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Erin says, ‘Three people are dead because of me.’
When he realizes where her mind has gone, he shakes his head. ‘Not because of you. It’s more complicated than that.’
He stands on shaking legs, asks himself if he believes his own words. He’s believed a lot of things these last four days. Most of them have turned out to be false.
He limps over to Enoch and slides the phone from the man’s back pocket. ‘I need to see what’s on here. But before I do, I need to tell you something else. And it’s going to be difficult.’ Joseph pauses. Then he says, ‘I think Max has Tilly.’
FORTY-SEVEN
Erin groans as if she’s taken a kick to the stomach. She staggers up, her chair scooting away, and braces herself against the kitchen worktop.
Watching her, Joseph recalls once again the deer he hit last summer: not the fawn, observing from the undergrowth, but the mother; the panic in her eyes as he’d approached with the torque wrench; the knowledge of her impending fate.
‘Tilly didn’t answer when you called,’ he says. ‘Nor when I tried her earlier. If you go upstairs and pull back the hallway runner, you might see what’s left of the blood I just mopped up. If you check the wall outside her bedroom, you’ll see a fresh dink in the plaster. That blood wasn’t there when we left the house. Something happened, here, while we were out.’
Erin stares at him a moment longer. Then her face collapses. She pulls herself along the worktop, as if she’s in the deep end of a swimming pool and has forgotten how to swim. When she reaches the corner unit, she lunges into the hall. He hears her thump up the stairs.
Forcing back the darkness still pressing at his vision, wondering how much of his humanity is left to shred, Josephturns his attention to the phone. When he presses the side buttons, it wakes. Staring at him from the screen is Drew.
The photo is a recent one, shot in his back garden. It might be the last ever image of the girl alive. He holds her gaze for as long as he can bear. Then he swipes with his thumb and brings up the PIN screen.
Floorboards creak above him. A sound of anguish follows, like nothing he’s ever heard.
Joseph keys 1-6-3-0 into the phone, sees the screen change.
He checks the call history first. The most recent inbound one was received half an hour ago, from a mobile number with no contact name. Scrolling back through the log, Joseph sees that all the other calls are to or from a contact labelledSCORPION. Checking the contacts folder, he sees thatSCORPIONis the sole listing.
Joseph opens WhatsApp next and finds a single chat log, again with theSCORPIONcontact. He scrolls back to the first message, so fast that the images and text blur. Then he begins to read. The conversation, initiated a few weeks ago, is chatty at first. Progressively it turns more flirty.
To some of Drew’s later messages, she’d attached selfies. None are intimate but all are revealing. Joseph finds only one photo sent in response, a shot taken on a boat somewhere exotic. Centre frame on deck, beside what might be a 500lb blue marlin, crouches Angus Roth.
The colours in the room smear again. Joseph screws up his eyes, tries to draw meaning from what he’s seeing. Scrolling to the end of the log, he reads the last few exchanges. They detail the pair’s plans to meet.
Joseph thinks of that photo in the living room, of Erin and Tilly and Drew at the Huntingdon Manor fundraiser. Angus Roth had been there that night, too.
Returning to the home screen, he taps a thumbnail calledGalleryand finds a video file created last Thursday night.
Footsteps crash down the stairs. Erin appears in the doorway, her face so ravaged it looks like she’s suffering from anaphylactic shock.
‘Police,’ she gasps. ‘We’re calling them right now. If you try to stop me, Joe, I’ll run.’
‘Listen to me before you do. Because how we choose to deal with this probably dictates how it ends. I know you’re scared for Tilly. And I know what’s happening here is as bad as it gets. The choices I’ve made – I’m not going to defend them. But I think we have a better chance of resolving this if we work together, instead of handing control to the police.’
‘That’s insane. We can’t—’
‘Think about it: did the police manage to stop Tilly’s dad from abusing her – or abusing you? Have they worked out what happened to Drew? Five years ago, some guy broke into our house and killed Claire. The police never even found him. Do you really want to put Tilly’s life in their hands?’
Erin sways on her feet, her eyes glassy. ‘I just want her back.’
‘I want them both back. I think I know where Max is taking her. And I think we still might have options. But only if we deal with this ourselves.’ He lifts the phone, displays the screen. ‘While you were upstairs, I learned something else. Seems like you weren’t the only one seeing Angus Roth. Because Drew was seeing him too.’
Erin lurches as if kicked.
‘There’s video,’ Joseph says. ‘I think we should watch it.’
FORTY-EIGHT
Sitting in the passenger seat as they bump along the track through Jack-O’-Lantern Woods, peering through the windscreen at the night, she still can’t quite believe this is happening. Can’t quite believe what she’s about to do.