29 Seconds: From the author of LIES. You will not put this thriller down until the final astonishing twist . . .

by TM Logan

  56

  Sarah wasn’t sure how long she stayed behind the locked bathroom door. She washed and washed her face again and again, trying to get his smell off her, to get his stink out of her nostrils. Her head was pounding and her throat painful from held-back sobs – but she knew that if she started crying, she wouldn’t be able to stop.

  She stripped off her cardigan and blouse, throwing them in the washing basket, before finally unlocking the bathroom door and heading to her bedroom to find something clean to wear. It was only then she saw the mess that Jonesy had left on the landing. The remains of the pigeon – most of the wings, head and feathers, with dark trails of blood and God knew what else – were scattered across the faded carpet.

  ‘Shit!’ she shouted to the empty house. ‘Shit! Shit!’

  She found a plastic bag, put her hand inside it and gathered up the parts of the bird that her tomcat had not eaten, before turning the bag inside out and tying it closed. Then she filled a bucket with water and detergent and knelt on her hands and knees on the landing, scrubbing and scrubbing at the mess with a sponge, trying to get rid of the blood and guts and only succeeding in soaking the worn beige stair carpet a deep brown. Still she continued scrubbing and wringing out and soaking and scrubbing because it gave her hands something to do.

  She knew, at the back of her mind, that she was doing what she always tried to do when troubles threatened to overcome her: stay busy, keep her mind occupied so that it wouldn’t dwell on the worst of it. Find a distraction and push everything else away.

  But today it wasn’t working.

  Because she could still smell his acrid sweat in the hall and in the lounge and on the stairs.

  She could still feel the scratch of his stubble on her cheeks and neck.

  And she had the same thought going round and around inside her head, the same image burned onto her retinas: Lovelock leaning towards her, with his bloodshot eyes and broken-vein cheeks, holding his thumb and forefinger half an inch apart.

  The police are this close to arresting you, Sarah.

  Was it true? Was he just bullshitting her? And more importantly, could she run the risk of finding out one way or the other? Could she call his bluff?

  I tried to make things better. But I ended up making them ten times worse.

  He knows I was involved. Never mind keeping my job, I will be lucky to stay out of prison. My family is at risk now more than ever. And to top it all – the cherry on the cake – somehow I’ve made Alan into the victim, I’ve made it so that people will feel sorry for him.

  After what had happened this afternoon, if it had been any other man, any other situation, the answer would be obvious: go to the police. Make a complaint. Press charges.

  But not him.

  Not now.

  Because if he had been bulletproof before, now he was totally untouchable.

  The thought of it, of proper police help being out of reach, brought her up short. She’d never felt more alone in her life, more completely and utterly wretched. She stopped scrubbing at the carpet and collapsed into the corner of the landing.

  She felt the tears come again, and this time she didn’t try to stop them.

  She sobbed, crying with all her breath and all her heart, in a way she had not done since her mother died, knees tucked up to her chin, her face pressed against the door frame, her body shaking with racking sobs as she thought of all she had lost and what she had left to lose, feeling something finally break inside her. She cried until her throat was choked raw and her chest ached.

  She cried until she had no tears left.

  She had no idea how long she stayed there. After a while, when she saw the sky outside darkening towards dusk, she went slowly and carefully downstairs. Her limbs ached, her head throbbed, her cheeks were salty with tears. She felt sick and exhausted, filled with a despair she had never known before. Catching sight of herself in the hall mirror, she didn’t recognise the wild-eyed stranger who stared back. Suddenly she wanted desperately to shield the children from all of this, to make sure they didn’t see her in this state. She didn’t want them to be in the place where Lovelock had been, or anywhere near it. Not before she erased every trace of him from the house.

  She was the firewall between her children and everything that was wrong with the world. She would protect them.

  She texted her dad.

  Can the kids stay at yours tonight, and you take them to school tomorrow? x

  The reply came back almost straight away.

  Of course. Are you OK? x

  She was so tired she couldn’t even come up with a convincing lie.

  Yes. Just need to sort a few things out here. Got a ton of marking to get through. Going to have a nap and then get down to it. See you tomorrow. Kiss the kids for me. x

  It didn’t sound plausible, even to her. She knew he’d ring at some point to check she was really all right. But she didn’t want him to see her like this. She didn’t want anyone to see her like this.

  Five minutes later, he did call. And then again, five minutes after that.

  She didn’t answer.

  57

  He was there. He was coming for her. And there was no door, no way out. He was in the hall, she was sitting in the armchair – but it was in the living room of his house, and they were alone, there was no one to help her. She couldn’t move as he loomed over her, he reached down and put a hand between her –

  Sarah woke with a start.

  She was on the floor of her lounge, a blanket wrapped loosely around her. It was past midnight. The central heating had gone off, the house grown cold around her. Her cheeks were wet; she had been crying in her sleep. Around her, scattered like leaves in the autumn wind, was a whirlwind of mess: papers, books, a broken wine glass and an empty bottle of wine lying on its side, clothes strewn around, her old diaries, laptop half-open on its back. Sheets of lined paper covered with wild scribbled handwriting she barely recognised as her own. A broken picture frame full of cracked glass, photo albums of the kids open at favourite pages. Her PhD thesis, bound in thick hardback, lying open and discarded in the corner.

  Her head was pounding, her limbs leaden. She felt about a hundred years old. She thought she ought to eat something but her appetite had disappeared weeks ago and had never really come back.

  She opened another bottle of wine and took her phone out to compose a text to Nick.

  I need you. I need to talk to you. When are you coming back? S x

  Three times she typed out a different version of the same message, and three times she deleted it before sending. Eventually she threw her phone to the floor in frustration.

  It occurred to her, not for the first time, that maybe this was how it was going to be now. That she had had the best of him – their best years together – and that was all he had to give. They had been through so much together, made two beautiful children, shared a life together. But maybe he was part of her past now, rather than her future.

  Maybe he would never come back.

  The thought had reduced her to tears many times in the last six weeks, but now the tears wouldn’t come. Instead of sadness, she felt resignation. A line being drawn. He had let her down in every possible way, and there was no point crying over something she couldn’t change. Not anymore.

  She drank more wine and roamed the house, feet dragging, drawing all the curtains and double-checking the doors and windows were locked. She took all the knives out of the kitchen drawers and lined them up on the worktop, largest to smallest. In the cupboard under the stairs she rummaged around until she found Nick’s little-used toolbox, going through it until she found a few more weapons to add to her arsenal. Eventually she sat on the sofa with the bottle of wine, staring into the dark fireplace. She saw his face in the darkness. Lovelock.

  She wasn’t sure how long she spent like that. Hours, maybe.

  It was not yet dawn when she went wearily up to the bathroom and opened the cabinet over the sink. On the top shelf were the
boxes of Temazepam pills she had been prescribed the year before, when the situation with Lovelock had started to affect her sleep.

  From experience, she knew two were usually enough to make her drowsy. She’d never taken more than that.

  She pulled out all the remaining strips of blister-packed tablets and counted what was left. Three strips were still nearly full: forty-one tablets in all. How did you swallow that many? Were they best swallowed all at once, in handfuls, or two at a time? Or was it best to break open the little plastic capsules and pour all the white powder into a tablespoon and take it that way? Maybe mix the powder up into a glass of water? No, they were probably better taken two at a time, she thought, then you could keep track of how many you’d had. That was the way to do it. That would give you the best chance of keeping them down long enough for the dose to do its work. Fill a pint glass of water, lay them out beside you, and keep on taking them two at a time. Two by two by two. Then just lie down and let it happen.

  No more Lovelock. No more police. No more fear.

  Once a week, every week. I’ll sit back and you’ll get down on your knees.

  She filled a tall glass of water from the tap and turned the blister packs over in her hand, punching out each of the tablets in turn. Holding them in her palm: forty-one little orange torpedoes with enough power to make everything go away. They didn’t look like much when they were all piled together like that. She found a clean flannel and laid them out on it, pushing the tablets into pairs. Two by two by two. That was the way to do it. She took her phone out of her dressing gown pocket, checked that it was switched off.

  The first grey slivers of dawn were creeping through the bathroom window.

  She swallowed two of the tablets with a mouthful of water. Then flushed the rest down the toilet.

  Closing the cabinet door, she stared at herself in the mirror until she couldn’t stand it any longer. Then shuffled to her bedroom on heavy legs and collapsed onto the bed, just managing to pull the duvet up to her neck before she drifted off.

  She was still there, curled into an exhausted sleep, when her father let himself in a few hours later.

  58

  Her dad brought tea to where Sarah slumped on the sofa, staring blankly at the muted TV. She felt empty, hollowed out with crying. The exhaustion lay over her like a shroud.

  ‘Are the kids OK?’

  ‘They’re fine. I just dropped them at school.’

  ‘Thanks, Dad.’

  He perched on the end of the sofa, handing her the steaming mug.

  ‘Sarah, do you remember when you were seven and you hid all of your Barbie dolls around the house because your sisters kept going into your bedroom and taking them?’

  ‘We had so many fallouts over those stupid dolls.’

  ‘You were so pleased with yourself that you’d managed to get the better of them for once. A week later I came home from work one day and you were crying your eyes out, because you’d forgotten where you’d hidden them. Do you remember?’

  She smiled faintly at the memory.

  ‘I remember writing a list of all their hiding places in invisible ink. Then I lost the piece of paper.’

  ‘I had to hunt those dolls down for you. Searched the whole house from top to bottom but I found them all, didn’t I?’

  ‘Every single one.’

  He patted her ankle gently.

  ‘Sarah?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I have something to show you.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Come on. Let’s get you up and on your feet now.’

  He turned off the TV and she levered herself up off the sofa with a grunt. She followed her dad through to the kitchen, where he gestured at the table. Arrayed on it, in a line, were the weapons she had hidden around the house: carving knife, poker, Stanley knife.

  ‘You seem to have mislaid a few things around the place, love.’

  Sarah swallowed, feeling tears spring to her eyes.

  ‘For protection.’

  ‘Protection from whom?’

  ‘I can’t really explain. I’m sorry.’

  He considered this for a moment, seeming to decide not to push her for an answer.

  ‘All right. But will you tell me whether I found everything this time?’

  ‘Yes. It was just those three.’

  ‘And what if Harry or Grace had found one of these . . . implements before me?’ he said gently.

  ‘I put them up high so they wouldn’t be able to reach. I made sure they couldn’t get to them.’

  ‘Hmm.’ He nodded, slowly. ‘Sit down a minute, Sarah.’

  She did as she was told and took the seat opposite her dad, wondering whether to tell him the truth. The whole truth. She wondered how she could explain about the weapons she had left around the house, about the man she feared would return and what he might do. The feeling of utter wretched helplessness, when he had been in her house for the first time.

  She wrapped both hands around her mug of tea and took a sip. It was hot and sweet; she didn’t normally take sugar but she was glad of it this time.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I’m worried about you, Sarah.’

  She said nothing.

  ‘I think it’s time you told me what’s going on.’

  Sarah shook her head, remembering Volkov’s words. Tell no one.

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Can’t or won’t?’

  ‘I wish I could, Dad. I really do.’

  The silence between them stretched out for a minute, until finally he took the seat next to her and simply hugged her. They sat like that for a while before she let him go, and they both settled back into their chairs.

  Her dad took a long drink of his tea.

  ‘You know, this is probably going to come as a bit of a surprise, but after your mother died I did something very bad.’

  Sarah looked at him, waiting to see if he was joking.

  ‘What?’ she shrugged. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I’ve never told anyone this before, so you must promise not to tell.’

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘Especially not your sisters.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Or Laura, or any of your other friends, or colleagues at work.’

  She frowned, unnerved at what might be coming.

  ‘OK,’ she said slowly.

  ‘All right. After your mother died, I . . . ’ He hesitated, but only for a second. ‘I spent six months planning to kill a man.’

  59

  Sarah coughed and almost spilt her drink.

  ‘What? No you didn’t. What are you talking about?’

  ‘It’s the truth.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Dad. You were never going to kill anyone.’

  ‘Lee Goodyer.’

  She looked up sharply. Her father hadn’t spoken of the accident in years. He talked about his late wife – Sarah’s mother – frequently, but not about the circumstances of her death. Not anymore. And she’d never, ever, heard him utter the name of the man who had taken him from her: Lee Goodyer, a thirty-two-year-old salesman whose haste to get to his next appointment had ended in tragedy. Goodyer had overtaken a lorry dangerously, recklessly, on an A-road to make up a few minutes in his journey. Sarah’s mother, coming the other way, had been forced to swerve to avoid him. She had overcorrected and driven straight into another lorry coming the other way.

  She had died instantly.

  A jury found Goodyer guilty of causing death by dangerous driving and the judge sentenced him to four years in prison.

  ‘Two years, he served – with good behaviour,’ Roger said bitterly. ‘Two bloody years for taking a life. It wasn’t enough, it wasn’t nearly enough. So as soon as he was sent down, I started thinking about what I was going to do.’

  ‘You withdrew from us completely. I thought you were grieving.’

  ‘I was grieving. But I was channelling it into planning.’

  She shook her head, still
struggling to believe what he was admitting to. This was her father, after all, who had spent his whole career in maritime insurance and had never received so much as a speeding fine.

  ‘God Almighty, Dad. What were you going to do?’

  ‘I had a few different plans – all of which involved me probably getting caught, but I didn’t care at that point. The worst had already happened to me, so why would it matter if I got caught? You have to understand – I was so angry, it felt like anger was all I had left after your mum died.’

  ‘You had us. Lucy and Helen and me.’

  ‘I know, I know. I was stupid. But you and your sisters were grown women, you weren’t dependent on us anymore. Me and your mum were married for thirty-three years and he took her life for the sake of a few minutes. He got two years of soft time in prison, and then out to enjoy the rest of his life. I wanted him to pay. Properly.’

  Sarah looked at her dad, the best man she had ever known, and saw then that his eyes were full of tears. She leaned over and hugged him again, rubbing his back as if soothing a child.

  ‘What made you change your mind?’

  He leaned back from the embrace and smiled, a tear spilling down his cheek.

  ‘You did.’

  Sarah frowned, digging in her pocket for a tissue and handing it to him.

  ‘Did I? How on earth did I manage that?’

  ‘Perhaps not you, exactly. Grace.’

  ‘But she wasn’t even born when Mum died.’

  ‘The first time I saw Gracie in the hospital, the first time I held her,’ he said, wiping his eyes, ‘I knew there was a choice to be made. If I went to take revenge on that man there was a good chance that I would be caught and I would go to prison. I would miss her growing up – she might never know who I was. All the plans I’d made about what I was going to do to Goodyer, all the lists and maps and photographs and background information, I threw it all in the fireplace and burned it that night. Then I got stinking drunk. And in the morning I brought the two of you home from the hospital.’