Kill Me Again (28 page)

‘What are you doing, Suzy?’ Maggie asked, not entirely trusting her sister and recognising the code to withhold her number.

‘Shh,’ she replied as she typed in the number of the hotel. ‘Hello. It’s Detective Inspector Robinson speaking from Greater Manchester Police. Can I speak to somebody in authority there, please?’

Maggie looked at her sister in horror. It was a serious offence to impersonate a police officer. What was she
doing
?

‘
Oh, I see. You’re the night manager. I’m hoping you’ll be able to help. I presume you ask your guests to provide the registration numbers of their vehicles? Well we’re looking for a white van in connection with a serious offence. Can you please check your records for this number?’

Suzy read out the number as Maggie frantically waved at her to stop. She was tempted to drag the phone out of her sister’s hands, but that would probably raise more suspicions than if she kept quiet.

‘I see. Well, thank you for your help. I won’t leave my number. If he’s not with you already, he won’t be coming. Goodnight.’ Suzy disconnected. ‘What?’ she said, looking Maggie squarely in the eye.

‘I can’t do this, Suzy. I could lose my job.’

‘Listen. The guys on duty at night at these places aren’t going to question getting a call about a vehicle. I’m not trying to extort money or anything. Worst case, I’m trying to help you find your husband. And in the highly unlikely event that we get caught, I’ll say you knew nothing about it. I was working on my own initiative. Stop fretting and give me the next number.’

Maggie blew out a long breath. She had to admit this was better than trailing round car parks all night.

Suzy tried the next hotel. There was no joy.

She was on hotel number five when Maggie noticed her sister sit up straighter in her chair.

‘Right. Can I have your name, please? Okay, Mr Trainer. I don’t want you to alert your guest to the fact that we are on our way to visit him. Can you tell me under what name he has registered?’ She paused. ‘And his room number?’

Suzy was scribbling madly on a piece of paper. ‘Thank you so much, Mr Trainer, and please do not mention this to your colleagues. We need to be sure that we stay under the radar on this one. Somebody will be with you within the hour.’

She ended the call and looked at Maggie.

‘Room 307. He’s checked in under the name of Eric Smith. Not a very imaginative surname, but there you go.’

Maggie felt slightly sick. She knew where he was. She was going to find out why he had left her. Much as she desperately wanted to know, she dreaded finding out. What if he had left because he had somebody else? What if there was another woman in that hotel room with him?

‘What do I do now?’ She spoke so quietly that Suzy had to lean forward.

‘You can’t go in impersonating a police officer – I know that. Here’s what I suggest.’

Maggie sat there, listening to Suzy’s suggestion. It made sense, but she couldn’t stop shaking. She didn’t know if she could pull it off, but she had to try.

The car park of the hotel was packed, and Maggie had to drive around twice to find a spot, narrowly missing the car next to hers as she reversed into the space.

‘Shit,’ she muttered. ‘Calm
down
.’ But she couldn’t. Her hands were sticky and her limbs tense. She tried taking deep breaths, but felt as if she was struggling to breathe at all. She
had
to get back in control. This was Duncan. There was going to be a logical reason for everything.

Forcing herself to move, she opened the car door and hurried through the cold drizzle into the warmth of the reception area. She was going to play this the way Suzy had suggested.

‘Can I speak to Mr Trainer, please?’

The man behind the desk seemed to be on his own. ‘That’s me,’ he said. ‘How can I help?’

‘I understand you had a call from DI Robinson earlier about a man calling himself Eric Smith. She explained the situation, I presume?’

The man nodded, his eyes wide. It was clear this wasn’t an everyday occurrence for Mr Trainer, and she imagined him enjoying telling the tale over a pint, revelling in his part in it.

‘She told me he’s in Room 307. I’m his solicitor.’ Maggie passed him one of her cards. ‘He doesn’t know the police are on their way, but I want to speak to him first.’

‘Should I call and tell him you’re here?’ said the night manager.

‘Please don’t. If he knows the police are coming, he might try to get away through one of your emergency exits. That would set off an alarm and create pandemonium I would imagine.’ Mr Trainer looked horrified at the thought. ‘I need to go and see him, prepare him for the police visit. Where will I find his room?’

Mr Trainer seemed a bit worried. This probably hadn’t been part of his training. He looked again at her card, and Maggie held her breath.

‘You’ll need a key card to get access to the corridor,’ he said, holding out a piece of white plastic. ‘Our security’s pretty good.’

He looked quite smug when he mentioned the security, but Maggie smiled and refrained from commenting.

‘If DI Robinson turns up, perhaps you could ask her to wait. I’ll bring my client down when I’ve had a chance to speak to him.’

Maggie took the key card from Mr Trainer, hoping he didn’t notice how much her hand was shaking.

She wanted to sit down. She wanted, somehow, to delay the moment. Her stomach lurched with nerves. What if there was another woman in the room with him? What would she do?

She had to retain a professional air, so she marched purposefully towards the door leading to the rooms, grasping her briefcase tightly in one hand and the key card in the other.

The corridor was long and badly lit, with a patterned carpet designed no doubt to hide as many stains as possible. The walls were scuffed and there was a smell of air freshener. This was the type of place that Maggie knew Duncan would normally hate. She followed the corridor to a junction and for a moment couldn’t work out which way she had to go to get to Room 307. The numbers seemed jumbled, and she hesitated.

‘Left,’ she mumbled, turning down another endless, narrow corridor. Room 307 was towards the end.

She stood facing the door. The moment had come, and she couldn’t put it off any longer.

She knocked. She could hear a television playing quietly inside but no movement.

Maggie knocked again, harder and with more authority. She heard a rustle as if somebody was getting up off the bed, and then the soft thud of shoeless feet padding towards the door. She held her breath. There was a pause, and she realised he must be looking at her through the peephole, her face distorted by the fisheye lens.

The door opened abruptly. Standing in front of her was a man with a half-grown beard, looking slightly grubby and unkempt. She glanced over his shoulder to the room beyond. There was nobody else there.

‘Hello, Duncan,’ she said, looking straight into his bloodshot eyes.

44

The clammy surface of Leo’s skin belied the deep, penetrating cold she felt. She wasn’t going to die of exposure – cold as she was, she knew it wasn’t as bad as that. But she might very well die of the infection that was raging through her system. Sometimes she felt she was slipping into delirium, seeing images that weren’t there. She thought she saw figures, mainly women dressed in long skirts and high-necked blouses. There was line after line of white reels, and metal wheels overhead being turned by giant rubber bands. She could hear the hum of machinery interspersed with a clack, clackety clack noise. Then she would sleep for a few moments and wake to the reality of her prison – a bare old mill – and the knowledge that those figures weren’t real. Her imagination had painted pictures of the past in her mind to comfort and distract her from her pain.

Leo dropped her head onto her chest and wondered what they were going to do with her. They hadn’t been for a while. It felt like weeks, but Leo was trying to keep a grasp on reality and knew this was only the second night that nobody had come. And in such a short time what had been nothing more than a painful wound had become a swollen, agonising lump of purple flesh.

Max and Ellie had to be looking for her, surely? Her sister wouldn’t believe for a moment that Leo had simply forgotten the baby’s christening, or that she would have gone away and totally ignored an event that Ellie had been planning with such excitement for weeks. And she knew what Max would have done: he would have called Tom.

Tom.

She had been so stupid. She hadn’t been able to trust him when they were together and in the end had pushed him away. It had taken her a long time to forgive herself for that, but she genuinely believed she had learned her lesson. Tom had told her repeatedly that he would never hurt her, but he had. Or rather, she had hurt herself. She could have fixed it, but her stupid pride wouldn’t let her.

Tom had explained to her that
everybody
was vulnerable when they loved another person. That person might die, but does that mean you have to avoid loving anybody because at some point you might suffer the pain of loss? The thought of being vulnerable was more than she had been able to bear, but then she had met Julian. Another genuinely good man. And she had driven him away too. It was like a disease.

She had decided before all of this – this nightmare that seemed to have no end – that she was going to fix it with Julian. She wouldn’t have embarrassed him by turning up unexpectedly at the races, but she was going to make it right and she was going to change who she was. For years she had hidden behind a persona – the uber-cool Leo Harris who only wore silk and cashmere and only ever black and white.

The morning after her row with Julian, moved by a level of self-disgust she had never experienced before, she had raced into her bedroom and ripped all her monochrome outfits from their hangers. They were all going to the charity shop and she was going to wear bright red, royal blue, emerald green – she was going to be
different
.

And then this.

She wiped her sticky forehead with the back of her free hand and looked at the dark spongy surface of the skin of her other wrist. Would she lose her arm? She didn’t know any more than she knew if she would lose her life.

One thing that Leo recognised when she saw it, though, was a psychopath. Her years of studying psychology had seen to that. The man who had sewn her arm to its binding showed no remorse for his actions and was totally indifferent to her pain. He blamed her. If she hadn’t tried to free herself, he wouldn’t have had to do this.

The other man tended to speak calmly and sensibly in a voice that spoke of a public school upbringing. That had confirmed one thing in Leo’s mind: she wasn’t dealing with ordinary Manchester thugs. But what did they want? Why keep her here like this? She was sure that if they had planned to kill her, they would have done it by now.

Her brain started to feel fuddled again, and she allowed herself to begin the slide back into delirium, her escape from the pain and discomfort.

She was disturbed by a sound. Somebody was coming. Leo closed her eyes. If they weren’t wearing masks, she didn’t want to see them. Whatever their intentions up to now, if they knew she had seen their faces, they would have to kill her.

Leo heard footsteps coming towards her and felt a kick on her thigh, not hard enough to hurt her but to see if she was awake. She lifted her head slowly, keeping her eyes closed. She
opened them to slits. His mask was in place. She opened them a fraction more but knew that they would be glassy with dull whites and dilated pupils.

‘Shit,’ the man muttered. He walked away from her and she heard the beep of mobile phone keys being pressed.

‘You need to get over here,’ he said without introduction. ‘The girl’s sick. Bring some stuff.’ There was a pause. ‘
I
don’t fucking know. You’re the doctor.’

That might have been interesting information had Leo not already guessed by the sutures in her arm.

She allowed herself to nod off, wanting to save her energy for when the posh boy’s accomplice arrived.

She didn’t know how long she had been dozing when she heard voices – the two men talking. The first one had been pacing up and down, a sound that had penetrated her light sleep, but she knew she should pretend to still be asleep.

The newcomer crouched down in front of her. She didn’t open her eyes, but she could feel his presence, smell a subtle but expensive aftershave and feel his warm breath on her cheek.

‘Stop panicking,’ he said to the first guy. ‘I’ll give her some antibiotics and she’ll be as right as rain. Not that it makes any difference.’

Leo tried not to react. That didn’t make sense. That sounded as if she was going to die, so why treat her?

‘How long do we have to keep this up for?’

‘Until he’s compliant. He has to take his punishment. If he doesn’t do as we ask, he knows what’s going to happen. It’s simple. He’s let me down once. Now it’s time for retribution. We give him twenty-four hours or we kill his wife.’

45

It was hard to read Duncan’s face. Not because it was grey from lack of decent food and sleep and covered in a thin light-brown beard, but because so many expressions flitted across it in quick succession. The first was horror, the second looked vaguely like relief.