I drive for another two hours before I start to get low on fuel. I spot a petrol station just outside Innsbruck and I pull in, already knowing what my plan will be. The traffic has started to get denser and I can see the city from here. As I step out of the car, a huge jumbo jet comes in overhead, ready to land barely a few hundred yards away. I’m right on the edge of the city.
I fill the car with twenty-one euros and fifteen cents’ worth of fuel. It’s enough to blend in and not be noticed or remembered, but it’s also not going to waste what remaining money I’ve got left. And a waste is exactly what it would be, because I don’t intend for that car to ever leave this forecourt.
The pump itself doesn’t seem to take payment. Not that I’d be risking using my credit cards, of course, but the option to feed cash into the machine and not have to come face to face with other people would’ve helped massively. Defeated, I walk into the building and look around furtively. I grab a few bits – a bottle of screenwash, a first-aid kit and some bags of sweets. I make a point of looking as though I’m struggling to carry it all in my arms as I dump it on the counter.
There’s no-one else there, so it’s a bit of a giveaway which car is mine, but I point over to it as I rummage through my pockets to pull out some money.
The man says something to me in German, which I presume to be the total. I glance over at the till and see the price: thirty-two euros and ten cents. I hand him thirty-five and he says something else in German. I look up, confused, and he repeats himself while holding up a large carrier bag. I raise my eyebrows and nod. He hands me the bag and my change and I smile and leave. No. Shouldn’t have done the smile. You were smiling on the front page of the paper. That’s what everyone’ll be looking out for. I tell myself I’m just being paranoid, and I walk back to my car, stopping deliberately when I get there to look back at something I’ve already seen. I need to make it look like I’ve just spotted it, though. I look at my car, as if appraising its cleanliness, then back at the car wash area, before sitting inside the car, starting it up and moving it over towards the jet wash machines.
The jet wash is to the side of the petrol station’s building, with a huge great brick wall between me and the cashier. I have a cursory glance around – nothing too obvious – to watch for CCTV cameras. I can’t be certain, but I’m fairly sure there aren’t any pointing this way. There are plenty on the roof of the forecourt pointing at the pumps, but nothing here from what I can see. Even so, I know I need to be careful. Anything that raises suspicions right now won’t be good. This is my one chance to fall off the radar, if only for a short while.
I open the back door of the car and take the vacuum nozzle from its holder. I put two euros into the coin slot and press the button to start the machine. Hidden by the car door and the noise of the vacuum cleaner, I quickly pull my shirt off over my head, grab a jumper from my bag and put it on. While I’m doing that, I push my shoes off. I change my trousers, too – from a pair of light chinos to navy jeans. I slip on a pair of lighter shoes, too, as well as a beanie hat, before shoving my old clothes back in the holdall with those damned reading glasses and zip it up.
Next, I tip the contents of the large carrier bag onto the backseat and I put the holdall inside it. It just about fits.
Leaving the car door open, I shove the nozzle around in the footwell a few times to keep the noise changing, then I hop over the short wall and onto the grass bank behind it. I check to make sure there are no rear windows to the petrol station – I’d checked from inside, too, but I couldn’t be sure there wasn’t office space at the back – and I brace my legs widely, getting down the surface of the grass bank as quickly and efficiently as I can.
To my left, the main dual carriageway into Innsbruck continues to rumble by, with a long succession of cars making their way into the city on the flyover. And before I know it, I’m on the footpath below, walking alongside a fast-flowing river and making my way towards the city.
33
My German is pretty limited, but even I can spot signs for a train station when I need to. The signs are infrequent, but at least they let me know I’m going in the right direction. I keep the river to my left, walking along the pretty pleasant footpath, watching the planes landing and taking off from the airport on the other side of the river.
The worst thing about all this – and the thing that I’m trying to keep tucked away right at the very back of my mind – is that I don’t know where the threat’s coming from. I have absolutely no idea who killed Lisa and Jess and who’s trying to get to me. It could be anyone – that bloke over there – someone watching from an office block. I’ve no way of knowing. Whoever it is, they’ve managed to track me down to a campsite out in the middle of Switzerland without too much trouble, so I doubt they’ll struggle to find me here. That’s why I’ve got to keep moving.
The police are after me, too, of course. I’ve been keeping well away from newspapers and TVs, but I’m not stupid or naive. They won’t give up. They don’t give up. They’ll make it look as if they’re scaling back the investigation at some point sooner or later, but that’s only really done in the hope that you’ll have to put your head up for oxygen at some point. And that’s when they pounce. I’m not going to let that happen.
Anyone around me could be an undercover police officer. I wouldn’t know. That’s the whole point, I suppose. But I also know that thinking these thoughts over and over is not going to help me in the slightest. All I can do is focus on keeping moving and getting myself somewhere safer. Somewhere I can try to figure out in my mind what’s happened.
That’s the bit I’m not looking forward to. How can I ever do this on my own? With Jess, I at least had half a chance. It was as if she was almost superhuman. I felt like she’d have the answers. And now she’s gone.
The fact of the matter is that as hard as I try I really can’t think of anyone who’d want me dead. And not only that, but to want to kill two innocent people on the way to it. Or do they want me dead? If so, why didn’t they kill me? Why kill only those around me? The killer could’ve easily waited until I came back up to my hotel room in Herne Bay minutes after they killed Lisa and killed me, too. The same goes for the caravan on the campsite. Why?