CHAPTER 16
Half the room is in total darkness, the bottom half in bright, white-hot light.
Simone can see the concrete floor, her own legs, and nothing else.
She waits, trembling, thinking that anybody could be standing in here with her.
A drugs baron. The mafia. A hitman, hiding in the shadows with a sniper gun.
Shapes emerge slowly, blocky and large, the detail filling in late.
A table, perhaps, then clarity: a workbench.
A stainless-steel sink along the back wall, not unlike those at the restaurant.
An old fridge, a few toolboxes and, there at the very back, a rifle, hanging still and silently by itself.
Simone’s breath catches as she sees it. Maybe they’re normal here, but to her it’s an omen, both that she’s in the right place but also in danger.
For the first time, she wishes she had a gun herself.
She turns in a slow circle. Sure enough, the bag really is to the back of the garage, right in the very corner, tucked away in the darkest point of the room.
A sports bag. She didn’t think this through; how is she going to get that back?
She will have to sneak it on to the coach, but she came with no luggage …
and she specifically said she didn’t have any.
She winces and wishes she’d brought a rucksack to transfer the items into, but, really, who could be thinking straight to have done that?
A noise outside, a flutter, only a bird, but it still makes her jump. This garage wasn’t locked. Nobody would store anything of value in an unlocked garage, so it must mean it’s being watched; she’s being watched.
She hesitates, then goes to the back of the room, kneels down almost reverentially in front of the bag. She looks up and around, above and behind her, but there isn’t any CCTV that she can see.
Finally, the moment. What is in this bag?
Really, it doesn’t matter what is inside. She will take whatever it is to get Lucy back. She stops, her fingertips on the zip. The bag is new; it has the rubbery smell of sports equipment.
Somehow, it does matter what it is. She needs to know the risk she is taking. Don’t they expect her to check?
Another glance, this time at the bright underside of the door. She expects to see legs, shoes, men coming for her, but there’s nothing, no one, not yet anyway.
She undoes the bag, zip sliding easily, and, for just a few seconds longer, this is Schrodinger’s sports bag; its contents could be anything. Identities. Passports. Money. Guns. Anything. Until she knows.
Simone opens it, then sucks a breath in.
Bars wrapped in brown paper: it’s drugs. As she suspected, but somehow still shocking to see.
She reaches to touch one of the bars, then picks it up. It’s weighty in her palm, compact and heavy, cool, like a weapon, the wrapping tight. It’s cocaine; she’s sadly expert in that, even though she’s never seen blocks like this. Colombian cocaine, she supposes.
Each package says it is a kilogram, written on the side, but that doesn’t mean much to her. But even she can see that this full, weighty bag has got to be worth a million dollars or more. She sits back, just staring at its contents.
Each bar is covered in brown parcel paper, wrapped tight with shiny gaffer tape.
A sticker on the top of each one bears a pornographic photograph: a naked woman, bent over, the view from behind.
Faceless. Something about this unsettles Simone more than the drugs.
The casual misogyny. That women are for sex or for shipping drugs around.
That she, too, is a pawn in this machine, so totally, vulnerably disposable.
And so is Lucy.
After putting the bar back into the bag, she goes to the sink, turns the tap and splashes her hands in the water.
There’s an old liver-spotted mirror behind it.
She looks at herself, thinking about the trail of evidence she’s left behind.
There’s too much of it; so much is already done.
If anybody ever suspects Simone, it is over for her.
Simone submerges her hands in the water as it heats up, scorching her skin, and she thinks about who will transport these drugs after her, who will distribute them, who will buy them, who will take them, and who will die from them, too. Whose children will suffer like she did.
In the old mirror, she avoids eye contact now with herself. She doesn’t want to look again. She doesn’t want to take on the identity of somebody who has done this. She of all people.
She picks up the bag, slings it over her shoulder and ducks out, under the roller shutter door, into the floodlit sun.
As she looks behind her, she sees a little vent on the front of the building that she missed before begin to steam, from the hot water she used, piping out into the sky for everyone to see.