Before We Met: A Novel (37 page)

Flashing a look in her rear-view mirror, Hannah cut across the slow lane, her rear bumper almost catching the angry muzzle of a juggernaut going much faster than she’d estimated. The driver leaned on the horn, letting loose a blast so loud it seemed to lift the car off the road. She was still doing sixty-five as she roared on to the hard shoulder, skidding on a layer of loose gravel as she braked. She answered the call just as it was about to ring out.

‘Neesha.’

‘Mrs Reilly.’

Even over the roar of the traffic, Hannah could hear the difference in her voice. It was thick and nasal, as if she had a heavy cold. ‘Are you all right?’ she said. ‘You sound . . .’

‘Unemployed?’ Neesha said.

‘What?’ For a moment, Hannah didn’t understand.

‘He fired me.’

‘Fired . . . What?’

‘You promised me you wouldn’t tell him.’

‘I didn’t,’ Hannah said. ‘I didn’t. He . . . guessed.’ Even as the word left her mouth, she realised how lame it sounded.

‘Guessed?’ Neesha’s voice was full of scorn. ‘Oh, well, that’s fine then. Perfect. Thanks, anyway. Perhaps you can tell me what we’re supposed to do now, Steven and I, with a child and a mortgage and no money coming in at all. I told you . . .’ her voice seemed to catch ‘. . . I
told
you I couldn’t lose my job.’

‘Neesha, I don’t think it’s got anything to do with that – really, I don’t. Mark was fine about it – actually, he said he was flattered that you and I both thought—’

‘That’s bullshit,’ she said. ‘It might be what he told you but . . .’

‘He hasn’t told me anything. I didn’t even know about it. Leo told me yesterday that you were on a warning – he said you’d messed up some figures. He didn’t tell me you’d been . . .’

‘On a warning?’ Down the line came a guttural snort. ‘These figures I messed up – did you ask what they were?’

‘No,’ Hannah admitted.

‘I wrote down a telephone number wrong – I transposed two digits. I put it right in a minute, thirty seconds, all it took was a look on the Net, but Mark jumped on it like he’d caught me siphoning money from the accounts. I knew there was something going on – he was furious with me from the moment he stepped into the office. He was just waiting for an excuse.’

‘Neesha,’ Hannah said, ‘you told me yourself that you’d been making mistakes, trying to juggle—’

‘Two tiny mistakes – the other one was a spelling mistake in a letter. Nothing important, nothing you’d
sack
someone for. I only said that to make you feel better – to make it seem like there really was a chance that I’d got it wrong and there wasn’t actually something going on between him and that woman.’

She hadn’t seen the papers, Hannah realised; she couldn’t have. ‘Neesha . . .’ she started, but Neesha wasn’t listening.

‘Oh, don’t even bother,’ she said. ‘I just thought you should know what you’ve done.’ Before Hannah could say anything else, she had hung up. Hannah tried three times to ring her back but each time the call went straight to voicemail.

The windscreen wipers beat like a pulse as the GPS brought her back through the outskirts of south London. The roads were still busy but the pavements were almost empty, and the few people who were out hid under umbrellas or huddled in doorways. It wasn’t half past seven yet but it felt late, as if the pubs and restaurants had closed already and everyone else – all the decent, sensible people – was tucked safely away at home.

She’d thought about driving to Tom’s but crossing central London on a Saturday night could take hours; much quicker to leave the car in Parsons Green and get the Piccadilly line to Holloway. She imagined arriving, her relief when he opened the front door and ushered her off the street into the light and warmth. He’d take her straight to the kitchen, pour her a glass of wine and demand the whole story. The idea of telling him made her feel nauseous but she’d just have to come out and say it, there was no other way. He’d listen quietly – God, he was going to be horrified – and then he’d ask her: What are you going to do?

As she waited for the lights at the foot of Wandsworth Bridge, tears rolled down her cheeks. She was going to get a divorce.
Divorce
– the word tolled in her mind. It was so final, so – absolute. They’d fight, there would be some legal wrangling – not much: she didn’t want anything except her own savings back – and then it would be over, finished, and they’d never speak to one another again. The thought caused her a pain so sharp it took her breath away. Sitting on the beach in the dark, feeding the fire with driftwood and talking as if they’d known each other for years; dancing in Williamsburg; the kiss in the alley as the J train had clattered overhead back into Manhattan – it was all gone.

But the lies . . . she knew she’d never be able to get past them. She couldn’t stay with Mark now that she knew he could lie like this, lie and keep lying even when she begged for the truth, one story after another, all plausible, all perfectly woven until she picked at the one semi-loose thread and they unravelled in her hands. If she stayed, it would mean living with the possibility – the likelihood – of lies for the rest of her life.

And the things he’d lied about, too. Lying about his brother she could understand – even forgive. In his place, meeting someone she really liked, perhaps she would have done the same in the tentative early days.
But you wouldn’t have kept on lying
, argued her inner voice;
when you knew the relationship was getting serious, you would have said something, even if it meant losing him
. And his parents: he’d lied to her about them from the very beginning, before he could ever really have known their relationship would be significant.

‘
The boring, ordinary,
petit bourgeois
people he had to leave behind
.’ She heard his father’s voice again. Was that why Mark had lied about them? Had he despised them so much? She thought of the pile of magazine clippings, the aspiration and yearning for sophistication that had risen off every hoarded page like steam. Was that why Mark kept his half of the bedroom so pared back? she wondered. Was that his way of rejecting his surroundings, refusing to own any part of that stifling bungalow with its chintzy rocking chairs and fabric flowers? He’d been designing a different sort of life for himself, hadn’t he, page by magazine page?

And now Neesha. Hannah knew in her bones that Mark had fired her for talking about Hermione’s calls. Why else would he have gone to such lengths to work out who’d told her? And if her for firing Neesha had been legitimate, he would have told her, Hannah, wouldn’t he? He always talked to her about work – under normal circumstances, there was no way he’d fire his assistant without discussing it with her first.

She turned into Studdridge Street, only a minute from home now.
Home
. Warm light shone from the windows of almost every house, people settling in for cosy Saturday evenings of dinner and television. She thought about the walk back to the station in the rain, the hour or so she’d spend sitting soaked and cold on the Tube to Holloway. She waited for an oncoming car to pass and then made the left turn into Quarrendon Street. There was a parking spot right on the end behind a white van and she pulled in and turned off the engine. She unplugged the GPS and put it back in the glove compartment then sat for a moment in the sudden quiet. The red light was flashing on her BlackBerry again but it was just her brother, asking what time she thought she’d get there; she could answer him once she got to the station. She dropped the phone into her bag, braced herself for the rain and got out.

Tucking the handle of the umbrella between her shoulder and ear, she hitched her bag on to her shoulder and slid the key into the car door. A darting movement at ground level startled her for a second but it was just a cat, the fat tabby from across the road. Rainwater streamed along the gutter at her feet.

‘Don’t scream, and don’t try and run.’

Hannah froze. The voice came from directly behind her, a foot away. A man’s voice, quiet, in control. Mark’s but not Mark’s – scratchier, the accent less cultured. For a second or two the world seemed to stop. She made to turn round but a strong hand had circled the top of her arm, and it was gripping hard, keeping her facing away.

‘Just do what I tell you and everything will be fine. Give me the key.’

‘Get off me. Get off – you’re—’

She tried to shake free of him but the hand gripped harder, fingers pressing into her flesh, sending pain shooting down her arm. She felt hot breath on her cheek, his mouth an inch from her ear. ‘Shut up,’ he said, his voice harder now, ‘and give me the key.’

She jabbed her other arm backwards, elbow up, hoping to make contact somewhere, surprise him enough to loosen his grip just for a second, but he anticipated her and grabbed hold of her wrist. He yanked it up behind her back and she felt something tear in her shoulder. Her umbrella fell to the pavement, followed by the car key. She heard the splash as it landed in the gutter and felt a stab of despair: the plastic fob was light; the coursing rainwater would carry it away and she’d never find it in the dark.

The police – where were the police? She twisted her head but her view was blocked by the white van she’d parked behind, and the Honda she’d seen at lunchtime had been around the curve in the street, on the same side. It was hidden from sight – or she was. She opened her mouth to scream but the hand that had circled her arm was now clamped across her face, forcing her head back. She struggled but he was too powerful, and every time she tried to get free, excruciating pain tore through her shoulder. The taste of leather was in her mouth – he was wearing gloves.

He kicked her feet out from under her and pulled her sharply round. She gasped with the pain, realised her mouth was partially uncovered and screamed. The sound was shockingly loud. She felt him flinch, and hope filled her: someone would have heard it – the police, one of the neighbours. Someone would come to see what was going on. Someone would help her.

Seconds later, the hope died: they wouldn’t have time. He half-pushed, half-dragged her the few steps to the van and pulled the back door open. With one neat move, he knocked her legs out from under her and shoved her forward. She fell face first, knocking the top of her head against the floor. Behind her, the van door slammed shut.

Chapter Twenty-five

The back of the van was windowless and, from the position she was tied in, Hannah couldn’t move her head far enough to see anything further forward. When he’d pushed her inside, she’d caught a brief view of the back of the seats and the heavy wire grille that separated them from the body of the van. Now all she could see was the van’s blank pressed-steel side and the patch of ceiling directly above her head, the patterns cast across it by the streetlights.

Where was he taking her?

She felt her gorge rising again and tried to swallow. If she threw up with the gag in her mouth, she’d choke. She couldn’t make a noise loud enough for him to hear in the front and she’d choke on her own vomit and suffocate.
And what if he did hear her?
said the voice in her head.
Did she think Nick was going to help her?
She thought of Hermione, dead in the yard at the back of the pub, her head smashed in, blood and bone and brain.

She pushed back, trying to lift her face away from the sacking that lay piled on the van floor. It was rough and reeked of earth and grass cuttings rotted to compost with an under-note of petrol that caught the back of her throat.

In the front section of the van, three feet away but hopelessly out of reach, she heard her phone start to ring. It rang five times then stopped as voicemail clicked in. Twenty seconds passed and then it rang again. ‘Christ’s sake,’ he muttered, and she heard him rummaging through her bag. A couple of seconds later, the ringing stopped for a second time and she heard the long tone the phone made when it was turned off.

Her forehead was throbbing where she’d hit it. He’d pushed her inside and climbed in after her, pulling the door shut behind him. The bang to the head had stunned her for a moment but then she’d started fighting, kicking and shouting, trying to make as much noise as possible. At one point she’d managed to bite his hand and he’d sworn and snatched it away level with his shoulder. She’d thought he was going to bring it back and hit her across the face but instead he’d launched himself at her again, pushing her back down and straddling her chest, pinning her arms with his knees while he tied the cloth across her face. She’d writhed and kicked, trying to bring her legs up behind him to knee him in the small of the back, but he was too strong and in a few seconds he had forced her on to her front, pulled her hands behind her back and bound them together with something hard and sharp-edged: perhaps a plant-tie. He’d done the same with her feet.

He’d checked both sets of ties twice and, when he was satisfied, he’d crawled to the door and got out, taking her bag with him. Seconds later, she heard him get back in at the front of the van and the engine had started. He’d made a four- or five-point turn – the street was narrow with cars parked on both sides – and headed back towards Studdridge Street.

In her panic, she’d quickly lost track of where they were going – any number of streets led off Studdridge; had he turned left then or just swerved? – but now, from outside, she heard a distinctive high-pitched beeping. She knew it; she’d heard it countless times: the pedestrian crossing on Parsons Green Lane, just outside the Tube station. They’d stopped – he was waiting for the light. She thought she heard the click of buttons – was he texting? – and then there was a thunderous clatter overhead: a train on the bridge, slowing, coming into the station. She felt a burst of elation – she knew where they were – but as quickly as it came, it was gone. What good was knowing where she was? She was bound and gagged, lying helpless in the semi-darkness in a van driven by a man who’d killed a woman. Two women.