by Mel McGrath
Chapter 54
Honor
For a few moments after the explosion everything is a blur. A fiery ash rains down and pricks her skin. She blinks dust from her eyes but still she cannot see Alex. People dart by but she does not hear them. The world is a confusing rush of lights and dust and movement. As her head begins to clear a single word surfaces. Nevis. She hears herself scream, ‘My daughter! Where’s my daughter?’ And then her legs are carrying her fast towards the bridge. Her body collides with another. Arms clamp around her shoulders, holding her back. She struggles and kicks out wildly but the arms are too strong. A voice says, ‘Calm down. You have to stay behind the cordon.’
‘My daughter Nevis is on that boat,’ she says, coughing up ash.
The arms do not let up. A voice says, ‘The fire crew are doing all they can.’
‘My daughter!’ She can feel the heat of the fire in her lungs. Her voice is a scream now.
A policewoman approaches, holding a hand to her ear. Remembering Alex suddenly, Honor says, ‘I was with a man, Alex, where is he?’
‘The guy who tried to jump in? We’ve put him in the back of the van over there. For his own safety.’
The policewoman turns away and whoever is holding her loosens their grip. There is shouting. Instructions are barked. She hears another voice saying, ‘I am Yolanda Graham from family liaison. The first responders are doing everything they can to establish whether there is anyone on the boat.’
‘Please,’ she says, her heart screeching, like a car in too low a gear. ‘I have to get to her.’
She feels herself being spun around, a woman’s arms around her now. Is this Yolanda? I can’t think straight. I can’t… her heart is beating so fast now she feels it will explode from her chest. Her breath seems to snap, everything is happening too fast, her head is fizzing and buzzing.
‘You need to come with me,’ the voice is saying. Yolanda has her firmly by one elbow, the other hand slung across her shoulder. She feels her hands covering her face, the smell of sweat and ash on them.
‘I can’t see,’ she says.
The voice says, ‘You don’t have to see, I’ve got you, just come with me.’
Her legs stumble forward, her body following on, the pressure of the hand on her elbow, the arm around her shoulders.
She hears a car door open and feels herself being pressed down. The door closes and for an instant stillness falls, then in a blast of warm, sooty air, Yolanda appears beside her. She removes her hands from her face and blinks into the light from the street.
‘We’re in one of the patrol cars. You’re quite safe. We’re not sure whether there is anyone on the boat, but we’re doing our best to find out.’
From the radio come bleeps and crackles and the sound of voices.
She is trembling now, her whole body shaking. Someone, Yolanda she supposes, has put a crunchy silver blanket over her.
‘You’re OK, it’s just shock. Try to breathe slowly.’
A knock comes on the window of the driver’s side. The glass slides down. A policewoman in uniform is bending towards the car. Beside her stands a man with a blackened face.
‘This gentleman thinks he saw your daughter on the quayside.’
She stops breathing, the shaking stops. Sirens blare in the background. Every cell in her body is still now, waiting.
The policewoman steps aside. The man with the blackened face peers in.
‘I saw a girl jumping from the boat. She was coughing but she was all right.’
Honor gasps out the words, ‘My phone!’
‘In your pocket,’ Yolanda says, ‘I can see it.’
With quaking hands Honor inspects the screen. No response to her calls, her texts. She has to think very hard to remember the passcode, her fingers shaking on the virtual keyboard. Calling Nevis’s number. Voicemail.
The man with the blackened face is standing beside the uniformed officer and speaking but she cannot hear above the sound of sirens.
‘She was with a man,’ shouts the uniformed officer.
‘Did he get a look at the man?’ asks Yolanda.
The uniformed officer turns his back to them for a moment then, swinging round and leaning into the car, says, ‘The witness says he saw the girl and the man jump from the boat together but he didn’t catch sight of the man’s face.’ She lays her arms on the door and lowering her voice says, ‘He’s had a drink or two.’
Honor sits back, trying to think straight. The police radio crackles, ‘…active search for Professor Christopher Cullen, also known as Christopher Mulholland, in connection with the deaths of Natasha Tillotson and Amanda Salter, believed to be his mother. May be armed.’
Mulholland. She feels the breath quit her body, goosebumps rising, a terrible cold like ice water in the veins. She hears the words ‘No! Stop!’ in her head but finds herself unable to speak. Seconds pass in which she can hear nothing but the blood thumping in her forehead. Hands clamp her mouth so hard it is painful. She knows they are her own hands but at the same time it seems they are someone else’s. Words chase through her mind but her head is so full of noise she cannot catch them. A disembodied voice says, ‘Are you all right?’ She does not answer, holding her breath now, doing her best to steady herself. Cullen, Mulholland, Cullen, Mulholland. A drumbeat. A call to action. It takes a moment to put the pieces together. Mulholland? After all these years?
In connection with the deaths of Natasha Tillotson and Amanda Salter, believed to be his mother.
The thoughts are a frantic jumble in her head. Mulholland. Zoe’s rapist, Madeleine Ince’s partner during the time of the Midland suicides, Mulholland becoming Cullen. Cullen the Dean.
Oh my God, Nevis! The way she’s spoken about him, her tone fan girl soft.
Who’ll be next?
Nevis seen leaping from the boat with a man.
No! Not Mulholland. Not now.
In a second, she springs from the car. Yolanda’s voice trails behind. No time to stop and explain. A helicopter buzzes overhead. Every sense sharpened by adrenaline. She scopes about, thinking of Alex, desperately seeking the man with the blackened face and suddenly spots him on the opposite side of the road, hastening towards Queen Square.
‘Hey, hey!’ She has to scream to make herself heard above the sound of the helicopter blades. The man stops, the yellowy whites of his eyes like beads in the light from the streetlamp.
‘The girl you saw is my daughter.’
‘I told the copper everything I know.’
‘Please.’ She wants to grab him, shake him down. ‘Please, tell me where they were heading?’
She watches his eyes sink in thought. Quick, quick! There’s no time for this. There’s no time. Her breath is coming in fits and starts. She watches him clocking it, alarmed. Please not now, not now. She holds herself still so as not to alarm him, watches his jaw relax.
‘You could try behind the shit shed. Abandoned boat shed down there in the undergrowth. Hole in the fence back there, you can get into the industrial park. Spare wood there sometimes for the brazier. Didn’t want to say nothing in front of the police in case they tell the owner. Handy, that hole in the fence.’ He tips his head towards the scene of the explosion. ‘Police cordoned off the whole area though. They wouldn’t let you through if you was the Queen.’
‘Thank you, thank you.’ She can drive around, hit the streets. She pivots and walks away, briskly, feeling for the van keys in her pocket, not wishing to arouse anyone’s interest. Last thing she wants is the police getting involved. No time for that. The moment she is out of sight she breaks into a run. The van is where they left it. She jumps in and starts the engine and is about to pull out into the road when she hears her own voice from earlier this evening asking Nevis to turn on share location.
I’ll think about it.
She pulls out her phone, taps in her passcode, goes to settings.
And there it is.
Nevis’s phone. A blue dot moving too fast for Nevis t
o be walking. They must be in a car, she thinks. She watches as the blue dot comes to a halt then starts up again, heading through the streets of Clifton towards the suspension bridge.
Chapter 55
Honor
The van screams into fourth gear, as she jumps through a red light, one eye on the road, the other on the blue dot. They’re on the bridge now. She hears herself cry out as the blue dot slows to a halt. They’d have to climb the suicide barrier… too hard to finish that thought. There is time. The road ahead is clear. She checks in her rear-view mirror for blue lights, floors the accelerator through another set of lights. Eyes blade to her phone. Feels her breath explode from her chest. The blue dot has begun to move steadily over the span and out onto the other side. Now it is anyone’s guess. She is closing the gap is all she knows. She swerves onto the approach road to the bridge, willing the driver’s side window to lower more quickly, one hand on the steering wheel, the other fumbling in her pockets for the bridge toll. Please let there be change! Remembers Nevis teasing her, saying that no one uses cash these days. And there they are, tangled in the seams of her trousers, two £1 coins. She slams on the brakes at the barrier, throws the coins in the hopper, notices the 40-mph speed limit sign but does not wait to see if the booth is manned. The cameras will catch her. Accelerating onto the bridge she finds herself suspended above the gorge and heading for the lights around Leigh Woods. Checks the speedometer, lifts her right foot and jams the accelerator. An APNR camera flashes twice as the van speeds by, hits sixty-five, seventy, rapidly catching up on the car ahead, she swerving at the last minute to avoid it, the blaring horn of the driver behind her already fading. Driving crazy enough to alert the cops.
On the other side of the bridge she slows and checks her phone. The blue dot is moving more slowly now too. They are no longer in a vehicle, she thinks, but on foot. They have entered the woods on the cliffs overlooking the gorge. One eye on the road, the other on Google Maps. There is an entrance to the woods just up ahead and beside it a car park. She turns off the road towards the woods, switches off the car lights, navigating from Google Maps and the reflection of the bridge lights on the water. Just before the entrance to the car park, she pulls onto the verge and cuts the engine. Takes a moment to compose herself. No longer panicky or flustered now, the blood burning hot in her veins, powered by a terrible, immutable rage. Thinks, you got Zoe, Mulholland, but you will not get her daughter and you won’t get me. I have thought about this moment, fantasised about it even, for years. You have no idea how hot and for how long the desire for revenge has burned in me.
All those years ago, at St Olaf’s, he said he would get his own back. No one could say he hasn’t been patient. He has planned this. The blue dot is a breadcrumb trail. I’m coming for you, Mulholland.
Jumping from the van she strides around to the back and flings open the doors, using the torch on her phone to check the small store of work tools she keeps stashed there. A torch, a length of rope, a roll of strong tape, a toolbelt and a Stanley knife with a new blade. She straps the toolbelt around her waist and drops the tools into their various compartments then makes her way to the car park where a blue Volvo sits alone. She approaches, cautiously, and moving close, takes out her phone. She dials 999, and when a voice answers, gives Mulholland’s name and location and hangs up. There’s no time to explain. The police will put two and two together. Mulholland will know they won’t be far behind him. Listening for movement or, better still, voices, she scans the trees searching for specks of light. They are somewhere in the darkness a few minutes ahead of her, but where? He will kill Nevis if he can, but he won’t make his move until she has found them. He will want to see the whites of her eyes. He will want to think he has finally destroyed her. She begins to creep along the forest fringe, using the railway line which skirts the edge of the gorge as a guide. The wind is up now and the moon appears blue behind scudding clouds.
Believed to be armed.
All these years he must have hated her and longed for revenge. To be in that man’s life all that time. To have been part of his thoughts. She’d never imagined that the boy who spat at her in the street and swore he’d get his own back would ever see it through. But here he is. For her own part, she’d thought of him rarely. The years had passed in a busy blur of motherhood and work. She’d googled him once or twice and found nothing. She had always dared to hope he was languishing unregarded in some distant prison or that he had taken his own life. He’d changed his name and managed to walk away from his past. On those occasions that she had thought about him it was always like looking into a deep dark well inside herself and it had unnerved her. She knew if ever she saw the bastard again she might kill him. She just never expected to put her conviction to the test. He wants to draw it out, this fight between them. He wants her to suffer, to prolong her anguish. But her mind is absolutely clear now. If he’s prepared to use her own daughter as bait then he’d better be prepared to die.
A light flickers through the trees. She takes a breath and heads towards it. Zoe, she thinks, I could use your help. She moves forward along the path, the thin moonlight creeping through the still naked branches of the trees enough, just, to keep her on track. Ahead the torchlight flares and fades like the spark of a firefly. The pulse drums in her temples and at the back of her brain and her breath comes in fits and starts. The only sounds around her are those of the forest, a sinister rustling and the odd screech of a night bird. Is that you, Zoe? I hope so.
She moves through the clearing and comes out onto a chalk cliff. She can see them now, two figures hugging the sky, standing on the railway tracks overlooking the gorge. A rifle glints in the moonlight. There’s no way to know if they’ve seen her. She drops the torch she’s clutching in her toolbelt and, holding her hands above her head so that Cullen can see she’s unarmed, shouts, ‘I’m here, Nevis.’ She watches them shift and turn.
A voice says, ‘Hello Honor.’ Mulholland. The voice has matured but she’d know it anywhere. He is wearing hunting gear, as though he were going on a country shoot for pheasants but the rifle in his hands is aimed at Nevis. His face is twisted into an awful grimace. Beside him Nevis seems frozen, barely registering Honor’s presence. ‘Do come and join the party,’ he says, glibly. She wonders if he has gone mad.
Creeping closer, her hands in the air, she says, ‘It’s not Nevis you want, Christopher. It’s me.’
He beckons her over. ‘Let’s talk awhile.’
She is a few metres away now, close enough to be able to see their faces, blue in moonlight. Mulholland looks odd and crazed, the whites of his eyes like those of an animal caught in a snare; raging, unpredictable and with nothing left to lose. Nevis is beside him, hands held out unsteadily in front of her, her body stiff and angled away. She swallows hard and gasps a little. But she is not crying and there is something about the way she is holding herself, tensed and poised for action, which suggests to Honor that hope hasn’t left her.
‘You killed your mother, Christopher. I overheard the police radio. As weird as it might sound, I get it.’ He frowns and shakes his head. Still she presses on. ‘I used to feel for you, in the early days, when you first arrived at St Olaf’s, so much younger than the rest of us and so uncertain of yourself, so much in her shadow, living her dream. I know she gave you an alibi, that night after the Maths Society party and I know that because of that you would never be free of her, never become your own person. If that were me, I think I’d have wanted to kill her too. But Tash? What could Tash have possibly done to have deserved to die?’
‘She got in my way. She was a tittle-tattler.’ He cocks his head towards Nevis. ‘Just like your friend in the hospital. She didn’t understand that is the line you cannot cross. I gave her plenty of warnings but she always knew better. Natasha had a good death. A great deal of Valium and a little push to send her on her way. She had no idea what was coming. As for the other one, Jessica, I had absolutely nothing to do with that. She did the job for me. But I woul
d have done, believe me. These women, girls, happily sold themselves for better grades. Why should I think anything of them when they thought so little of themselves? Listen, a man who can kill his mother can kill anyone. Anyone.’
‘Let Nevis go. You don’t hate her. You hate me.’
‘That’s plenty.’
‘You told me once that you loved Zoe, do you remember?’
At the mention of Zoe’s name he gives a start as though all this time he has been in some kind of dream that he is only just waking from.
Nevis’s eyes flare and she begins to tremble.
‘Zoe was the only woman I’ve ever met who was worth anything. Every woman I was ever with after Zoe was a stain on her memory. You couldn’t bear that I loved her, could you? You had to get in the way. You with your ruinous jealousy. Your hatred. You could have said nothing that night. Zoe would never have known. It was you who kept at her, on and on, with your stupid, sentimental version of “justice”. You ruined your best friend. It was because of what you did, not what I did, that she took her life. You killed her. And now you come to me, thinking you can make terms, do a deal. Well I don’t deal with the devil.’
