Chapter 54
Dom and I set up camp in the little den next to the lounge where the Wi-Fi signal is strongest, a tense silence between us.
“We shouldn’t have let her go,” he says finally. “We know what these people are capable of.”
“You know what she’s like,” I say. “Good luck getting her to change her mind once she’s set on something.”
“Hmm.”
“Are Daisy and Cal asleep?”
He nods. “Leah’s doing homework in her room.”
While Jess has been driving to Wollaton Park, I’ve been busy studying maps on my iPad.
I’ve been there with the kids dozens of times over the years but have never seen it as a place of danger before, a place to hide, to observe, to pursue.
It was 500 acres in all, including a lake, a golf course, multiple buildings around the main old house, and areas of thick woodland here and there, the whole park crisscrossed with footpaths and trails.
It was a lot of ground to cover; an easy place to hide. An easy place to lose yourself in.
My phone rings and I stab the screen to answer it, putting it on loudspeaker so Dom can listen in.
“I’m here.” My wife’s voice is quiet at the other end of the line. “In the main car park. Can’t see a gray Volvo.”
I check my watch: five minutes to eight.
“Is it busy?”
“Maybe three or four dozen other cars, but the light’s fading and there aren’t many street lights.”
Keeping the phone line open to Jess, I send a message to the unknown number to let them know we’re ready to hand over the backpack.
There is no response.
Eight o’clock comes and goes. My wife gives an intermittent running commentary on what she can see from the car park, from her position—down the hill from the imposing Elizabethan mansion with its high windows and ornate stone balustrades.
The natural history museum inside would have shut several hours ago but it seemed there were still a few dog walkers and late picnickers enjoying the warm spring evening.
“I’m going to get out and have a walk around, see what I—”
“No,” I say. “Not yet. Stay in the car for now and stay on the line.”
At ten past eight, my phone buzzes with another message.
Green roller bin, back of the courtyard café. Drop the bag in there and leave the park immediately. We are watching.
I forward it straight on to Jess, wishing more than anything that I could be there with her, that I could see for myself what was going on. To protect her.
“Talk to me, Jess.”
A rustle of static and the muffled crump of a car door closing.
“OK,” she says. “I’m heading up there with the backpack now.”
There is an interminable silence, punctuated only by the faraway sound of her shoes on the tarmac, the sound of the wind, a car engine passing in the distance. A creeping sense of unease crawls up my arms, the hairs rising as if chilled by a cold wind. Was she walking into a trap?
“I see it,” she says finally. “No one else around.”
“Nobody watching?”
Her breathing grows a little heavier, the exertion of walking up the incline. “It’s open ground on one side here,” she says. “But there are trees, bushes, another building, the main house. Like, a hundred places to hide. Putting the backpack in now.”
Over the phone line I can make out the scratching creak of a hinge, a momentary pause before the heavy plastic lid is dropped back into place.
“OK, it’s done,” she says, a nervous smile in her voice. “Feel like I’ve just dropped off a bag of ransom cash in a movie.”
“Who can you see, Jess?”
“No one. I can’t see anyone.”
“Someone is there,” I say. “Somebody must be watching you.”
“I’m going to loop around, take the long way back to the car. See what I can see.”
Dom says: “Be careful.”
She slips into silence again, only the intermittent sound of her breathing and the occasional dog barking in the distance to prove the line is still open.
I’m struck with an overwhelming sense that I should have gone with her, that it should be me taking this risk.
Instead, I’m blind, straining to hear what’s going on.
Only a mile away but it might as well be a hundred.
“All right,” she says. “I’ve gone back up and around the visitors’ center. Going to hang here for a minute, see if anyone comes along to pick up the bag.”
“Listen, Jess, I’ve got a bad feeling about this.” A hard bubble of anxiety is painful in my throat. “Why don’t you head back to the car now? Better than being caught in the open.”
“I’m all right,” she says. “Don’t stress, there’s still a few other people around. They’re not going to try anything.”
I look out the window, the evening sky softening into dusk.
It’s going to get harder for her to see what’s going on, and it’s not long before the gates will be shut for the night.
Unless… the person we’re waiting for is an employee, right there at the park?
A worker at the café, or the visitors’ center?
In which case they could wait until all members of the public are gone before retrieving the backpack.
I discuss the idea with Jess while she watches, and waits, answering me in clipped tones.
“Could be,” she says quietly. “But it would be high risk, bringing us so close to their workplace.”
She spends another five minutes waiting, observing from the shadows. A couple of people emerge into the courtyard but only to go to their cars and drive away. Neither of them goes near the roller bin.
“OK,” Jess says. “Plan B.”
“Stay on the line.”
She goes back to the car, narrating for our benefit as she drives slowly and conspicuously down the drive to the main gate. Back on Wollaton Road, she pulls into a side street and does a U-turn, positioning herself with a good view of the exit.
It’s not long before the silence is broken by her loud exclamation of surprise.
“Bingo!”
I lean toward my phone. “What is it?”
“Volvo estate, dark color, leaving now. Pulling out left.” The soft cough of an engine coming to life. “I’m on him… oh.”
“Can you see the driver?”
“I’m not sure…” She tails off again. “Just got a glimpse as it turned through the gate. It might be…”
“What?”
“It might have been a woman. But it was so quick, it’s hard to say. Can’t quite…”
“Have they seen you?”
“Don’t think so. I’m one car back; we’re heading west now. Steady as you like, doesn’t seem to be in any hurry.”
She narrates the journey as she goes, passing the Admiral Rodney pub on her right before a left turn onto Russell Drive into light traffic. A main street on a quiet weekday evening, then over a railway bridge and up to more traffic lights at a junction.
“Turning right onto Glaisdale Drive,” she says. For a long moment there is only the clicking of her indicator. “OK, now we’re going northeast, back toward Beechdale. Bit quieter here.”
“Keep your distance,” I say.
“Uh-huh. I’m going to try taking a picture of the number plate.” After a moment, she adds: “Ah, crap. Need to be closer.”
“What’s happening?”
“Turning right again now, looks like some kind of industrial estate. Just going to check if the AirTag is showing on the app.”
Dom and I both lean nearer the phone, willing her to break a long moment of silence.
“Jess?”
“Err, OK, yup, it looks like the app is working; it’s showing a location.”
“What’s the Volvo doing now?”
“He… ahh, sugar. Must have turned off into one of these little side roads while I was looking at my phone. It’s all warehouses and industrial units here.” She curses. “Where the hell did they go?”
“Be careful, love.”
“It’s a dead end here. It all goes up to the railway line,” she says. “I’m going to turn around and retrace my steps; it must have pulled in somewhere.”
Dom leans toward the phone’s speaker. “Why don’t you just leave it now, sis? We have the AirTag; you’ve done what you needed to do. Come back now.”
There is a long pause.
“Got him,” she says, almost to herself. “How the hell did he get that far ahead?”
“Don’t take any more risks, Jess—you’ve done enough.”
“He’s stopped at a junction. All right, he’s just moving away on a green light now; reckon I can catch up to him and get a picture of his number plate before it goes red again.”
The engine tone in the background rises higher as she accelerates to catch up to the Volvo—
Suddenly overlaid by the roar of another engine revving loud, a piercing screech of brakes almost blotting out my wife’s panicked voice.
“Oh crap—”
A thundering crash of metal against metal.
Then nothing.