I shake my head in disbelief. ‘You might, but I don’t even know him. Did you tell him where we were?’
She places a hand on my upper thigh. ‘Dan, relax. The only way we’re going to get through this is with a level head, alright? Now, we need to head out past Zurich. We’re looking for a place called Uster. There’s a campsite near there that we’re looking for.’
‘Campsite?’ I ask.
‘Not just camping. They have caravans and lodges as well. And they take cash without a passport.’
‘How the hell do you know this?’
‘Claude,’ she says, as if that explains everything.
‘Jesus Christ,’ I reply, feeling myself getting deeper and deeper into this confusing spiral of the unknown. ‘How far is it?’
‘A little under two hours away,’ she says. ‘Less if you actually start the car up and get going.’
19
We’re not long past Bern, and the open road behind us is starting to enable me to think a little more clearly. I’m still nowhere near as lucid as I want to be, the shock having warped my mind, but I’m starting to get there.
The main problem with my mind clearing is that the paranoia is starting to set in. I’ve not even realised it, but ever since we left the hotel in Herne Bay I’ve been looking in the rear-view mirror at every car that approaches, expecting to see a police car that’ll pull us over and arrest us. I know it’s daft, because they’d have no reason to. Now, though, I’m fairly sure Lisa’s body will have been discovered and the hunt will be on.
How long will it take them to know we’ve left the country? Presumably they’ll find my mobile in the hotel room, see my bag is gone, find out that Jess disappeared around the same time and put two and two together. They’re not stupid, after all. What’s it going to look like? Unhappy husband murders his wife and runs off with his new girlfriend. Open-and-shut case, as far as they’ll be concerned. Beers are on you, Detective Inspector.
Next they’ll probably check CCTV, see us driving off in the same car and check CCTV and number plate recognition cameras on the major motorway networks. They’ll see us getting on at Folkestone and coming off at Calais, after a short bit of diplomacy with the French border police to get hold of their footage. Or do the British control the French entrance side of the tunnel? I think I remember reading that somewhere. Makes sense, I suppose. And how long would that all take them? In the digital age, probably not long. An hour or two at the most? Maybe longer if they’ve got facial recognition or something like that. That means there’s a very good chance they already know we’ve been to France. From there, they’ll have worked out the furthest we could have driven: likely only to Germany or Switzerland, and the police in those countries will be on red alert. The French police within a few hours’ drive of Calais will have their eyes peeled, too. They’ll all want a piece of being the ones who manage to nab the fleeing murderers.
What if it’s worse than that? What if someone in a neighbouring room reported a smell from my room? Would a dead body start to smell that quickly? What about the blood? Would that have come through the ceiling? No, of course not, I tell myself. Her body was in the bath. It’d just go down the plughole. But what if a plumber was working on the drains at the time? Wait a minute. Was there any blood? Thinking back, I don’t think there was. So why is there an image burned onto my retinas, branded onto my mind, of Lisa lying in a pool of blood?
What if Lisa was seen entering the hotel and not exiting? What if someone else on reception noticed Jess had gone and they searched all the rooms? My mind’s running away with so many ideas and possibilities, and I’m trying my level best to keep it calm and rational. It’s all I can do right now.
The roads are actually pretty clear, and I can see why so many people have said they like driving in Switzerland. There’s an almost serene beauty in the gentle curvature of the road as it delicately body-swerves natural obstacles.
But that calmness and rationality soon disappears when I take the umpteen-thousandth glance in my rear-view mirror just outside Bern and see the livery of the Swiss police car. The two male officers sat up front appear to be staring straight into my eyes as I look back at them, and I quickly realise I have been making eye contact for too long. What if they can see the fear? They can probably smell it. They’re trained to.
I swallow and tighten my hands on the wheel.
‘Jess, don’t look now, but there’s a police car behind us.’
‘So?’ she says, as worryingly calm as ever.
‘What do you mean, so? I’m five miles an hour under the speed limit and they’re just sitting behind us while everyone else overtakes.’
‘Speed up, then. You’re going to look suspicious if you drive that slowly.’
‘Won’t that look even more suspicious, though? Seeing a police car and totally changing the way I drive?’
‘Dan, you need to calm the fuck down,’ she says, both slowly and sternly at the same time. ‘Right now, you could be fast asleep and still look suspicious.’
Before I can say another word, and before I can alter my speed, the police car pulls out to the left and starts to coast past, barely walking pace above what we’re doing. I try to keep my eyes focused straight in front of me, but I can feel the eyes of the non-driving officer boring into my skull.
I quickly assume that the game’s up. They’ve found Lisa, they’ve circulated a photo of me and Jess and we’ve been rumbled. Game over. Where they’d find a recent picture of me, though, I don’t know. They couldn’t exactly ask Lisa to provide one. Facebook? No. I never put pictures of myself on there.
In the space of a split second, I register that the police car’s presence next to me has blocked the blinding sunlight from streaming in through that window. Because of the light, I’d pulled the sun visor out and turned it across the side window about fifteen minutes earlier. That same sun visor that’d now be obscuring the top half of my head quite nicely.
With newfound confidence, I tilt my head slightly and smile and nod at the police officer. It’s kill or cure.
The officer smiles, then points to our car, gives me a thumbs up and laughs.
It’s weird, but my first thought is to be slightly offended. Yeah, the other cars on the roads in Switzerland are all new Mercedes and BMWs, but I’m still a little affronted at him taking the piss.
Then it dawns on me.
We’re clear.
20