Carly looked at her watch. It was 8.55 p.m., which meant it was 1.55 a.m. in the UK. Her stomach tightened. Her nerves were in tatters.
Her fear deepened as the car made a right turn in front of a Mobil Oil garage and headed down a leafy lane with a double yellow line in the middle. All her clear thinking suddenly turned into a fog of panic. She was breathing deeper, perspiring, close to hyperventilating. She turned and through the rear window she saw the headlights of Detective Investigator Lanigan’s car following, and now, instead of feeling irritated, she was comforted by his presence.
She felt a lump in her throat and a tightening knot in her stomach. Her hands were shaking. She took a few deep breaths to calm down. She tried to organize her thoughts, to rehearse that crucial way she would introduce herself. The driver’s phone rang again, but as if sensing her mood he killed the call without answering it.
The double yellow line ended and the lane narrowed to single track. In the glare of the headlights Carly saw trim hedges on both sides of them.
The car slowed, then halted. Directly in front of them were tall, closed gates, painted grey, with spikes along the top. There was a speaker panel and a warning sign beside that which said ARMED RESPONSE.
‘Want me to ring?’ the driver asked.
She turned and peered through the rear window and saw that the detective was getting out of his car. Carly climbed out too.
‘Good luck, lady,’ Lanigan said. ‘Let’s see if they let you in. If they do, I’ll be waiting here. I’ll be waiting for that first text in fifteen minutes’ time. You don’t forget that, right?’
She tried to reply, but nothing came out. Her mouth was parched and it felt like there was an iron band around her throat. She nodded.
He entered his number on Carly’s phone and tapped in ‘OK’. ‘That’s what you’re gonna text me, every fifteen minutes.’
The air was still and mild. Carly had dressed casually but conservatively, wearing a lightweight beige mackintosh over a dark grey jacket, plain white blouse, black jeans and black leather boots. Every shred of her confidence seemed to have deserted her and, despite the adrenalin pumping, she felt even more spaced out now. She tried to block from her mind the fact it was past 2 a.m., body time.
She pressed the square metal button. Instantly a light shone in her face. Above it she could see a CCTV camera pointing down at her.
A voice speaking in broken English crackled. ‘Yes, who is this?’
Carly stared straight back at the camera and forced a smile. ‘I’ve come from England to see Mr and Mrs Revere. My name is Carly Chase.’
‘They expect you?’
‘No. I think they know who I am. I was in the accident involving their son, Tony.’
‘You wait, please.’
The light went off. Carly waited, clutching her iPhone, her finger on the
A minute later, the gates began to swing open, in almost total oiled silence. There was just a faint electric whirr. Feeling sick with fear, she climbed back into the car.
79
Carly stepped out into the silence of the night. Above her loomed the facade of a huge modern mansion. It looked dark and unwelcoming, with barely any lights showing. She turned back to look at the limousine, having second thoughts. It was parked a few yards away on the woodchip-covered drive, close to a Porsche Cayenne sports utility vehicle. Floodlights printed stark shadows of shrubs and trees across an immaculate lawn. Her nerves shorting out, she sensed faces peering from the darkened windows down at her. She swallowed, then swallowed again, and stared at the front door, which was set beneath an imposing portico with square, modern pilasters.
The silence was pressing in all around her. She heard the faint, distant, restless sound of the sea. She breathed in tangy, salty air and the scent of freshly mown grass. The normality of that scared her. These people, their life going on as normal. Their son was dead, but they still mowed the lawn. Something about that spooked her. She had not mown the lawn after Kes died. She’d let the garden go wild and the house turn into a tip around her. It was only for Tyler’s sake she eventually pulled herself together.
Before she had a chance to change her mind, the front door opened and a woman emerged, unsteadily, dressed in a turquoise tracksuit and sparkly trainers. She had short, blonde hair, an attractive but hard face, and held a martini glass tilted at an angle in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Her whole demeanour was hostile.
Carly took a few, faltering steps towards her. ‘Mrs Revere?’ She tried to put on the smile she had been practising, but it didn’t feel like it was working. ‘Fernanda Revere?’
The woman stared at her with eyes as cold and hard as ice. Carly felt as if she was staring right through her soul.
‘You got fucking balls coming here.’ The words were slightly slurred and bitter. ‘You’re not welcome in my home. Get back in your car.’
The woman scared her, but Carly stood her ground. She had been preparing herself for a whole range of different responses and this was one of them, although she had not factored in that Fernanda Revere might be smashed.
‘I’ve flown from England to talk to you,’ she said. ‘I just want a few minutes of your time. I’m not going to begin to pretend I understand what you must be going through – but you and I have something in common.’
‘We do? We’re alive, that’s about all I can see we have in common. I don’t believe we have much else.’
Carly had known all along this was not going to be easy. But she had nurtured the hope that perhaps she could get a dialogue going with this woman and find some common ground.
‘May I come in? I’ll leave the moment you want me to. But please let’s talk for a few minutes.’
Fernanda Revere drew on her cigarette, snorted out smoke through her mouth and nose, then tossed the butt away with a contemptuous flick of her jewelled hand. It landed on the drive in a shower of sparks. With her drink slopping over the rim of her glass, she tottered back and gestured for Carly to enter, glowering hatred, only faintly diluted with curiosity, at her.
Carly hesitated. This woman looked dangerously unpredictable and she had no idea how her husband was going to react. Glad now that Detective Investigator Lanigan was sitting outside the gates in his car, she surreptitiously glanced at her watch. Thirteen minutes left before her first text.
She entered a grand hallway with a flagstone floor and a circular staircase, and followed the woman, who bumped against the wall several times, along a corridor furnished with antiques. Then they entered a palatial drawing room, with a minstrel’s gallery. It had oak beams and tapestries hanging from the walls, alongside fine- looking oil paintings. Almost all of the furniture was antique, except for one item.
Seated, with his legs up in an incongruously modern leather recliner armchair, was a man in his fifties, with slicked-back grey hair and dense black eyebrows, watching a ball game on television. He held a can of beer in one hand and a large cigar in the other.
The woman walked towards him, picked up the TV remote from the antique wooden table beside him, peered at it for some moments as if she had never seen one of these before in her life, then muted the sound and dropped the remote back down with a clatter.
‘Hey, what the-’ the man protested.
‘We have a visitor, Lou.’ Fernanda pointed at Carly. ‘She’s come all the way from England. How nice is that?’ she said icily.
Lou Revere gave Carly a weak smile and an abstracted wave of his hand. Then, keeping his eyes on the silent players on the screen, he turned to his wife and reached out for the remote.
‘This is kind of an important moment in the game.’
‘Yeah, right,’ Fernanda said. ‘Well, this is kind of an important moment, too.’ She reached down, picked up a
