. Ditto the ‘Dani’s Place’ account on Flickr and the burner phone he’d used to call his own cellphone, one in his pocket, the other at his ear, to create the illusion of a call from a secret lover and set the whole thing in motion. He separated the burner phone from its SIM and destroyed both with a hammer, disposing of them in two separate dustbins a mile apart.
Using the last hours of darkness he had let himself back into Ed and Claire’s house in West Bridgford, deleting anything problematic from the search history on Ed’s PC, and checking that the ten searches he’d planted there last week – suggestive of suicidal intent – were still in place. They were. Ed hadn’t looked, because why would he? Then he’d given the cat a few more kicks to shut it up – next time he’d make sure he finished the job he started on that creature – napped for an hour on Abbie’s old bed, showered and changed into his work clothes, and headed into the office grabbing wine and flowers on the way.
All in all, it had been a busy night.
75
Abbie
Abbie ignored him.
Of course he would tell her she was going the wrong way: he was a pathological liar. Their whole relationship was built on lies. He did it compulsively, automatically. She checked behind her and was relieved to see him walking off in the opposite direction, the bright orange of his coat disappearing into a gully.
Dad, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. This is my fault. Where are you? Please be OK. I’m sorry.
She walked quickly, her vision blurred with tears, looking around for the reassurance of other people. But there was no one and the wisps of low cloud were rolling in again, cutting visibility down even further until the edge of the moor had disappeared completely. She checked her mobile again. No service.
The only thing she could think of was getting off this awful moor. This hideous bleak place that was literally in the middle of nowhere. Back down to the village where she could get a train home, back to her mum. Back to DC Preston, to show him what the private investigator had found. She would tell them the report had mysteriously been redirected to Ryan’s address, that Ryan had gone completely off the radar for twenty-four hours when her dad went missing. That he had access to her parents’ house. How he knew the keys had been left in the ignition of her dad’s car when it was abandoned.
Just keep walking.
Don’t look over your shoulder.
She marched on, the ground uneven beneath her feet, keeping her eyes on the few yards in front of her. Angrily cuffing the tears away from her cheeks with the sleeves of her jacket. Swallowing down the sobs and fighting against the urge to simply lie down on the floor and curl up into a ball. Just put one foot in front of the other, keep going, keep heading downhill until you are back down on the edge of civilisation. Concentrate on that.
Don’t look over your shoulder.
She looked over her shoulder.
Ryan was nowhere to be seen.
He’s left me, she thought. He’s finally gone. And so here I am, on my own again. She felt sick and dizzy, numb with disbelief that she could have misjudged this man so badly, that she could have known him for almost nine months, shared his house, shared her innermost thoughts with him – and never really known him at all.
The ground dipped and hollowed out, a series of deep gullies opening up that looked like channels carved by winter rain. She’d not noticed them on the w
ay up, but they had cut away from the path higher up and this was surely the quickest way to get back to it. The ground was sloping away, moving slightly downhill. She felt sure this was the right direction. The channels formed gouges in the moorland that dropped down almost six feet – deep enough for her to be invisible to Ryan. He was marathon-runner fit, Iron Man fit, and strong too. She was reasonably fit from training for the 10K, but not fit enough to outrun him over a long distance. If he couldn’t see her though, he couldn’t follow her.
She walked down into the gully, following the path as it curved first one way then the other, a deep track scored through the moorland. Dark earth banks high on either side of her provided some shelter from the weather, although the sun had yet to break through the clouds, glowing white behind them. She checked her watch. The sun was coming down behind her and over to the left. Was that where it should be, if I’m headed back to Edale? She wasn’t sure. She rounded another bend in the channel, following a slight line of descent, the earth beneath her feet loamy and dark. Tussocks of grass pushing through here and there. She pulled out her mobile again, hoping that by some miracle there might be one beautiful bar of mobile reception here so she could call her mum, call the police, call anyone. But there was nothing. No 4G, no 3G, no internet, no calls. She cursed the phone and shoved it back in her pocket.
She came around another bend in the gully and stopped.
A figure blocked her path.
76
Abbie
Abbie stared at him. This man, this stranger, wearing her husband’s skin.
Ryan gestured to the sloping walls of the channel they were in.
‘They’re called groughs, these gullies. Rainwater carves out the channels in the winter, but they dry out in the summer.’
‘Leave me alone, Ryan.’
‘I wasn’t kidding when I said you were going the wrong way.’ He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. ‘Edale’s back that way. This path just takes you further onto the Dark Peak.’
Abbie shook her head, closing her hands into fists.
‘You’re a liar,’ she spat, her voice trembling. ‘My dad was right about you all along.’
Ryan laughed, taking a step towards her. ‘Your dad’s the entire reason you’re here. If he’d been able to trust you, to trust me, none of this would have happened. All of this is his fault! You do see that, don’t you?’
Abbie’s heart was racing. ‘What, I would have been happier to be oblivious to all the stuff in your past? To who you really are?’
‘Of course,’ he shrugged, as if the answer was obvious. ‘No one actually knows anyone, do they? Not really. They think they know, or they know what the other person’s willing to show them, but they don’t truly know them. It’s impossible. The only person you can truly know is yourself.’
‘Everything was a lie. Everything about you.’
‘But that doesn’t matter – because you would have been happy. Don’t you see?’ He clasped his hands together in front of him. ‘I would have made you happy, I would have been the best husband ever.’
Abbie still couldn’t take her eyes off him, this man she loved.
Had loved.
‘No,’ she said finally.
‘I still could be,’ he added. ‘I love you, I want to be with you, nothing else matters. I can make you—’
‘What happened to your first wife, Ryan?’
‘She wasn’t a good person.’
‘What about your foster mother?’
He shrugged, taking another step towards her. ‘She died of cancer.’
‘What happened to my dad, Ryan?’ Her voice was high and brittle now. ‘What did you do to him?’
Ryan shook his head. ‘I really liked him, you know.’ He moved closer. ‘He was a genuinely good guy, we had a lot in common.’
She took a half-step away from him, her elbow brushing the dark earth wall of the gully.
‘Just let me go, Ryan.’
He frowned, as if he was disappointed. ‘Let you go, so you can discard me like you did poor George? So you can look for someone better? So you can go around screwing whoever you like?’
Abbie’s mind flicked to an image of George, feeling a deep pang of sorrow. She knew now why he had gone missing, what had happened to him: Ryan had perceived him as a competitor, as a problem to solve.
She blinked the image away. She couldn’t think about it now. ‘It doesn’t have to . . .’ She took a breath. ‘I didn’t mean it that way.’
He gave her a sympathetic frown, head cocked to one side. ‘I’m sorry, my love, but I can’t let those things happen.’
She sagged back against the earth bank, eyes cast down to the ground. A broken sob escaped from her chest.
Ryan smiled and turned away to check back over his shoulder. The moors were virtually deserted today, but it was always better to—
She drew back her left fist and punched him with everything she had, her big diamond solitaire catching and ripping the skin above his mouth. As he reeled back in surprise she summoned the self-defence mantra her dad had drilled into her before she went to university.
Eyes, balls, knees or toes. Hit hard, run fast, scream loud.
She swung a kick at his crotch, an audible oof from Ryan as her boot connected. Then she turned and sprinted back down the gully, dodging around one corner, then another, her arms pumping, her boots scrambling for purchase on the uneven ground. Hide and seek. She could do this. She was good at it.
‘Help!’ she screamed, beginning to hear Ryan’s ragged breaths behind her. ‘Help me! Anyone!’
This gully was a death-trap, she now realised – he must have planned it this way. It deadened sound and made her almost invisible to anyone above unless they were virtually beside her. She had to get out, find a way back up onto open ground, look for a walker, a path, a sign, anything. Get down to where there was a signal on her phone. She ran on, her lungs burning now. She had to—
Her legs were grabbed from behind and she crashed down onto her face, elbows jarring with the impact. Before she could catch her breath Ryan was on her, his weight on her back, as she desperately tried to crawl forward. As she hauled herself along in the dirt, she felt her nails cracking and splitting, but it was no use, he was too big, too strong, and in a moment he was fully on top of her, his lips next to her ear, the citrus aftershave that had grown so familiar now poisonous in her nostrils.
‘Help!’ she screamed again, her voice high and desperate.
In one powerful movement Ryan flipped her onto her back and straddled her, pinning her arms with his knees then punching her full in the face. The utter surprise was almost worse than the pain blooming along her jaw, the shock of being hit like an explosion inside her head.
She cried out and he punched her again, the back of her head smacking against the ground.
‘No one can hear you anyway, love’ he said. ‘There’s no one for miles. It’s just you and me now.’
Still she fought and screamed and tried to throw him off, bucking and thrashing beneath him, tasting blood in her mouth, in her throat.
And then there was a huge shining knife in Ryan’s hand, its sharp point an inch from her left eye.
She stopped moving.
77
Ryan
Ryan loomed over her, straddling her, holding the big hunting knife. Her body was slack and still, her eyes fixed on the blade: seven inches of stainless steel, serrated on one edge, butcher-sharp on the other, curving and tapering to a single point.
‘Ryan, please,’ she breathed. ‘I’m begging you. Please!’
But the feeling was already building inside him, rising and rising like a swelling tide, the exquisite tingling gathering in every muscle of his body. Just like he’d felt that first time, standing in his bare feet and pyjamas in the snow as he watched the fire – his fire – consume the house with his family inside. Just like every time since.
‘You’re so beautiful right now, you know that? Nothing is ever as beautifu
l, as fully alive, as when it’s right on the cusp of life and death.’
It would be a shame, such a shame, to waste almost nine months’ work. To have got so far and then have to start again. He’d never wanted it to end like this – but she didn’t know when to stop. He would probably have to go somewhere else, but that was OK. He quite liked the idea of returning to Canada: big enough to spread your wings. Lots of space. Lots of opportunity.
He was good at starting again.
He took one final look at her helpless body beneath his, her jacket open, top ridden up to expose her stomach, the smooth skin below her navel with the little birthmark that he had kissed so many times. He had loved her. But she’d left him with no choice.
She wriggled beneath him, but he was heavier and stronger. He had the practice at this. The expertise.
‘Please,’ she said again, her eyes shining with tears. ‘I need to tell you something.’
‘Shush now.’ He touched the knife to her lips. ‘No more talking.’
He laid the point of the knife flat on her jugular, leaning in close so he could see the rapid pulsing of her blood just below the skin. The perfect steel tip was a beautiful counterpoint to Abbie’s pale pink skin, mottled with panic. Just a tiny amount of additional pressure, a movement of no more than a quarter of an inch, would be enough to open the skin and take the point through to the artery. Just a flex of the wrist, no more.
Always remember to turn the head away to keep the blood off your jeans, he reminded himself. He had a full change of clothes in his backpack but preferred not to use them if he didn’t have to.
