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

by TM Logan

‘At his house.’

  ‘You’ve got to be fucking kidding me! That means deliberately breaking every single one of the Rules.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Her dad walked in, putting a finger to his lips.

  ‘The children are asleep.’

  ‘Thanks, Dad.’

  Laura gave him a thumbs up and turned back to her friend, her voice quieter.

  ‘And how exactly are you going to make him think you’ll play ball?’

  Sarah shrugged.

  ‘Act the right way. Say the right things. Pick the right dress.’

  ‘Holy Christ!’ Laura said, loudly again. She threw her hands up. ‘Sorry. But have you been smoking crack?’

  ‘I know it sounds mad, but bear with me – it makes sense. Let’s break it down for a minute: first of all what do we know about him? What is the fundamental essence of Professor Alan Lovelock?’

  ‘He’s a massive twat?’ Laura said.

  ‘Yes, but that wasn’t quite what I was driving at.’

  There was silence for a moment while they pondered Sarah’s question.

  ‘Ego,’ Roger said. ‘He has an ego the size of Big Ben.’

  Sarah pointed at her father, smiling.

  ‘Absolutely. And that means what?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘Colossal, unshakeable self-belief.’

  ‘Right. Keep going.’

  ‘So even despite all your knock-backs, he still believes that deep down you’re attracted to him. Because, of course, you are, right? You’re a woman, what woman wouldn’t be?’

  ‘Bingo,’ Sarah said. ‘He thinks he’s irresistible. That’s his weakness.’

  ‘And he’s a massive twat,’ Laura added.

  ‘It gives me a way in, a way to exploit his weakness. But I’ll have to go about it in a convincing way.’

  Laura crossed her arms tightly over her chest.

  ‘And how are you going to do that?’

  ‘I’m going to play a role. Just like Nick played a role with me the last few years.’

  ‘Acting?’

  ‘Yes. I’m going to give the performance of a lifetime.’

  ‘You’re talking about entrapment.’

  ‘I’m talking about proof. Saving my job – and my sanity.’

  Laura spoke more calmly now, her voice softened with concern.

  ‘You know, at work we have to categorise potential reputation issues for the company in terms of them being low, medium, high or critical risk. From what you’ve told me so far, this plan of yours would be ranked somewhere north of critical, probably in the category of “totally shitting bonkers”. Do you follow me?’

  ‘I know it’s high risk, Loz, but I’ve run out of options. Anyway, I thought you said you were up for it?’

  Laura frowned.

  ‘I am, of course I am. He’s spent his whole life fighting dirty – why shouldn’t we fight dirty, too? But how are you going to record him?’

  ‘He’s invited me to his house on Saturday evening. Well, I actually sort of invited myself.’

  ‘What about his wife?’

  ‘She’s away in the West Country, seeing her mother. And he’s been busy telling people at work that he’s locking himself away at home for the weekend to finish writing his book – no visitors, no calls, no distractions. Says he’s going to spend two days in splendid isolation to finish his magnum opus.’

  ‘Hang on a minute, you’re going this Saturday? You mean tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes.’ She picked up the box that Mikhail had given her in the Brent Cross multi-storey, lifting it up onto the kitchen side and slicing it open with the boning knife. ‘So we’ve not got long to prepare.’

  74

  ‘This is a really bad idea,’ Roger said. ‘It’s far too dangerous.’

  ‘I agree,’ Laura said.

  Sarah looked from one of them to the other, across the table.

  ‘I know there’s risk,’ she said calmly, ‘but it’s my best shot as well. And it’s the best I could come up with. I might only get inside his house once – I have to take this chance, it could be the only one I get. It’s now or never.’

  Her dad leaned forward, his face grim.

  ‘Why does it have to be at his house?’

  ‘Because that’s his domain, his kingdom; it’s where he’s most likely to let his guard down.’

  ‘It just feels like you’re playing right into his hands.’

  ‘Look, I’ve got a better idea,’ Laura said. ‘We do this in a public place, in a park maybe, or a café, or even at your office, and the two of us can be waiting around the corner ready to step in if things go wrong. We could be twenty yards away the whole time, rather than bloody miles away.’

  ‘Agreed,’ Roger said, nodding.

  ‘Won’t work,’ Sarah countered. ‘He’s too smart for that. He’ll smell it a mile off. It needs to be on his own turf, with plenty of alcohol to loosen his tongue.’

  ‘But that’s exactly what makes it more dangerous for you, love,’ Roger said, his voice rising. ‘The risk is too great.’

  ‘The risk is necessary,’ Sarah replied, her own voice flat. ‘Dad, you’re the one who told me what my options were. This is the option I choose.’

  ‘I’m with your dad on this,’ Laura said.

  Sarah crossed her arms on the table in front of her.

  ‘Look, I’m going to do this whether you help me or not. I think I’ll have a better chance of making it work if I have backup, but I’m going to do it anyway. I’ve got the kit to do the job, and I’m going to use it. Solo, if I have to.’

  ‘You can’t pull this off on your own.’

  ‘Watch me.’

  Her father and her best friend stared at her across the table, then looked at each other.

  Finally, her father nodded.

  ‘OK then. You better show us the equipment.’

  *

  ‘The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog,’ Sarah’s dad said to her.

  ‘The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain,’ she replied.

  More quietly, he said: ‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.’

  Sarah paused for a moment.

  ‘Lean back a bit and say that again.’

  He did as he was told and they looked at each other as he repeated the same sentence. Sarah picked up her phone, lying on the coffee table between them, and moved it onto the arm of the sofa next to her.

  ‘Try it again,’ Laura called from the next room. ‘I can hear you OK, Sarah, but your dad is getting really muffled.’

  They went through their lines again and a minute later Laura came into the room, sitting down with the laptop.

  ‘You’re going to need to get the phone as close to him as you can, especially if there’s background noise.’

  ‘That’s why I have the other kit.’

  ‘Yeah. About that . . .’

  Laura called up another tab on the screen of the laptop the young Russian had provided, showing an image from the room they were in. She selected the rewind option and the picture skipped backwards, jerking up and down. She paused it and the only things visible were Roger’s knees, the coffee table and a section of carpet.

  ‘There’s a lot of movement on this little camera. That’s not so good.’ She studied the new brooch pinned to Sarah’s blouse. ‘We’re going to need to secure it, somehow, so it’s more stable. Also, you’ll need to stay as still as possible, slow and steady, otherwise the image quality is going to be shite.’

  ‘I’m going to have to move, Loz. I can’t just sit there like a statue.’

  ‘The less you move, the better the video is going to be. That’s all I’m saying.’

  ‘Easier said than done.’

  ‘Ideally, we want to take the image from the brooch camera and the audio from the phone, and sync them together to give the full picture of what’s going on. You’ve got the bag as well, but I don’t think we should rely on that.’

  ‘But they’re all recordin
g OK?’

  ‘Yup. Audio and video wirelessly transmitted and captured right here.’

  Laura patted the laptop.

  Roger stood up and headed for the kitchen.

  ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’

  When he’d left the room, Laura said more quietly: ‘We should have an alert word, too.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A word you can use to raise the alarm, to drop into conversation without him realising. Something innocuous that won’t raise his suspicions.’

  ‘If it gets to that stage, it’ll probably be too late anyway.’

  ‘But we need a way for you to tell us if you’re in trouble – if you need help. And when we hear the word, or if you text it to your dad, all bets are off and we come to get you out.’

  ‘What are you going to do, kick the door down?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Laura said. ‘Or call the police.’

  Sarah shook her head.

  ‘No. Not the police.’

  ‘You can’t just rule it out. What if things go wrong, or he gets violent, or something?’

  ‘Let me worry about that.’

  ‘Bollocks!’ Laura said, throwing her hands in the air. ‘That’s just bollocks, and you know it.’

  ‘No police,’ Sarah said again.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You know why.’

  Laura couldn’t hide her exasperation.

  ‘This thing of yours, this plan, it could easily get to the point of no return. As in, it could go seriously wrong if he figures out what’s going on.’

  ‘I think we all know that already,’ Sarah said quietly.

  ‘I mean it could go catastrophically fucking wrong. You realise that, don’t you?’

  Sarah looked down at the floor.

  ‘Yes. I know.’

  Laura lowered her voice.

  ‘He might try to rape you. He might do anything.’

  ‘He has to be confronted.’

  ‘And if the really bad stuff happens, if things go wrong, it’s going to be very hard to explain why you went to his house willingly, on a Saturday evening, when his wife wasn’t there. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You know how risky this is?’

  Sarah nodded again but couldn’t speak. She had thought of little else since coming up with the plan.

  ‘Christ,’ Laura said. ‘Come here.’

  She went to her friend and put her arms around her. The two of them stood like that, in the middle of Sarah’s lounge, no words between them. Each trying to comfort the other, and themselves.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Laura said finally. ‘But I don’t like the idea of you going to that bastard’s house, alone with no one to back you up. For the third time of asking, I’m now going to try and talk you out of this mad plan. Because it is totally mad.’

  Sarah hugged her back.

  ‘I know, but that’s what I’m relying on. If it wasn’t a bit crazy, he’d see it coming from a mile away.’

  ‘Sometimes I think you’re even more pig-headed than me.’

  ‘No chance.’

  ‘We should think of an alert phrase, though. It needs to be something unusual enough that you won’t use it in normal conversation. So we’ll know what it means when we hear it.’

  ‘Such as?’

  Laura’s eyes lit on the cheap new throwaway phones that Sarah had bought for Laura and her dad to use. Both charging on a side table.

  ‘How about something to do with your phone? Then I’ll know you want to make a call, but can’t. You could use the words “brand new phone” in that order.’

  Roger came back into the lounge, holding three steaming mugs of tea.

  ‘I suppose that’s as good a phrase as any,’ she said. ‘What happens if I say it?’

  Roger frowned. ‘If we hear you’re in trouble, I drive straight to the house and hammer on the door until he lets me in. I’ll be waiting down the road in the pub car park – I can be at his house in two minutes from there.’

  Laura put her hand up.

  ‘Hang on a minute, if she gives the alert phrase our rescue plan is that you’re going to knock on the door? What if he just ignores you?’

  ‘Have you got a better idea?’ Roger said.

  ‘Take a sledgehammer to it. Kick it in.’

  Sarah shook her head.

  ‘It’s solid oak, two inches thick. No one’s smashing the front door down.’

  ‘OK,’ Laura said, ‘but then what’s the point of having an alert phrase if we can’t come in and get you?’

  ‘Let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that. Stick to the plan: you call me on the mobile at exactly 8.10, you tell me Harry has fallen down the stairs and you’re in an ambulance on the way to hospital. You tell me that Dad’s on his way to pick me up.’

  ‘Why 8.10 again?’

  ‘The timing is important: I’ll arrive at 7.30 so it will give me forty minutes to get what I need.’

  ‘A lot of shit could go wrong in forty minutes.’

  ‘I know that. So if you hear me say the words “brand new phone” at any point, you just call my mobile straight away, give me the spiel about Harry and the ambulance, and we stop it right there.’

  ‘What if you can’t answer?’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ll keep it within arm’s reach the whole time.’

  75

  They sat at the kitchen table, the three of them. With an hour until the allotted meeting time, everything was in place. Laura had the laptop in front of her, showing the live video and audio feeds on its screen, a phone connected via USB and ready to record everything. Her dad had his coat and shoes on, car keys in hand, looking exactly like what he was: a harmless retiree in his mid-sixties. Sarah was in a smart jacket, blouse and long skirt that she had not taken out of the cupboard for months. Where before the jacket had fitted just about right, now there seemed to be room to spare. The consequence of barely eating for weeks on end, she supposed. A new crystal brooch decorated one side of the jacket, over her heart.

  ‘You look fab, honey,’ Laura said, taking her friend’s hands in hers.

  ‘Thanks,’ Sarah said.

  ‘I wish I could come with you. But since you won’t let me, I’ve got something else for your handbag. A bit of insurance.’

  ‘I’ll be fine.’

  ‘Bollocks to being fine,’ Laura said. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a slim rectangle of black plastic, pressing a button at one end. A wicked four-inch blade sprang out of the handle, snapping into place.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Sarah breathed. ‘A flick knife?’

  ‘It used to be my brother’s. I nicked it off him one day when we were kids, and I’ve kept it ever since.’

  ‘Aren’t they illegal?’

  Laura raised an eyebrow.

  ‘I think we’re a bit beyond that, aren’t we?’

  She retracted the blade back into the handle and dropped it into the handbag.

  ‘Thanks,’ Sarah said. ‘Have you both got your throwaway phones switched on and ready?’

  They held up the cheap pay-as-you go handsets.

  ‘Why do we need these again?’ Laura said.

  ‘Because if it all goes wrong, I’ll be able to say you weren’t involved and had nothing to do with any of it – and there will be no mobile phone data to contradict me. I’ve got those numbers if I need them, but whatever happens, tomorrow both these phones are going into the Thames, never to be seen again.’

  ‘I don’t like the idea of it going wrong.’

  ‘It’s not going to go wrong, Loz.’

  Laura nodded and gave her a tight smile.

  ‘Good,’ Sarah said. ‘So are we all ready? Everyone know what they have to do?’

  ‘Are you ready?’ her dad said.

  ‘Not really, but if we waited until we were ready we’d never get anywhere, would we?’

  ‘And you’re sure, you’re absolutely sure, that you want to go through with this?’
r />   She stood up.

  ‘Yes, I’m sure.’ She picked up her handbag. ‘Let’s go.’

  76

  Sarah walked carefully up the drive of Lovelock’s six-bedroom detached house, her heels crunching on the gravel. She was grateful for the way her jacket now hung off her thinner frame. It left more space for the items concealed beneath her blouse. Her hair was pinned up and she carried the brand new handbag in her left hand. It was slightly bigger than she would have chosen for herself and didn’t quite go with the rest of the outfit, but she didn’t think a man like Alan Lovelock would notice.

  A security light clicked on as she approached, bathing the top of the drive in a bright halogen light. The house behind was a huge shadowy mass, looming up out of the cold November night. The only other light she could see was glowing faintly in one of the long bay windows – the rest of the house was in darkness.

  It was the second time she had been here in a matter of weeks. That first time, at Lovelock’s annual charity fundraising party, the place had been loud with chatter and music and Sarah had been hopeful that her invitation was a prelude to good news for her job and her career prospects. How we delude ourselves, she thought as she approached the front door. She was grateful for one thing at least: the party was where she had met Gillian Arnold. A woman with whom she had a great deal in common.

  Tonight would be different. This time, the house would not be full of guests. No safety in numbers. No witnesses to keep his behaviour in check. She wouldn’t have a colleague by her side, riding shotgun. In fact, she was breaking the Rules so completely that she thought she’d probably broken new ones that they hadn’t even thought up yet. She would be alone with Lovelock behind a closed door, he would likely be drunk, and on his home turf. If Marie had known what she was about to do she would have begged her, pleaded with her, to walk away. Though of course they were no longer on speaking terms.

  Marie didn’t know, anyway. And that was the way it had to be.

  She looked up and saw the little CCTV camera in its discreet housing above the front door, nestled among the ivy. Its tiny red light, unblinking in the shadows, indicating the camera was live and filming everyone who came up the drive. This will have to be the performance of a lifetime, she reminded herself.