'But--'
'Do it now. Hold the phones close together so I can hear the tone.'
I scrolled down until I found Valerie's name, glancing in the mirror at the CCTV again. That was why I was here - to implicate myself on camera. The police would trace where the message had been sent from, check the CCTV and see my car.
I scrolled up through Tori's contacts list and highlighted my own name instead.
That would work. The man would hear the tone and believe I'd sent the message. And if the police were looking at me as a suspect and tracking my mobile, this would throw up a massive question mark for them.
My thumb touched the Select key.
Then paused as something awful occurred to me.
How careful is he being?
'What's taking so fucking long?'
'I'm not used to this phone,' I said. 'I'm sorry.'
I hit Cancel, then Menu, then Contacts.
Scrolled down. Valerie, Valerie, Valerie . . .
Select.
'If you don't send that text,' the man said, 'I hang up and drive away. In the next five seconds, you're going to kill her.'
The screen changed to tell me I was dialling Valerie's number. I could dimly hear the ring tone from Tori's mobile and immediately cancelled the call. For a moment, I'd had the awful suspicion that there was no Valerie - that Valerie's phone was the one in the man's hand, thirty metres behind me - and that he was just testing me. I'd had to make sure.
'Okay.'
Sweating now, I clicked quickly back through, and forwarded it to myself.
The phone beeped.
'Did you hear that?'
'Yeah. I heard it. Turn her mobile off.'
'Now what?'
'Get out of the car,' he told me, 'and walk down the road. Number twenty-six is about five along from where you are now. The front door's open. Go inside.'
'What?'
'Just do as you're fucking told. Don't look back, and keep the phone out of sight.'
He hung up.
I stepped out of the car and was immediately hit by the rain; it picked at me as I walked down the road, passing the houses one by one. Scared now. Why did he want me inside somewhere? Was he coming after me? But I didn't want to disobey him by looking behind. I was glad I had the knife with me. I just hoped I'd get the chance to use it.
What the fuck are you doing?
Number twenty-six.
It was a small, drab semi with a metal gate separating a patch of concrete garden from the street. The gate creaked badly, scraping across the ground as I opened it, then clattering down when I let go. At the front door I looked up. No lights on. No noise from within. The place was empty and silent, just like Tori's house had been.
Deep breaths.
The door was unlocked. I turned the handle and stepped into a thin hallway. The wind followed me, tinkling a wind chime suspended beside the door. A staircase led up on the right, while straight ahead was a dark, moonlit kitchen. Two doors off the hall to the left, both shut.
I closed the front door - he hadn't told me not to - and took the knife out with one hand, the mobile with the other, and waited for him to call back. Seconds passed, and nothing happened. The phone stayed as dark and still as the house around me.
Then I heard it, and glanced up the stairs.
A dull, whining noise coming from above me.
Tori. I didn't even hesitate.
Upstairs, the whirr of flies in the air was louder, and the smell hit me. It was like ascending into a black cloud: a revolting haze in the air, which my throat objected to on a primal level. It reminded me of the last time I'd visited my father in the hospice, when his skin had been yellow and he'd looked like he was sweating death. There was that same sickly sweet aroma of disease here. The air felt damp with it.
I held my sleeve up to my face and pushed the bedroom door open.
The curtains were open. They allowed a wedge of light to come in and fall like a blanket across the girl lying on the bed. Flies cut through it in tiny black flashes.
Oh God.
I nearly fell down.
It didn't even look like a real person. She was too still: an object rather than a human being; a waxwork dummy lying naked, spread-eagled, on the bed. I noticed the thick coils of leather tying her wrists to the bed-posts, beneath the horrible, splayed fingers. Rope was wrapped around her head, cutting into her mouth.
One of her eyes was shut. The other was open just a sliver, showing a crescent of white.
All completely motionless.
I took a stupid step towards the bed, needing to get a better look at her face and make sure . . . and then stumbled backwards, my heart tumbling down into my gut. Emma.
The mobile went.
My hand shook as I held it up to my ear. For a few seconds I heard nothing but the whine of flies in the air. When his voice finally came, it was as cold and callous as anything I'd ever heard.
'You let her die.'
It wasn't true, but the violence in his words pierced through any of the rational things I could tell myself. Emma, who'd been lying here all this time, forgotten and uncared for. Whom I'd barely thought about since she left. Not even a person anymore. Just a thing, left there on the bed.
'Why?' I said quietly.
'You thought you were a better person.' And as hard as his voice remained, I could tell that he was taking some pleasure from this. 'But you see now you're no better than anyone else. That you don't care at all about people when it's hard for you.'
'Why are you doing this?'
'You should have asked yourself that. Every second you did nothing.'
I closed my eyes. Even though Emma was out of sight, I could smell the decay. And sense something on a deeper level, as well, hanging in the air. I felt like a sinner, standing alone in the quiet, echoing dignity of a cathedral.
'What do you want from me?' I said.
'Nothing.'
'What?'
'Nothing. You've already abandoned her once. Now you just have to do it again. Walk out of here, get back in your car and drive away.'
'What - I'm supposed to leave her here?'
'Just like you did before.'
I opened my eyes and forced myself to look at her, and deliberately tried to put the girl I'd known out of my head. It wasn't Emma. There was nothing I could do for her now.
'Or can you not bring yourself to care enough about Tori?'
I'm sorry, Emma.
'All right.'
I turned around and walked out of the bedroom. Headed back downstairs. The front door was still closed.
'I come out now?' I said. 'Then what?'
For a few seconds, the man didn't reply.
'We're done for tonight,' he said. 'We'll have more fun tomorrow. I don't care where you go in the meantime, but the police will be looking for you. If you contact them, you'll never hear from me again. I'll be watching.'
'Right.'
'Remember that, Dave,' he said quickly. 'Really try hard. Because you might think you're so fucking clever, but you're not. You have no idea what I can do.'
I opened the front door and stepped out. Was it worth wiping my fingerprints away? I didn't know whether that would make me look less guilty or more. Better to do nothing.
'I understand,' I said.
He laughed at me. Mocking the idea.
And then the line went dead.
I stepped back out into the night. The immediate tapping of the rain startled me, and I shivered. One last glance up at the profound silence of the house - I'm so sorry - and then I walked back to my car, facing the CCTV camera the whole way.
The street beyond was already empty; the man had gone. And yet I felt his eyes on me every step of the way.
Part Four
Chapter Twenty-four
Saturday 3rd September
After I got back to the car, I didn't know what to do next. Where could I go? All the places I had a key for weren't safe. At the same time, I couldn't fill up on petrol and keep driving: the police would be looking out for the car, and possibly even monitoring my bank account. I had a quarter of a tank in the car, about ten pounds in my wallet, and no easy way of replenishing either. But I set off anyway, without thinking, because the one place I did need to be was somewhere else.
I was driving fairly aimlessly, my head in pieces, when I thought about something. My hands tightened on the wheel.
You have no idea what I can do.
I didn't know how or why, but the killer had clearly singled me out for some reason. And if he knew about Julie and Emma, maybe he knew about Sarah as well.
Immediately, I indicated and took the next turning. But then, when I was nearly there, I began to question what I was doing. What if he didn't know about her at all? If I called round to her house - if I even phoned her - I might be placing her in danger.
I didn't know what to do.
I just wanted to park up and collapse. Let someone else deal with all this.
In the end, I drove down her street and kept my eye out - intending to sweep past and see if anything looked suspicious or out of place. But then I had a bit of luck: there was a car park a little way down from her house. It was far enough away that, if the killer was watching me, he wouldn't be able to tell why I was there, but close enough to catch an angled view of the front of her building, including the door. I pulled in. In the context of everything that had happened, this felt like winning the fucking lottery.
I sat there, feeling blank but determined. There was no point in trying to sleep, and I had nowhere else to go. So I would sit here, instead - wait out the night, and as far as possible make sure Sarah was okay.
The rain sounded almost peaceful now. I started thinking about what had happened, trying to piece what I'd learned together into a bigger picture.
The killer had laughed when I said I understood, but it was obvious I was in a lot of trouble. Maybe he couldn't frame me in a way that would stand up to scrutiny in the long term. Then again, maybe I'd underestimated just how convincing and full an illusion it was possible to create. A handful of small details. Not so hard.
But why me?
You might think you're so fucking clever, but you're not.
He was wrong about that. I didn't feel clever at all. In fact, sitting there, I felt like the stupidest person in the world. I knew I should go to the police - turn myself in, try to explain - and every time I closed my eyes, I pictured Emma's emaciated body. Her face demanding to know why I'd forgotten about her, and how I could bring myself to leave her again now.
But the memory also made me think about Tori. If I didn't carry on, someone would find her like that. As long as I believed she was still alive, I had to keep going. I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I didn't try.
So I spent the night slumped in the car with all those thoughts, hiding in plain view. At some point the rain stopped, and everything became silent apart from the wind. Eventually, I could hear birds, and realised that the top sliver of the sun had appeared at the horizon. It rose slowly, a nimbus of yellow and orange spreading upwards, revealing the remnants of last night's storm overhead: tattered clouds like bruises on the sky.
Just after seven o'clock, a light came on in Sarah's house. I watched, and another one appeared beside it.
She was all right.
Shivering a little, I started the car and drove away.
At half past eight, I was sitting in a large cafe about six miles out of the city centre. It was the definition of greasy-spoon, and the dirt and fat seemed ingrained in every surface. There were bottles of scab-topped brown sauce and ketchup resting on the Formica tables. Samples of each had been helpfully crusted to the laminated menus.
The cafe was a few miles up the main road from my parents' house. I remembered it from school bus journeys home, because it always seemed to be full of truckers, and sometimes the braver sixth-formers would venture inside for kudos. Back then, the place had possessed a strange and almost exotic danger. This was the first time I'd ever been inside, and it turned out to be just a cafe. At this time of day, there were only a few weathered-looking delivery drivers at the far end by the counter, barking loudly at their own jokes and occasionally bantering with the waitress. From beyond the counter, I could hear bacon sizzling and pans being scraped out, and a coffee machine that sounded as though it was rasping up phlegm.
As I'd driven past, my body had made the snap decision to stop for some food. It was only as I'd parked up next to the post box outside that I'd realised how hungry I was.
I sipped a black coffee. The remains of my breakfast were on the table in front of me, along with three mobiles - my own, Tori's and the one the killer had left for me. The coffee was hot, bitter and strong. Every time I tasted it, the flavours stuck to the inside of my mouth like a layer of paint.
If nothing else, it gave me a way to occupy myself, because apart from waiting for the killer's phone call, I had no idea what I was going to do with the delightful day ahead. I warmed my hands around the ebbing heat of the mug as the waitress made her way over.
'Finished with your meal?'
'Yes. It was fine, thanks.'
She smiled and started clearing things up. If she thought it was at all strange that I had three mobile phones on the table, she was kind enough not to mention it.
When she was done, I picked up my phone and stared at the blank screen. I'd been completely disconnected from my old life; the me that existed a week ago was like something on the other side of a mirror. The coffee had snapped me out of the dreamlike state I'd been in during the night, and I felt glimpses of the panic below the surface. Sadness welled up. More than anything else in the world, I wanted a flash of. . . I just wanted something normal back.
I turned my mobile on. I'd be leaving here soon, anyway.
The time the phone took to power up and find the network was painful. It looked like it wasn't doing anything. I waited, feeling a ridiculous thrill - an itch in the heart.
Bleep.
Two new messages.
I gave it a couple more seconds, but that appeared to be it.