One wrong turn, p.10
One Wrong Turn, page 10
Everything stopped.
Time.
My heart.
Any last semblance that this situation might turn out to be normal or recoverable in any way.
A groan escaped my lips and my handbag dropped to the ground.
24
I stared at the ground, my mind scrambling to keep up with what I was seeing, my vision seeming to wobble out of focus.
My knees flexed.
My breaths came in deep heaves.
Gary was sprawled face down. The long hair on the back of his head was matted and bloody. His pimpled face was turned to one side, his expression slack, his complexion wan and grey.
A brick lay on the ground close to him, flecks of something dark spattering the concrete, more darkness pooling around his head.
This can’t be real.
This isn’t happening.
I watched as the side of his shoe scuffed the ground limply.
Scraaaaaape.
‘Leave him,’ Paul snapped. ‘Look at me.’
I should have done as Paul told me. I knew that. But I couldn’t quite drag my eyes away from Gary’s left hand. His fingers were curling and uncurling ever so slightly, as if it was taking all of his strength to move them. I couldn’t tell if he was reaching for something or trying to pull himself across the concrete or—
‘I’m begging you, look at me.’
I forced myself to turn my head, achingly slowly, and when I did, it was hard to say what terrified me more.
The tears that were streaking down Paul’s face, the tremors that had taken hold of his body, or the gun that was shaking in his hand.
Saturday Night
10.15 p.m.
‘How well do you know your husband?’
There it was. The question Samantha had been shying from. The question that had plagued her in the small hours of the night and that had threatened to unpick the last fragile threads of her sanity.
How well did she know Paul? Truly know him?
Did she know him at all?
‘I know I love him.’
It grieved her to see the pitiful looks her parents were giving her. They knew her so deeply that sometimes it felt as if they knew all her unspoken thoughts, too.
She was about to say something more, something else, when Pippa the Labrador raised her head from the floor, cocking it to one side, listening keenly. A second later, Samantha heard the rasp of tyres on the gravel driveway outside and, instantly, she knew.
Paul was here.
25
I’d never seen a gun before in real life. Not outside of a museum. This one looked as if it could have featured in an exhibit. It was old and scuffed and surprisingly small. A revolver, I thought.
I wanted to tell myself it wasn’t real, but the shaky way Paul was holding it, not to mention the spray pluming from his lips and the fear in his eyes, told me that wasn’t the case.
‘What did you do?’ I asked him.
‘It was an accident.’
But I didn’t believe that.
Nobody would believe that.
I was trembling, afraid my legs would go from under me.
‘I didn’t have a choice,’ Paul murmured. ‘I . . .’
His words trailed away, his face collapsing as he looked down and to one side, staring at his hand as if he was confounded to find himself holding the gun.
‘Please,’ I whispered.
My lips felt numb. It was difficult to talk. I wanted to be anywhere else right now.
‘You have to come back to the car with me,’ Paul said.
I didn’t reply. I knew I couldn’t do that. I think he knew it, too.
‘We have to go,’ he told me, looking over his shoulder. ‘We have to hurry.’
‘No, we need to help him. We can still help him. Look!’
I bent on creaking ankles, moving painfully slowly, terrified he might shoot me even as I found myself kneeling on the soaked ground, reaching blindly for my handbag. When my hand touched the strap, I dragged it towards me, searching inside and removing my phone. ‘Let me call an ambulance. I can tell them to—’
‘NO!’
Only one word, but there was so much wrapped up in it.
Fear and frustration, terror and despair.
Paul strode towards me and snatched my mobile from my hand, jabbing the gun at my face. I shrieked and covered up as he tossed my phone away into the darkness. When I looked up at him, he thrust his gun closer to me. It was vibrating at the end of his reach.
He exhaled hard and scrubbed his free hand down over his eyes, nose and mouth, clamping it to his jaw as if he was fighting to hold in a scream. He then cupped his hand to the back of his neck and glanced behind him again, as if he didn’t know what to do next.
‘We have to get back in the car and leave before anyone else shows up. Understand?’
No, I wanted to say. Because I didn’t understand. I wasn’t sure there was anything that could be understood.
He’d beaten Gary. He’d pulled a gun on me. He’d lied to us. He was violent, unstable, dangerous. He was—
My mind flashed on Ben and terror gripped me. The last time I’d seen Ben, Paul had been stepping out of my car to confront him.
Oh, God.
You sent him out there. You told him you’d bring help.
I shrank backwards, my hand dropping to my belly, a new horror engulfing me.
Then Gary made a faint noise in the back of his throat. A feeble, gasping croak.
I stared at the gun Paul was pointing at me, the way it was shaking in his hand. His fingers were clenched very tight around it, his knuckles whitening, skin glistening.
‘We have to help him,’ I said again.
‘There isn’t time.’
‘But we have to try.’
‘You can’t. Please. Don’t do this to me, we—’
But I spun and took hold of Gary’s upper arm with both hands, pulling with a desperate energy until he rolled onto his back.
His head followed slackly. His eyes were glazed and unfocused. His chest wasn’t moving.
There was too much blood.
I ducked and put my cheek to his mouth. No signs of breathing. The only thing I could feel was the wisp of his facial hair against my skin.
No.
Tipping back his head, I cleared his airways and blew two quick breaths into his mouth, then laced my fingers together, hand over hand, and started chest compressions.
26
I counted the compressions in my head. I knew first aid from my childcare training, though I’d never had to use CPR before. I should have paced myself, but I’d started off in a hurry. Everything was happening in a rush.
‘You have to stop,’ Paul yelled.
I didn’t.
I kept going, pressing harder, faster, a film of sweat forming on my brow and across the back of my neck and shoulders, dribbling down under the collar of my sweater.
‘I told you, stop!’
There was a noise like a ratchet, or a zip being loosened, and then Paul jabbed the gun into my lower back, the metal grinding against my vertebrae. A cold numbness oozed out from the impact point, as if I’d been injected with an epidural. I trembled with a sudden exhaustion.
‘There’s nothing you can do for him now. It’s over. Let’s go.’
Slowly, I looked down at my crossed hands on Gary’s chest. My knuckles were white, my wrist and the backs of my fingers smeared with blood. My own breath rattled in my lungs.
I didn’t know how much time had passed.
Then I looked up gradually at Gary’s face and I saw that Paul was right. He was dead.
‘Get up.’
Paul seized my arm, lifting me roughly, holding me up when my legs gave out.
The faint whistling in my head had been growing steadily louder, building in pitch. I raised my hands before my eyes. They were streaked with Gary’s blood. I felt myself slump. This had just been an ordinary night. A normal night.
My vision dimmed. I felt myself totter.
‘You have to listen to me, do what I say. We have to go. If anyone else comes along . . .’
He didn’t complete the thought.
It was strange.
I could hear Paul. I could understand his words. I knew what was at stake. But I felt weirdly distanced from everything, as if my thinking was delayed or gummy, as if I was seeing him through a fogged glass screen.
‘Hurry.’
He urged me away from Gary in the direction of the forecourt. I staggered sideways, clattering into the wire fencing, clinging on as he stooped for my handbag and began searching through it.
‘Your car keys,’ he said. ‘Where are they?’
I couldn’t speak. My tongue was too swollen in my mouth. I was too scared.
‘They must be here. I saw you put them in here.’
I shook my head. The scene in front of me began to tilt, the details blurring and smearing. I could feel my pulse coming thready in my fingertips. My legs felt as if they belonged to somebody else.
‘What’s this?’
I looked around groggily and saw that Paul was holding something.
It took me a second to focus, to understand that—
No.
‘Are you . . . pregnant?’
I heard the modulation in his voice. The shock, and maybe the guilt, too.
He was holding the test stick, contemplating the two parallel lines. Then he whipped his head away and stared towards the forecourt, an appalled expression forming on his face.
A clutch of horror.
Ben. What had he done to him?
‘I didn’t know you were pregnant,’ he said, as if somehow that would have changed things, as if he wouldn’t have visited this horror on us if only he’d known.
I thought of the empty car seat again, trying to reckon with what it meant, how it might impact on Paul.
My body went numb all over and I watched helplessly as he put the test stick back where he’d found it, rustling around in my handbag in a frenzy. I saw him take out my purse and stuff it in his pocket. Then he closed his fist around my keys.
‘Got them.’
He wouldn’t meet my eyes as he dropped my bag on the ground and then grabbed my arm, jabbing his gun into my side, steering me towards the forecourt.
I didn’t know you were pregnant.
I thought of the new life inside me. My baby. I should have been doing everything I could to protect my unborn child. None of this should have been happening.
In my heart, I’d worried that I’d miscarried the first time because I’d been working too hard. I hadn’t rested. But this situation was so much worse.
I stumbled, but Paul heaved me back up. Then I glanced over my shoulder at the caged area we were leaving behind, and the shock hit me anew. I couldn’t see Gary any more. His body was almost completely concealed.
‘Are you . . .?’ I choked on my words. ‘Are you going to kill us?’
‘I don’t want to.’
Bad answer.
As if he had no choice in that.
As if it was out of his control.
Somewhere inside my head a voice was screaming, yelling, telling me to attempt to get away while I still could.
I looked dazedly to my right, thinking of the petrol station shop, then into the foggy grassland to my left.
I could see patches of stone and weeds, gravel and rubble. There was a large mound of dirt and building detritus that must have been left over from the construction of the petrol station.
‘Try to get away and I’ll shoot you,’ Paul panted, squeezing my arm tighter. ‘We’re going back to the car. You’re going to get in and drive. That’s it. That’s all you have to do. If you do exactly what I tell you, nobody else has to get hurt.’
Saturday Night
10.17 p.m.
Samantha ventured away from the front door to her parents’ house as Paul rushed from the car, tramping across the gravel driveway in a fury. The night air was misty and dense. He was wearing his mackintosh and it flared behind him like a cape as Samantha streaked from the porch to intercept him.
‘No, wait, Paul. Stop, please.’
She placed the flat of her hands on his chest, holding him back.
His eyes flashed darkly, reading her in an instant.
‘He still hasn’t given you the money, has he?’
‘He will. I think he will.’
‘We don’t have time for this.’
Paul shook her off, moving her aside, and in a flash she had a vision of what might unfold inside her parents’ house, the disaster this could become.
‘Please, Paul, don’t.’
She didn’t say anything else. It was there in her tone, the way she grabbed for his hand.
Please, Paul, don’t go in there like this.
Please, Paul, don’t make it worse.
‘No, it’s too late,’ he said, striding on. ‘If he has the money, he can give it to us. Enough of this bullshit.’
‘Samantha?’ It was her mother. She must have slipped unseen through the front door behind her. ‘Paul? Where is Lila? Is she sleeping?’
27
When we reached the corner of the petrol station shop, Paul kept hold of my arm and pulled me back roughly, digging his gun in close to my lungs, surveying the forecourt.
My breath stuttered. I squinted against the sudden bright dazzle.
The forecourt was lit brilliantly amid the fog and the night, looking oddly unreal. My car was the only vehicle at the pumps. It appeared tiny and remote in the bright vastness underneath the raised canopy. The windows gleamed slickly, reflecting the overhead lights. I couldn’t see inside to tell if Ben was looking at us.
Please help me, Ben. Please do something.
At the fringes of the forecourt, the glow of the vapour lights dissolved into murk. There were no traffic noises coming from the main road. Nobody else had turned up for fuel. Everything was too still and too hushed.
This can’t be happening.
Gary was dead.
Paul had killed him.
He was holding a gun on me.
None of that would compute.
‘OK, go,’ Paul said. ‘Quickly.’
He ushered me forwards. My legs felt leaden, my knees mushy.
If Paul was careful, Ben probably couldn’t see the gun he was holding on me. It might even appear as if Paul was supporting me in some way.
I glanced sideways at the front of the shop, conscious of how abandoned it looked inside, thinking about Gary and how rapidly things had deteriorated since we’d arrived.
If I hadn’t stopped for fuel, Gary would still be alive. Same thing if I’d stopped somewhere else, anywhere else. Same thing if I hadn’t taken the wrong turn out of Fowey, or if we’d never picked Paul and Samantha up in the first place.
Our mistakes and decisions – my mistakes and decisions – had led to this.
I sucked in too much air, the tang of petrol turning my stomach. My sense of smell seemed so much keener now. I didn’t know if it was down to the pregnancy hormones or my fear.
We passed the first set of petrol pumps, getting closer to my car. I didn’t want to get inside it. Getting into my car felt like a sure way to get killed.
I stopped.
Another moment of strange unreality, even more intense than the last. Something insect-like skittered across my scalp.
The light reflecting off the car windows had shifted and I could see inside.
In the back, Samantha had her palm flattened on the glass. Her fingers were spread, her face anguished.
Next to her was the baby car seat. The hood had been pushed back. The muslin cloth was gone. I could see that it really was empty.
Sitting next to it was Ben.
I guessed that he’d climbed into the back to talk with Samantha. Maybe he’d been consoling her or perhaps she’d been confiding in him about the empty car seat. I’d told Ben we needed to separate Paul and Samantha. If she’d needed his help, perhaps that explained why he hadn’t come looking for me.
But he must have sensed that something was wrong. He must have seen it from my shaky demeanour. Maybe he was questioning why we’d come around from behind the building, or he’d noticed the blood on my hands, or he’d seen how tightly Paul was gripping my arm.
Ben’s face slackened. He blinked rapidly. His mouth began to fall.
Then he turned very quickly, fumbling for his door handle, rising out of the car.
‘Abi . . .?’
Ben was clinging to the top of his door with one hand and bracing his other hand on the car roof, his gaze flitting between us, taking everything in but still not quite understanding what he was seeing. I glanced from him to the empty baby car seat and back again, feeling sickened, confused.
Paul wasn’t moving away from me. He didn’t let go. When I didn’t say anything to Ben, Paul tugged me closer to him, the gun jabbing into my flesh.
I gasped and trembled.
I could feel the intense heat coming off Paul’s body and I could see the vapour drifting up from the shoulders of his mackintosh. When I looked up at his face, his cheeks were ruddy, his spectacles misted, like he was burning up with a fever.
‘Abi, what’s going on?’ Ben asked.
‘Get back in the car,’ Paul shouted, pressing his gun even harder into my side.
I bared my teeth as I stared desperately at Ben, shaking my head in warning.
Ben gawped back at me, his eyebrows forking deeply. He backed away from my car, circling around by the boot, stepping out from behind.
‘Abi.’ He beckoned to me. ‘Come over here.’
But I couldn’t.
‘I told you, get back in the car,’ Paul said.
‘No, I don’t think I will, thanks. This whole thing has gone far enough. Whatever has been happening here has to stop, OK? You’ve upset your wife. You’ve been acting really strangely. We gave you a lift, but that’s it. We’re done. This is over. We’ll call the police if we have to.’
Paul tensed and measured Ben. He looked to his right for a short moment, then back at the car.
I locked onto Samantha through the window glass, willing her to get out and intervene, somehow fix this, maybe explain what the hell was going on.
