SAY SORRY
Goosebumps washed over her as she recalled the note from Martin on the sanitary towel, from Julie on the lard packet, from Bill on the flipper and, most recently, from Talia on the yellow dress she’d been forced into. She approached the words and put out a finger, dreading what it would meet. But before she could contaminate the evidence, her nose told her this was not blood — it was some kind of acrylic paint. She recognised the smell from Lucas’s art studio back at his bungalow in Wiltshire. Lucas. Where the hell was he?
She ducked out of the bunker and glanced left and right. She could see nobody on the beach or up along the grassy edge of the low crumbling cliffs. She sprinted on towards the next bunker, just visible beside a recent cliff fall further down the beach. As she ran her mind buzzed with confusion. Who was demanding apologies? And why? Like Lucas had said, what the hell had they done?
The next bunker was more upright, but half buried in the silty sand that regularly washed down from the stones of the cliff, along with heavy rain or the ingress of high tides. She ran in, steeling herself against the worst, phone torch already lit and flailing around the concrete walls. Pebbles crunched and something like a tin tray, probably an abandoned barbecue, flexed with a metallic twang beneath her foot. No bodies, but another display of fresh graffiti across the older scrawlings. Red words, daubed bigger and more violently around all of the walls.
Say sorry.
Say sorry.
Are you sorry?
Too late!
Too late!
Too late!
‘FUCK!’ she screamed, spinning around and yelling at the walls as if they could answer her. ‘WHY?! WHY SHOULD WE BE SORRY?’
Her answer came with a sudden hiss and rattle. It hit her on the scalp and rained down across her bare shoulders. She dodged to one side, and stared up at a stream of sand pouring down through the centre of the low concrete ceiling. ‘What the hell?’ she breathed.
‘I want you to know something,’ said a voice, low down at ankle level, ‘of how it will be at the end. This is your taster. The practice run.’
She dropped to her knees and peered past the sandfall towards the door, but nobody was silhouetted in its warped frame. Instead, she spotted a pinprick of red in the corner and realised she was hearing a recording, or perhaps someone talking through a remote device. Her torchlight found wires connected to the half buried metal panel she had trodden on. As the voice went on she guessed the recording had been triggered when she stepped inside. Maybe the shower of sand, too. She’d better hope nothing else was about to go off.
‘Who are you?’ she yelled at the red light, in case this was a live transmission, and someone was listening to her.
‘You should have said sorry,’ went on the voice. Male and tinny through the cheap silver device propped up against the wall. Vaguely familiar? Maybe. ‘You should all have said sorry. But you left it too late. Seven years too late. You’re sorry now. You’re sorry now. You’re sorry now.’
These last three words carried on, looping around. The sand trickled to a halt and Kate recalled the earlier words in the message. ‘The practice run.’
SHIT! She hurled herself back outside and along the beach. There was one more hut, a good half kilometre down the shore. She did not like the shape of this story. It was some warped version of Goldilocks. In hut one, a small shower of sand inside the timer. In hut two, a bigger shower of sand. What was waiting for Nikki and Craig in hut three? Was she already too late?
She fumbled with her mobile, pulling up Lucas’s number and pressing CALL, praying that he would answer and tell her he’d found them in the nick of time and had the killer pinned to the floor, knocked unconscious or dead.
Who? Who? Who the HELL was it?
28
Lucas lay still on the roof of a Buntin’s holiday chalet, trying not to breathe.
Dodging away from his pursuers, allowing Sid to guide him at speed, he’d soon realised he was hemmed in and needed another option. Half a dozen deck chairs had been left flat and folded alongside the end wall of a chalet block, offering him that option. He had taken a leap of faith — literally — and used the stacked wood as a step up to the low, gently sloped tiles. Three seconds later he was flat on his back and out of sight, and not a moment too soon.
Below him, he heard hard boots striking the paving slab alleys. ‘Suspect on foot,’ puffed a male officer. ‘Answers to description but wearing different clothing — jeans and a black leather jacket.’
Lucas groaned silently as he finally made the connection with the silver man on the unicycle. It was that guy he’d seen outside the cocktail bar last night; the one who had looked a bit like him. Now he knew why the Suffolk police were so hot for Lucas Henry — mistaken identity. But if silver man was a prime suspect, had he sent Francis after a killer after all?
‘We’re getting the drone up,’ came back another voice, tinny though the two-way.
Shit. He wasn’t going to get much time on this roof then. He didn’t have it anyway. As
