Run Away (16 page)

Chapter 25

July 22, England

“S
O NOBODY SAW
Sam break his hand?”

“Nope.” Kayla once again met Sadie in a bar, off hours, for a conspiracy and gin session. While she was backing away from Aran Peters—­for her nan’s sake, if nothing else—­that didn’t mean she was about to surrender all suspicion without any answers.

Bling had eventually texted Kayla back to inform her that she hadn’t seen the injury happen, and Kayla jumped at the chance to meet with the detective. She missed having ­people around her, and Sadie was young enough and nice enough to almost pass as a real friend.

“Which means that the theory about a drug dealer’s bailiff chasing Sam for money, and providing physical incentives to pay up, makes sense.” DI Winters was making light work of the wasabi peas on the bar, crunching loudly through the fiery balls. Kayla swore that her mouth was even bigger than last time, her teeth even more crooked. That didn’t make her imperfect smile any less attractive, though. “Did Sam receive any threatening phone calls? Or appear to be on edge?”

“It’s hard to say, really. Obviously I never heard what the person on the other end of the phone was saying, but there were a few times that pleasantries weren’t exactly exchanged, and Sam seemed unsettled. As for being on edge the rest of the time, he definitely was. But it’s hard to know why.” Kayla polished off half her gin and tonic in one fell swoop. “It’s a little complicated, if I’m honest. This guy Oliver, who we all hated, had followed us to Phuket and wouldn’t leave us alone. So Sam was a little aggravated by that. And since he’d apparently asked to borrow money from his mum, who then declined, he’d have been stressed about that, I guess. I’ve tried to call Kathy to ask her more about it, but she hasn’t got back to me.

“I don’t know,” she went on. “My memory is so fuzzy, like it didn’t actually happen to me. Feels like a lifetime ago, like I can’t distinguish between what I think happened and what actually happened. Looking back, I wish I’d paid more attention.”

“Everyone wishes that,” the detective replied. “If only you’d read the signs, if only you’d done something differently. It’s natural for ­people to obsess over how they’d live the past differently if they could.” She took a gigantic swig of gin to wash down the five kilograms of wasabi peas she’d just inhaled. “This guy Oliver. You’ve never mentioned him before. Tell me about him.”

“Ugh. Do I have to?” Kayla dreaded the thought. Sadie said nothing, just looked at her expectantly. The stakes were too high not to share the story. She inhaled deeply, steadying herself. “When we were in Sangk—­Sangkhlaburi—­sorry, I still have no idea how to pronounce it, I’m such a tourist.” She laughed, but her false giggle did little to soften Sadie’s intense stare. Kayla went on then and told the detective about what happened between her and Oliver. No matter how many times she said it aloud—­albeit it only a few—­it never got any easier.

Sadie choked on her mustardy snack and hastily took a sip of her drink. “He tried to rape you?” Kayla wished she’d keep her voice down. ­People were starting to stare, and it wasn’t something she’d wanted to announce to the whole bar. The stereo system was between songs, and Sadie’s voice rang through the silence, lingering on the word rape. “Did you report it?” Kayla shook her head. She felt like a naughty schoolkid. The music started up again. “Why the bloody hell not?”

“I don’t know . . . No, I do. It would have been difficult to prove, for one thing. And after everything that had happened with Gabe, all I wanted was to move on and not cause any more stress or heartache for my family. Can you imagine how my parents would feel losing a son to suicide, then a few months later it comes out that their daughter had been assaulted? It would’ve broken my mum. My dad would pummel Oliver to a pulp, then probably go to jail for murder. Even if he didn’t, we’d all be stuck in Thailand until the trial was over, and God knows how long that’d take. At the time, I thought we were only lumbered with Oliver for another week and then he’d be back in Bangkok with the next Escaping Grey group.”
Preying on his next victim
.

Kayla realized she was rambling, and was aware that she sounded incredibly selfish. She hadn’t meant to imply that as long as Oliver was no longer her problem, he could do what he liked to who he liked. But that’s the way it sounded. Sadie looked shocked.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Kayla said, her cheeks flushed with embarrassment.

“No, I know you didn’t,” said Sadie, a little too quickly. She gestured for the barman to bring her another gin. “I really think you should report it, Kayla. I know it’s been a while but . . . I shudder to think of him doing the same to countless other girls and getting away with it. Did you say he followed you to Phuket?”

“Yeah. He lurked near us all the time. In bars, down the street, at the market. He was a bit . . . obsessed by me.”

“And how did that make you feel?” Sadie asked, before erupting in laugher. “Jesus Christ, I sound like a therapist.” Kayla thought it’d be too awkward to tell her that she really did have a therapist. And actually quite liked her.

“It’s hard to explain. Trapped, I guess? Suffocated?” She couldn’t bring herself to drop in the small detail of her entirely consensual kiss with Oliver a week after the initial rape attempt. She cared far too much about what DI Winters thought about her. “Observed. I felt constantly observed.”

Sadie nodded. “Have you heard from him since Sam went missing?”

Kayla opted for honesty. “Yeah. He texted me about a week after it happened.”

“What saying?”

“Basically, that he was really sorry to hear about Sam and that he was a nice guy, blah blah blah. And that if I needed anything, I knew where he was.”

Sadie’s eyebrow jolted upward in an arch, as if caught in a fish hook. “That’s a little strange, isn’t it? Why on earth would he assume that you’d want to go to him for comfort after what he did to you?”

“I suppose it is odd.”

“Well, forgetting the fact that I think you’re utterly bonkers for not reporting the assault—­which I do, but it’s your decision—­let’s look at it in another light. Do you think Oliver was so obsessed that he might have let jealousy over your and Sam’s relationship . . . influence his actions?”

The idea had crossed Kayla’s mind once before, if only briefly. It didn’t seem compelling enough a hypothesis to run with. Obsession in itself was a powerful force, sure, and it had been enough for Oliver to follow her to Phuket. But enough to commit murder? She didn’t think so. Plenty of ­people experienced obsession in various forms: a band, a teenage crush, a sports team. It was largely harmless.

The only aspect that caused any doubt, in this case, was the carnal nature of most of Oliver’s actions. At times he seemed almost doglike, unaffected by morality, a slave to his urges. “I genuinely don’t know if he was jealous. Sometimes I think absolutely not. But that’s maybe because I myself can’t imagine a crush driving me to homicide. It’s hard, isn’t it—­as a normal person—­trying to wrap your head around the thought processes that would drive someone to be so . . . evil? Murder. It’s just such an absurd solution. One that no ordinary person would resort to.”

“I know,” Sadie said. “It’s something I used to struggle with a lot. Couldn’t understand the reasoning behind it. I’ve always been a logical person, so to work with ­people every day that were so far from logical, so far from normal . . . it was difficult. So I went back to uni, a few years ago, and started studying for a master’s degree in criminal psychology. It was fascinating, really amazing.” Sadie’s pupils were dilated, her skin flushed, her hands gesturing animatedly. Her passion was written all across her face. “It meant I would be able to apply so much of what I learned to my work, help me get into the brains of rapists and murderers. It was an uncomfortable place to be, but that’s when I started to really engage with the messed up ­people I deal with on a daily basis. It sounds so weird, I know, but I genuinely love my job.”

“So what happened?”

Sadie looked confused. “What happened with what?”

“You said a lot of that in past tense. It was fascinating. It
was
an uncomfortable place to be. You
started
studying for your masters. What happened? Didn’t you finish it?”

“No,” Sadie admitted. “And I wish I had. Sometimes I dream about going back, but . . . it’s complicated.”

“Why? Did you drop out, I mean? I’m sorry if that’s too personal . . .”

Sadie sighed, looking around to see where the barman was in the gin-­and-­tonic-­making process. Not very far along, it seemed. His attention was entirely focused on the bosomy brunette at the other end of the bar. “A few reasons, I guess. Some were circumstantial. Because my work had improved so much, I was offered a promotion. I took it, of course. Who wouldn’t? But the increased workload meant I missed a lot of my classes. I was studying part-­time—­six to eight, two nights a week—­and found myself staying in the office until long after seven. Juggling both got a lot harder. I finished my first year, then got so caught up in work that I just never went back for my second. So I deferred it a few times. I’m supposed to go back this September, but . . . I don’t know. I could pick up exactly where I left off, but it feels like there’s something stopping me. I can’t work out what, though. I just get to the start of the semester, and when I’m prompted to re-­enroll, I just . . . don’t.”

“Do you think the disturbing things you’ve learned made you subconsciously not want to go back?” Kayla speculated.

“No, I don’t think that’s it. I wouldn’t throw myself into a job dealing with psychopaths on a daily basis if I’d become squeamish toward crime. The only thing I can think of is that my young cousin—­he was only twenty—­died as I was doing my exams, and it hit me pretty hard.” Sadie chuckled, a little sadly. “Again, you’d have to ask a therapist.”

“Your cousin died? I’m so sorry.”

Sadie shook her head dismissively, the words
you didn’t know
left unspoken. Selfishly, Kayla didn’t want to let it go, though. She remembered the initial reason Sadie had felt so connected to Sam’s case was because she said that she too knew what it was like to lose a young loved one.

“How did he, or she . . . ?”

“Drug overdose. Stupid. He was a pretty shitty person, actually, but he was family, you know? The funeral was the worst.”

Memories of Gabe’s funeral hit Kayla with a pang of sadness. She knew how gut-­wrenching they were. She thought, for a split second, about how death was hard on everyone, no matter what walk of life they were from or what the circumstances were. “I know it’s messed up to wish this . . . but part of me feels like it would be so much easier to have closure on what happened to Sam if there had been a funeral. Maybe that’s why I’m so hell-­bent on discovering what really happened the day he vanished.”

“And maybe that’s why I’m so hell-­bent on helping you.” Sadie smiled, a glint of determination in her eyes.

There was a lull in conversation—­something that didn’t often happen when drinking with Sadie Winters. Kayla took a deep breath, trying pluck up the courage to ask her something that had been troubling her for a while. “Why do you think there hasn’t been much on the news about Sam? Usually when this kind of thing happens, especially to a guy from such a tight-­knit community, it’s on the news for months on ends. But not with Sam.”

Sadie swallowed, not quite meeting Kayla’s eye. “Shepherd seems keen to bury Sam’s case as soon as possible.” As soon as the words left Sadie’s lips, they rang true with Kayla. The half-­assed questioning. His complete disinterest.

Kayla was taken aback by her honesty. “Really?” She stirred her drink with a swizzle stick, pushing the ice and lemon around in the small glass tumbler and trying to seem nonchalant. “He seemed distant and apathetic, but I didn’t get the impression he actively wanted to bury it, yet it seems that’s what he’s doing. Why is that? Sorry if that’s inappropriate to ask you, it just seems weird.”

“No, it’s fine. I probably shouldn’t be saying this, but I think there were a few cock-­ups in the process of handing the case over from the Thais to us. Nothing drastic, just sloppy reports and huge time delays. Shepherd is relatively new to the DCI role—­he only started a few months ago, and everyone thought he was the wrong man for the promotion—­so he probably doesn’t want to attract attention to it. It’d reflect badly on him.”

“And the rest of us are just supposed to forget about it too?”

“Yes. But
I
haven’t, Kayla. I hope you know that.”

S
A
D
I
E
A
S
K
E
D
K
A
Y
L
A
for her version of the events that occurred five weeks ago, on the seventeenth of June. The proper version, not the curtailed, disjointed notes she’d given Shepherd.

“You want an objective account of what happened?”

Sadie clicked the top of her pen, poising it above her lined notebook, ready to record her every word. Kayla liked that she used pen and paper, not a dictaphone. It felt like she was properly engaging with her.

“Yes, please. If it’s not too difficult for you, a timeline would be great. As accurate as possible too. Down to the minute.” Sadie pushed her reading glasses farther up her nose.

“Why are you only asking me this now?” Kayla blurted out. “Why not ask me the first time we met?”

Sadie looked taken aback by her assertiveness. “I guess I was treading lightly because I didn’t want to undermine Shepherd. In theory, he’s already asked you everything we needed to know. In theory . . . all avenues have been explored.” She tilted her head to the side. Kayla knew what she was thinking.
But they haven’t
.

Kayla recounted the events of the morning and early afternoon with relative ease. Practically, not emotionally. But when it came to the nitty-­gritty details of the disappearance, she was surprised to find that her memory had failed her. Everything was foggy. Sadie tried to help her out. “So you estimate that you knocked on Sam’s door around quarter to seven, is that right?” Kayla nodded. “And what were you met with?”