Chapter Twenty-Two

I closed my room door quietly, the lock making not much more than a soft click, and crept along the hallway. I paused outside Susie’s door and listened. I could hear the television, so I kept going and walked slowly down the stairs, hoping that a creak wouldn’t give me away.

The hotel lobby was just a corridor with a small counter, rows of key rings behind, and then a glass door to the street outside. But there were also rooms at the back of the hotel, and a green plastic sign pointed that way as a fire exit. Susie’s room overlooked the front, and so I knew she wouldn’t see me if I went out the back way.

I couldn’t see any staff, and so I followed the green arrow, past clusters of doors, to a wooden fire door. It was unlocked and opened into a small yard, and once through that, I was in the alleyway that ran along the back of the line of hotels.

I walked slowly along the alley before taking up a position at the end of the street, so that I could see who went in and who went out of the hotel. The street was busy with a mix of dossers and young travellers, most heading for Victoria station, and the midsummer lightness made it hard to conceal myself. I just had to hope that Susie didn’t spot me if she went out. She didn’t want to spend the night alone, I could tell that, and she had been in touch with Claude throughout the day. I guessed that she would risk a trip to meet him. I looked around to see if I was being watched—wondering whether Claude was watching me somewhere nearby—but I couldn’t see anyone loitering. It was just the usual London bustle.

My hunch proved right, and I was there for only thirty minutes before Susie emerged from the hotel. She looked left and right and then walked swiftly away from me, bustling along in her heels, the clicks loud in the street. I set off after her, fifty yards behind, my eyes fixed on her hair. She turned down a side street, making it more difficult to follow, and so I hung back and waited for her to go onto the next street before rushing down to see which way she went. By the time I got down there, I saw that she was just disappearing around another corner, and so I raced once more to keep up with her.

I stopped at the next corner and peered around it, getting ready to begin the pursuit again, when I saw that she had stopped and was speaking on her phone. Susie was listening, not talking, and she was looking around anxiously. I cursed under my breath and felt the hairs rise up on my arms. Claude was watching, had been all along. I looked around quickly, tried to look out for someone ducking behind a corner, or the flash of a binocular lens as it caught the fading sun. Then I saw it, a camera lens on the other side of a bus shelter.

I looked behind me, just in time to see the yellow roof-light of a black cab switch off as Susie climbed in. As it drove away, I stepped out from behind the corner and cursed to myself.

I’d lost her, and maybe lost Claude too.

Laura looked around the living room. Something wasn’t right. The feeling had been there ever since she came home, a sensation that she wasn’t alone that made her skin prickle under the soft cloth of her T-shirt. Her eyes shot to the ceiling. She thought she’d heard a creak. Was it just Bobby getting out of bed? No, it wasn’t that, she knew it.

She reached for the remote control and silenced the television. It was suddenly too quiet. Her eyes drifted to the window; the night was drawing in, so that the view outside had turned purple.

She looked over her shoulder, to the table at the other end of the room where Jack did his writing, past the front door, her gaze drifting to the other windows. She thought she could see movement outside, but maybe it was just the shifting of the branches in the breeze.

Laura rose slowly to her feet, her ears keen, the creaks of the sofa like loud cracks now. She was being stupid, she told herself, there was nothing to make her think she wasn’t alone. Except that receptor in her brain that detected the presence of a person, like human radar, a certainty that someone was watching her.

She cursed the location of the cottage, so isolated and vulnerable, just a rickety wooden door protecting her from whoever was outside. Why did this have to happen when Jack was a few hundred miles away? But then she was angry with herself. Why did that matter? She thought back to her training all those years ago, and the self-defence refresher courses she had been on, those afternoons being hurled onto a mat by a police instructor. If someone was outside, she would have to deal with it on her own. She remembered what she had told Thomas the day before: get the first strike in and make it a good one, leave no room for a second assault.

As she moved through the room, her eyes flicked between the windows and looked for movement. All she could hear was the shuffle of her bare feet on the rug that turned into quiet slaps as she stepped onto the stone floor that ran to the end of the room. The kitchen was nearby, and she thought about getting a knife. But what if she was disarmed? It would be used against her. Then again, what if whoever was out there was already armed? Laura could feel the tension in her muscles as she crept forward, her eyes scanning the windows all the time.

Then her eyes shot to the front door. Had she locked it when she came in? Think, think. Bobby had been in the car, and she had shopping bags with her. She had come in and put the bags on the table, and then she had got changed. So, no, she hadn’t. She wasn’t in the habit of locking the door. She had moved to the North so she could stop doing that. The keys were on the table, attached to her car keys. She grabbed them and moved slowly forward, keeping an eye on the latch. Was it moving?

Laura rushed at the door and threw her weight against it, panting, scared now. She thrust the key into the lock and turned it quickly, taking deep gasps when she heard the lock click into place. Then her eyes flicked around the room. Were the windows locked?

Then she thought of Bobby and ran for the stairs.