Accidents Happen (43 page)

‘What do you mean, “this one”?’ she asked, terrified.

‘Well, it’s not easy. The important thing is that Richard doesn’t find out that it’s about him. Because that way I can keep going right to the end. So I mean this step. First the dog . . .’ he murmured. He put his hands up like two little paws desperately scrabbling in the air, and began to whine.

It took Kate a horrible moment to register. ‘
Hugo
’s dog?’ She remembered Hugo talking about the dog, how he’d never wanted one since, he’d been so upset as a teenager. ‘
You drowned his dog
?’

Jago put on his own helmet. ‘That’s what gave me the idea. Honestly, seeing Hugo’s face. Seeing the cracks in Richard’s face, not being able to fix it for him. It just helped, you know?’

Kate put her hands to her face. ‘Jago, I’m sorry; this is crazy. You’re telling me you drowned Hugo’s dog because of Richard. But that was twenty years ago!’

Jago held out a helmet for her. He was so calm.

‘I know it’s hard to understand, but what you’re seeing today, Kate, is my life. What I do for my parents. Putting cracks in Richard Parker’s world, and then watching it crumble, brick by brick. Just like he did to ours. Trust me, it’s nothing personal against you.’

Kate stared. Then, with an explosion of understanding, she reeled backwards.

‘
What else have you done
?’

Magnus waved goodbye to Jack and he set off home, relieved.

‘Snores!’ he heard Sass shout as he came up to the house.

‘Here,’ he said feeling guilty.

‘Are you OK? Why did you take so long? Granddad’s gone that way down the lane looking for you.’

‘I was helping that man.’

‘What man?’

They peered back out of the gate.

‘Oh,’ Jack said. That was weird. ‘He’s gone. His car must have started working again.’

Saskia followed his eyes. ‘Well, never mind. Listen, I think I’m going to take you back to your mum’s this afternoon. I need to speak to her not in front of Nana or Granddad.’

‘What about?’

‘Don’t you worry.’

He hoped when she found out what he’d done she wouldn’t be cross.

‘I said, what else have you done?’ Kate repeated, weakly.

‘Guys, over by the manifest, please,’ she heard Calum shout. He held out a small cloth bag. ‘I’ll need to take your mobiles, keys, anything loose that could fall out – in here, please.’

Jago put his hand on her back and firmly guided her forwards. Kate’s brain felt under fire. Bullets of information that made no sense flew at her from all directions. Shaken, she found herself clutching at her car keys, to stop them dropping from her damp palms.

As they approached Calum, and the open valuables bag that he offered, she looked over and saw their plane waiting on the field. Jago was taking her on a plane. Telling her things that made no sense. Taking her up in the sky. Why?

Jack!

THINK, Kate yelled to herself in a panic.

Pull yourself together.

Jack’s in trouble.

THINK.

She forced a long deep breath through her body in a desperate attempt to calm herself. And, then, from somewhere through the fug of shock, in the tiny space she created for herself, Jago’s voice miraculously drifted into her head. Not the Jago standing in front of her, the frightening stranger with the unfamiliar West Country accent who had stolen her son, but kind, sweet Jago from last week. From the night in Chumsley Norton, from the canal boat, from Highgate Woods. ‘Trust your instincts, Kate,’ said the kindly Scottish accent in her head. ‘Trust your
instincts
.’

She had to.

She had to stop trying to work out what he was saying to her, and work out how to survive this, for Jack’s sake.

Jago stepped in front of her. As he moved forwards, she took her keys into her shaking right hand.

Jago dropped his phone into the bag, then turned to her. Calum, too, watched Kate expectantly.

‘Anything, Kate?’ he asked.

‘Yeah,’ she said, quickly, sticking her closed right hand quickly into the bag and dropping her car keys in heavily.

Jago placed his hand on her back. This afternoon, the touch of it there had sent a shiver of anticipation through her. Now it felt like a steel rod.

His eyes fixed on hers, cold and hard.

STAY CALM, she thought. She searched for a phone, any phone. Grasping the smallest in the bag, as subtly as she could, she formed a cage around it with sweaty fingers.

‘Is it safe to jump? It seems more windy suddenly,’ she asked Calum, to distract Jago.

‘’Course it is, darling,’ Jago interrupted, the steel rod pushing further into her back. He winked at Calum.

Praying, hating him, Kate gently pulled out the phone.

KEEP YOUR NERVE.

Jago blinked.

‘You’ll be fine, Kate,’ Calum said, tying the top together. Jago’s face broke into what she could see was an attempt at a relaxed smile. ‘Now, could you follow the others over to the manifest board?’

She felt Jago’s fingers between her vertebrae, prodding her forwards, as they walked to the manifest area, where the other two passengers were writing on their names, checking they were doing it right. He took his arm from behind her back, put it around her shoulders and whispered intently into her ear. Kate glanced at the others. She knew what they saw: the kind boyfriend, soothing her nerves.

‘Anyway, now back to my story – do you remember you used to meet Hugo in a pub in Archway when you were at college? Your local?’

Kate felt her legs start to shake uncontrollably. She gripped the phone.

‘Well, I used to watch you there.’

What was he saying?

THINK, she screamed in her head.
Breathe
.

‘Well, one day, you left, and Hugo watched you,’ Jago sneered into her ear, ‘and I could tell he was dreaming. Thinking about you. The future. And then I thought, what could I do to take the smile off his big fat face?’

‘No,’ Kate said. ‘No,’ she shook her head. ‘No.’

He pulled her in more tightly. ‘What could I do that would make Richard’s son’s marriage shit from Day One. What could I do to put a great big fuck-off crack through it?’

A cramp in her stomach now. Nausea. She bent her middle finger hard, and pointed it hard inside her palm, pushing the bottom of the phone inside her sleeve to keep it safe.

‘. . . Something that no one would trace back to me.’

She shook her head. ‘You can’t have,’ she whispered. ‘Their car hit a stag . . .’

Jago rolled his eyes. ‘If you’re as pissed off as me, honestly, Kate, anything’s possible. Remember, I lost my parents, too. No, it wasn’t easy, but I shot it with one of my dad’s old poaching rifles, dragged it onto my truck tailgate with a rig, and waited till dark.’

The words came out of her mouth, broken into pieces. ‘You caused my parents’ car crash?’

One of the two other jumpers, a middle-aged woman, came over with the pen. Jago pulled back and smiled.

‘Nervous?’ she asked.

Kate nodded.

‘Me too,’ she said sympathetically. ‘We’ll be fine.’

‘Well said,’ Jago said, taking the pen from the woman with a wink.

As she walked off with the other jumper onto the field towards the plane, he took the pen and wrote both their names on the manifest board.

‘And then . . .’

Kate’s mouth flew open as a new horrific vision came into her head. ‘No,’ she repeated. She tried to turn, but he pulled her close again and shouted in her ear above the passing noise of a small aircraft that was taxiing to another part of the field. Tears came into her eyes again.

She fought them back.

STOP CRYING. THINK.

‘Every week. Sat on the bench outside your house in Highgate, bought with my family’s blood money. Saw him bring that car home. Saw him looking to see what the neighbours thought.’

‘But those men . . .’

He kept his nose pressed hard into her ear. ‘The Viking gathers information when I need it, and he gives it to people too. He opened his big mouth beside them in their pub one night about this fifty-thousand-pound sports car his neighbour had bought. All I had to do was slip in after they’d left with his keys. The door was open. Hugo was just about to phone the police.’

Kate held out her hands, aimlessly, as if she were trying to fight off something she couldn’t see.

‘And, you know what the best bit was?’ Jago said, putting down the pen, and guiding her onto the field behind the others. ‘I told him all of this. Told him it would be you next. But I’d give it another five years. Because first I wanted to enjoy watching Richard trying to keep the cracks together with his big, smiley, desperate face. Waiting until you’d had enough of the cold nights. Were ready to be warmed up again.’ He forced Kate to look at him. ‘Hugo particularly liked that detail. Actually, it was a long wait, so I practised on your sister-in-law, and caused Richard and Helen a little embarrassment in the process . . .
crack
. . .’

Kate took his hand, beseeching him with her eyes as she started to realize what was coming. ‘
Please, Jago
. Please. Not Jack.’

He shook his head as if soothing a child. ‘Kate, honestly, I’m not going to touch him. I’ve worked it out. I reckon his foundations will be so rotten after I’ve finished with you lot, I can sit back and watch him fuck up his own life.’

‘What do you mean, finished with . . .?’

‘Well, his grandparents, his father, and now . . .’ He pushed her along as Calum marched ahead to the plane fifty yards away, her feet almost off the ground.

She looked at it up ahead. ‘No,’ she said desperately. ‘There are people all around us. You can’t.’

‘I know, which is why, when you jump out, you’re going to . . .’ Jago whispered something in her ear. It was something that in this morning’s safety refresher Calum had reminded her never to do.

She pulled back, horrified. ‘But my chute will get entangled.’

Jago shrugged. ‘Kate, don’t worry. There’s a note on your computer called “Sorry”, explaining why you did it. That you were a shit mother and you knew it.’

She shook her head, trying to suck in air, but he kept pulling her towards the plane. Forty yards, thirty . . .

He was telling her to jump out. Sabotage her own chute.

THINK, her brain screamed. Stop listening to him. Think what you’re going to do.

Jack NEEDS YOU.

Jago’s arm pulled her faster towards the plane. Twenty yards, ten . . .

‘The thing is, if you don’t do it, Kate, if the Viking doesn’t hear you did it, in twenty minutes, Jack’s going to dive into the river to save Rosie. I’ll be out of here before you can check. And, thanks to the money the Viking took out of your internet account yesterday, I’ll be gone for a long time. But when they stop looking for me – and they will – I’ll come back for you, anyway. This way, you save your son at least. If you don’t, he goes in the river and I come back for you. It might be a year, or five. In a wardrobe, behind a door, in a window, who knows?’ He kissed her ear and said in a playful scary voice: ‘
The monster in the dark
.’

‘Get off me,’ she gasped, as they finally reached the back of the plane.

He embraced her, making her want to retch at the forced intimacy, hiding her from Calum who strode ahead to talk to the pilot. ‘It’s a shame you had to run off last Saturday and that we couldn’t finish what we started in the kitchen. But it doesn’t matter. Because one day, when Richard is an old man, lying in the ruins of his family, just like my mother was, I’ll tell him about today, and your sad, scared face. Watch his.’

‘All right, Kate?’ Calum said, coming over to check her equipment. She saw him note her expression. ‘You sure?’

Could she tell him, shout for help? Tell him she’d lost her nerve, didn’t want to jump?

But what if Jago was telling the truth? What if they hurt Jack?

She forced herself to shrug casually, her finger touching the phone in her hand.

THINK.

It had been Jago, the whole time, for the past eleven years.

He had killed Hugo and her parents, and had been frightening her ever since.

None of it had been imagined.

She had been right. Her instinct had been RIGHT.

And now he wanted to kill her.

THINK. Her instincts. She needed to use her instincts.

Kate forced herself to breathe deeply, to keep the oxygen coming. To remember the power she’d felt in Chumsley Norton, in Highgate Woods.

Her eyes danced about. She was nearly out of time.

She thought about everything that had happened. Meeting him in the cafe, the book, the waitress, the dog, the canal boat, the woods . . . And then, a thought came spinning furiously into her head.

An image of Jago’s book. Locked in her shed.

She looked him in the eye. Slowly. She saw him register her revelation. Saw the ice melt, momentarily. ‘I’ve got your book!’ she said, as Calum looked over her straps. She saw Jago glance at him, checking if he’d heard.

‘No, you don’t,’ Jago said casually.

‘Yes, I do. You left it in the juice bar. The waitress gave it to me.’

Jago dropped her gaze. He turned round as Calum now checked his straps.

‘No. I went back. Twice. She said I didn’t leave it there.’

Kate remembered the waitress’s earnest expression. ‘Interesting guy.’ Had she known something was wrong about Jago? ‘Well, she lied,’ Kate said.

Jago shook his head again. He waited till Calum walked away to check the others. ‘No, Kate. The Viking checked your house, top to bottom.’

He had faltered. A moment of weakness. She felt new power surge into her.

‘It was locked in the shed.’

Jago turned his face further from her. Trying to hide his disquiet, Kate realized.

‘Yeah, nice try, Kate.’

‘Jack has it,’ she said triumphantly as Calum called out to them that they would board in three minutes. ‘And this morning, he gave it to Saskia and she recognized you. Tony from Essex, she said. She’s showing it to the police right now. She thought you were after my money.’ The words tumbled out. Desperately, she hoped her face wouldn’t give away her bluff. She saw the middle-aged female passenger, her shoulders shaking hysterically, laughing nervously with her friend.