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“Haven Cliffs, please,” I say, climbing into the car.
“Do you have an address?”
“The house is called Albatross, but I’ve stupidly forgotten which road it’s on.”
“No problem.” He fiddles with his GPS. “Got it.”
“Great, thank you.”
I sit back, look out of the window, trying to calm my nerves. I have no idea how the next hour will play out but I know what I’d like to happen. Lukas is there, he agrees to talk to me, he admits giving the order for Hunter to be killed, admits kidnapping me and Ned, admits killing Ned. He tells me that everything was payback for Lina’s death, because he once loved her, or because he was meant to look out for her, and then I leave, and go straight to the police with the recording I’ve secretly made on my phone. But I’m not so naïve as to think things go exactly as we’d like.
“Here you are,” the driver says, some fifteen minutes later.
I look out of the window and see a pair of black double gates with a high white wall stretching on either side of it. I recognize the small black gate a few yards along from the main gates; it’s the gate I went through when I pretended to look for Ned on the beach.
I pay the driver, get out of the car, and stand for a moment, studying the upper windows of the house where I was held captive for two weeks. When the kidnappers first brought us here, I didn’t smell the tang of the sea in the air. But maybe the fear I felt as they dragged Ned and me from the car had blunted my senses. Even if I had smelled the sea, I wouldn’t have thought we were at the house where Ned and I had had lunch with Lukas. In my mind, the place we’d been brought to was old and derelict, hidden away in some woods.
I wait until the taxi has left before pressing the intercom button. While I wait for it to be answered, I look up and down the wide road, noting how each house is so far from its neighbor that I could have screamed as much as I liked, and nobody would have heard.
I press the intercom again, but nobody answers, and I feel suddenly furious, because if Lukas is going to the memorial service for Justine and Lina tomorrow, he should be here by now. It’s why I waited until today to come, why I didn’t come yesterday or the day before, in case he hadn’t arrived yet.
I press the intercom again and again, refusing to believe Lukas isn’t somewhere behind the high white wall. Unless he decided to stay in London to be nearer to the church. But London is only a couple of hours by train from Bournemouth, and surely this is where he’d come to grieve for a woman who meant so much to him that he resorted to murder and kidnapping to avenge her death?
I move away, hoping to lull Lukas into a false sense of security, in case he’s watching me on the camera perched above the gate. I walk along the length of the wall to the right and, tucked away at the end, I find another pair of double gates, not quite as stately as the main gates. There’s no camera, and no one around, so I grab hold of the top of thegates and try to pull myself up. The gates are too smooth for me to get a toehold; my shoes scramble uselessly and I drop down to the path. I move to the stone pillar on the right-hand side of the gate and this time, when I grab the top of the gates, I manage to get enough purchase on the pillar’s rough surface to haul myself up. I just have time to peer quickly over the top before my foothold slips, and I see that the gates lead to a wooded area at the side of the house. These are the gates that the kidnappers drove through the night they brought me and Ned here.
I return to the main gates, press on the buzzer, keeping my finger on it, enraged that Lukas is refusing to answer, enraged that it hasn’t worked out as I’d hoped. Defeated, because I can’t stay around forever, I raise my head, look straight into the camera, and slowly mouth a message to Lukas:See you tomorrow.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I walk into the church. It’s already full, but I don’t want to stand at the back, I’d feel too conspicuous.
Turning to the right, I walk up the side aisle and slide into a space at the end of a bench, hoping that the young woman who shifts along to give me more room isn’t someone from the magazine. I tug on the brim of the blue hat I’m wearing, bringing it down on my forehead, and pull my hair forward, hiding my face, but keeping my eyes clear. Where is he?
During the service, I close my ears to the sounds of gentle weeping around me. I’m scared to cry, scared that I might not be able to stop. I focus on Justine, on the last time I saw her, at dinner at Carolyn’s, when she made us laugh with stories about an interview she’d done with a famous jockey, in a stable full of horses. For Lina, it’s harder to conjure good memories.
The service ends, and I slide quickly out of the pew, wanting to get out of the church before people start coming down the central aisle. My plan is to stand somewhere to the side and scan the faces of the exiting crowd until I see Lukas. But as I hurry toward the door, I see a manstepping out of the shadows on the other side of the church, also making his way to the door, in as much of a hurry to leave as I am. My breath comes quicker; it isn’t Lukas, but I know this man, I’m sure of it. I try to place him: he’s of medium height, medium build, but there’s nothing else to give me a clue as to his identity.
I tell myself that I must be mistaken, that I don’t know him. As he approaches the door, I hang back to get a better look at him and notice that his head is shaved. The pieces lock together—Carl, I’m sure it’s Carl.
I force my way through the crowd leaving the church and see him walking across the adjacent gardens, toward the main road. Panic takes hold; if he has a car parked nearby, he’ll be gone before I can speak to him.
“Carl!”
He doesn’t turn, he keeps on walking. But I saw, I saw him falter when I called his name, it’s definitely him. He’s moving faster now, there’s an exit at each corner of the park, he’s heading toward the left-hand one, so I start running toward the one on the right. My hat flies off my head as I exit the park, but I don’t stop, I run faster as I double back along the road to the exit Carl is heading toward. I can see him through the railings, his head is down, he has no idea that any second now, he’ll be face-to-face with me. I burst through the exit, people scatter, he looks up at the sound of their surprise, and sees me heading straight for him. I see alarm flare in his eyes as he tries to step out of my way. But I follow his movements and block his path so that he’s obliged to stop.
“I need to talk to you,” I say breathlessly. “I know you’re Carl, and I think you know who I am.”
His face is impassive as he looks back at me. His eyes are dark, I notice, almost black. Then his brow clears.
“Mrs. Hawthorpe. I’m sorry—we never met face-to-face, so I had trouble placing you.” He looks back at the church. “I thought I’d come and pay my respects.”
“Why?”
“Sorry?”
“I’m asking why you wanted to pay your respects to Justine and Lina when you didn’t know them. You only worked for Ned for a few days. You never met either of them.”
“Their story has captured a lot of people’s hearts, Mrs. Hawthorpe.”
