Part 25 (2/2)

She dreamed of the room again, the nursery with the snow falling outside. Except this time she was on the floor, feeling very small and very scared and, terrifyingly, Sally was standing above her. She was holding the broken hand over Zoe. It was wrecked, with bones sticking out at all angles, and the blood dripped out of it, rolling in fat plops on to Zoe's face.

She pushed her legs out, scrambling away from Sally, flipping herself over and stumbling for the door. Sally followed close behind, her hand raised. 'No!' she was crying. 'Don't go don't go!'

But Zoe was out of the door, tumbling down the stairs, breaking into a run, pelting through the streets. It was Bristol, she realized. St Paul's. Ahead she saw a doorway, a red light coming from it, a hand beckoning her. Hurry up Hurry up, someone yelled. Hurry up! This is the way through. In here! Hurry up! This is the way through. In here! And then, suddenly, she was standing on a stage, an audience looking expectantly up at her. In the front row were her parents, her first-form teacher and the superintendent. And then, suddenly, she was standing on a stage, an audience looking expectantly up at her. In the front row were her parents, her first-form teacher and the superintendent. Do something Do something, shouted the superintendant. Do something good Do something good. The lighting man frowned from the box at her, and at the back the maintenance man leaned on his broom, grinning up at her. Get on with it Get on with it, someone yelled. Do something good Do something good. Someone was pus.h.i.+ng her from behind. When she turned she saw David Goldrab, as a young man, London Tarn.

Zoe, he said. Lovely to see you again, Zoe! Lovely to see you again, Zoe!

She woke in the hotel room, her hands clutching the sides of the bed, her eyes wide. Her head was aching. She breathed in and out, in and out, staring at the headlights racing to and fro across the wall. After a while she rolled over. The display on the bedside table said 11:09. She groped for her phone the signal was strong, but no one in that time had tried to call her or text. She wondered who she'd been hoping for. Ben? It was eleven o'clock. He and Debbie would be in bed, maybe sharing a nightcap or cocoa. Or something else.

Debbie. Clean, clean, clean.

She put the phone into her pocket, swung her legs off the bed, went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face. Then she straightened and considered her reflection. 'd.a.m.n it,' she hissed. 'd.a.m.n it and f.u.c.k it to all h.e.l.l.'

She knew what she was going to do. She was going to go back to Mooney's.

23.

'Millie, go to bed.' A hundred miles to the west, Sally sat at the kitchen table in Peppercorn Cottage, watching her daughter rummage in the fridge for a late-night snack. 'You've got school in the morning. Go on. It's late.'

'Jesus.' She gave her mother a disdainful look. 'What's the matter with you? You're so so messing with my head.' messing with my head.'

'I'm only asking you to go to bed.'

'But you're acting totally weird.' She turned from the fridge with a carton of milk and gave the wine gla.s.s next to Sally's elbow an accusatory nod. 'And you've drunk tons. I mean tons tons.'

Sally put a hand protectively over the gla.s.s. It was true: she'd drunk the whole bottle and it hadn't changed a thing. Not a thing. Her head was still hard and taut, her heart racing. 'Just pour a gla.s.s of milk,' she said, in a controlled voice, 'and take it to bed.'

'And how come all the doors are locked? It's like being in a prison. I mean, it's not like he's going to find us all the way out here, for Christ's sake.'

'What did you say?'

'He doesn't know where I live.'

'Who doesn't know where you live?' doesn't know where you live?'

Millie blinked, as if she wasn't quite sure whether she'd heard Sally right. 'Jake, of course. You've paid him now. He'll leave me alone.'

Sally didn't answer. The muscles under her ribs were aching, she'd been so scared all day. It was an effort to hold the panic locked inside. After a while she pushed the chair back and went to the pantry for another bottle of Steve's wine. 'Just pour the milk. Take it to your room. And leave the windows closed. It's going to rain tonight.'

Millie banged around the kitchen, getting a gla.s.s, pouring the milk. She slammed the carton down on the worktop and disappeared. Sally stood motionless in the pantry, listening to her clump off down the corridor, and slam her bedroom door. She took a breath, rested her head against the wall, and counted to ten.

It was nearly nine hours since Steve's plane had taken off in Bristol. Nine hours and it seemed like nine years. Nine centuries. Wearily, she pushed herself away from the door, uncorked the wine, carried it to the table and filled her gla.s.s. She sat down and checked the display on her mobile. Nothing. He'd be landing in fifty minutes. She'd left several messages on his voicemail. If he switched on his phone before he got into Immigration he'd get them all within the hour. He'd know something was wrong. She raised her eyes to the window, the lighted kitchen reflected in the dark panes. All the surfaces and cupboards and her own face, white as a moon, in the middle of it. Earlier, after picking up Millie from school, she'd gone round the house and locked all the doors and windows, closed all the curtains. But then the idea that someone could be standing unseen outside one of the windows had crept into her head and eventually she'd thrown the curtains open again. When it came to the choice of being watched or not being able to see what was happening outside, she'd chosen being watched.

Watched ...

She'd been sure, so sure, that night that no one could be watching her and Steve in the garden. So how could it be? How could could it be? What had she overlooked? it be? What had she overlooked?

She pulled the laptop towards her and opened Google. When Google Earth had first come out she and Millie used to spend hours looking at it zooming in on friends' houses, going into street view and taking virtual walks down streets they knew. Streets they didn't know. Streets they might never visit. Now she zoomed it in on Peppercorn. The familiar double-pitched roof of the garage, the grey gables three at back and front the stone chimney and the thatch. The photo had been taken in midsummer and the trees were as fluffy and fat as dandelion clocks, casting short, puffy shadows on the lawn. She traced her finger across the screen in a huge circle around the cottage. There was nothing, no overlooking buildings. She zoomed the image out and still there was nothing. Just the familiar planting lines through the crops in the neighbouring fields.

She pushed the computer away and sat for a while, a finger on her lips, thinking. She got up, switched off the light and went to stand at the window. There was nothing out there. No movement or change. Only the distant twinkle of cars on the motorway and the faint grey of the moon behind the clouds. She took off her shoes and padded silently down the corridor, into Millie's room. She was asleep in bed, her breath coming evenly in and out, so she went back to the hallway, put on her wellingtons and a duffel coat and found the big, high-powered torch that Steve had insisted on buying her from Maplins, because he said it was craziness her being out in the middle of nowhere when there were power cuts all the time. Steve. G.o.d, she wished he was here now.

Silently she let herself out of the back door. It was cool very cool, almost cold after the unseasonable heat of the day. She stood for a moment looking around at the familiar surroundings, the great line of silver birch on the north perimeter, the patch of wood to the east, the top garden where a kiwi tree grew, its fruit hard and bitter. Her car was parked at the place she and Steve had stood six nights ago, shaking and sick with what they had done.

She locked the door behind her and went to the car. She stood with her back to it and slowly, slowly, scanned the horizon. Nothing. She moved around the car and did the same on the other side. There was nothing there. No building or place someone could have stood and watched. She crossed the lawn to the flowerbed where she'd made the bonfire yesterday. The earth was still grey and luminous with the ash and she could smell the faintest trace of carbonized wood in the air. She hefted up the huge torch, switched it on and aimed the beam into the trees. She'd never used the light before and it was so powerful she could make out details hundreds of yards away. If it found gla.s.s, a window-pane she'd overlooked, it would flash back at her. She swept the torch across the fields, going in a wide circle up the side of the cottage, the garage, b.u.mping over the hedgerows. She could see individual leaves and branches in the forest, the trees bending and whispering. In the copse at the top of the property the beam glanced across twin green spots. Eyes looking at her steadily. She came to a halt, her heart thudding. The eyes moved slightly, ducked a little, turned. It was just a deer, startled in the middle of grazing.

Sally let out all her breath and lowered the torch. There was nothing no building, no concealed layby or bird hide or tree-house or farm building. Nowhere someone could have hidden to watch what they'd done. And then something occurred to her. Something that should have been clear all along if she'd only been thinking straight. The car. Whoever had sent the message had chosen to put it in the car when it was parked at Steve's. What did that mean? Why hadn't they come to Peppercorn? Why go to the trouble of following her to Steve's if ...

Of course. She switched off the torch, went fast across the lawn to the cottage. Unlocked the front door and, without taking off her wellingtons or switching on the lights, went into the kitchen and opened the laptop. The screen came to life all the thick midsummer fields green and vibrant with light. She zoomed out, clawed the image to the left, moving north, pausing when she came to the faint, blurred line of the Caterpillar opposite Hanging Hill.

'There,' she breathed, sinking into her chair. 'There.'

The photograph had been taken in, she guessed, late June. A pinkish floating haze of poppies hung over the fields. Among them, Lightpil House a huge yellow slash on the green, its fountains and terraces reflecting the sun. To its north the almost triangular wedge of the parking s.p.a.ce where David Goldrab had died. To its south, near the perimeter, half hidden by towering poplars, the roof of a cottage.

Whoever had left the note knew nothing about Peppercorn Cottage: they'd seen her at David's. She'd thought they couldn't be overlooked where the killing happened, but she hadn't thought about the gardens of the houses at the top of Lightpil Lane. The bottom of the land attached to the cottage on the screen stretched along the northern wall of Lightpil House and came out at the bottom in a spoon shape, bordered by a low hedge. If someone had been standing there at the right time, if they had looked across the dip in the land ...

The phone rang in her pocket, making her jump. She s.n.a.t.c.hed it out with trembling hands.

'Steve. Steve? Steve?'

'Christ, Sally, what the h.e.l.l's going on?'

'It's all gone wrong. I told you it would go wrong and it has.'

'OK, OK, calm down. Now, first of all, we're speaking on an international line. You know what I mean by that can you hear it humming?'

She took deep breaths, still staring at the cottage roof. 'Yes,' she said shakily, thinking of those vast domed listening stations. And Cheltenham GCHQ not far from here. Did phone calls really get monitored? Maybe in Steve's job they did. 'I think I know what you mean.'

'Explain, carefully, what's happened.'

She licked her lips. 'I got a message when I got back into the car. The lipstick I leaned on it was a message. It said-' She swallowed. 'It said I wouldn't get away with it.'

There was a long silence at the end of the line as Steve digested this. 'Right,' he said, sounding as if he wasn't just thousands of miles away but millions. In a different galaxy. 'Right.'

'But if anyone has ... you know, witnessed anything, it wasn't here at Pepp- at my place, so I don't think they know where I am. It must have been at the ...' She hesitated. 'The first place. I think they must have seen my car and then they saw it outside your place and planted the message. I've looked at Google Earth and I think I know where they were standing ...'

'OK. I'm coming straight back. I'm not even going to leave the airport I'll just turn right around and get the first flight back. OK?'

'No,' she said. 'No. You can't.'

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