She was in a car, and it felt like she'd been here for ever. Countless black hours stretched behind her. What day was it now? Not Thursday anymore. That was the last thing she could remember--
The vehicle rocked heavily, hitting a speed bump, and Tori passed out, remembering exactly that.
The traffic was so bad.
Her small car was inching along the ring road, and the vehicles around it made her feel defensive, even slightly nervous. Everybody was so impatient. Horns kept blaring up ahead, followed by answering calls. Cars angling to push in. People shoving and worming their way through, shouting and waving their fists. Important, important. Now, now, now.
She turned the radio on and pressed the cassette in, hearing it lock into place with a reassuringly chunky click. Some time soon, she'd have to upgrade for a CD player. You couldn't even buy tapes anymore, could you? But she'd always put it off. She liked her old compilation cassettes, despite the deficiencies of the medium, or maybe because of them. The hiss on the tape was as reassuring as the songs; the familiar, faded blue writing on the inlay reminded her of her shared history with the music. She even liked the methodical mending - a pen through the spool when the tape came loose, reeling it back into the case. One day, they'd break and stop working altogether. She could replace the songs themselves, but somehow it wouldn't be the same.
Tori relaxed slightly as The Heart Asks Pleasure First drowned out the abrasive world around her. Thinking briefly about Dave, and how she'd lied about not remembering him visiting her in the hospital, without being sure why. She pulled up another car length, the red brake lights ahead harsh in the orange glare of the underpass, remembering her day at work, and thought:
Valerie doesn't trust you anymore.
She wished her hospitalisation three weeks ago had been the result of a broken bone, or a car accident, or at least something physical. Maybe even a good, old-fashioned, debilitating disease. When you damaged your body, people related to that and understood it. Even if they'd never suffered the same thing themselves, it made sense to them. When you went back to work after a broken wrist, you didn't have to put up with your colleagues stealing sideways glances at it all the time, as though it might suddenly flail out of control at any moment and scatter the coffee cups.
In Valerie's averted eyes and hastily mumbled departures, Tori had sensed a feeling of betrayal. It felt like Tori hadn't told her about some criminal past, and now she was in danger of being done as an accomplice. In fact, all of them had excluded her today. They'd even checked her work when they thought she wasn't looking. Damaged goods: she was tainted in their eyes now, not even a proper person anymore. You break your wrist and people can see it heal. You break a less visible part of you and people assume it's always broken and always has been.
It was just so hard sometimes.
Breathe . . .
Slow and shallow.
Later, after drawing the curtains against the world and lighting the house up in warm, bright colours, Tori ate a meagre dinner of beans on toast. When she was done, she scraped the crumbs into the kitchen bin - and then stopped. There had been a noise upstairs.
She stood still, cocking her head slightly.
The floorboards had creaked.
But the sound didn't return, so she finished with the plate and put it down on the counter.
She was about to turn around and put some hot water in the sink when she heard it again. It sounded like it had come from the spare room, which was directly above her, and even though the noise didn't repeat itself, she kept her eye on the hairline fracture in the plaster.
Everything creaked here, of course. The wood was old and the walls were thin. Occasionally, she'd even heard the couple next door making love, and felt a twinge of envy. Not for the sex so much as for the quiet moments afterwards, when she could imagine them cuddling. That would be nice. Someone to hold her.
Creak.
It was nothing. The floorboards flexed and shrank continually as the day went on. But something drew her out of the kitchen anyway, back into the lounge and, from there, to the stairwell by the back door. She listened again, and heard nothing. The landing above was very quiet and still.
She went upstairs.
The door to the spare room was hanging wide open. Tori could see all the way inside, and of course, there was nobody there.
God, she needed to do something with this room, though. She stepped inside and clicked on the light, hit by the sight of bare floorboards, and the wardrobe against the far wall that needed the doors adjusting. A single bare bulb hung down from the ceiling, and beyond that, the purple curtains didn't quite cover the window. She glanced over and saw herself reflected in the sliver of glass visible at the edge, and the reflection of the man standing behind the door.
He kicked it into her - very hard - and the next thing she knew, she'd hit the wardrobe and rebounded onto the floor.
She woke up in panic and fear - and then realised she'd been dreaming. The car rocked beneath her, reminding her where she was. Oh God. Still in the boot. What did he want? Where was he taking her? It had got to the point where she almost wanted to die, because at least then this agony would be finished. Her muscles, already on fire, flared up with each jolt of the suspension. It was unbearable, and she was being forced to bear it.
Breathe.
Ignoring the agony running through her body, she tried to move her head closer to the air holes again, straining her cramped neck and stretching as far as she could. All that happened was the petrol smell grew stronger, and her vision became full of the purple stench of it. That was wrong; her senses were confused. She was going to pass out again.
But then the car slowed down, and came to a stop, and she heard the crick of the handbrake. They'd pulled up somewhere. She listened carefully, trying to hear if anybody was nearby, and couldn't hear anything. She lashed out anyway: kicked down at the side of the car as hard as she was able.
But her legs didn't even move. She wanted to--
Voices.
Tori pulled herself together and listened. It was definitely people. Or one person, anyway. Half a conversation. It was a moment before she realised it was the man who was driving the car, talking on a mobile phone, but the sound was muffled by the seats behind her. She tried to hear what he was saying, but couldn't quite make it out. The words kept drifting past, the way the fresh air from the drill-holes did - forming blurry impressions of language inside her head that she couldn't decipher.
And then she heard it and thought:
What happened to your hands?
Oh God, she remembered what it meant now.
Tori began to scream silently, not caring about the dry metal and dust in her throat, until the pain bloomed and the darkness took her away again.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Saturday 3rd September
There's one good principle to use when analysing a magic trick. You start with the final effect - the thing you can't explain - and then you move backwards, working through the things you know for sure and looking for clues in the spaces between. That's the way you find the secret. Set the parameters of the trick in stone and then work out how it could be achieved within them.
If a ring appears in a flowerpot by the door then someone must have put it there. If only one person has been near that door, then it must have been him. If there's only one time he could have got hold of that ring, it must have been then. By going over the facts you can see, you work out the ones you can't.
That principle holds true for everything else, as well. If I could figure out how the killer had achieved what he had, I'd learn things about him.
It was obvious he knew a great deal about me, and he hadn't conjured that information out of thin air. So how? He knew three of my ex-girlfriends. It was possible that either Julie or Emma could have told him about Tori, because my relationship with her had come first, and both of them had met her. But they didn't know each other. He couldn't have abducted Julie and learned about Emma, or vice versa. And so he must have learned about them by some other means. The most likely explanation was that I was his starting point, and for some reason he was targeting me. If I'd gone out with different people, he would have taken them instead.
He knew about my ex-girlfriends, going back at least two years. He knew where my parents' house was. And he'd bribed Thom Stanley to give me a message in the theatre on Thursday night, so he'd known I was going to be there.
From the effect to the secret. As much as I didn't want it to be true, I could think of only one person in the world who could possibly have known all that.
On a Saturday lunchtime, the university campus was almost deserted. I was sitting on a concrete wall a little way up from the main building, watching the entrance. The road swelled out in front, forming an eye with a circular patch of flowers for an iris; the Union building was the brow, while the road thinned out and split to either side, like laughter lines.
A few students meandered past every so often, checking their mobiles, or adjusting their headphones, but there was hardly anyone around. The tarmac and grass were both strewn with fliers: fallout from the various events last night. Sheets of sodden paper had been rain-pressed to the ground, then dried tight to it like stickers. One storey above the main door, an arched window was open. A couple of large speakers were balanced on the sill, entirely silent.
When I'd called Rob from Thom Stanley's flat, I hadn't told him where to meet me. I was hoping he'd still be thinking about what I'd said last night in Carpe Diem. Do you remember when we met? If the police were listening, they would have seen someone calling from Thom Stanley's number and heard nothing more than an innocuous conversation about a pre-arranged business meeting over lunch.
If they arrived here now, it meant they'd either followed Rob, or else he'd turned me in. If I was right, there was no way he would do that. And despite the fact I hadn't recognised the man's voice last night, I couldn't think of any other explanation. Because nobody apart from Rob knew all those things about me.
He arrived about five minutes later. I watched him approach down the long road to the left, moving in that familiar stalking shuffle he had, as though he was expecting somebody to laugh at him and intended to be above and beyond it when they did. Nobody else, as far as I could tell.
I hopped down off the wall as he reached the Union.
'Rob.'
He glanced about, confused, then saw me.
I nodded at him. 'Over here.'
As he walked across, I stared at his face and wondered if what I was thinking could possibly be true. I didn't want it to be, and could barely imagine it. He'd been my best friend for nearly ten years: always there for me, watching my back. It seemed absurd to believe he had any connection to this, but the facts stood as they were.
I tried to keep my expression blank.
'Dave,' he said. 'Christ, how are you doing?'
I shook my head.
'Not here.'
'Where, then?'
'Follow me.'
St John's Field was a large area of grassland nestled between the university campus and the main road. It was peaceful and quiet on a weekday. Right now, as far as I could tell, we were the only people in sight.
It was also a remarkably eerie place, even in daylight. In the centre, there was the Garratty Extension, an ominous stone building surrounded by benches and old, judgemental statues. From there, a spider web of paths spread out, some leading to the various passages down to the university, others into small groves of trees that took you out to the streets. The paths themselves were made of arched gravestones. When the oldest part of the city cemetery had been renovated, the stones had been brought here and laid flat, interlaced like teeth.
Fifteen names and dates were chiselled into each, many of them barely legible anymore, and most of them infants and children. In the space of the exposed, windswept journey from one end of the field to the other, you walked across an entire community of forgotten people
'You must have been planning this last night,' Rob said. 'The thing about remembering where we met.'
We were moving slowly, like we had nowhere in particular to go. It was what we'd done before, back when we were students. I narrowed my eyes against the insistent breeze; it was so open here. Instead of looking ahead, I watched the stones beneath my feet.
'Not exactly,' I told him. 'But I was thinking ahead.'
'Do I need to tell you how much trouble you're in?'
'I don't know for sure. So why don't you tell me?'
The animosity slipped into my voice, but Rob didn't seem to notice. He sounded unhappy, though.
'They've been in the office.'
'I guessed that.'
'They were there when you called. They've taken a lot of stuff away with them. I'd say it's pretty serious.'
I nodded. 'They think I killed those girls.'
'And kidnapped Tori, as well. I saw her on the news last night. She's missing.'
'I know. I didn't do it.'
'Yeah, I figured that. So what's going on, Dave?'
'Here.'
I took a piece of paper out of my pocket, unfolded it and passed it over. We kept walking as he read it, but I watched his face. Everything about his expression said that he hadn't seen it before. I wanted to believe that was true, but how could it be?
'Jesus Christ, Dave. What the fuck is this?'
'Exactly what it looks like,' I said. 'The man who abducted Tori left this at her house for me to find. He's playing games with me; I don't know why. He also sent that email you brought to Carpe Diem for me.'
Rob was reading it again. 'Christ.'
He looked shocked, but was it by the contents of the note? If he really had been the man in the car last night, or if he'd known anything about his plans, then surely he would have been more surprised that I still had a copy of it? He'd been very careful about getting it back off me, after all. Just not before I'd had the chance to run it through my father's old fax machine a couple of times.