But the lies . . . she knew she’d never be able to get past them. She couldn’t stay with Mark now that she knew he could lie like this, lie and keep lying even when she begged for the truth, one story after another, all plausible, all perfectly woven until she picked at the one semi-loose thread and they unravelled in her hands. If she stayed, it would mean living with the possibility – the likelihood – of lies for the rest of her life.
And the things he’d lied about, too. Lying about his brother she could understand – even forgive. In his place, meeting someone she really liked, perhaps she would have done the same in the tentative early days. But you wouldn’t have kept on lying, argued her inner voice; when you knew the relationship was getting serious, you would have said something, even if it meant losing him. And his parents: he’d lied to her about them from the very beginning, before he could ever really have known their relationship would be significant.
‘The boring, ordinary, petit bourgeois people he had to leave behind.’ She heard his father’s voice again. Was that why Mark had lied about them? Had he despised them so much? She thought of the pile of magazine clippings, the aspiration and yearning for sophistication that had risen off every hoarded page like steam. Was that why Mark kept his half of the bedroom so pared back? she wondered. Was that his way of rejecting his surroundings, refusing to own any part of that stifling bungalow with its chintzy rocking chairs and fabric flowers? He’d been designing a different sort of life for himself, hadn’t he, page by magazine page?
And now Neesha. Hannah knew in her bones that Mark had fired her for talking about Hermione’s calls. Why else would he have gone to such lengths to work out who’d told her? And if her for firing Neesha had been legitimate, he would have told her, Hannah, wouldn’t he? He always talked to her about work – under normal circumstances, there was no way he’d fire his assistant without discussing it with her first.
She turned into Studdridge Street, only a minute from home now. Home. Warm light shone from the windows of almost every house, people settling in for cosy Saturday evenings of dinner and television. She thought about the walk back to the station in the rain, the hour or so she’d spend sitting soaked and cold on the Tube to Holloway. She waited for an oncoming car to pass and then made the left turn into Quarrendon Street. There was a parking spot right on the end behind a white van and she pulled in and turned off the engine. She unplugged the GPS and put it back in the glove compartment then sat for a moment in the sudden quiet. The red light was flashing on her BlackBerry again but it was just her brother, asking what time she thought she’d get there; she could answer him once she got to the station. She dropped the phone into her bag, braced herself for the rain and got out.
Tucking the handle of the umbrella between her shoulder and ear, she hitched her bag on to her shoulder and slid the key into the car door. A darting movement at ground level startled her for a second but it was just a cat, the fat tabby from across the road. Rainwater streamed along the gutter at her feet.
‘Don’t scream, and don’t try and run.’
Hannah froze. The voice came from directly behind her, a foot away. A man’s voice, quiet, in control. Mark’s but not Mark’s – scratchier, the accent less cultured. For a second or two the world seemed to stop. She made to turn round but a strong hand had circled the top of her arm, and it was gripping hard, keeping her facing away.
‘Just do what I tell you and everything will be fine. Give me the key.’
‘Get off me. Get off – you’re—’
She tried to shake free of him but the hand gripped harder, fingers pressing into her flesh, sending pain shooting down her arm. She felt hot breath on her cheek, his mouth an inch from her ear. ‘Shut up,’ he said, his voice harder now, ‘and give me the key.’
She jabbed her other arm backwards, elbow up, hoping to make contact somewhere, surprise him enough to loosen his grip just for a second, but he anticipated her and grabbed hold of her wrist. He yanked it up behind her back and she felt something tear in her shoulder. Her umbrella fell to the pavement, followed by the car key. She heard the splash as it landed in the gutter and felt a stab of despair: the plastic fob was light; the coursing rainwater would carry it away and she’d never find it in the dark.
The police – where were the police? She twisted her head but her view was blocked by the white van she’d parked behind, and the Honda she’d seen at lunchtime had been around the curve in the street, on the same side. It was hidden from sight – or she was. She opened her mouth to scream but the hand that had circled her arm was now clamped across her face, forcing her head back. She struggled but he was too powerful, and every time she tried to get free, excruciating pain tore through her shoulder. The taste of leather was in her mouth – he was wearing gloves.
He kicked her feet out from under her and pulled her sharply round. She gasped with the pain, realised her mouth was partially uncovered and screamed. The sound was shockingly loud. She felt him flinch, and hope filled her: someone would have heard it – the police, one of the neighbours. Someone would come to see what was going on. Someone would help her.
Seconds later, the hope died: they wouldn’t have time. He half-pushed, half-dragged her the few steps to the van and pulled the back door open. With one neat move, he knocked her legs out from under her and shoved her forward. She fell face first, knocking the top of her head against the floor. Behind her, the van door slammed shut.
Chapter Twenty-five
The back of the van was windowless and, from the position she was tied in, Hannah couldn’t move her head far enough to see anything further forward. When he’d pushed her inside, she’d caught a brief view of the back of the seats and the heavy wire grille that separated them from the body of the van. Now all she could see was the van’s blank pressed-steel side and the patch of ceiling directly above her head, the patterns cast across it by the streetlights.
Where was he taking her?
She felt her gorge rising again and tried to swallow. If she threw up with the gag in her mouth, she’d choke. She couldn’t make a noise loud enough for him to hear in the front and she’d choke on her own vomit and suffocate. And what if he did hear her? said the voice in her head. Did she think Nick was going to help her? She thought of Hermione, dead in the yard at the back of the pub, her head smashed in, blood and bone and brain.
She pushed back, trying to lift her face away from the sacking that lay piled on the van floor. It was rough and reeked of earth and grass cuttings rotted to compost with an under-note of petrol that caught the back of her throat.
In the front section of the van, three feet away but hopelessly out of reach, she heard her phone start to ring. It rang five times then stopped as voicemail clicked in. Twenty seconds passed and then it rang again. ‘Christ’s sake,’ he muttered, and she heard him rummaging through her bag. A couple of seconds later, the ringing stopped for a second time and she heard the long tone the phone made when it was turned off.
Her forehead was throbbing where she’d hit it. He’d pushed her inside and climbed in after her, pulling the door shut behind him. The bang to the head had stunned her for a moment but then she’d started fighting, kicking and shouting, trying to make as much noise as possible. At one point she’d managed to bite his hand and he’d sworn and snatched it away level with his shoulder. She’d thought he was going to bring it back and hit her across the face but instead he’d launched himself at her again, pushing her back down and straddling her chest, pinning her arms with his knees while he tied the cloth across her face. She’d writhed and kicked, trying to bring her legs up behind him to knee him in the small of the back, but he was too strong and in a few seconds he had forced her on to her front, pulled her hands behind her back and bound them together with something hard and sharp-edged: perhaps a plant-tie. He’d done the same with her feet.
He’d checked both sets of ties twice and, when he was satisfied, he’d crawled to the door and got out, taking her bag with him. Seconds later
, she heard him get back in at the front of the van and the engine had started. He’d made a four- or five-point turn – the street was narrow with cars parked on both sides – and headed back towards Studdridge Street.
In her panic, she’d quickly lost track of where they were going – any number of streets led off Studdridge; had he turned left then or just swerved? – but now, from outside, she heard a distinctive high-pitched beeping. She knew it; she’d heard it countless times: the pedestrian crossing on Parsons Green Lane, just outside the Tube station. They’d stopped – he was waiting for the light. She thought she heard the click of buttons – was he texting? – and then there was a thunderous clatter overhead: a train on the bridge, slowing, coming into the station. She felt a burst of elation – she knew where they were – but as quickly as it came, it was gone. What good was knowing where she was? She was bound and gagged, lying helpless in the semi-darkness in a van driven by a man who’d killed a woman. Two women.
Trying to concentrate seemed to quell the panic, though, at least to some extent. It was something to focus on, a straw to clutch at. They started moving again and she pictured Parson’s Green Lane, the little café, the fish-and-chip shop, the doctor’s surgery. At the top, he turned left on to Fulham Road.
She traced the route in her head as he took them up Fulham Palace Road to the roundabout at Hammersmith and then – two sets of traffic lights followed by a sudden acceleration – on to the A40. The lights on the van ceiling changed, the orange streetlamp glow giving way to the strobing white of headlights passing quickly on the other side of the road. Her heart started beating faster, the panic rising again: unless he turned off soon, they were heading for the motorway. They were leaving London.
The roar of planes coming in to land at Heathrow was the last thing Hannah was sure about. After that, there was just the sound of the engine and the other traffic around them on the motorway, with an occasional rough bronchitic cough from the front. Every few minutes there was the click of a lighter and the air filled with acrid cigarette smoke. Had they stayed on the M4 or had Nick taken the London Orbital and then one of the numerous other motorways that came off it like spokes? There was no way of knowing: they could be heading anywhere. Without markers, time started to billow in and out: had it been ten minutes since she’d heard the planes or twenty? The rain came in waves, too, sometimes drumming so hard on the windscreen that he was forced to slow down, sometimes dying away almost completely.
She took an inventory of her pain. Her head was bad – the temple she’d hit was throbbing, sending needles of pain down through her eye – but her shoulder was injured, too. Something, either muscles or a ligament, was seriously torn.
She couldn’t stop thinking about her mother now. If something happened – if he kills you, said the voice – she’d never have a chance to say sorry. It was Mrs Reilly who’d done it, the reverence with which she’d handled that cheap photograph album, her desperate face at the car window. Despite everything, ten years of being ignored – scorned, her husband had said – she’d been prepared to beg a stranger for the smallest chance of seeing her son again.
Despite the way Hannah had behaved towards her, the brusque behaviour and constant rejection, her mother loved her, wanted to talk to her, counted down the weeks and months between Hannah’s infrequent visits. Hannah remembered how she’d stood in the kitchen in Malvern as a teenager quoting The Second Sex – hardly her own intellectual discovery: they’d studied it for French A-level – and denouncing her mother’s choices in life and she was ashamed of herself. Yes, her mother had never had a career, had never wanted one beyond bringing up her children, but couldn’t she, Hannah, one of the recipients of that love and attention and sacrifice, respect that? Be grateful? Despite all the hurt she’d inflicted, she realised, she could always rely on her mother’s unfailing loyalty and love. She thought of the trepidation she heard in Sandy’s voice when she telephoned, her obvious fear that she’d called at the wrong time, and Hannah wanted to cry with shame. If she came through this alive, she thought, she’d go to Malvern and throw herself at her mother’s feet, tell her she loved and appreciated her and was sorry.
There was the click of the indicator and they pulled out again. He was driving quickly but not quickly enough, she realised with despair, to draw the attention of the police. She could sense him, his physical presence seemed to weigh down the air, but he hadn’t uttered a word to her since he’d slammed the back doors shut. The silence was worse than anything he might have said. Years ago on the news, she’d seen Stephanie Slater, the woman Michael Sams had kidnapped and kept tied up for days in a wheelie bin. She’d told the interviewer that she’d talked to him, never let him forget that she was a real person, trying to make it harder for him to kill her. But this wasn’t about sex, was it, and she wasn’t some poor woman pulled off the street at random.
Hannah tried to think logically. Why would Nick kill her? He’d had a reason for killing Hermione but she, Hannah, had done nothing to him. What would he hope to achieve? Then she had another thought. What if he’d finally spoken to Mark and he knew he didn’t have the money? Was that it? Was this some kind of revenge attack? Or was she going to be used as a bargaining chip? Bait?
They’d been driving for a long time, maybe an hour and a half, maybe two hours, when she heard the indicator again and they began to slow down. They climbed a short slope and the burr of motorway traffic receded. A brief pause, then a green glow on the ceiling and they were moving again but more slowly, fifty miles an hour now, not eighty. She strained, listening for any clue at all as to where they were, but apart from another vehicle every minute or so and the sound of wind in the trees, there was nothing. The road had changed, too, winding one way then the other, dipping then rising. There was no glow of streetlights across the ceiling, no more traffic lights. They were out in the country.
After another ten or fifteen minutes, they slowed almost to a stop and turned off the road on to what felt like an unmade track. The van lurched in and out of potholes, jarring Hannah’s hip and shoulder against the floor. Wherever he was taking her, they must be almost there.
The surface under the wheels changed again and they came on to gravel. Nick stopped the van and got out, slamming his door shut. The crunch of footsteps and then the back doors opened and she saw him silhouetted against the sky. Taking hold of her lower legs, he dragged her towards the doors and pulled her into a sitting position. He took a Stanley knife out of his pocket and she felt a flare of pure fear, but then he bent and cut the tie around her ankles with a quick upward flick. Taking hold of her by the upper arms, he pulled her to her feet. She struggled, trying to get free and head-butt him, but he tightened his grip and held her at arm’s length.
‘I wouldn’t bother,’ he said, voice neutral. ‘We’re miles from anywhere.’
After the fetid sacking, the cold night air smelled clean and sweet. She sucked it in through her nose, trying to flush the stink of rotting vegetation and petrol from her nostrils. Into her head came the idea that this might be the last time she ever smelled fresh air and she pushed it away, ordering herself to keep it together.
Hand between her shoulder blades, Nick pushed her around the side of the van. Cloud blotted out any moonlight but her eyes were accustomed to the dark now and she saw the front of a large, pale-stone house backed by trees. It was the house from the newspaper picture, the one where he’d been photographed with his sports car.
She stumbled as her foot caught the edge of a flagstone on the uneven path, but he caught her, yanking her backwards, sending another bolt of pain through her shoulder. One hand on the neck of her coat, he unlocked the front door and thrust her inside. Then he shut the door after himself, locked it again and pocketed the key.
Reaching out, he snapped the light on. Hannah blinked. They were in a hallway, polished stone flagging underfoot, a wide flight of stairs climbing away into darkness. There was a series of gloomy oil paintings in ornate gilt frames, and at the foot o
f the stairs a mounted stag’s head with branched antlers. To their left and right were closed doors. The air was warm but smelled strongly of dust, as if the house had been empty for some time and the heating had only just been put back on.
In front of them, a corridor led towards the back of the house. With a sharp nudge, he directed her forward. They went round a corner, passing another pair of closed doors, and came into a room at the end. In the weak light from the window, she made out a table with chairs and then, at the other end, units: a sink, a stove.
Nick flicked the light on, pulled out a chair and pushed her into it. Going behind her, he tied her wrists to the bar across the back then came round and crouched in front of her. She aimed a kick at his face but he caught her ankle before it reached him. ‘Just don’t, all right? There’s no need to make this any harder.’
Through the gag she made a sound she meant him to interpret as ‘Fuck you’.
For the first time now, she saw Nick at close range. No wonder she’d mistaken him for Mark outside the delicatessen. As she knew from the pictures, he had no mole, and his eyes were larger and even darker than Mark’s, the pupils almost indistinguishable from the irises, but the structure of their faces was the same. The only real difference, she could see now, was in their skin. Though he was forty, Mark could pass for thirty-two or three but no one would take Nick for that. He looked older by ten years, if not fifteen. His forehead and the area around his eyes were scored with lines, and other, deeper ones, the result of years of heavy smoking, radiated out from his mouth. He was wearing the pea coat she’d seen him in before, the one that had reminded her of Mark’s, but his black jeans were old, faded and white at the seams, and his beanie was knitted in a cheap nylon-wool mix, completely different from the cashmere one that Mark had picked up at Barneys on a New York trip last year.
Keeping hold of her ankle, he forced it against the leg of the chair, took another garden tie out of his pocket and pulled it tight. When he’d tied her other leg, he stood up and went behind her again. She felt tugging at her hands and then, to her confusion, she realised he’d cut them free. Pain shooting through her shoulder, she brought them round in front of her and saw deep red welts around her wrists. A moment later, she felt his hands at the back of her head again and he pulled the gag out of her mouth.
Before We Met: A Novel Page 28
