“Never mind,” I wrote. “Long story. But I’m going to need something more substantial to figure out what’s going on.”
And then, even as I pressed send, it occurred to me. There was something—possibly, at least. If I was right, if Gabe hadn’t set up that insurance policy, then someone else had. And maybe that someone had left a trail. The problem was, that kind of work—hacking into databases and looking for information trails—was very much more Gabe’s area than mine. Had been, I reminded myself painfully. Had been Gabe’s area.
“Actually… there is one lead,” I typed out to Hel, just as a message came through from her.
“I’ve been wondering…”
“Crossed, sorry,” I wrote.
“You go first :)” she typed back, with an uncharacteristic smiley—Hel wasn’t usually much of a one for emojis, but this wasn’t exactly a normal situation. “What’s your one lead?”
“Okay. Well. I was just thinking—there IS one clue. The insurance.”
There was a long pause. I could almost hear Hel’s brain ticking. Then her reply came through.
“How do you mean?”
“Someone took that policy out. And I really don’t think it was Gabe. It’s just not his style.”
Wasn’t, I reminded myself bitterly. It wasn’t his style. Would I ever get used to thinking of him in the past tense? It seemed impossible that he was gone, even though I’d cradled his dead body in my arms.
Hel’s reply had already pinged through onto the mobile.
“Okay. But how do you prove that?”
“I’m not sure,” I typed. “I could ask Cole. Maybe he could do something fancy with their system—figure out the IP address of whoever applied?”
There was another long pause. Then the message popped up. Just one word.
“Maybe.” I could almost hear the doubt coming off the screen. For some reason I felt nettled.
“Okay then—what were you wondering?”
“Well… I don’t know if you’re going to like this…”
She paused again and I almost rolled my eyes. There was literally nothing to like about the situation I was in. Hel could hardly make that any worse.
The phone pinged again.
“But I was thinking… have you heard anything from Jeff Leadbetter lately?”
“Jeff?” For a second I was puzzled, wondering how on earth she knew about Jeff’s email. She didn’t—couldn’t—surely? “What do you mean? Has he emailed you too?”
“He’s emailed you?”
“Yes, isn’t that why you asked?”
“No, what do you mean he’s emailed you?”
I sighed, the sound surprisingly loud in the little cottage, audible even over the cracks and hissing of the fire.
“Oh God, he sent me this stupid goading thing about Gabe’s death. I assume his bosses told him to do it. Probably hoping I’d email back and give up my location.”
Hel’s response came back quickly this time.
“Did you? Reply?”
“Yes, but I made sure to switch on the VPN. I don’t think they could get anything off it.”
There was another long pause. Presumably Hel was trying to figure out whether I had just done something incredibly stupid.
“That’s a virtual private network,” I added, in case Hel didn’t know what I was talking about. “It hides your location.”
There was still no response.
“Why did you want to know about Jeff anyway?” I tapped out, more to get her to tell me what she was thinking. The long pauses were making me nervous. I had an image of the police battering down Hel’s door, seizing the phone, although it was far more likely she was just typing one-handed while trying to get the twins to bed.
“Hel?” I was just typing when her message came through.
“Look. I might be completely wrong, but let’s say someone did kill Gabe. And let’s say you’re right, and they’re framing you. We’ve both been assuming that was something to do with Gabe, but what if it wasn’t? What if it was something to do with you?”
“What?” I was confused now, my tiredness getting the better of me to the extent that I couldn’t quite understand what she was trying to say. “Hel, sorry, you’re going to have to spell this out. What do you mean?”
“I’m saying, what if someone killed Gabe not to punish him, but to punish YOU? And now they’re set on ruining your life. And the only person I can think of who’s sick enough to do that…”
The message trailed off, but I had gone completely cold, because I knew what she wasn’t saying now.
The only person she could imagine deliberately ruining my life, the only person I could think of who would want to do that, was Jeff Leadbetter.
For a long moment I didn’t reply. I just sat there, trying to process Hel’s suggestion. It couldn’t be true. It couldn’t. And yet… could it? For six months after we broke up, Jeff had made my life a nightmare. Speeding tickets that mysteriously appeared from nowhere. Dropped calls in the night. A two a.m. drug bust at my old flat, in Hackney, with six armed officers battering the door down and storming in while I slept. Anonymous tip-off, love was all the explanation I’d ever got, but I’d known the truth. Jeff. And if I’d been a different kind of person, a more reactive one, or even—God forbid—someone who still enjoyed the occasional joint or bit of coke, the way I had when I was younger, I could have ended up in jail or even dead, if things had gone really wrong.
The middle-of-the-night drug bust was the worst, and it had tailed off after that, going back to silent phone calls and the occasional “random” vehicle search. Finally, when I’d met Gabe and moved in with him, it had stopped completely. Naively, I had assumed that Jeff was frightened of Gabe, or had moved on.
But what if he hadn’t? What if he had simply been biding his time, waiting to punish both of us?
It was fantastical. But then so was every other theory I had come up with.
My phone pinged again.
“Jack? Are you there?”
“Yes, I’m here,” I typed. “Thinking.”
“Thinking what?”
Thinking her theory made no sense, was the honest answer. Jeff? A cop? Staging my husband’s murder just to punish me for some long-ago breakup? It seemed ridiculous—not least because I had seen him at the station right around the time Gabe must have died. But he was the only person I could think of with a grudge against us, and somehow, even as my logical brain came up with a hundred reasons why it couldn’t be true, a question kept whispering treacherously at the edge of my subconscious. Was it my fault? Had Gabe died because of me?
I was sitting there, staring at the screen, trying to think what to say to Hel, when a warning flashed up. 15% battery.
Shit. I had completely forgotten that with no electricity, I wouldn’t be able to charge my phone.
“Listen, my battery’s running low,” I typed out to Hel. “I’d better go. But I love you.”
“Love you too,” she messaged back. “Stay safe, okay?”
“I will xx”
There was a brief pause while I waited to see if she would message back, but she didn’t, and in the end I shut down the phone and simply lay there, staring into the firelit darkness, trying to process what she had said. The more I thought about it, the more unlikely it seemed—Jeff was a dickhead, sure, but he wasn’t a killer. And more to the point, he was a dickhead with an alibi—one I could attest to myself.
But when I closed my eyes, trying to fall asleep, it wasn’t with Hel’s words echoing in my ears, it was Jeff’s own, the words he had hissed at me as I packed my bag that final day, the day I had left him for good. I’ll make you regret this, you stupid cunt. If I can’t have you, no one can.
Back then, I was sure he hadn’t really meant it. I’d put it down to hot air, empty words spoken by a man with an outsize ego and an inability to accept rejection. But now… well, now Gabe was dead. And I wasn’t sure of anything anymore.
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 8 MINUS FOUR DAYS
It was very, very cold when I awoke, and for a while I just lay there, huddled on the sofa, trying to work out what time it was. The fire had died down in the night and was now white ash and black cinders in the grate. I could see my breath every time I exhaled.
I had fallen asleep fully clothed, with a crocheted woolen blanket wrapped around me, which now seemed like a good decision. I might be cold and stiff, but at least I didn’t have to get dressed.
What I did need, however, was to pee—and in spite of my ignoring it for as long as I could, the pain in my pelvis at last forced me upright. It wasn’t just my bladder that hurt. Everything ached. My side where the puncture wound throbbed every time I tried to roll over on the couch. My thigh muscles from slogging through the dunes the day before. My feet from walking six miles on London pavements to Cole’s office, and then three miles back in the opposite direction to Charing Cross. Even my fingers were stiff and sore—probably from clenching my fists to try to stop my hands shaking whenever I passed a police officer or a CCTV camera.