by Adam Croft
The woman working in the shop seems to know who I am straight away, and she beckons me over to the till. She bends down behind the counter and picks up a carrier bag. I can see inside – it’s a large carriage clock. She smiles at me in that way people do when they’re expecting you to go as quickly as possible.
As I walk back to the scooter, I can’t help but wonder why the hell I’m transporting a carriage clock in a carrier bag. A few thoughts cross my mind – perhaps it’s filled with drugs, maybe it’s packed with explosives. Or maybe it’s just a carriage clock being transported from a jeweller’s shop. That last possibility doesn’t seem so far-fetched – I imagine Marek and Andrej need to ensure some level of secrecy by giving me some perfectly innocent deliveries. From their point of view, it’d be a good test of my loyalties and reduce their risk of me flaking out, especially after the incident with the note.
When I get back to the scooter, I open the seat and go to put the carrier bag inside it. I catch sight of the folded piece of paper as it shifts in the breeze. I swallow, hard. I’m sure that wasn’t there before, but I can’t be certain. I didn’t look in the compartment before I left the bar earlier.
My heart thumping in my chest, I delicately lower my hand towards the paper – as if dipping my hand into a pool of crocodiles to test the temperature of the water – and pull the paper out. Unfolding it, I see the words written on it in black pen:
Who are you buying jewellery for, Daniel?
Just seven words, but seven words that mean so much. They mean someone is here, watching me. There’s now no doubt that the note was written and put here in the past couple of minutes, as even I didn’t know I was going to a jewellery shop until I got here. But it’s impossible – I know for a fact I wasn’t tailed. The only people who knew I was here are Marek and Andrej. They sent me here. And they’re the only people I can think of who might have a reason for terrorising me in this way, even though I have absolutely no idea what that reason might be.
My instincts kick in and in that moment a huge realisation dawns on me. It’s all over. Whatever I do, I can’t run. Whichever way I turn, the killer is there, tormenting me. And the worst part of it all is that he hasn’t killed me, too. In many ways, that would be a relief, an escape. It would never clear my name, though, and that’s something that means a lot to me. I can’t live with injustice, but I can’t resolve this one on my own, either.
Ten minutes later, I park the moped up outside the police station and walk slowly but confidently up to the door.
I’ve planned out the whole conversation in my head on the ride over here. I’ll find an officer who speaks English and tell them everything. I’ll tell them how I need someone to hear my case, that I’ve not committed any crimes (other than potentially getting involved in drug dealing, but I don’t know that for certain, and in any case I can quite legitimately say I was blackmailed). It’s my only option.
I know that I’ll be arrested. I know that I’ll be deported back to England, and I know that when I get there I’m going to be questioned at length about Lisa’s death, but I’ll get a good lawyer. The best. He’ll be able to help me. After all, the truth is that I haven’t done anything. I didn’t kill Lisa and I didn’t kill Jess.
But as I stand with my hand on the front door of the police station, I just can’t shake that immovable feeling that I won’t be able to find the truth this way. The British police are already hell-bent on the idea that I killed Lisa, and I don’t have a thing – nothing – that can prove otherwise. Try as I might, how am I going to convince the people who are already convinced?
No. I need more. Much more. And I’ve only got one tiny glimmer of hope available to me.
60
I know what I need to do, but I also know that I have to complete this delivery first. Whatever happens, I need to either get rid of any incriminating evidence, or I need to ensure that Marek and Andrej don’t have any more reasons to terrorise me – if it is them who are doing it.
I try to keep as calm as I can and make my way over to the drop-off point. I never quite know what I’m going to find until I get there, as I’m only ever given an address – never a name of a shop or any indication as to what the building is. When I get to my drop-off point, it’s in a residential area. Not in quite the same league as the house I visited the other day, but pretty nice all the same. Certainly a nicer house than mine back home. If I’ll ever be able to call it mine again. It’s then that I realise I’ve referred to it as home. Is that just a force of habit, or am I starting to miss England? If I’m honest, I really don’t know. My feelings are somewhat marred and blurred by everything that’s happened recently.
I walk up the driveway of the address I’ve been given and I look for a doorbell. There isn’t one, so I knock instead. A few seconds later, I hear someone approaching the door. When it opens, there’s an elderly gentleman looking back at me, a television blaring out at full volume somewhere inside the house. The man can’t be any younger than ninety, and he smiles genially as he sees me. As if he is expecting me. He doesn’t say anything, and the best I can manage is, ‘Delivery,’ as I hold up the carrier bag, still not having bothered to learn a word of Slovak. The old man beams, takes the bag and pats me on the arm whilst saying something I don’t understand a word of. I smile and wave as I walk back down his driveway and hear the door close behind me.
And that’s when the idea occurs to me. I look back at his house, and then at the ones nearby. I’m looking for security cameras, but I can’t see any. It strikes me as the sort of neighbourhood where crime just doesn’t exist.
I make my way back up his driveway, but I keep to the side of it, walking in between his car and the fence. The car is a Hyundai hatchback – fairly new, by the looks of things, but not new or expensive enough that it’s going to have a tracker installed. When I get to the end of the driveway, I’m level with the house. There’s a gate in the fence that leads to the back garden, but it appears to be locked. In any case, I wouldn’t be able to open the gate far, as the car’s parked right up against it. I climb onto the bonnet of the car, my shoes clunking on the metalwork, then over the fence. There’s a patio the other side, and I drop down fairly noiselessly onto it.
I can still hear the old man’s TV from inside the house, and praise the gods for his dreadful hearing. I make my way round to the back of the house, ducking under each window, until I get to the back door. It’s a wooden door with nine inset glass panes. I peer around and through one of the bottom panes, perched on my hands and knees like a dog. There’s no sign of the old man in the kitchen, so I get up onto my feet and have a proper peer through. Just inside the door is a row of four hooks. On one is what looks like the key to his Hyundai.
I try the door handle. To my amazement and delight, it’s open. I push the door gently, flinching and holding back as it starts to creak. After a few seconds there’s still no sign of life from inside the house, so I push the door open just enough that I can get my arm inside, and I make a grab for the keys.
Just as I manage to hook my hand around them, the keys slip from my grasp and come clattering to the floor. I jerk my arm out and duck back down against the wall beside the door. I listen carefully for any movement. There’s nothing. Back on my hands and knees, I push my arm through the gap in the door and grab the car key. Then I stand, pull the door to and make my way back around the side of the house.
When I get back to the fence, I realise there’s no way of me being able to climb up. There’s no handy car bonnet this side. I carefully check both of the windows along the side of the house – the old man’s in neither of the rooms. Thanking my lucky stars, I clench his car key between my teeth, give myself a run-up and launch myself at the fence, my arms flailing upwards as I grasp for purchase on the top of it. I plant my feet against the fence and pull myself upwards, feeling my muscles burning before I hook my right elbow over the top and manage to pull the rest of my body up. Once I’m over the top, I step down onto the car bonnet and the
n duck down beside the car.
I wait a few seconds, just to make sure I’ve not been seen or heard, and then I press the button on the key fob. The car unlocks immediately, so I pull the handle and open the door as carefully and quietly as I can. With the door still slightly ajar, I quickly familiarise myself with the controls. I know that as soon as I start it up, I’m going to need to disappear very quickly. Once I’m happy that I know where everything is, I pull the door shut, start the engine up immediately and slip the stick into reverse. With a squeal of tyres, the car shoots back into the road. I push the stick into drive, and with another small squeal I’m accelerating off down the street.
61
In a heartbeat, I know exactly where I’m going. I’ve no idea how I’m going to get there, but I know it’s going to take a long time. From my limited but slowly growing knowledge of Bratislava, I know which way is west. I head out of the city, being careful to stick to speed limits but at the same time not holding back where I can get away with it.
Yet again, my life has taken a bizarre twist and I’m driving through Slovakia in an old man’s car, with only the clothes on my back. I’ve got the iPhone Jess gave me in my jacket pocket, having charged it fully last night. If Jess’s body has been found by now, they’ll have found her phone. I don’t know how linked the phones are, but I’m certainly not going to risk using it.
A thought occurs to me. Can they track the phone just through it being on? I’m fairly sure I read somewhere that they can do that using the masts. Would it still be the case in Slovakia? I’m not about to risk it. Holding on to the steering wheel with one hand, I fish the phone out of my jacket pocket and hold down the button to switch it off. After what seems like an absolute age, the screen changes, and Slide to power off appears at the top. I do as it says, and the phone eventually shuts down. I put it back in my pocket – I still want the option of being able to use it if I should somehow get myself into some really deep trouble.
I do a quick mental calculation to work out how much money I’ve got on me. I reckon it’s probably a couple of hundred euros. The fuel tank in the car’s full to the brim, according to the dashboard, and I’m getting about 58mpg by the time I head out of town, which I reckon means I’ll probably have to fill up the tank once more. Maybe twice. My journey’s going to be about eight hundred miles, I estimate. I should be able to do that in eleven or twelve hours, depending on traffic, and I don’t intend to stop for sleep. It’ll be coffee that keeps me going. I have no time to lose.
A mile or so down the road, I pull over into a car park behind a gym. I’m pleased to find there’s no CCTV that I can see, so I park up next to a row of vans. I can’t read the writing on the side, but by my way of thinking they must be delivery vans for a local company as they’re all sign-written identically. I crouch down behind one, and, using the key from the moped, I quickly but carefully unscrew the number plates from one of the vans. I do the same on the old man’s car and swap them over. I figure that the people driving these vans aren’t going to know the registration numbers off by heart – they’re probably pool vehicles. That should give me a bit of breathing space. I get back into the car, complete with its new registration plates, and within three minutes of parking up I’m on the road again.
Before long I’m over the border into Austria, keeping the car on the main road as I carry on heading west. Once I’m past Vienna, I stop at a small service station and buy a couple of road maps. Using a pen, I trace my route. I know roughly the signs I’m looking out for: Linz, Nuremberg, Frankfurt, Bonn, Liege, Charleroi and Mons. Then I’ll need to head south.
By the time I reach the outskirts of Frankfurt, the fuel in the car is getting low. I pull over, buy myself a few cans of energy drink and some sandwiches, and refuel the car. I think about doing another swap of registration plates, but I decide not to risk it. The whole journey will take me less than twelve hours in total, and it’s unlikely anyone’s going to realise the plates on the van have been changed within that time, and they’re almost certainly not going to have the police in Germany looking out for the registration. I figure I’m as safe as I can be.
With the car – and myself – refuelled, I’m back on the road and I’m back on the A3, which has been my home for the past few hours and will be for a while yet. As I look in my rear-view mirror at the tarmac disappearing behind me, I know that I’m moving closer and closer towards finally being able to get some justice.
62
By the time I reach the French border it’s past midnight. I’ve driven more or less non-stop, save for a couple of toilet stops and the refuelling outside Frankfurt. I don’t have much fuel left now, but there aren’t many miles to go, either. The lumbar area of my back hurts like hell. Every now and again I straighten up in my seat and push the bottom of my back forward, feeling the creaking and cracking as the vertebrae resettle into their proper positions. My knees are stiff, too, and my right ankle started to hurt about an hour ago. Stopping for a rest has never been an option, though. The only thing I can do is keep going, keep ploughing on.
About twenty minutes or so after I cross the border from Belgium into France, the roads start to look familiar. The memories come back, and it feels as though I’ve spent huge periods of my life here, whereas in reality I was only here for a few hours – most of them asleep.
There’s a light on inside Claude’s farmhouse as I pull the car up opposite, parking as far over on the gravel lay-by as I can. The road’s so narrow that there wouldn’t be room for a car to pass if I didn’t. I silently apologise to the old man in Bratislava for scratching the side of his car.
I sit for a moment, taking in what’s happened and what I’m about to do. It sounds bizarre, but even though I’ve just spent twelve hours driving here, I still don’t know what I’m going to say to Claude. All I know is that if there’s a chance anyone can help me, it’ll be him. I’ve managed to get myself to the other side of Europe and back without being caught or killed – mainly thanks to a shave and a haircut and stealing other people’s cars, but also partially thanks to Lisa and Jess’s killer preferring to torment me rather than kill me.
I know for a fact I’ve not been followed here: you don’t drive for twelve hours from one side of Europe to the other without realising someone’s following you.
I think about what I’m going to say to Claude. I don’t need to say anything. He’ll know what to do. But I do need to tell him about Jess. I know they were close, I know he had been her salvation, and it pains me to think that I’m now going to have to tell him she’s been killed. How do you even go about a thing like that? Straight to the point, I guess.
I unlock the car, open the door and step out into the cool night air. My legs feel like tree trunks holding my weakened torso somewhat upright, my neck cracking as I rotate my head and push my shoulder blades backwards. I close the car door and cross the narrow lane, before pushing open the creaking gate that leads to Claude’s farmhouse.
When I get to the front of the house, I can hear a TV playing from inside. It reminds me of being back at the old man’s house in Bratislava, and I feel a pang of guilt at what I did to him. The thought also crosses my mind that he’s probably still sat there in front of the box, chuckling away at some late-night comedy programme, not having even realised his car’s halfway across Europe.
I ring the doorbell, then knock on the door. After a few seconds, I hear nothing – just the sound of the TV. It sounds like a game show, or perhaps one of those late-night shopping channels. Without speaking a word of French, it’s hard to tell. I ring the doorbell again, twice, and then knock louder. Still nothing.
There’s no way Claude will have slept through that, so I can only presume he’s not in the house. He can’t be far, though, judging by the fact the TV’s on. It’s late, but the only other place he could be is in the barn. I doubt if he’ll be out on the farm at this time.
I walk back down the path to the lane, then further up the road to the barn. As I get closer to it
, I can see the large doors are slightly ajar. There’s no light inside, but I quicken my pace as I approach the barn.
When I get there, I call Claude’s name just before I get to the doors. Then I pause for a moment before pulling one of the large doors open a little further, calling inside.
‘Claude?’ My voice sounds croaky and weak.
I take a step inside, leaving the barn door open slightly to allow some moonlight to stream in. It’s the only light I’ve got.
I start to move around inside the barn, but I can’t see or hear anything.
‘Claude?’ I call again, wondering how the hell he can’t hear me. It’s deathly silent apart from my voice, which rattles and echoes around inside this huge barn.
Something isn’t right.
I turn to head back towards the open door, and it’s at that moment I notice the moonlight softening as a figure walks across the doorway and stands stock-still, a shadow being cast across me and the floor of the barn.
It’s not Claude. I know in an instant exactly who it is.
‘Hello, Daniel.’
63
For the first time in my life, I’m lost for words. I can’t even form a coherent thought, never mind speak.
‘I can tell you didn’t expect to find me here,’ Jess says, not moving. After a couple of seconds I shake my head slowly. ‘What’s wrong, Daniel? Don’t you believe in ghosts?’ She walks towards me, then past me, sitting herself down on a bale of hay. ‘Come. Sit with me.’
I’m struck dumb. I can’t say or do anything. I can only presume I’m hallucinating. I saw her lying dead on the floor of that caravan. She was as dead as Lisa had been that day at the hotel. Or had I imagined the whole thing?
‘Sit down, Daniel,’ she says, as if she’s speaking to a small child. Her tone of voice and the way she uses my full name takes me back to a time long before I met her, long before I met Lisa. It has the effect of jolting me awake, putting me right back into the here and now.
