She’d googled the car battery in advance and after putting it in her trolley she selected two backpacks big enough to carry their stuff and a couple of torches. She was halfway down the tools aisle, headed for the till, when she stopped.
The front gates to the mansion were secured with a chain. They’d need something to sever it. She shuddered – imagine having gone through all that and got so far only to find themselves trapped in the grounds – then set about searching out the biggest bolt cutter she could find, jittery with good fortune at having solved the problem before it could materialise but also afraid. What else hadn’t they thought of?
She paid in cash (Jem had rightly pointed out that the authorities would pore over all her recent card transactions for clues) and took the Tube home. She’d row the battery and the bolt cutters over to the mansion tonight and leave them in the garage, ready for Tuesday. After that they had three whole days to sort a jerrycan of petrol and anything else they might need to prepare.
Weighed down with bags, she staggered out of the station, turned onto Rona Road and was struggling up its shallow incline when a car pulled up and beeped its horn.
She didn’t recognise it and so she ignored it at first, but then the driver leaned across to push open the passenger door. She saw a hand ringed with bracelets and a sliver of purple turban.
Kiki Masters.
‘Lift?’
Hannah hesitated. Kiki had never offered her so much as a smile.
‘Well?’ said Kiki.
Hannah weighed the bags in her arms and her biceps screamed in protest. She got in.
‘Thanks.’
A yowl, like a tiny air-raid siren going off in the back. Hannah turned round and saw Poobah. He glared out of the meshed front of his carrier, street-light bouncing off his whiskers.
‘Shopping spree?’ said Kiki. She pulled away from the kerb and, bracelets jangling, guided the car down the street.
‘Cake supplies,’ said Hannah. ‘Client wants a big installation.’ Kiki would find out what had happened soon enough and then there’d be the inevitable onslaught of protest and speculation about how many more tens of thousands an escaped convict would knock off the value of her house.
Kiki screwed up her mouth and nodded, as if the prospect of having to earn money was distasteful.
‘We took down our FOR SALE sign today.’
‘Oh?’ Hannah braced. So this was why Kiki had wanted to get her in the car, so she could spend the next five minutes berating her.
‘We were mortgaged to the hilt and since your . . .’ she paused, searching for an appropriate term of derision, ‘little addition to the street our house has depreciated significantly. We can’t afford to sell, we’re stuck.’
They turned onto Shirlock Road. Nearly there. She’d only have to put up with this for two more minutes max.
‘Do you know what it’s like having to stay living with someone who doesn’t want to be with you anymore?’
It was more of a declaration than a question and had a false brightness that suggested Kiki had been left both scared and liberated at having finally spoken it out loud.
‘Maxwell wants a divorce. But until we can turn a profit on the house . . .’
Hannah turned to look at her side-on.
‘He’s started bringing women home.’ She pressed on the accelerator and took a corner too fast. An oncoming car beeped angrily. ‘The first time was last month,’ she said, guiding the car across the roundabout. ‘I sleep in the loft but I could hear them. She called him Maxie.’ She grimaced like she’d tasted something bad. ‘Since then, whenever he brings one home I put Poobah in his carrier, get in the car and drive.’
As they approached the top of their street Kiki slowed and peered out to the spot where the FOR SALE sign had stood.
‘I’m glad we can’t move house,’ she said. ‘It’s not ideal, him bringing women back, but at least we’re still together under the same roof.’ She laughed, as though she’d just realised something for the first time. ‘You’ve done me a favour in a way.’
Hannah nodded. She got out of the car and as she grabbed her things from the footwell she saw Kiki, downlit by the pearl of light in the roof. It made her face look like a skull.
‘Tell Rupes I said hello and to stay away from the gee-gees.’ She shook her head. ‘Bad business.’
Hannah nodded again vaguely, not sure what she was talking about.
A hiss. Wet and long.
Hannah looked to the back seat and saw Poobah, mouth stretched wide, the skin inside nubbled and pink.
She leaned forward across the seat and hissed back.
Inside, she picked up the post from the mat and headed down to the basement. Jem was at the bars, baseball cap pulled low.
‘So?’ he said, lifting the peak of the cap up and down, a nervous tic she’d never seen before.
‘She agreed to help.’
He let go of the cap and sagged forward against the steel.
‘We’re really doing this?’ He smiled, and Hannah felt like she had been hit by a ray of sun.
‘We are.’
After turning on the kettle, she gave Jem the mobile phone packs to open and flicked through the post. There were two bills and one envelope postmarked with the Domestic Prison Service logo. Probably more Foster Host paperwork. She slit it open with a knife, already intending to dump whatever it was on the side with the other soon-to-be redundant transfer forms, but on seeing the first few lines she pulled it taut and held it so close that it obscured her face.
Jem sensed her concern.
‘Hannah?’
The kettle had boiled. It clicked off, steam gurgling toward the ceiling.
‘We have now found a permanent replacement for Mr Dalgleish,’ she said, reading from the letter, ‘as of Monday 3rd January your new DLO will be Miss Biggins. Miss Biggins will be along to introduce herself in due course. Because of Miss Biggins’ pre-existing prisoner commitments your weekly schedule will transition to the below timetable.’
Hannah scanned the sheet. Shower and outside time sessions were switching days. Not a big deal. On the morning of the Tuesday they planned to leave Jem would have time in the garden with the DLO as opposed to a shower. But then, underneath the table she saw an asterisk and next to it a small line of text: ‘Please note, regardless of where you currently are in the four-weekly cycle, fence codes will be reset on the first day your new DLO comes into post.’
Hannah dropped the piece of paper to her side.
The fence codes would switch the day before their designated escape day.
‘Once the code changes, that’s it,’ said Jem, fiddling with his baseball cap again. ‘I can’t go anywhere.’ He shifted the peak up and down and Hannah saw how the friction had reddened the skin on his forehead.
‘Then we’ll go when the code still works,’ said Hannah. ‘Move the plan forward.’ She tried to sound braver than she felt. ‘Forty-eight hours and we have to be ready.’
Compressing their preparations from three days to two meant compromising on certain things, most importantly the passports. When Jem called Alina to tell her the new deadline she laughed and told him she’d ask, but not to hold his breath.
Still, they ploughed on in good faith.
Hannah spent Friday and Saturday night rowing over to the mansion to switch the car batteries in the Bentley and to fill the tank with petrol. Her first attempt at the battery was disastrous; trying to work by torchlight was impossible and the signal in the garage was so weak that the video tutorial she was using to walk her through it kept cutting out. Eventually though she’d managed it, and when she put the key in the ignition it had started first time.
Now it was Sunday, the night before they were due to leave, and there was nothing more to do except preprogramme their respective numbers into each other’s burner phones and go over their plans again, trying to identify the points where they might come unstuck.
They both agreed they couldn’t leave until a
t least 4 p.m. Rowing across the pond and climbing the ladder would be best performed under the cover of darkness. If a neighbour saw them it might scupper their escape and then, if they were to get away, there’d be witnesses, people who could alert the police to their route; not good when they were counting on no one being able to figure out which way they had actually gone.
In their discussions they had imagined how the DLO would turn up for Jem’s outside session the day after they’d escaped. How he’d knock on the door and then, when there was no answer, call for assistance. The guards would break down the door, find them both missing and realise the back fence had been deactivated. Sniffer dogs wouldn’t be able to track them across such an expanse of water and so they’d be left to draw their own assumptions. The most logical being that they’d rowed to the Heath and gone on foot from there. The police would waste hours, if not days (they hoped) on this scenario, by which point they’d be long gone.
From the mansion, they’d drive to Dover and board a ferry to Calais. Then they’d motor across France and down to the bottom-most nub of Spain to Valencia, where they’d board another ferry to Palma. The last ferry left Dover at 11.45 p.m., which gave them more than enough time – almost eight hours – from the moment Hannah unlocked the cell to get there, buy a ticket and board.
If Alina didn’t come good they’d have no option but to try to get out of the country with their actual passports. It was risky and it would provide a marker for the authorities on where and when they’d left the country but the alternative, staying in the UK to be hunted by the police, was far worse.
‘Let’s go through it one more time,’ said Jem, as Hannah cleared away the dishes.
‘OK, and then bed. I’m shattered.’
‘It’s 8.30 p.m?!’
‘In case you’ve forgotten, I’m growing another human.’ She patted her stomach. She was now ten weeks along. ‘It’s tiring.’
Jem grinned.
Hannah’s phone rang. Seeing the caller ID, she gasped and immediately picked up.
‘Mickey?’
‘The one and only,’ said the detective chief inspector. ‘I’m home.’ She was jovial but there was a hesitancy to her words, a careful navigation of the vowels and consonants, like she was finding her way across a tightrope.
‘How are you? I mean, are you OK?’
‘Don’t know about that, but I’m sober. For now, at least.’ She laughed wearily. ‘Laramie mentioned you were keen to talk to me about something?’
Hannah hesitated. It didn’t feel right or fair to lay everything on Mickey now, in this the first, fragile part of her recovery. And in theory, it no longer mattered what Mickey did or didn’t say. Jem had been refused leave to appeal. They were escaping tomorrow. Nothing would change that.
‘I’m an alcoholic,’ said Mickey, sensing her reluctance. ‘That’s my burden. Doesn’t mean you need to wrap me in cotton wool. Whatever it is, I can handle it.’
Even with her reassurances, it took Hannah a moment to speak.
‘Some stuff has come to light, about the night John died.’ Jem had been sitting on his bed but now he came up close to where she stood on the other side of the bars, eager to hear more. ‘It might all be a nonsense but does the phrase Marzipan Rain mean anything to you?’
Silence. Hannah thought Mickey was making her way across the tightrope again, trying to find the words.
‘What did you say?’
But as soon as Hannah heard her friend’s tone she realised it was more than that. She’d struck a nerve.
‘Marzipan Rain. John might have been on his way to meet someone on the night he died. Before he left the bar he was heard arguing with them on the phone and he used that phrase.’
She decided not to bring up the claims that John was a dirty cop, and she certainly wasn’t going to mention the bag of money upstairs, not now she needed it to start a new life elsewhere.
‘Marzipan Rain is a codename,’ said Mickey. ‘A few months before John died I lost another officer, a UC. They committed suicide.’
It was like she’d been staring down a blurry camera lens only for it to suddenly pull focus.
‘Roddy Blessop?’
‘How do you know that?’ Mickey was suddenly cold. ‘That’s confidential. Even in death we try to keep actual names under wraps in case it jeopardises an ongoing investigation.’
‘Did John know him, this UC?’
‘He came from another force. John would have had no idea there was an undercover working on his turf. We keep it that way on purpose.’ She stopped, distracted by something at her end. ‘One minute.’ She covered the phone with her hand and shouted something. ‘Laramie,’ she said once she was done. ‘She’s staying with me for a few weeks.’ Again, she muffled the phone with her hand and shouted something, and when she came back on she sounded distracted. ‘Dinner is ready. I have to go but let’s talk more when we see each other. Lunch soon?’
‘Sure,’ said Hannah, the lie catching in her throat. ‘Can’t wait.’
‘And Hannah,’ said Mickey before she signed off. ‘This thing about the UC. Knowing that codename is serious. Keep it to yourself for now.’
Off the phone, Hannah relayed Mickey’s revelation to Jem.
‘Why was John arguing about a dead undercover whose codename he couldn’t possibly have known?’
‘I don’t know, but if it’s true that he was dirty then maybe it had something to do with that?’
Any further discussion was interrupted by the doorbell.
Hannah ran upstairs to find Alina, a brown A4 envelope in her hand.
‘Not the finest work,’ she said, handing them over. ‘But they should do.’
The passports.
Her posture was different to the other day; her shoulders sagging, her chest concave.
She looked Hannah up and down, as if she was trying to see her through fresh eyes, in search of an answer to some unspoken question.
‘Do you want to see him?’ Hannah stood back to let her in. ‘Say goodbye?’
Alina pressed forward, then stopped and retreated, fighting some hidden impulse. She pressed her lips together.
‘I should get back.’ She nodded toward the street. ‘My son.’
She went to walk away and Hannah called after her.
‘Thank you. So much. We wouldn’t be able to do this without you.’
Alina paused and Hannah thought she was going to turn round and say something more, but then she was gone, slinking down the path and away into the night.
Monday morning and Hannah woke shivering, her breath white on the morning air. After months of heat and humidity the seasons had finally changed and, judging by the temperature, they’d decided to skip autumn and hurtle straight into the bleak midwinter. She pulled the duvet up around her neck and then she reached for her belly, as if to stop the baby from getting cold.
This was it.
If all went to plan then tonight she and Jem would be gone from here. Tomorrow they’d start a new life in a new country, live together like a normal couple. She imagined what it might feel like to wake up next to him in bed, his hips pressed against hers, his mouth soft against her shoulder blades.
If all went to plan.
All night she’d dreamed the same dream. In it she was a guy, sitting high atop a bonfire that had just been lit. As long as she didn’t look at the fire, as long as she kept her head up and her gaze forward, she could keep the flames at bay. But if she looked down, even a glance, then the fire would start to build. The dream ended with it engulfing her completely.
Teeth clacking, she got out of bed and pulled on some jogging bottoms, socks, slippers, a T-shirt and two jumpers. She checked her blood and, finding it high, gave herself an insulin shot. She resolved to test more often. The further she got in her pregnancy the more unpredictable her sugars were likely to become.
Downstairs she found Jem on the bed, knees hugged to his chest. He too had layered on T-shirts and jumpers to keep warm and his upper
half looked bulky and misshapen.
‘I know, right?’ She turned on the heating and went over to the cell. ‘I’d forgotten what it feels like to be cold.’ She put her face up close to the bars to kiss him good morning but he didn’t move. For a horrible moment she thought he’d changed his mind, that he didn’t want them to go after all. Then he nodded toward the garden.
‘Look.’
Hannah followed his gaze. Everything on the other side of the French doors had been smothered with frost, the fence filigreed with ice.
Then she saw it. The pond.
Overnight the water had been rinked white.
‘No.’
She stumbled outside and crunched through the grass to the back fence. Eyes watering, she peered at the mud, peaked and glittering in the morning sun. A moorhen emerged from the reeds and headed for the centre of the pond, its webbed feet skidding across the ice.
After braving her way down the steps to the water’s edge she grabbed a stick and prodded at the floe. It was thick and solid, the wood splintering against its surface.
She ran back inside.
‘How bad?’ he said, still huddled on the bed.
‘It’s frozen solid. No way we can row through it.’
‘Shit.’
He rubbed the hair on the back of his head, forcing the nap one way then the other.
‘What are we going to do?’ said Hannah. ‘It doesn’t look like it’s going to thaw any time soon.’
Again, he rubbed his head.
‘We could walk,’ he said finally.
‘Across the ice?’ Her hand went to her belly. ‘What if we fell in?’
‘You’re right, it’s too dangerous.’ He shook his head, annoyed at his own thoughtlessness.
They were quiet then, both of them lost in desperate thought.
Hannah looked out of the French doors, to the ice-crusted Heath beyond.
‘The ice seemed thick. We could take it slow. You lead, I’ll follow a few steps behind. Make sure it can support our weight.’
The Captive Page 25
