Before We Met: A Novel (31 page)

‘And he made no effort to come after you?’

‘Not as far as I know. I didn’t hear anything – no footsteps. I just kept going until I reached the pub – the White Horse at the top of the Green.’

‘Do you have any idea which way he might have headed?’

Hannah shook her head. ‘All I could think about was getting away.’

DS Andrews took a notepad from her jacket pocket, leaned against the mantelpiece and made three quick lines of notes.

‘Mr Reilly,’ said Wells, ‘when was the last time you spoke to Hermione? The last time you got through to her, I mean. Or perhaps you saw her, met up?’

‘No, I haven’t – hadn’t . . .’ Mark swallowed. ‘I hadn’t seen her in person for ages – I don’t even know how long. A couple of years, maybe – definitely before I met my wife.’

‘We met in July last year,’ Hannah said.

‘But I spoke to her last week. She called me at the office. It was Tuesday, I think – yes, it must have been, Tuesday afternoon. I went to America first thing on Wednesday morning.’

The policewoman made a note in her book. ‘And how was she then?’

‘She was . . . anxious. Frightened.’

‘Your brother had made contact with her?’

‘Yes, and his release date was coming up. She was worried – she wanted to talk.’ Mark’s voice shook.

Wells waited a moment. ‘These threats of your brother’s – did she give you any details, discuss what he’d said specifically?’

‘Not really. She said he’d told her he’d find her –
he’d track her down
, was what he said – and it was payback time.’

‘Right.’ Wells looked at his colleague, who made a final note then returned the pad to her pocket. He took out a card and gave it to Mark. ‘Obviously, Mr Reilly, finding your brother is our top priority. If you hear from him, please get in touch – immediately. We’ll need to speak to you again, I’m sure, but if you remember anything else before you hear from us, ring me on that number. I’m going to arrange for a watch to be kept on the house in case he comes here again. We’ll have a car outside in the next hour. Is there anywhere else you think he might go? Friends, family? Anyone who might give him a bed?’

Mark thought for a moment then shook his head. ‘Not that I can think of, no. Most of Nick’s friends – all of them – dropped him when he was arrested. I’m not sure you’d really have called them friends, anyway – more like acolytes, hangers-on. Users – in both senses. My office, though – DataPro. I mean, I don’t think he’d come up, not now, but he might try and wait for me outside.’

‘Right. And where is that?’

Mark gave them the address.

‘Okay,’ the detective said. ‘We’ll have a car there, too. Just ignore it – both of them. Act like you don’t know they’re there – if he comes, we don’t want him to cotton on. Hopefully, it’ll make you feel a bit safer, too,’ he nodded his head in Hannah’s direction, ‘but don’t take any risks. If you’re out, stay in busy places, don’t go anywhere on your own after dark. Be careful – I don’t need to tell you. And if you think of anything else, however trivial, let us know.’

‘We will.’ Mark got to his feet slowly, as if he’d been badly beaten. In the hallway, he opened the door and they stepped outside.

Just as they were turning to go, the policewoman stopped and looked back at Hannah. ‘Mrs Reilly, in his message your husband said he thought you’d met Hermione, and yet just now he said he hadn’t seen her since the two of you,’ she waved her hand between them, ‘had been together.’

‘Yes,’ Hannah said. ‘Actually, it’s embarrassing. I went to the hospital on Monday. Mark was away in America longer than I’d expected and when I spoke to his assistant she told me a woman had been calling him.’ She looked at Mark apologetically. ‘I was being ridiculous – I accused Hermione of having an affair with him.’

The policewoman frowned slightly. ‘You didn’t know she was a friend of your husband’s?’

‘Like he said, we’d never met.’

‘Hermione and I weren’t in touch often,’ Mark explained. ‘It was too painful. If we saw each other, the memory of Nick was always there, this . . . nightmare hanging over us. We tried to go back to how things had been before, at college, but we couldn’t. We could never get away from him.’

Chapter Twenty-one

Mark closed the door and Hannah put her arms around him, feeling him shake. Tremors were running through his body. At the sound of approaching footsteps outside he stiffened but they continued on, pace unchanged, past the door and on towards the bottom of the street. He pressed his cheek against the top of Hannah’s head, and in the parting of her hair she felt tears fall, one warm drop, then another.

‘It’s my fault, Han,’ he said. ‘I should have done something.’

‘It’s not your fault,’ she said, fiercely. ‘Stop saying that. You can’t blame yourself, I won’t let you. For God’s sake, Nick’s a killer.’

Mark said nothing and the word hung in the air.
A killer
. Yes, he was. It was no accident this time. Head injuries, blunt-force trauma to the skull – with Hermione, Nick had set out to kill.

Hannah led Mark back to the sitting room and they sat pressed together on the sofa. He made no effort to stop crying and the tears fell one after another, making dark rings on his T-shirt. ‘She should have gone away,’ he said. ‘I told her to, I tried to make her promise me she would, but she said no, she was tied in at work, she had a conference coming up and . . .’ He took a long shuddering breath.

‘Mark.’ Hannah put her hand on his cheek and turned his head so that he was looking at her. ‘Hermione was an adult. She knew the situation and she made her own choice. You are not to blame.’

‘But . . .’

‘No. No. You tried to help and she took a chance and . . .’ Her voice trailed off and Mark turned away from her and stared at his hands, which were clenched in his lap. The clock on the DVD player clicked from 8.13 to 8.14.

‘We should leave,’ said Hannah.

‘Leave? What do you mean?’

‘Get out of London. We should go away now – right now. That holiday you were talking about . . .’

‘I can’t,’ he said.

‘?“
She was tied in at work
.”?’

‘I know, I know, but I just can’t. The first meeting with Systema is on Tuesday and—’

‘Mark.’

‘No,’ he said, adamant. When he turned to her, his face was set. ‘No, Hannah. I’ve got to be here – I’ve got to. I’ve worked for seventeen years to build DataPro and I will not –
I
will not
– let Nick screw it up for me. This might be the biggest deal I ever do – I am not going to let anything jeopardise it.’

‘Even if you’re risking your life?’

He said nothing.

‘And mine?’

He closed his eyes. ‘I’m sorry. You’re right – of course you’re right.’

‘We can stay in London, I can deal with that, but just not here. I can’t stand it – with him out there, knowing exactly where to find us.’

‘The police car will be outside.’

‘But that just makes it worse, doesn’t it? I feel like we’re . . . bait.’

Mark took a last look around then stepped outside and pulled the front door shut. The deadlock made a final-sounding
clunk
. Hannah watched as he closed the gate behind them and put the latch down as if it would make all the difference to the security of the house while they were gone.

They loaded the bags into his Mercedes and Hannah jumped as he slammed the boot shut. She kept her eyes down to stop herself looking for the surveillance car but as she made her way round to the passenger door, she caught a glimpse through the window of the house opposite and saw the little boy who lived there hurl a stuffed rabbit from the tray of his high chair. The sound of his gleeful laughter was just audible and she watched as his mother, the woman she’d seen in yoga kit on Tuesday, picked the rabbit up, gave it to him then laughed herself as he tossed it straight back down again. The sight caused a sudden inexplicable ache in Hannah’s chest.

‘Han?’ Mark was watching her. She shook her head, snapping out of it.

The car’s new-leather smell enveloped her as she pulled her door shut. Mark did up his seatbelt then reached for her hand. ‘You’re sure you’re okay?’

She nodded then shrugged.

‘It’ll be over soon,’ he said.

He started the car and pulled out. At the top of the street they turned on to New King’s Road and, as they passed the delicatessen, she remembered how Nick had looked as he stood spot-lit under the awning, his face as he turned her way. She closed her eyes, as if that would block out the image.

When they reached the lights at Fulham Road and neither of them had spoken, Mark put the radio on to break the silence. While she’d been showering, he’d called and booked a room for two nights at K West in Shepherd’s Bush. ‘We’ll see where we are after that,’ he told her when she came back down, towelling her hair. ‘With luck . . .’

‘Is that far enough?’ she said, stopping. ‘Shepherd’s Bush. It’s only – what? Three miles away? Four?’

‘Something like that. But I think you’re right: the important thing is not being here, sitting targets. It’s four-star so there’ll be someone on reception twenty-four hours a day, people around all the time. You’ll never be on your own, and when I’m out this afternoon . . .’

‘You’re going out?’

‘I have to.’

‘God, Mark . . .’

‘I’ll feel so much happier if I know you’ve got other people around.’

‘But what about you?’

‘There’ll be a car at the office, too, remember? Anyway, you’re my priority here – I want you to feel safe.’ He picked up the detective’s card from the counter. ‘I’m going to call the police and tell them what we’re doing.’

The hotel was a hyper-modern box of glass and concrete on a street otherwise lined with Victorian mansion blocks and terraced villas. It was almost as quiet as Quarrendon Street, the only real noise the muffled sound of traffic on the four-lane roundabout beyond the road’s dead end. Inside, the incongruity continued: the lobby was over-designed, all sleek marble surfaces, outsize lampshades and walls of backlit curtaining. Hannah hated it.

‘It’s like a tornado went spinning through Miami, picked up a hotel and dropped it in suburban west London,’ she said, closing the door after the porter. She wandered around the room, touching the dark-wood desktop and the cold surface of the dresser, switching on one of the ugly bedside lights then switching it off again. The street was hidden from view by a great expanse of net curtain.

‘Is it all right?’

‘It’s . . . luxurious,’ she said, feeling ungrateful. ‘It’s just weird, that’s all.’

‘Like we’re hiding in a nightclub?’

She looked at him and grinned. ‘Exactly.’

They ate a room-service lunch before Mark went. ‘I won’t be late,’ he said at the door. ‘Do something relaxing this afternoon: watch a film or have a massage – there’s a spa downstairs.’

She shook her head. She found spas uncomfortable at the best of times, and if there was ever a day when she didn’t want a stranger’s hands on her, this was it.

‘Okay, but just . . . I need to know you’re safe. Please don’t go outside.’

‘I won’t.’

‘You promise me?’

After he’d gone, she surfed the net listlessly for ten minutes then got the copy of
Our Man in Havana
out of her bag. She lay down on the bed and tried to read but it was no good: her eyes slid off the words again and the jokes still weren’t funny. She closed her eyes, conscious suddenly of how exhausted she was. Sleep was like something from a different life, she thought, turning on to her side. She scarcely remembered what it was.

She was woken by the sound of a lorry reversing outside. Looking at the clock on the desk, she saw that more than an hour and a half had passed. Clearly, she hadn’t moved in that time: her shoulder and hip were numb. She turned slowly on to her back and looked at the ceiling. She’d dreamed, strange scraps of stories connected by a single common thread: the knowledge that she’d forgotten something vitally important.

That sense persisted now, joining the shifting, uncomfortable feeling she’d had since the morning that something was lurking at the fringe of her field of vision again, out of view but only just, something that didn’t make sense. This time, though, she didn’t think it was to do with Hermione.

She closed her eyes again, hoping that by concentrating, shutting out other distractions, she could bring whatever it was into focus. Within seconds, however, a hideous parade of mental images had started up instead: Hermione running, looking back over her shoulder in terror, quick steps gaining on her, a hand reaching out of the darkness.
Blunt-force trauma
: blood and hair and fragments of bone . . . Hannah sat up, heart pounding.

If she stayed here all afternoon, she realised, locked in this room, she’d go mad. But she couldn’t leave the hotel, either: she’d promised. She stalked about for a minute before she remembered the bar opposite the lobby. She could sit down there.