Before We Met: A Novel (38 page)

Trying to concentrate seemed to quell the panic, though, at least to some extent. It was something to focus on, a straw to clutch at. They started moving again and she pictured Parson’s Green Lane, the little café, the fish-and-chip shop, the doctor’s surgery. At the top, he turned left on to Fulham Road.

She traced the route in her head as he took them up Fulham Palace Road to the roundabout at Hammersmith and then – two sets of traffic lights followed by a sudden acceleration – on to the A40. The lights on the van ceiling changed, the orange streetlamp glow giving way to the strobing white of headlights passing quickly on the other side of the road. Her heart started beating faster, the panic rising again: unless he turned off soon, they were heading for the motorway. They were leaving London.

The roar of planes coming in to land at Heathrow was the last thing Hannah was sure about. After that, there was just the sound of the engine and the other traffic around them on the motorway, with an occasional rough bronchitic cough from the front. Every few minutes there was the click of a lighter and the air filled with acrid cigarette smoke. Had they stayed on the M4 or had Nick taken the London Orbital and then one of the numerous other motorways that came off it like spokes? There was no way of knowing: they could be heading anywhere. Without markers, time started to billow in and out: had it been ten minutes since she’d heard the planes or twenty? The rain came in waves, too, sometimes drumming so hard on the windscreen that he was forced to slow down, sometimes dying away almost completely.

She took an inventory of her pain. Her head was bad – the temple she’d hit was throbbing, sending needles of pain down through her eye – but her shoulder was injured, too. Something, either muscles or a ligament, was seriously torn.

She couldn’t stop thinking about her mother now. If something happened –
if he kills you
, said the voice – she’d never have a chance to say sorry. It was Mrs Reilly who’d done it, the reverence with which she’d handled that cheap photograph album, her desperate face at the car window. Despite everything, ten years of being ignored – scorned, her husband had said – she’d been prepared to beg a stranger for the smallest chance of seeing her son again.

Despite the way Hannah had behaved towards her, the brusque behaviour and constant rejection, her mother loved her, wanted to talk to her, counted down the weeks and months between Hannah’s infrequent visits. Hannah remembered how she’d stood in the kitchen in Malvern as a teenager quoting
The Second Sex
– hardly her own intellectual discovery: they’d studied it for French A-level – and denouncing her mother’s choices in life and she was ashamed of herself. Yes, her mother had never had a career, had never wanted one beyond bringing up her children, but couldn’t she, Hannah, one of the recipients of that love and attention and sacrifice, respect that? Be grateful? Despite all the hurt she’d inflicted, she realised, she could always rely on her mother’s unfailing loyalty and love. She thought of the trepidation she heard in Sandy’s voice when she telephoned, her obvious fear that she’d called at the wrong time, and Hannah wanted to cry with shame. If she came through this alive, she thought, she’d go to Malvern and throw herself at her mother’s feet, tell her she loved and appreciated her and was sorry.

There was the click of the indicator and they pulled out again. He was driving quickly but not quickly enough, she realised with despair, to draw the attention of the police. She could sense him, his physical presence seemed to weigh down the air, but he hadn’t uttered a word to her since he’d slammed the back doors shut. The silence was worse than anything he might have said. Years ago on the news, she’d seen Stephanie Slater, the woman Michael Sams had kidnapped and kept tied up for days in a wheelie bin. She’d told the interviewer that she’d talked to him, never let him forget that she was a real person, trying to make it harder for him to kill her. But this wasn’t about sex, was it, and she wasn’t some poor woman pulled off the street at random.

Hannah tried to think logically. Why would Nick kill her? He’d had a reason for killing Hermione but she, Hannah, had done nothing to him. What would he hope to achieve? Then she had another thought. What if he’d finally spoken to Mark and he knew he didn’t have the money? Was that it? Was this some kind of revenge attack? Or was she going to be used as a bargaining chip? Bait?

They’d been driving for a long time, maybe an hour and a half, maybe two hours, when she heard the indicator again and they began to slow down. They climbed a short slope and the burr of motorway traffic receded. A brief pause, then a green glow on the ceiling and they were moving again but more slowly, fifty miles an hour now, not eighty. She strained, listening for any clue at all as to where they were, but apart from another vehicle every minute or so and the sound of wind in the trees, there was nothing. The road had changed, too, winding one way then the other, dipping then rising. There was no glow of streetlights across the ceiling, no more traffic lights. They were out in the country.

After another ten or fifteen minutes, they slowed almost to a stop and turned off the road on to what felt like an unmade track. The van lurched in and out of potholes, jarring Hannah’s hip and shoulder against the floor. Wherever he was taking her, they must be almost there.

The surface under the wheels changed again and they came on to gravel. Nick stopped the van and got out, slamming his door shut. The crunch of footsteps and then the back doors opened and she saw him silhouetted against the sky. Taking hold of her lower legs, he dragged her towards the doors and pulled her into a sitting position. He took a Stanley knife out of his pocket and she felt a flare of pure fear, but then he bent and cut the tie around her ankles with a quick upward flick. Taking hold of her by the upper arms, he pulled her to her feet. She struggled, trying to get free and head-butt him, but he tightened his grip and held her at arm’s length.

‘I wouldn’t bother,’ he said, voice neutral. ‘We’re miles from anywhere.’

After the fetid sacking, the cold night air smelled clean and sweet. She sucked it in through her nose, trying to flush the stink of rotting vegetation and petrol from her nostrils. Into her head came the idea that this might be the last time she ever smelled fresh air and she pushed it away, ordering herself to keep it together
.

Hand between her shoulder blades, Nick pushed her around the side of the van. Cloud blotted out any moonlight but her eyes were accustomed to the dark now and she saw the front of a large, pale-stone house backed by trees. It was the house from the newspaper picture, the one where he’d been photographed with his sports car.

She stumbled as her foot caught the edge of a flagstone on the uneven path, but he caught her, yanking her backwards, sending another bolt of pain through her shoulder. One hand on the neck of her coat, he unlocked the front door and thrust her inside. Then he shut the door after himself, locked it again and pocketed the key.

Reaching out, he snapped the light on. Hannah blinked. They were in a hallway, polished stone flagging underfoot, a wide flight of stairs climbing away into darkness. There was a series of gloomy oil paintings in ornate gilt frames, and at the foot of the stairs a mounted stag’s head with branched antlers. To their left and right were closed doors. The air was warm but smelled strongly of dust, as if the house had been empty for some time and the heating had only just been put back on.

In front of them, a corridor led towards the back of the house. With a sharp nudge, he directed her forward. They went round a corner, passing another pair of closed doors, and came into a room at the end. In the weak light from the window, she made out a table with chairs and then, at the other end, units: a sink, a stove.

Nick flicked the light on, pulled out a chair and pushed her into it. Going behind her, he tied her wrists to the bar across the back then came round and crouched in front of her. She aimed a kick at his face but he caught her ankle before it reached him. ‘Just don’t, all right? There’s no need to make this any harder.’

Through the gag she made a sound she meant him to interpret as ‘Fuck you’.

For the first time now, she saw Nick at close range. No wonder she’d mistaken him for Mark outside the delicatessen. As she knew from the pictures, he had no mole, and his eyes were larger and even darker than Mark’s, the pupils almost indistinguishable from the irises, but the structure of their faces was the same. The only real difference, she could see now, was in their skin. Though he was forty, Mark could pass for thirty-two or three but no one would take Nick for that. He looked older by ten years, if not fifteen. His forehead and the area around his eyes were scored with lines, and other, deeper ones, the result of years of heavy smoking, radiated out from his mouth. He was wearing the pea coat she’d seen him in before, the one that had reminded her of Mark’s, but his black jeans were old, faded and white at the seams, and his beanie was knitted in a cheap nylon-wool mix, completely different from the cashmere one that Mark had picked up at Barneys on a New York trip last year.

Keeping hold of her ankle, he forced it against the leg of the chair, took another garden tie out of his pocket and pulled it tight. When he’d tied her other leg, he stood up and went behind her again. She felt tugging at her hands and then, to her confusion, she realised he’d cut them free. Pain shooting through her shoulder, she brought them round in front of her and saw deep red welts around her wrists. A moment later, she felt his hands at the back of her head again and he pulled the gag out of her mouth.

She took a great gulp of air that hit the back of her throat and made her choke. She coughed until her eyes were streaming. ‘You,’ she croaked as soon as she could catch a breath. ‘You . . .’

Nick put his hands up, palms towards her. ‘I’m sorry.’

She’d been about to scream at him but his tone pulled her up short. ‘You’re
sorry
?’

‘Yes, I’m sorry – I’m really sorry. I wouldn’t have done it like this, given the choice, but . . . Anyway, I’m not going to hurt you and I’m sorry for frightening you.’

Hannah stared at him but he seemed to be serious. ‘What the hell are you doing then? You
abducted
me.’

‘You were hardly going to get in the car willingly, were you?’

‘But . . .’

‘Getting you here is the only way of getting my brother here. He wouldn’t meet me and he wouldn’t answer my calls so . . .’

Hannah nearly laughed. ‘He’s been trying to reach you for
days
, ringing and ringing, since before you got out of prison, until—’ She stopped herself from saying it.
Hermione
.

‘No,’ Nick said simply. ‘He hasn’t called me once.’

‘You’re lying,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘He told me he’d tried everything to talk to you. He came to visit you in prison. He—’

‘Yes,’ Nick admitted, ‘he did visit me, that’s true at least, but I’m pretty confident he didn’t tell you why he came. Anyway,’ he gave a light shrug, ‘believe me when I tell you that I wouldn’t have gone to this sort of trouble unless I had to. Imagine how it would look to the police as well – my third day out.’

He walked over to the part of the room with the units and she watched him open a cupboard and take out a bottle of whisky and two glasses. Bringing them to the table, he sat down opposite her. He kept his coat on but pulled off his beanie and stuffed it into his pocket. Underneath, his hair was shaved almost to the scalp. He poured an inch of Scotch into both glasses and handed her one. ‘Here. I should think you need it.’

She looked at it for a second then took a swig that made her cough again.

‘I’ve sent him a text to let him know where we are.’

She smiled. ‘Then the police will be here any minute, won’t they?’

Nick regarded her over the rim of his glass. ‘I doubt it.’

From inside his jacket he took a cheap-looking red mobile phone that he put on the table in front of him, and a new pack of Embassy. He tore off the cellophane and pulled out the slip of silver paper inside. ‘I don’t know what he’s told you about me,’ he said, ‘but from the way you ran off the other night, I’m guessing it was the full works. I want to tell you the truth.’

‘I don’t want to hear it.’

‘Well, that’s bad luck, isn’t it?’ he said, with a dry smile. ‘Given that you’re literally a captive audience.’ He unscrewed the bottle again and poured himself a modest top-up. ‘You need to hear the truth about what happened. To Patty – all of it.’

‘I told you, I’m not interested,’ she said, but there was something about the directness of the way he was looking at her that made her heart start beating very fast.
He’s a psychopath,
she told herself,
an expert manipulator; this is what he does
, but his face was open and she thought of his parents, tucked away in their bungalow in Eastbourne, alive after all.

‘You might be more interested,’ he said, ‘if I told you that Mark was there, too.’

‘Yes, at the club that night. I know.’

‘Not at the club – at my flat. He was there when Patty died.’

Hannah went cold. ‘You’re lying,’ she said.

Nick shook his head. ‘No.’

He put a cigarette in his mouth and flicked the lighter. When he inhaled, the tobacco crackled in the silence. ‘He’s told you the official version, obviously – I’m the monster who watched Patty die and didn’t call an ambulance.’