by Adam Croft
‘I know,’ I say, not wanting to put Claude through the pain of having to tell me. He looks surprised.
‘She never forgave herself for what they did to her.’
‘Forgave herself?’ I say. ‘What did she need to forgive herself for? She didn’t do anything.’
‘She saw it differently,’ Claude replies. ‘She thought she had evil blood. The bad things she did, she blamed it on them. She said she was born evil to evil parents.’
‘Christ.’
‘Before she went to England,’ Claude says, stopping to swallow and compose his thoughts, ‘she asked me to do something.’ I can see the pained look on his face as his brow furrows. He raises his head and looks me in the eye. ‘She was scared, Daniel. She was petrified. Petrified of that evil spreading further. She wanted me to help her be sterilised.’
I don’t know what to say to this. ‘Sterilised?’ I ask. ‘How old was she?’
‘Far too young,’ Claude replies, shaking his head. ‘Far too young. But I could see it in her eyes. The evil she spoke about. We found a doctor in a local village who agreed to carry out the operation. It cost a lot of money, but afterwards she seemed . . . more at peace.’
‘Happier?’ I ask, thinking back to the faint scar I noticed below her belly button.
‘No. Just more at peace.’
‘Why did you help her?’ I ask. ‘I mean, if you thought she was born tainted or had bad blood or whatever. Why didn’t you just get as far away from her as you could?’
Claude makes a noise that almost sounds like a laugh. ‘You can’t get away from that girl. You’ll never get away from her.’ Better the devil you know, I think to myself. ‘And I thought it might help. A young girl burns down a house and murders her parents. And she was just so calm. It was like she had just got back from taking the dog for a walk.’
‘Believe me, I know exactly what you mean,’ I say. ‘What happened after the fire?’ I ask, tasting the acrid smoke and blood in my throat.
‘She went to England.’
‘With her new passport?’
Claude looks momentarily guilty. ‘Yes.’
‘Jess isn’t her real name, is it?’ I ask.
Claude shakes his head.
‘What’s her real name?’
Claude looks up at the road as he hears the sirens of the ambulance approaching.
‘Come. The ambulance is here.’
66
It feels strange being in my house. The sights, the smells, the familiar sound of the radiators knocking and humming – it all takes me back to a time when things were very different. I keep expecting Lisa to walk out of the kitchen at any minute and ask me if I want a cup of tea. It feels like years since I’ve been here. It’s difficult to believe we’re still in the same month.
The living room is darker than usual, mainly due to the curtains’ having been pulled shut. Some daylight seeps around the edges, bleeding across the wallpaper, but at least I’m sheltered from the flashbulbs of the press photographers who are being kept at bay at the end of the driveway by the police. Percy, the stuffed bear, sits solemnly on the wall unit, wedged gracefully between two shelves. I look at him for a moment, and smile.
DCI Kelman, a man who can barely be pushing fifty but who’s sporting a cropped head of grey hair and an athletic look that’d make most men twenty years younger than him jealous, moves his lower jaw around in circles. I can hear the occasional click and crunch.
‘Best thing to do is keep away from the front of the house, if you can. They’ll get bored pretty quickly. I’m going to give them a statement in a moment. Anything you’d like me to say?’
I think for a couple of seconds.
‘I dunno. Just that I didn’t do it.’
Kelman smiles. ‘I think I’ll probably remember to mention that at some point, don’t worry. I meant more about your own personal feelings. For your wife.’
How am I ever meant to put that into words? I don’t want to tell Kelman this, but I’ve barely had a moment to think about life without Lisa. My overriding feeling is of guilt. After all, I’m the reason she died. Kelman tells me I can’t blame myself, that Jess admitted to Lisa’s murder.
I thought I’d have a tougher time convincing the police of my innocence, but the recording on the dictaphone seemed to go a long way. Having Claude’s statement about Jess was vital. We didn’t mention the false passport stuff, or the burning down of her parents’ holiday home all those years ago. That’s stuff they’ll find out on their own. All I needed was someone else to testify that Jess existed, and that she was responsible for what happened.
Even before I’d got back to East Grinstead, the British and French police had liaised with each other, the French police taking DNA samples from Claude’s farmhouse and matching them to a stray hair found in the bathroom at the hotel in Herne Bay. As far as a court of law would go, that wouldn’t prove anything. Her hair had every right to be in the hotel in which she worked, particularly as I’d already admitted having an affair with her in that room. My main advantage was that the police seemed to believe me, and any evidence to the contrary would be purely circumstantial and wouldn’t stand up in court.
A younger officer enters the living room, dressed in a sharp suit.
‘Sir, the Austrian police have confirmed that they’ve found the Citroën. It was left in a petrol station just outside Innsbruck a few days ago. Registered in France to a Monsieur Claude Robert. Apparently they passed it over to the French police to follow up, but it fell somewhere down their list of priorities.’
‘Why doesn’t that surprise me?’ Kelman replies, raising his eyebrows. ‘Have they done DNA swabs?’
‘Not yet, but we’ve got them on the case.’
Kelman nods, a confident look in his eye. ‘I presume we’ll find Jessica’s DNA in it, will we, Daniel?’
‘I should imagine so,’ I reply. ‘But all that’ll tell you is that she was in the car. It doesn’t prove that she killed Lisa, does it?’
‘No, but the circumstantial evidence would lead to that. Not enough to stand up in court, but the crucial thing is there’d be even less pointing in your direction.’
I’m comfortable that Kelman believes my side of the story. I could see from the look on his face when he listened to the dictaphone recording that he personally wouldn’t need much more.
The police had only got as far as France in terms of looking for me. That surprised me. I was sure they would’ve at least managed to track us to Claude’s farmhouse and that CCTV between Claude’s and the Swiss campsite would have picked us up at some point. The cameras lost us as we turned off the motorway a good few miles away from Claude’s place, and my car never reappeared again. The next day, we were on the road in Claude’s old Citroën. In many ways, I wish I’d known this from the start and hadn’t had to risk my life in Bratislava.
I gasp, a sudden thought entering my mind.
‘What about Slovakia? What about Marek and Andrej?’ The twists and turns of the past few days have left enormous gaps in my reasoning.
‘The guys who owned the bar? The drug dealers?’
‘We don’t know they were drug dealers,’ I say, almost as if I’m trying to defend them.
Kelman shrugs. ‘What do you reckon? I don’t mean to sound rude, but if what you’ve told us is true, firstly it doesn’t concern us, and secondly I don’t see why they’d give a tuppenny toss. They’ve got bigger things to worry about than some foreign bloke ditching their moped halfway across town.’
‘But they know who I am. They know where I live,’ I say. ‘They’re dangerous people.’
Kelman forces a smile. ‘We’ve got officers stationed outside your house, Daniel. I’m not being funny, but we’re hardly going to just disappear and leave you on your own. There’s even a few of our own who still think you’re guilty, and that’s before you start dealing with those bastards from the press out there. Which reminds me, do you want me to get them to piss off?’
I shake my
head. ‘Nah, I reckon I can deal with a few photographers after what I’ve been through recently.’
‘We can have you put up in a hotel if you like. We won’t be paying for it, but it’ll be a reduced rate.’
I laugh. It’s the natural, instinctive reaction. ‘No. I think I’ll be staying away from hotels for a while.’
67
The press had given up the ghost within forty-eight hours. There were newer, juicier stories for them to get their teeth stuck into. A new innocent victim for the baying pack to latch on to. After the police announced that they would not be pressing charges against me and that they had reason to believe the person responsible had died in a fire in France, the press seemed to ease off a bit.
The fact was that almost nothing remained of the inside of Claude’s barn. The French authorities were still combing it, trying to find evidence that Jess had indeed perished. It would take some time, they said, but they had no reason to believe anything else had happened. Claude’s testimony was that he’d managed to pull me out of the barn just as he saw me losing consciousness, and that he hadn’t seen Jess at all. She had been further into the barn than I was at that point, and judging by the look on her face and the things she was saying, she had no intention of living anyway.
The police told me they wouldn’t be able to give me any sort of ongoing protection. They’d offered to put me up in a hotel and suggested that I go and stay with family or friends, but none of those ideas seemed particularly attractive. I’ve got used to being on my own recently.
I’m going to take a few days to take stock and let life resume its normal rhythms before I decide what I want to do. I’m still flitting between returning to normality and embracing the chance to start again, build myself a new life in a new place. Perhaps not abroad, though. And preferably away from any hotels.
The doorbell rings, and I poke my head around the lounge door and squint as I look at the frosted glass panel in the upper half of the front door. I can see the reflective colours of the postman’s waterproof jacket, so I unlock the door. He’s standing there with a large cardboard box.
‘Delivery for Mr Cooper?’ he says, thrusting the box at me. ‘Sign here, please.’ He eyes me carefully, no doubt having heard my name and seen my photograph, as has most of Europe by now.
I avoid eye contact with him, sign his PDA with a random squiggle and close the door. I hold the cardboard box in my hand for a few moments, feeling the weight. I’m not expecting anything. I put the box down on my kitchen table and look more closely at the address, which has been written in black marker pen. In the upper-right corner is a selection of stamps, postmarked with a picture of two ice skaters and some words I don’t understand. One stands, out, though: Bratislava.
I instinctively think about calling the police, worried about what might be inside. Something stills me, though. It’s something in the way my name and address have been written on the front of the box. Calmly, almost with kindness. I’m not the sort of person who thinks inanimate objects carry an aura, but I’m definitely starting to trust my instincts much more after recent events.
I take a small paring knife from the block and cut through the tape that holds the box shut. Carefully, I lift open the flaps to find my rucksack, wrapped in two thick layers of bubble wrap. Sellotaped to the outside of the bubble wrap is a note, written in the same black marker pen as was used to write the name and address on the front:
For Bradley. From Bratislava.
68
Martin da Silva turns down the volume on his Audi’s stereo as he always does just before turning off the engine. It was a force of habit, and he knew it, but it still didn’t stop him.
He opens the door and steps out into the cold, damp night air. It was much as he expected from a November night in Carlisle, but at least he’d go home tomorrow afternoon with a ten-grand Christmas bonus if he managed to complete the Granex deal at tomorrow’s meeting. He knew he would. He always managed to complete deals, and this one was a dead cert.
He’d get himself a new suit with the cash, he told himself. The Armani number he was wearing right now was at least two years old, and it was about time he treated himself. Thanks to inheriting his father’s Hispanic good looks, a smart designer suit was almost mandatory in completing his image.
He certainly wouldn’t tell Katrina about the bonus, he told himself. She’d only blow it on more Louis Vuitton shoes or handbags. A nice suit was one thing – he needed that for his professional image, and for other stuff besides – but what could his wife possibly do with twenty handbags?
Martin lifted his chin, exuding confidence as he walked towards the reception of the hotel, his leather-soled shoes clip-clopping across the tarmac as he swung his overnight bag beside him.
The automatic doors slid open as the warm air from the reception area rushed to meet him. Safely inside, the doors closed behind him and he approached the reception desk, waiting for a moment before pressing the buzzer.
A few seconds later, a young, slim woman appeared through a doorway. She can’t have been more than twenty-five, but it was always difficult to tell some women’s ages. Martin couldn’t help but raise one corner of his mouth in a suggestive smile as he watched her walk behind the desk, her eyes full of sparkle and youthful exuberance. She looked at him for a moment before speaking, glancing down at his wedding ring.
‘Can I help you, sir?’
Martin moved his right hand over his left, covering his wedding ring.
‘Yes, I’ve got a reservation for tonight. Martin da Silva.’
The girl smiled and glanced over at her computer screen.
‘Ah yes. Here you are. Let’s just see what room you’re in . . .’
Martin gulped and swallowed as she leaned forward to get a better look at the screen, simultaneously giving him a better look down her blouse.
‘Right. We’ve got room 202. That’s up on the second floor. The only thing is, the TV’s on the blink. Doesn’t get Channels 4 or 5. But I presume that won’t be a problem if you’re only staying the one night . . . ?’
Martin smiled seductively. ‘Oh, I’m certainly hoping not.’
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I spent a lot of the second half of 2015 in hotels all around Britain. In between trying to grab snatches of time to continue working on my books, a few things struck me as being really odd about the whole situation. Being quite a private person, the fact that I was sleeping in a bed someone else had been in only hours earlier, just inches away from a complete stranger who’s separated from me only by eight inches of brick, was quite bizarre.
When you wake up in the room of a chain hotel which looks the same as every hotel room you’ve slept in for the past couple of months, it takes you a few minutes to even realise which part of the country you’re in. Everything’s the same, but somehow different. It’s quite an odd and depersonalising thing.
I’m always on the lookout for new book ideas and like to try and throw the ‘What if?’ line into everyday situations and see where my mind takes me. One evening, whilst I was getting ready for bed in my identikit hotel room in Glasgow (or was it Edinburgh? Or Harrogate? Or Stourbridge?) I threw a new ‘What if?’ into the mix. What if I turned around and there was a dead body in the bath? That was the spark that led to the plot for this book.
That’s perhaps the most exciting moment in the process of writing a new book – that spark that sets it all off and leaves you with a big beaming smile as you realise you’ve got the golden nugget at the heart of a new book. And that’s when the hard work begins!
I should just add a small caveat: my protagonist staying in a hotel is where the inspiration from real life starts and ends. I should just point out that we have no other similarities. Especially as my wife is reading this.
I hope you enjoyed reading the book as much as I enjoyed writing it. My psychological thrillers are proving extremely popular (especially since Her Last Tomorrow flew up the Amazon charts and became a bestseller), and I absolutely
love writing them and coming up with new, horrifying scenarios for perfectly ordinary people.
If you’ve read Her Last Tomorrow, you might’ve spotted a couple of familiar characters popping up in the shop in Switzerland. Sorry. I couldn’t resist it.
If you know France, Switzerland, Austria or Slovakia at all, you’ve probably noticed that I don’t. Although I’ve based every location in this book on real locations, I must admit to some artistic licence where necessary and hope you’ll forgive me for it.
My thanks go to Österreichische Bundesbahnen, the Austrian train operator, for the information on travel between Innsbruck and Bratislava. Thanks also to the residents of Innsbruck for unwittingly allowing me to invent a petrol station and flyover.
I must also thank Lucy Hayward, for her eagle eye and pointing out a few daft errors in the manuscript before they got too far.
Huge thanks must go to my editor Jane Snelgrove and development editor Charlotte Herscher, and the team at Thomas & Mercer for the support they’ve given me and the sterling work they’ve done in publishing this book. Their forward thinking and innovation makes them a credit to the teetering publishing industry.
And last but certainly not least, the biggest thanks must go to my readers and members of my VIP Club, who are the whole reason I keep doing this. You guys rock.
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