The Couple Next Door (28 page)

‘That’s not true,’ Anne says, as if remembering. ‘I did see Cynthia.’

Marco is silent. Terrified.

‘She showed me the video.’ The look she gives him is terrible. All her pain and rage shows on her face. Her hatred.

Marco sags; he feels like his knees will give way. It’s all over now. Maybe Anne wants to kill him for stealing their baby. He can’t blame her. He wants to grab the knife and do it himself.

Suddenly he goes cold. He needs to see the knife. He needs to know if she’s used it. But it’s too dark. He can’t see her well enough to see if there’s blood on her or on the knife. He takes another step toward her and stops. Her eyes terrify him.

She says, ‘
You
kidnapped Cora. I saw it with my own eyes. You carried her out of the house wrapped in her blanket and took her to the garage. That man took her away. You planned the whole thing. You lied to me. And you kept on lying to me, all this time.’ Her voice is disbelieving. ‘And then, when he double-crossed you, you went to that cabin and beat him to death with a shovel.’ She’s more animated now.

Marco is horrified. ‘No, Anne – I didn’t!’

‘And then you sat at the kitchen table with me and said he looked
familiar.
’

Marco feels sick. He thinks of how it must seem to her. How twisted everything has become.

Anne leans forward; she is holding the large knife tightly with both hands. ‘I’ve been living with you in this house, this whole time since Cora was taken, and all along you’ve been lying to me. Lying about everything.’ She stares at him and whispers,
‘I don’t know who you are.’

Marco keeps his eyes on the knife and says, desperately, ‘I did take her. I did take her, Anne. But it’s not what you think! I don’t know what Cynthia told you – she doesn’t know
anything about it. She’s blackmailing me. She’s trying to use the video to get money out of me.’

Anne stares at him, her eyes huge in the dark.

‘I can explain, Anne! It’s not how it looks. Listen to me. I got into financial trouble. The business wasn’t going well. I had some reversals. And then I met this man, this . . . Derek Honig.’ Marco falters. ‘He told me his name was Bruce Neeland. He seemed like a nice guy – we became friends.
He
suggested the kidnapping. It was all his idea. I needed the money. He said it would be fast and easy, that no one would get hurt. He planned the whole thing.’ Marco pauses for breath. She is staring at him, her eyes grim. Even so, it is a relief to confess, to tell her the truth.

‘I took Cora out to him in the garage. He was supposed to call us within twelve hours, and we were supposed to get her back in two or three days at most. It was supposed to be so fast and easy,’ Marco says bitterly. ‘But then we didn’t hear from him. I didn’t know what was happening. I tried to call him with that cell phone you found – that’s what it was for – but he didn’t answer my calls. I didn’t know what to do. I had no other way to reach him. I thought that maybe he’d lost the cell phone. Or that he’d gotten cold feet, that maybe he’d killed her and left the country.’ His voice has become a sob. He pauses to regain control. ‘I was panicking. It’s been absolute hell for me, too, Anne – you’ve no idea.’

‘Don’t tell me I have no idea!’ Anne screams at him. ‘Because of you our baby is gone!’

He tries to calm her by lowering his voice. He has to tell her everything, he has to get it out. ‘And then when we got the onesie in the mail, I thought it was him, reaching out. That maybe something had happened to the cell and he was afraid to call me directly. I thought he was trying to get her back to
us. Even when he increased the ransom to five million, I didn’t think . . . I didn’t think he would double-cross me. I was only worried that your parents might not pay. I thought maybe he’d upped the stakes because he felt the risk had increased.’ Marco stops talking for a minute, overwhelmed by reliving it all. ‘But then when I got there, Cora wasn’t there.’ He breaks down, sobbing. ‘She was supposed to be there. I don’t know what happened! Anne, I swear to you, I never meant for anyone to get hurt. Especially not Cora – or you.’

He’s dropped down onto his knees on the floor in front of her. She could slit his throat now if she chose. He doesn’t care.

‘How could you?’ Anne whispers. ‘How could you be so stupid?’ Marco lifts his head miserably and looks at her. ‘Why didn’t you ask my father for money, if you needed it so badly?’

‘I did!’ Marco says wildly. ‘But he turned me down.’

‘I don’t believe you. He wouldn’t do that.’

‘Why would I lie?’

‘You do nothing
but
lie, Marco.’

‘Ask him, then!’

They glare at each other for a moment.

Then Marco says, more quietly, ‘You have every reason to hate me, Anne. I hate myself for what I did. But you don’t need to be afraid of me.’

‘Not even after you beat that man to death? With a spade?’

‘I didn’t!’

‘Why don’t you tell me everything, Marco?’

‘I
have
told you everything! I did
not
kill that man in the cabin.’

‘Then who did?’

‘If we knew that, we’d know who has Cora! Derek wouldn’t have hurt Cora, I’m sure of it. He would never have hurt her – I would never have let him have her if I thought he
would.’ But saying this, Marco is appalled at how easily he let someone else have his daughter. He’d been so desperate that he’d blinded himself to the risks.

But that was nothing to the desperation he feels now. Why would Derek harm Cora? He would have no reason to. Unless he panicked. Marco says, ‘He just wanted to make the exchange and get his money and disappear. Someone else must have found out he had her, then killed him and taken her. And then they cheated us.’ He pleads with her. ‘Anne, you have to believe me, I did not kill him. How could I? You know I’ve been here with you most of the time, or at the office. I
couldn’t
have killed him.’

Anne is silent, considering. Then she whispers, ‘I don’t know what to believe.’

‘That’s why I went to the police,’ Marco explains. ‘I told them I’d seen him hanging around the house so they’d investigate him. I wanted to point the police in the right direction, so they could find out who killed him, to find Cora without giving myself away. But as usual they’ve come up empty.’ He adds, his voice defeated, ‘Although it’s probably just a matter of time until they arrest me.’

‘They’ll arrest you really fast if they see that tape,’ Anne mutters bitterly.

Marco looks at her. He doesn’t know if she would prefer that the police arrest him or not. It’s hard to read her now. ‘I did take Cora and hand her over to Derek. We did try to get money from your parents. But I didn’t kill Derek. I couldn’t kill anybody, I swear to you.’ He puts a tender hand on her knee. ‘Anne, let me have the knife.’

She looks at the knife in her hands as if she doesn’t know it’s there.

No matter what he’s done, what havoc he’s wreaked, he
does not want to be responsible for any more harm. Her manner is disturbing. He moves then and gently takes the knife from her hands. She doesn’t resist. Relieved, he sees that the blade is clean. There is no blood on it. He studies her closely, looks at her wrists; there’s no blood anywhere. She has not hurt herself. It was meant for him, to protect herself from him. He sets the knife down on the side table, gets up off the floor, and sits beside her on the sofa, facing her. He asks, ‘Have you heard from your father today?’

‘No, but I went to my parents’,’ Anne says.

‘I thought you said you didn’t see them?’

‘I didn’t. I packed a bag. I was going to leave you,’ she says bitterly. ‘After I left Cynthia’s, after I saw the video, I hated you for what you did.’ Her voice is agitated again. ‘And I thought you were a murderer. I was afraid of you.’

‘I can understand why you’d hate me, Anne. I understand that you’ll never forgive me.’ He chokes on the words. ‘But you don’t need to be afraid of me. I’m not a murderer.’

She turns her face away, as if she can’t bear to look at him. She says, ‘I went to my parents’. But I didn’t go in.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I remembered where I’d seen that man before, the dead man.’

‘You’ve seen him before?’ Marco asks in surprise.

She turns her head and looks at him again. ‘I told you.’

She had, but he hadn’t really believed her. At the time he’d just thought it was the power of suggestion.

‘Where did you see him?’

‘It was a long time ago,’ she whispers. ‘He’s a friend of my father’s.’

MARCO FREEZES
. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes.’

She sounds strange, not like herself. Can he trust anything she says? Marco thinks rapidly. Richard and Derek Honig. The cell phone.

Was this whole thing a setup? Has Richard been controlling this nightmare from behind the scenes?
Has Richard had Cora all along?

‘I’m sure I’ve seen him with my father, when I was younger,’ Anne says. ‘He knows him. Why would my father know the man who took our baby, Marco? Don’t you think that’s strange?’ She sounds like she’s drifting away.

‘It’s strange all right,’ Marco says slowly. He remembers his suspicions when he’d used the secret cell phone and his father-in-law had answered.
Was this the missing link?
Honig had approached
him
, out of the blue. He had befriended Marco, listened to his troubles. He got Marco to trust him. He urged Marco to ask Richard for more money, and then Richard turned him down. What if they were in collusion and Richard had turned down his request for more money knowing that
Honig would be there, waiting to pick up the pieces? Honig had suggested the kidnapping that same day. What if this had all been carefully orchestrated by Marco’s father-in-law? Marco feels ill. If so, he has been even more duped than he thought, and by the man he most dislikes in the world.

‘Anne,’ Marco says, and then the words spill out in a rush, ‘Derek Honig found
me.
He befriended me. He urged me to ask your father for more money. Then, the day your father turned me down for another loan, he showed up again,
as if he knew.
It was like he knew I’d be desperate. That’s when he suggested the kidnapping.’ Marco feels as if he’s emerging from a bad dream, that things are finally starting to make sense. ‘What if your father is behind this, Anne?’ He says urgently, ‘I think he got Honig to approach me, to set me up for the kidnapping. I’ve been played, Anne!’

‘No!’ Anne says stubbornly. ‘I can’t believe it. My father would never do that. Why would he? What possible reason could he have?’

It wounds Marco that she seems to have no difficulty believing that
he
could murder a man with a spade in cold blood yet can’t believe that her father would set him up. But he must remember that she’s seen that damning video. That would shatter the faith of anyone. He must tell her the rest. ‘Anne, the cell phone, in the duct. The one Honig and I were using.’

‘What about it?’

‘After you found it. I noticed that there were some missed calls – someone had called from Honig’s cell phone. So I called the number again. And . . . your father answered.’

She looks at him in disbelief.

‘Anne, he was
expecting
it to be me on the other end of the phone. He
knew
I’d taken Cora. I asked him how he got the phone. He said the kidnappers had mailed it to him, with a
note, like the onesie. He said the kidnappers got in touch with him because it was in the newspapers that your parents were the ones who’d paid the ransom. He said they were asking for more money for Cora, that he was going to pay it, but he made me promise not to tell you. He said he didn’t want to get your hopes up, in case it all fell apart.’

‘What?’ Anne’s face, dazed with suffering, now comes to life. ‘He’s been in touch with the kidnappers?’

Marco nods. ‘He said he was going to deal with them and get her back himself, because I’d fucked it all up.’

‘When was this?’ Anne asks breathlessly.

‘Last night.’

‘And you didn’t tell me?’

‘He made me promise not to! In case things don’t work out. I’ve been trying to reach him all day, but he won’t call me back. I’ve been going out of my mind, not knowing what’s happening. I assume he hasn’t gotten her back, or we would have heard something.’ But now Marco sees it differently. He’s been played by a master. ‘But, Anne –
what if your father has known where Cora is all along?
’

Anne looks like she can’t take in any more. She looks numb. Finally, her voice breaking, she asks, ‘But why would he do that?’

Marco knows why. ‘Because your parents hate me!’ Marco says. ‘They want to destroy me, destroy our marriage, and get you and Cora back for themselves.’

Anne shakes her head. ‘I know they don’t like you – maybe they even hate you – but what you’re saying . . . I can’t believe it. What if he’s telling the truth? What if the kidnappers are in touch with my parents and he’s trying to get her back for us?’ The hope in her voice is heartrending.

Marco says, ‘But you just said that your father knows Derek Honig. That can’t be a coincidence.’

There’s a long pause. Then she whispers, ‘Did
he
kill Derek Honig with the shovel?’

‘Maybe,’ Marco says uncertainly. ‘I don’t know.’

‘What about Cora?’ Anne whispers. ‘What’s happened to her?’

Marco takes her by the shoulders and looks into her eyes, which are big and frightened. ‘I think your father must have her. Or he knows who does.’

‘What are we going to do?’ Anne whispers.

‘We have to think this through,’ Marco says. He gets up from the sofa, too anxious to sit still. ‘If your father does have her, or knows where she is, we have two options. We can go directly to the police or we can confront him.’

Anne stares into space, as if her mind has become overwhelmed.

‘Maybe we should talk to your father first, rather than going to the police,’ Marco says uneasily. Marco doesn’t want to go to jail.

‘If we go to my father,’ Anne says, ‘I can talk to him. He’ll give Cora back to me. He’ll be sorry, I know he will. He just wants me to be happy.’