Halfway down the article was a grainy blown-up shot of me walking through Charing Cross station, my head down over my phone. It was black-and-white, but you could tell that my hair was probably no longer red. Below were links to three pieces about Gabe’s death, each illustrated with a photo of him taken from our company website. I knew I should click through, find out what information the police had already put out there, but his warm, friendly face, smiling out of the screen, felt like a punch in the stomach, and I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Instead, I shut down the phone, but closing the screen did nothing to lessen the sick feeling of dread that had been building in the pit of my stomach the whole time I was reading. In one way, the article wasn’t a surprise—it was, after all, only confirmation of what I already knew: that the police were looking for me and considered me a suspect in Gabe’s death. But somehow, seeing the facts set out so brutally was still a shock, and the way the police had phrased their quotes… who also goes by the name Jack. How had they managed to make a simple abbreviation sound so shady? And as for We would ask the public not to approach Ms Cross directly—like I was armed and dangerous, for God’s sake! The photo was good, as well. No mercifully blurred black-and-white mug shot. They had taken my professional head shot from the Crossways company website, along with Gabe’s. It was high-res, well lit, and even with my hair bleached straw white and bags of exhaustion under my eyes, I was very recognizably the same person. Was the woman with the toddler already calling 999?
I glanced out the window, and then pulled up the train timetable on my phone. We were about fifteen minutes away from Northampton, but that was a big station which would almost certainly have ticket barriers and probably British Transport Police on standby. I absolutely could not afford any kind of altercation at a place like that. I’d be arrested within seconds.
The next stop was ten minutes further down the line, at a place I had never heard of—Long Buckby. Google showed it to be a small village with a station that didn’t seem to have even a ticket office, let alone fixed barriers. It was exactly the kind of place I’d been hoping for. The only problem was that it was twenty-five minutes and two stops away. If—if—the woman with the toddler was calling the police right now, they would almost certainly board the train at Northampton. In ten minutes they could sweep the entire train.
I stood at the window, chewing my nail and considering my options. Option one was to get off at Northampton and try to tailgate through the barriers behind another passenger—but I didn’t like my chances. In a rush hour crush with commuters pushing and shoving I might be able to pull it off, but it was only just gone four p.m. and doing the same thing in a sparsely filled station was much harder. Option two was to stay on the train and try to hide until Long Buckby. If I made it that far, I was probably home free. The problem was, if the woman with the toddler had called the police, then staying on the train past Northampton was pretty much a one-way ticket to jail.
Option three… but there I ran into a brick wall. The only remaining option was what my last resort had always been—to stop running and give myself up to the police. Obviously, I wasn’t going to do that. It would make the whole thing pointless. Except… would it?
I took my hand out of my mouth. I hadn’t seriously considered giving myself up before. But my trip to Sunsmile had changed—well, not everything. But it had changed a lot. I now had evidence backing up my story.
My statement to Cole had been a lie—I hadn’t been recording our conversation; there wasn’t any setting on my phone to allow me to do so, though I was pretty sure I could have found an app somewhere, if it had occurred to me in advance. But I hadn’t thought of it—and so when I’d told him I would stream the conversation, it was nothing but bluff. Still, I did have a recording I could take to DS Malik: the one of Cole’s voice sitting on the Sunsmile database. I just had to hope that when Malik and Miles listened to it, they were as certain as I was that the speaker wasn’t Gabe. Because the problem was, Gabe and Cole did sound a lot alike. Same deep voice, same North London accent. It had been close enough to twist my heart with grief every time Cole spoke to me these past few days.
The problem was that even if Malik and Miles agreed that it was Cole on the recording, that might not let me off the hook. What if they thought we’d been in it together? Cole setting up the insurance in Gabe’s name, me collecting on the policy. We wouldn’t be the first couple to commit a murder for financial security and a new future. The fact that I’d been found hiding out at Cole’s cottage would likely seal their suspicions.
No. I couldn’t trust this to Malik and Miles—not again. They had proven already that they were willing to go for the easy solution rather than dig for a complicated truth. I couldn’t afford to give them a second chance—not until I had got to the bottom of what was really going on. Because as much as I wanted Cole on the hook for his part in this, I wanted to find Gabe’s killer more—and I was pretty sure that wasn’t Cole.
That left me with two options: Northampton or Long Buckby. The only question was which.
I was still trying to make up my mind when the train began to slow, and eventually came to a halt with a screech of brakes. The silence after the roar of wind through the half-open window was like a strange vacuum. I could hear the patter of rain outside and the hiss and tick of the train’s air brakes. From far up the carriage came a child’s slow exhausted wail, and I knew how it felt.
Then a crackle came over the speakers.
“Sorry for the delay, ladies and gentlemen, we’re being held for a few minutes at a red signal. There’s a train ahead of us at Northampton and we’re waiting for the platform. We should be on the move in just a few minutes.”
I felt my heart begin to thump. Was there really a train ahead of us? Or was this some kind of ruse, to let the police get their officers in place, ready and waiting on the platform to board the train?
Shit. Shit.
But what could I do?
My eyes fell on the door, with its half-open window. If only it had been one of the old-fashioned trains, where you could lean out and unlock the door from the outside. But I was fairly sure those had been phased out. This one still looked pretty old, but it seemed to have some kind of central override—an illuminated display stated firmly Door Locked, and below it a poster read To open door, wait for train to stop. Check door is adjacent to platform. Wait for unlocked light above. Open door window and unlock door.
Which meant there was no chance of opening the door until we had reached the platform. Except… Open door window.
My thumping heart sped up. Could I?
The window was already halfway down, but it seemed to have stuck, and it was with a great effort that I managed to get it just a few inches further. Then I stood on tiptoes and put my head out through the narrow gap. There was nothing underneath apart from railway sleepers and gravel.
I put a hand to my side, thinking about the oozing cut beneath the dressing. This window was barely wide enough for me to wriggle through, and the ground was a good fifteen feet below the opening. I had dropped fifteen feet before. It is not a joke, even in tip-top condition. You feel it everywhere—in every bone and joint. I felt more than a little sick. But there were no other options.
I pushed the bag out first. The side pockets stuck against the sill, but I ground it through, and then listened with a wince as it ricocheted off the outside step and from there thudded to the ground. Then I grabbed hold of the top of the window surround and tried to hook one foot up and over the edge.
It was very high, and for a minute I wasn’t sure if I could even get my foot up, let alone the rest of my body. It should be possible. I had vaulted a much higher wall when I broke into my own backyard in Salisbury Lane, but now my arms were shaking with fatigue, the pain in my side was screaming, and my muscles didn’t seem to want to obey me.
For a moment I thought about giving up. But my bag was already on the ground outside. If I stayed on this train, even if the woman with the baby hadn’t spotted me, even if I made it safely to Long Buckby, I would be completely and utterly screwed. I would have no money, no phone, no clean clothes, nothing.
I had to get out of that window.