One wrong turn, p.21
One Wrong Turn, page 21
‘Should I count to three?’ she asked, bringing the knife closer to my eye, the flat of the blade touching my cheek.
‘About six weeks, I think.’
‘Precious.’
I was full-on shaking now, and hating her for it.
‘But how about this?’ She leaned towards me, lowering her voice to a whisper. ‘How about we stop talking, and you start driving? Because if you don’t, I will kill you, and then I’ll get Paul to dump your body in the boot and he can drive me himself.’
62
I rejoined the road slowly, trembling all over. The wind through my shattered window ruffled my hair and clothes.
As I shifted up a gear (my arm alive with pain) I was aware of Collette watching me, monitoring me. It took several seconds until she removed her knife, but I could still feel its touch as I glanced over my shoulder to see her returning it to her pocket and picking up the gun again.
‘You need to take the next exit,’ she told me.
I quivered. In a feverish part of my mind, her knife was still pressing against my cheek, still creeping towards my eye.
Focus.
The steering seemed OK. There were no unusual bumps or bangs, no strange noises from the engine or my tyres. I couldn’t detect any obvious mechanical damage from my collision with the central reservation.
‘Speed up,’ Collette ordered. ‘Drive normally.’
I accelerated, the wind blustering icy cold through my window, wincing as I painfully shifted through the gears. Driving with no seat belt felt alien and unsafe, which I knew was what she wanted.
Don’t think about that.
You have to save yourself now. Save your baby.
Because I understood how bad my chances of surviving this were. Maybe Paul didn’t. Maybe he genuinely believed there was a way out of this for me. He’d told Collette I was pregnant as if he’d expected her to show me mercy because of it. But I didn’t think she would. I thought Collette was utterly ruthless.
I fought back a sob, feeling very alone. When I looked at Paul, he pressed his lips together and turned away from me, as if he was ashamed.
He should be.
What kind of person could do what he’d done? What kind of husband and father? I could see how desperately he wanted Lila back, but I also knew he didn’t deserve her. His actions had cost Lila her mum tonight. They might already have cost Lila her life, too.
My mind travelled to the baby changing bag filled with money that was next to Collette, and all I felt was disgust for them both. All this horror. All this mess. It had been so avoidable.
You can still get out of this. You can still find a way.
At the side of the dual carriageway, a sign was approaching, displaying a turn-off for Liskeard. I dipped my eyes to the map display on the satnav, desperately trying to get a sense of the nearby terrain, an inkling of where Collette might be taking us.
‘Abi, your exit is coming up,’ Collette said. ‘I’d really hate for you to miss it.’
Bracing myself against the pain in my arm, I nudged down my indicator. Then I glanced up at her in my mirror. Her skin was so pale it was almost translucent. It seemed to be stretched taut across her face.
‘How long is left?’ I asked her.
I think she knew what I meant by that. I wasn’t asking her how long until our destination. I was asking her how long I had left, period.
‘Fifteen minutes,’ she told me, with a small nod of understanding. ‘No more.’
63
Ben
Ben sped onwards, teetering around bends, flying through the dark. There was less fog now, but he’d seen no trace of Abi’s car. There was nothing to reassure him he was on the right path. He might have already gone too far.
His body writhed with nervous energy. He was clenching his jaw so hard his gums ached. He’d never concentrated so hard or so desperately in his life.
To his left, the world dropped away into a cliffside arrayed with trees and Ben craned his neck to survey it, alert for any felled tree trunks, or churned-up patches of grass or foliage, or tyre marks on the tarmac that might indicate that Abi had tussled with her abductors and crashed. He kept hoping against hope that he’d find her walking by the side of the road, released, let go.
Maybe he was on the wrong route altogether. He couldn’t rule it out. Paul and Samantha had lied about having a baby with them. They’d hidden a dead woman in their car. They could have made Abi follow a different route entirely.
‘Please be here, Abi.’
Another vehicle passed him going the other way, but it was low and sporty, nothing like Abi’s car.
His eyes went to his mirrors, watching the vehicle streak away behind him. He kept expecting to see blue lights as the police chased him down, but there was no sign of that yet. No police at all. He had no sense they were out searching for Abi.
The mobile phone started chiming.
Again.
Ben bared his teeth and stared furiously ahead as it buzzed and hopped across the open road map that was spread across the passenger seat next to him. He’d already hung up on two previous calls from the emergency operator he’d spoken with most recently. The operator hadn’t had any new information for him. He’d just been trying to get Ben’s location and encourage him to return to the petrol station.
Didn’t they get that he wanted to preserve his battery? A quick search had shown him there was no charging cable in Gary’s car.
‘You’d better have some news this time,’ he muttered.
But when he pulled his eyes from the road and looked down at the phone, he saw something unexpected. There was the same disabling lock-screen image of Paul with the dead woman and the baby, but overlaid on it were the words: Mum and Dad Calling.
Uncertainty skittered through him.
Should he answer it? Could they help him? How could he answer their call and explain himself without also telling them that he thought their daughter was dead?
But then again, Paul was featured in the lock-screen image. They might have some idea of what was happening and where he was going.
Ben gauged the road ahead of him, then reached out and grasped for the phone. It squirmed in his hand. The battery was on 9 per cent. He juggled it in his palm, then swiped to answer and put it on speaker without saying anything.
A pause, a crackle of dead air, and then an elderly female voice said, ‘Samantha?’
Samantha.
Ben rocked back in his seat.
Were they calling to speak with the woman Paul had been with or was Samantha the name of the dead woman in the lock-screen image on the phone? Had the name Paul and the woman given them been just another lie?
‘Hello?’ The woman sounded shaky and on edge, her words balanced on the precipice of a terrible fear.
‘Yes, hello,’ Ben said quickly.
‘Who is this?’
He looked at the empty tarmac ahead of him, feeling a hollowness form inside his chest. If he didn’t say something soon, the woman might hang up on him. And if she did that, he’d have no way of returning her call. It wasn’t as if the number she was dialling from had come up on screen, so Ben couldn’t even stop and use a different phone.
Tell her.
‘My name is Ben. I think, well, I found what I think is your daughter’s phone and—’
‘Where did you find it?’ The woman’s worry went up a notch, ratcheting towards frantic. ‘Is Samantha hurt? Have they harmed her? Have they . . . Oh . . . Oh . . .’
A wavering silence, and then Ben heard a heavy thump and a groan.
‘Hello?’ he said. ‘Hello? Can you hear me?’
But there was no response at all.
64
Fifteen minutes. No more.
That was an impossible thing to digest. It chilled me to my core. And I’d already spent three or four minutes navigating a series of roundabouts on the outskirts of Liskeard, then picking up an A-road that dipped and undulated and curved.
Fifteen minutes.
My head went light. My breathing grew funny. The pain in my arm seemed to churn and burn.
All the things I’d wanted to do with my life. All the moments I’d wasted. The future with Ben I’d dreamed of.
I glanced down at my belly and thought of what else I was about to lose. A child. Our child.
And that’s when something changed.
I changed.
My blood fizzed beneath my skin with a pent-up, desperate energy.
I was suddenly angry, furious with Collette and Paul. With Ben. With myself.
And I wasn’t going to give up. I refused to lose this baby.
Fifteen minutes. No more.
I guessed I had about eleven minutes left. Eleven minutes of planning and strategizing. Eleven minutes to save myself.
Headlights bloomed against the trees and hedgerows ahead of us, coming from the opposite direction. They sped closer and a delivery van tore by. But I couldn’t see the driver. There was no way they would see me.
Something else, then.
‘Take the right turn up ahead,’ Collette told me.
I nodded, slowing down and swinging the car onto a more minor road, glancing at the satnav to see a network of other small roads weaving towards the snaking blue line of a river. The area was becoming increasingly rural and remote.
Think, Abi, think.
I gazed around me wildly, the wind ruffling my hair through my shattered window, chilling my hands and face, irritating the wound in my arm.
Then I looked down into the footwell around my feet. Fragments of shattered glass were gathered there. It was something. Maybe. A small thing that I could store away in my mind for later.
What else?
The money in the baby changing bag.
That was behind me now. And maybe that was a mistake they’d made. Not that I could get to it. Yet.
‘Next left.’
I made the turn, my gaze drifting over the central console, snagging on something else.
What was it?
Not Ben’s phone. That was long gone. But there was something about where it had been, something that hooked me, an idea or a possibility. The charging cable? It wasn’t much of a weapon.
The road in front of me narrowed to a single lane. The tarmac was patterned with stripes of mud that had probably been shed by a tractor’s tyres. It didn’t seem as if many vehicles came this way.
I didn’t like it. If Collette didn’t want to risk any witnesses when she killed me, then maybe she was simply waiting until we got to somewhere remote.
Hurry.
I looked around the interior of the car again, but I was seeing the same things I’d seen all night, more or less. The gearstick and the handbrake, the radio and dash, the heating controls and the button for the hazard warning lights and—
The cigarette lighter.
That was what I’d noticed.
Grandpa had been a smoker. His car had come equipped with a cigarette lighter that fitted into the 12v socket.
Ben had used an adaptor to plug his phone into the socket and charge it, and he’d had to remove the pop-out cigarette lighter to do it, but the lighter itself was nestled in the cubby close by.
It was dusty and furred in grime. Easy to overlook.
I’d never used it before. I’d never smoked. I wasn’t even sure if it worked.
But if it did, then maybe I could get to it and pop it down, wait for, what, thirty seconds, and then it would pop back up and it would be red hot and . . . right.
Thirty seconds.
With Collette watching like a hawk with a gun in her hand. With Paul sitting next to me, focused on getting Lila back.
And, all right, Paul was distracted by his own concerns. His eyes had gone inwards, as if he was wrestling with his demons, perhaps even his conscience. But even so, I thought he’d notice if I popped a damn cigarette lighter down.
Something else, then.
I looked into my door pocket, scanned the steering wheel in front of me, then glanced across at Paul’s side of the car.
The glovebox?
I couldn’t open it with Paul sitting there. Not now. But what if I got a chance to open it when we got to where we were going, wherever that might be?
In my mind, I pictured myself opening it, carrying out a mental inventory of what I was likely to find inside.
Likely, because I knew my glovebox was a complete mess. A dumping ground, if I was honest.
I eyed the road in a panic – we were now passing along a stretch of woodland – then peered at it again.
There would be money, for starters. Not bank notes. I was thinking of the bag of loose change I kept inside. I stored it there for minor emergencies, to pay for parking in any car parks that weren’t listed on the apps I used, or if I needed a pound for a shopping trolley. But there weren’t enough coins to function as a makeshift cosh.
There would be pens. At least one or two. They were most likely Biros, and a Biro could be an improvised weapon. I could grab it and pluck off the lid and plunge the nib hard into the fleshy part of Collette’s throat, or her hand.
I got a little buzz of adrenaline as I thought about that.
What else?
Sweets, maybe? A tyre pressure gauge. And . . .?
There had to be other things. But they weren’t any of the things I could use in a crisis like this. I didn’t have a can of mace in there. I didn’t have a rape alarm. I probably should have had both those things – I wished I did – but I didn’t.
Why?
Because I wasn’t the type of person who picked up strangers in my car. I wasn’t that reckless.
Fuck. Tell that to Ben.
I pushed the thought away. Pushed the shakes away, too.
Not now.
Not here.
Not when I needed to summon all my strengths, and none of my weaknesses. Not if I was going to have even the slimmest chance.
But the thought of Ben lying alone in that field wormed into my mind anyway, whispering in the darkness.
Ben.
A jag of sorrow.
A sudden sear of discomfort from my arm.
No. Stay focused.
There had to be something else. Something I was missing, or overlooking, or—
‘Pay attention,’ Collette told me. ‘There’s a lane coming up on your left.’
65
Collette directed me to a blink-and-you’d-miss-it gap in the hedge where a rugged woodland track awaited.
I slowed way down, wishing with all my being that I could drive past it, but then she stuck her gun into my side and I swung my car in, picking a path between the ruts, bumps and trenches.
A spooky wood in the middle of nowhere.
This was bad. It was beyond remote.
There wasn’t anywhere to turn around and there were no alternative routes. There was only one way to go.
The chassis tipped and pitched from side to side over the uneven ground. Grass and foliage brushed and scraped at the exterior of my car. A few stray branches flapped through my open window like unseen hands.
Overhead, the intertwined limbs of crooked trees formed an impromptu tunnel. My headlamps blazed through the darkness, throwing the trees into stark relief. They were ancient and knotted. Alder, beech, oak and pine.
Fifteen minutes. No more.
I must have lost nine or ten minutes by now.
Not long left.
My heart cantered. The gash to my arm was weeping and stinging. I cradled it to my stomach as I steered one-handed, thinking of the glovebox and the Biro inside it, then of the cigarette lighter in the central cubby hole, scared by how limited my options really were.
Paul was silent next to me, but he seemed to be scanning the terrain with the same uneasy awareness that had taken hold of me. I wondered if he believed his daughter was really here, or if, like me, he feared we were driving into a trap.
I jolted as my headlights caught the reflected glare of animal eyes in the undergrowth. Deep pockets of darkness lurked under the trees.
Then a wooden gate appeared in front of me, blocking our way, and I slowed to a stop. The gate was secured with a padlock and chain. The timber looked bleached and aged. It was flaked and split in places, covered with moss and threads of ivy in others. Next to it, a smart holiday letting sign read: KEEPER’S COTTAGE ****.
‘Take these,’ Collette said, passing some keys through to Paul in the front. ‘Open the gate.’
Paul hesitated. ‘Lila is here?’
‘Well, there wouldn’t be much point in coming here if she wasn’t now, would there?’
He glanced at me for a quick moment, as if to check if I thought it was as sketchy as he obviously did. His face was worn and creased in the darkness, his eyes shining wetly behind his spectacles like two damp pebbles. He turned his head the other way and assessed the trees by his door, his body growing still, as if he sensed an unknown threat lurking among them.
‘This is nearly over, Paul,’ Collette assured him. ‘Open the gate. You don’t want to keep Lila waiting, do you?’
He tugged his door release and the interior light came on. He then waited another second or two before pushing the door fully open and stepping outside. The ground squelched beneath his feet. He raised one of his leather shoes and contemplated the mud and leaves that were adhered to it. With a shake of his head, he looked warily into the trees again, then closed his door softly and tramped towards the gate.
I watched him go, my breath clouding the air coming through my missing window. The silence all around us was deafening. I could smell damp earth and soaked resin mingled with the tang of what remained of the night fog. I wondered if it would be the last things I ever smelled.
The engine idled. The car shuddered.
Paul crouched in the light of my headlamps to fit the key into the padlock, then nervously raised his head to check the trees again.
I swallowed drily. The cigarette lighter was just to my left. I began to reach for it, but I hadn’t got very far before Collette hummed, tapped her gun against Paul’s seat and said, ‘Do you have a plan, Abi?’
Panic seized me. I cradled my arm, quickly covering up my move. The bloody gash was sticking to the wool of my sweater.
