Chapter 52
It’s easier to find a ride than she’d anticipated.
She persuades a lorry driver for Rannoch Fisheries with an Inverness address on the side of his truck that there’s nothing he’d like more than to drive her back up to Scotland with him, reassured by his Aran jumper and avuncular face.
He looks a safe bet, though she reminds herself again about appearances.
It’s only when they’re safely sitting in the cab of the truck, breathing in the fumes of smoked fish, his usual cargo, that she stops to think about the confession she’s made to Lucy.
Forgiveness. Learning to forgive yourself and others. The core lesson of successful rehabilitation, the aspect of society that’s most lacking. Why should society take it easy on her, though? She’ll never allow herself to forget what she did, the damage that she’s caused.
‘You’re lucky you didn’t get caught up behind that crash,’ the lorry driver says. He’s been silent until now, but he’s obviously feeling more comfortable with his passenger.
‘What crash?’
‘Apparently there’s been a smash on the section leading up the exit by the services. Stationary car on the hard shoulder, hit by another. Lucky only two cars were involved, but it’s caused a hold-up.’
‘Christ.’
‘Yep. Not great. Those smart motorways have got a lot to answer for.’
‘Awful. How do you know about it? Is it on the radio?’ She glances over at the stereo, which has been burbling out pop at a low volume.
‘Mate of mine stuck in the jam behind it.’
‘Any idea why the car would have stopped?’
‘Who knows? All sorts can cause an engine to cut out.’
‘I don’t know anything about cars really,’ she says with a giggle, trying not to despise herself too much. ‘What kind of thing do you think would be most likely? A tyre bursting?’
‘Well, yeah, that’s one thing. Or an issue with the gearbox. Spark plugs. Electrical failure. Sometimes even something as simple as the wrong oil.’
‘The wrong oil?’
‘Yeah, if you put oil in that’s the wrong gauge, it can make the engine seize up.’
‘How would you know if that was happening?’ Anna says, her voice as casual as she can make it. Idle chitchat, that’s all.
‘Burning smell as the engine overheats, banging. That kind of shit. Before it grinds to a halt. I mean, it wouldn’t stop immediately – it would be like being in neutral.
The car would still have forward momentum, at least for a little.
Depend how fast it was going in the first place!
’ He guffaws at the end, clearly enjoying the vision he’s conjured up of a speeding car suddenly losing its power.
Anna isn’t laughing, though. The hairs on the back of her head tingle.
She shakes it off. She’s being paranoid. It’s no wonder, either. So much has happened in such a short time. It was an accident, and it’s down to this stupid motorway system that she can’t even begin to understand.
The miles pass slowly. Anna shifts from side to side in her seat, desperate now to get to her destination.
The situation is out of control. There’s a trail of destruction behind her, from the dead woman in the cell onwards: the fire, the crash, that strange attic full of screens.
None of it makes sense. The only solid fact she can grasp on to is that of death, pain, the grave of a woman unvisited by anyone from one year to the next.
The scent of lilies dying in the night air.
The driver turns up the radio, talked out for the time being. Anna will achieve nothing by staying awake. She shuts her eyes and lets sleep in.
Anna wakes with a start as they pass a turn-off to Glasgow.
It’s early afternoon now, the truck trundling along in the slow lane as it eats up the miles.
The crash is far behind them, the pain of her confession, too.
She feels better for having aired it, lighter.
She knows there’s no easy remedy to the situation, but perhaps when this is all over, when she’s navigated her way out of this mad situation in which she’s found herself, she might contact her family, even if just to be rebuffed by them once more.
Anna’s glad she’s slept – she’s going to need to stay alert for the latter part of the journey. From Inverness to Gairloch is still a fair distance, and she’s already had all the luck she could hope for in finding this lorry that’s taken her so much of the way.
‘Is there a bus that goes to Gairloch? From Inverness, I mean?’ she says.
‘Aye, yes, there is one. Is that where you’re off to, then?’
‘Yes. I’m visiting a friend. All a bit last minute,’ Anna says, suddenly aware that an explanation might be required. He’s not interested, though.
‘I’ll drop you at the coach station,’ he says. ‘Not far from my work. You should be able to find something all right. Public transport system’s shit, right enough, but I think you’ll be able to get there.’
‘Great. Thanks.’
There’s no more conversation for the rest of the journey. Anna’s desperate to go to the loo, but she doesn’t want to ask the driver to stop. It’s more important she gets there – the sooner she arrives, the sooner she can return south, get back on with her life.
She watches the cars passing in the opposite direction, the rhythm of it hypnotic.
The further north they go, the more beautiful the countryside becomes.
The height of the lorry’s cab gives her a perspective she doesn’t normally have, an opening up of vistas that would be closed to her from the vantage point of a car.
Not all bad then, this turn of events. She shakes away the thought.
Not the time nor the place to be looking for silver linings.
They pull in at the coach station in Inverness. Anna thanks the driver and clambers out into air colder by far than it was in Oxford. She pulls her scrappy jacket tight round her.
She’s in luck with the coach; there’s one leaving in only an hour. Only four a week. Anna offers up thanks to the ether. Someone is taking care of her today, that’s for sure, smoothing her passage like this.
She wanders round the vicinity, locating first the loo, basic but clean, and then a sandwich shop, which is about to close. She persuades the owner to make her some food with what he’s about to throw out. The lettuce especially has seen better days.
Anna’s seen better days, too. It’s been four days since she left prison. To her surprise, a part of her is missing the routine, the warmth. She may never have got that close to anyone, but there was still a feeling of companionship from the other women, a sense that they were all in it together.
She’d felt that companionship with Lucy, too, but that poor girl is out for the count now. The impact of the crash must still be reverberating through her. Anna hopes she’s not in too much pain, that Rachel has been able to get to her and bring her home.
It’s time to get on the coach. Anna finds a seat and leans back against the grubby upholstery, exhausted. She can’t sleep, though, her mind too full of what might happen next.
The countryside rolls past the window, the purple heather blurring dark as the light falls.
Despite everything, Anna wouldn’t swap places with anyone right now, looking out at the long view after all those years of concrete walls and shortened vistas.
She gazes out until the light fails entirely, and only then does she sleep.
It’s dark by the time she arrives in Gairloch.
She walks straight from the bus station to the shop address that Rachel had written down for her, a small, independent supermarket, but it’s already closed for the night.
She’ll need to find somewhere to sleep. Before they left, Rachel had pressed some money into her hand, which with the cash she has left from leaving prison means Anna still has enough for a bed and breakfast.
She paces around the town for a while, discounting one for looking too flash, another for being too rundown. Goldilocks. She knows she needs not to be so damn picky. At last she spots one that’s just right, a bungalow on the outskirts of town with a sign for vacancies.
Within a short time, she’s tucked up in a comfortable room, pink counterpanes and flowery cushions abounding.
The proprietor even rustles her up a round of sandwiches, much nicer than the one she had earlier.
The woman asks her no questions other than how long she’s planning to stay, happy with the cash payment she’s proffered.
Peace. For the first time in years. In the eye of the storm, a moment of calm. She’s grabbing the opportunity with both hands.
Pouring a large slug of bath oil into the bath in the en-suite bathroom, she perches on the edge and inhales the vapour, fragrant with lavender.
Maybe the nicest scent she’s smelled in years, not a million miles from the bath oil she used to use, before.
Stripping off her travel-stained clothes, she slips under the bubbles, holding her head in the water, her hair streaming around her.
With her eyes shut, the steam and the soothing scent playing round her face, she could almost be back in her old bath, in her old life, cleansed of it all.
She’s about to drop off, relaxed like she hasn’t been for such a long time.
She moves her foot to turn on the hot tap and catches the bottle of bath oil which falls on to the floor with a thud, making her jump.
Her drowsiness disappears with a jolt, also her calm.
She should be relaxed, but now she can’t hush the thoughts in her head: what’s to come tomorrow, the mission that she needs to see through.
She hasn’t planned this properly.
She hasn’t planned this at all.
But she doesn’t want anyone else to die. With that thought, she hauls herself out of the water and washes her hair. Time for sleep.
First sitting for breakfast is at 7am, and she’s ready and dressed on the bell, starving now despite the sandwiches of the evening before. As soon as she’s scraped her plate clean of the fry-up, she picks up her belongings and makes her way back to the shop, ready to sit outside until it opens.
At 8.30am, a middle-aged man approaches the shop and unlocks the door. He looks over at her, but doesn’t seem overly interested in who she is, barely reacting as she approaches.
‘This is going to sound a bit strange,’ she begins. ‘But I’m here to ask about one of your customers. One you deliver to.’
‘I can’t give out any addresses,’ he says, half-heartedly.
‘You’ve been making a regular delivery to this isolated place. You’re emailed with instructions, and it’s paid for remotely. Groceries, most likely, enough for two people.’
He inclines his head, just a fraction, but enough so it could be interpreted as a nod.
‘Please can you tell me where it is?’
The man’s face twists. He doesn’t look confused, though. He knows what she’s talking about.
‘Who are you?’ he says.
‘My name is Anna. I’ve been sent to find someone. But I’m not sure where to look. Not unless you help me.’
‘Why do you want to find them?’
‘I don’t mean them any harm.’
He looks her up and down. ‘You don’t look harmful.’
‘Please,’ she says. ‘I’ve come a long way.’
He thinks, gives one firm nod, the movement very definite.
‘I’ll take you there,’ he says. ‘Or at least to where I deliver the boxes. The rest is up to you.’
Locking the shop door again, he leads her to the four-by-four in which he drove up. They get in the car and he starts to drive.
‘I’m Robert, by the way.’
Anna smiles politely.
‘For years I’ve been getting those emails,’ he says, his eyes focused on the road.
‘The woman – I’ve never actually spoken to her – she leaves a list in the box, what she needs for the next week.
Sometimes they let her have it.’ He laughs to himself.
‘The fresh chillies, that was a pain. I had to make a trip to the big supermarket to get hold of them. It’s bizarre, what I’m asked to deliver. There’s no sense to it.’
‘In what way?’
‘Sometimes bottles of whisky, sometimes not. The amount of food fluctuates. Mostly alcohol, the last few weeks. The last emails I received, they asked for a bunch of white lilies to be delivered. That was the first time there’d been anything like that.
And a magazine, a true crime one. Another time there was an envelope posted to me, and they asked me to put it in the box. ’
‘Did you do it?’
‘I did. Then last week, the payment didn’t come. I tried calling the number I’ve got but the phone was switched off. It went straight through to voicemail. If it wasn’t for that, I wouldn’t be taking you now.’
Anna believes him. She thanks him for the information and settles back against the headrest for the remainder of the journey.
The road is narrow, the hills rising above it steep and magnificent.
She’s read somewhere that the area is known as the Great Wilderness, and she can see why.
It’s empty of people, of other cars, even.
Solitary, silent – the perfect place to hide people, if that’s what someone wanted to do.
Eventually, the truck pulls up in a lay-by beside a loch. They walk down wooden steps to a small jetty where a motorboat is moored.
‘You all right on the water?’
She nods.
‘You can swim?’
Nods again.
‘It’s over the other side.’ He points to the opposite side of the loch. It looks miles away. Remote, though. The setting becomes more and more logical. No one would come looking for a child-killer here.
The boat chugs across the smooth surface of the loch. It should be soothing, it should remind Anna of being on holiday, of lazy days spent messing about on the water, but she’s wiped happiness like that from her mind.
She looks out at the water. It’s clear, inviting. She wouldn’t want to fall in, though. The sun is shining, but the air is biting cold and the temperature of the water must be fridge-like. Even a strong swimmer wouldn’t be able to survive in it for long. No one could have swum across. No way out.