‘We are very keen to speak to the driver of this third car, thought to be a white saloon, and work together to establish the identity of the speeding driver,’ DS McGowan continued.
The victim’s account confirms that of the owner of the house where the collision occurred, who saw a black VW or Audi turning off Silver Road soon after.
The victim’s husband has offered a ￡10,000 reward for information leading to a breakthrough in the investigation.
I swore under my breath, ignoring Nerina’s curious gaze. It defied belief: the police might have been mouthing Mike’s own lines, so well did they serve his cause. The bastard hadn’t let me overtake, that was what caused the collision, but, no, in the official account I was reckless and he blameless. And what were the chances that his car’s brand had eluded recognition, while mine had not? A white saloon: was that all she’d noticed?
Once again, I consoled myself that it was in my interests for him to escape the attention of the police; thanks to the evidence he’d collected against me, he’d be even more dangerous in their interview room than he was in his harassment of me now. Far worse was the fact that the car was no longer dark-coloured, but definitively black – and a hatchback.
Any thoughts? a text prompted.
I did not reply immediately. There was enough time before I left for an early afternoon client visit in Surrey to find an anonymous local shop and buy an unregistered pay-as-you-go phone. I knew better now than to trust that any phone supplied by Mike came free of invisible weaponry to be used against me. I’d ditch it in the flat later.
I texted him in the car on the way to the client. In a week heavy with external meetings, a new intern had been charged with chauffeuring me, less convenient than it might have been had he not also shadowed me to the meetings themselves, forcing me to reach for a level of professionalism I was fairly sure I would never produce again in my lifetime. (What did it matter if a hospital or clinic repeated its order of cervical collars? Doubled it or cancelled it? I was going down here.)
- I might be able to get you some cash.
- This you, Bram?
- Yes.
- I’d prefer you to use the phone I left you.
- Well, I’d prefer to use this one.
I took petty pleasure in challenging him, enjoyed the pause that followed.
‘Do you not have an iPhone?’ said Rich, the intern, from the driver’s seat, noticing my cheap pay-as-you-go of dubious brand. He was young, didn’t spot my nervous breakdown, only my uncool phone.
‘I do, yes, for work. This one’s for my second job at MI5,’ I said. It beggared belief that I was now in possession of three mobile phones, like a drug trafficker or a polygamist.
‘Yeah, right,’ Rich laughed, and I resisted the urge to lecture him about valuing his life and all those in it, to warn him against making the same mistakes I had because if he did not then nothing less than a living hell awaited.
Mike was back:
- What cash? Not interested in shrapnel.
- Not shrapnel. 15K, better than the reward money.
Fifty per cent better: surely that would satisfy him?
- Let’s talk. I’ll come to Trinity Avenue tonight.
- No! I keep telling you, I’m in rented digs.
I added the address for the flat, an unnecessary courtesy since he appeared to already know every last detail of my circumstances.
- I’ll be there at 8. You’d better not be scamming me.
That was his sign off. Not a trace of irony.
*
The client meeting was pure torture. Throughout my presentation of new products, my mind churned the same phrases: life-threatening injuries . . . multiple surgeries . . . identity of the speeding driver . . . The client, marginally more emotionally intelligent than the intern, remarked on my being off-colour.
‘All right, Bram? You’re away with the fairies today.’
Realizing I was chewing my fingers in an agitated, simian way, I dropped my hand to my side. ‘Sorry, no, I’m fine. Just got a few things on my mind.’
‘Ah, yes, I heard about your domestic troubles,’ he said. ‘Happens to the best of us, mate.’
He’d told me previously that his wife had left him to shack up with a colleague of hers, consigning him to a bachelor existence of Netflix, ready meals and porn.
‘Who’s she dumped you for?’ he asked, kindly.
‘No one,’ I said. ‘There wasn’t anyone else involved.’
Mercifully, he gave me the benefit of the doubt on that. He saw us as kindred spirits, godforsaken – wife-forsaken.
He didn’t have a clue.
26
Bram, Word document
I have no problem saying I fantasized about cracking him over the head as he came through the door. Or sliding a knife between his ribs and watching him crumple to the floor, a jointless puppet. But then what? When you think it through, when you try malice aforethought for yourself, you quickly realize there really isn’t any foolproof method for murder, what with security cameras everywhere and phones betraying our every step, not to mention DNA and forensics.
No, of course I wouldn’t kill the bastard. I could only hope to pay him – and that grasping slut Wendy, wherever she’d got to – to go away.
I watched for him from the balcony. One after another, the vehicles of Alder Rise crawled up to the traffic lights on the eastern side of the park – silver-blonde mothers chauffeuring their charges from late sports clubs and music lessons; the evening Ocado deliveries of avocados and sauvignon blanc – and I experienced the physical cramp of grief. I missed Fi and the boys the way you miss a sense like sight or touch. I missed driving. Being behind the wheel had been, I saw now, a genuine passion. I’d offered lifts, I’d volunteered for chores, I whizzed here and there with the kids. Fitting the child seats that foxed Fi, securing the belts, ruffling the boys’ hair before clunking shut their doors and sliding into the driver’s seat. I’d felt so relaxed, so in command – apart from when I got riled up by other motorists or by cyclists or pedestrians, but that was par for the course in London, wasn’t it? All drivers had their lapses.
Except mine had had terrible consequences.
Consequences that were about to get worse.
A filthy white Toyota pulled up and reversed into the only available space in range. The driver’s and passenger’s doors opened simultaneously and I watched as Mike and Wendy stepped out. He stood staring up at Baby Deco, at me – I resisted the instinct to duck out of view, but made no acknowledgement – while she consulted her phone, and then together they approached the main doors.
I waited in the hallway for them, already blazing with fury.
‘What the fuck are you playing at?’ I hissed, as soon as they emerged from the lift, and the brute hostility attracted a startled look from my neighbour leaving her flat (sod’s law, the only time I saw another soul on my floor and it was when I was with these two).
Mike had the gall to look offended. ‘What? You knew I was coming, what’s the problem? You don’t mind that I’ve brought Wendy along? Thought you might like to get reacquainted.’
I hustled them in, closed the door behind them. ‘I mean the car! The Toyota. I thought you said you got rid of it?’
Mike frowned. ‘Why would I do that?’
‘You said joyriders took it!’ Thirty seconds in and already I was on the back foot, speaking in just the wild exclamations I’d been determined to avoid.
Wendy, who had not uttered a word until then, said, conversationally, ‘If I were the police and someone said they’d seen a Toyota at the scene of a crime, the first one I’d check out would be the one that’s just been reported stolen. I’d think, A bit of a coincidence, that.’ She regarded me, wide-eyed.