Look Behind You (24 page)

‘But I didn’t have anywhere else to go.’

He gives a reluctant sigh, as if he’s just humouring the crazy woman so he can get rid of her. ‘Did you find anything at Sara’s that might help discover what you did next?’

I shake my head forcefully. ‘Not really. I rang the bank, which is the last call from her landline. I went to Waitrose at some point and came back with food. I slept there at least one night, because my stuff is in the bedroom and the bedclothes are rumpled.’ I suck in a breath and hold it as I try to formulate things in my mind. ‘Dr Traynor said my level of dehydration pointed to not drinking for no more than two days.’

‘Were there any signs of a struggle or break-in at Sara’s?’

‘No, I checked. The doors and windows were all locked and secured, and there were no signs of a fight or struggle.’

‘OK, so let’s work out a timeline of the missing days.’ He slides my notes closer to him and glances at them. ‘You were found on the road on the ninth of May. On the sixth, you went to Sara’s and probably stayed the night if the bedclothes were slept in. So whatever happened occurred somewhere between the seventh and ninth. Do you agree?’

‘Yes.’

‘Let’s have a hypothetical question, then.’ He taps his finger on the desk thoughtfully. ‘Instinctively, you already seem to be repeating what you did before. You’ve found out about Liam’s affair, and you’ve moved to Sara’s house. You’ve phoned the bank to change your address. So, what would you do next? Where would you go? Who would you talk to?’

‘I’ve thought about that so much, and nothing can point me in one direction or another. It’s all just a dead end after that.’

‘Think about it again, then,’ he says calmly. ‘Sara isn’t due to come home for another few months, so you could’ve stayed there for a while. Is that what you would’ve done, or would you have looked for a place of your own?’

‘I…I don’t know. I mean, Liam would’ve most likely known where I’d be, and I wouldn’t have wanted him to try to find me and change my mind. I probably would’ve looked for somewhere else to live. Somewhere he didn’t know about.’

‘Right, that’s a start. And you were still signed off work, so you wouldn’t have gone back there? Theresa said she hadn’t seen you, but would you have gone to speak to any of your other colleagues?’

Jordan is the only one I would’ve wanted to see, but he didn’t mention it. In fact, he said he wanted to call me but stopped himself because that’s what I wanted. ‘I don’t think so.’ I bite my lip and stare at the ceiling, as if it somehow has all the answers I need.

‘You’d already been food shopping, so you didn’t need immediate supplies.’

‘That’s right.’

‘What about your mobile phone? You said you broke it when you were leaving home. Would you have gone to buy another one?’

‘Maybe. It’s a possibility, but I didn’t see a new phone at Sara’s house.’

‘Did you find any receipts? Or anything else?’

‘I was only really looking for the sleeping tablets, and I was in a rush to talk to you, so I don’t know. There could be something there.’

‘I think we should go back to Sara’s and have a good look around.’ He stands up just as his mobile phone goes off. ‘DI Summers,’ he answers, listening for a few moments. ‘Actually, I’m with Chloe at the moment.’ He looks at me. ‘I’ll be there soon. I’ll bring her with me. OK, see you then.’ He hangs up. ‘That was Theresa. She says something has come to light I need to be aware of. She wants to show me something, and it might help if you’re there, too.’

24

Summers drives his police issue car to the college and parks next to Jordan’s classic VW Camper that he restored himself. As I get out, I look around for Jordan, hoping to catch a glimpse of him, but he’s nowhere to be seen. I lead the way to Theresa’s office, and Gillian blushes, acting tongue-tied in front of Summers. That’s how anxious I felt around the police only a few days ago. Now, I just think Summers doesn’t have a clue what he’s doing.

A pile of paperwork surrounds Theresa, reading glasses perched on the end of her nose, when we enter her office. She glances up and rises, extending her hand to Summers before giving me an embarassed nod. ‘How are you?’ she asks me, her pinched lips quirking up a fraction. It’s the closest thing I’ve seen to a smile on her face in years.

‘Not that great, actually.’

She avoids looking at me and turns to Summers. ‘Thank you for coming.’ She waves us into the two seats opposite her. ‘When you came to see me initially to ask about Chloe being off sick, you didn’t go into specific details about what had happened to her.’ She gives him a stern look, and I pity the poor students sent to her office for a telling off.

Summers shifts in his chair and has the good grace to look chastised. ‘We weren’t exactly sure what we were dealing with initially, but some further things have come to light.’

‘Yes.’ She glances briefly at me before turning to him again. ‘When I spoke to Chloe yesterday, she told me a rather shocking version of events.’

I don’t point out that she didn’t believe me and practically ordered me to resign.

‘This morning, when I had a routine staff meeting with Chloe’s stand-in tutor and informed her what Chloe had told me, she went as white as a sheet and immediately alerted me to this.’ She picks up a few pieces of paper stapled together from her desk and hands it to Summers. ‘You should read it.’

I want to read it over Summers’ shoulder or better yet, rip it out of his hands. What is it, and how does it relate to me? I give Theresa a questioning look, but her gaze darts immediately back to Summers, watching him while he reads. I squirm in my seat the whole time.

When he finishes, he looks solemn and hands it to me.

It’s a creative writing assignment I gave my students just before I went on sick leave after the miscarriage. I set them a title of
Darkness
, and they had to write a short story with that theme. The name of the student who’s written the story is at the top of the page. Chris Barnes.

The opening paragraphs describe a man who’s secretly stalking a woman. He watches her in her house, follows her when she goes out, notices things about her she probably doesn’t even see herself, like the way she fiddles with her small hooped earrings, turning them round and round absentmindedly. This man has done it before to other women, looking for the perfect one he thinks will love him back.

He waits for the right moment. She’s alone in the house. Her husband is working away. He’s an expert in picking locks and enters the house through the kitchen door. She’s asleep in bed and doesn’t hear a thing. He strikes her on the head with a small baton he brought with him. It knocks her unconscious, and he binds her hands and feet with rope and gags her before bundling her into his car parked on the driveway, the number plates already exchanged for fake ones. It’s the early hours of the morning, and the street is quiet. Everyone’s sleeping. No one sees anything. He takes her to his house in the middle of nowhere and leaves her in the basement.

The next few pages follow the stalker’s state of mind. He hasn’t decided what to do with the woman yet. Part of him wants to kill her straight away. The other part wants to keep her there forever, to worship her and show her just how much he loves her. He’s in turmoil. The first woman he took didn’t deserve to live. She whined and moaned, always begging him for her life, so he got sick of her quickly and killed her. The second one cracked immediately. Said she’d do anything to stay alive. Anything, if he promised he wouldn’t kill her. The third…well, the third is the woman in the basement.

He starts drinking whisky, and the more he drinks, the more confused he becomes, eventually falling into a drunken sleep. When he wakes up, she’s gone. Somehow, she’s managed to escape. Or was it all just a drunken fantasy?

As I read the last word on the page, the walls get narrower, closing in on me. I fall off the chair, and the floor rushes up to meet me.

25

‘Chloe? Chloe, are you OK?’ a voice says. Someone taps my hand lightly. ‘Can you hear me?’

My eyelids flutter open. I’m lying on the floor, Theresa kneeling beside me, holding my hand.

‘You went down with a hell of a bang. Are you OK?’

I reach up and touch the back of my head. It’s throbbing. ‘Ouch.’

‘You hit your head on the floor when you fell off the chair.’

I try to sit up, but she guides me back down again with one hand on my back.

‘No, stay there. Don’t move yet. I want to get you checked out by the nurse first.’

She’s probably only worried about being sued for an industrial injury. ‘I’m OK. Really.’ I blink once, twice, to clear my vision.

‘I want to make sure you haven’t got concussion. Are you cold? Do you want a blanket?’

‘Honestly, I’m fine. I feel much better now.’

The nurse, Elaine Waters, enters the room then. She’s in her early fifties, with kind eyes. ‘Oh, dear.’ She kneels on the other side of me. ‘How are you feeling?’

I’m sick of people asking me that lately. I want to scream at them all to shut up, but that would be ungrateful and mean. ‘I’m fine. There’s absolutely no need to make a fuss. I just fainted, that’s all.’

‘She hit her head, I think,’ Theresa says to Elaine.

‘But I’m
fine
,’ I insist, trying to sit up again.

‘You’re not feeling dizzy or sick?’ Elaine helps me up, because she can tell I’m not just going to lie there.

‘No. I know what concussion feels like, and I’m OK. Honestly.’ I attempt a smile.

Elaine slips a hand under my right arm while Theresa takes my left, and they help me up into the chair. ‘Did you have anything to eat today?’ Elaine peers at me with concern.

‘Yes. I had a big bowl of pasta.’

‘You look like you’re wasting away, Chloe.’ Elaine rubs her hand up and down my arm. ‘This must be an incredibly stressful time for you.’

Theresa gives Elaine the same stern look she gave Summers earlier, which reminds me that he isn’t in the room.

‘Where’s Summers?’ I don’t have time for sympathetic chitchat. I need to find out what’s going on.

‘He’s gone to speak to Chris.’

I want to rub the back of my head, soothe out the throbbing there, but I daren’t risk them trying to keep me here any longer. I stand up, steadying myself on the edge of Theresa’s desk. ‘I need to find out what’s going on. I mean his assignment…’ I shiver. ‘It’s so similar to what happened to me.’

Elaine guides me gently into the seat again. ‘Chloe, this is for the police to deal with. Now, let me get you some sweet tea and a biscuit.’

I know she’s just trying to be nice and helpful, but it’s not helpful at all. This is my life we’re talking about here. I can’t just sit helplessly and wait. Sweet tea and a bloody stupid biscuit aren’t going to help.

‘If you start feeling unwell, make sure you call me.’ Elaine smiles before exiting the office.

Theresa and I sit in silence. When she catches my eye, she looks away. I still don’t think she believes me. She’s just covering her arse by getting Summers involved now.

When Elaine returns, she sets a cup and saucer on Theresa’s desk in front of me, along with a plate of chocolate digestives, before disappearing again. I take the saucer, but my hand shakes and the tea spills onto it, leaving a brown moat of liquid around the bottom of the cup.

Theresa pulls out a wad of tissues from a box on her desk and passes them to me. ‘Here, use these.’

I put the saucer back on her desk, fold up the tissues, and place them under the cup. ‘Thanks.’ And then I burst into tears. Shoulder-shaking sobs wrack my whole body as I wrap my arms around myself and rock back and forth. It’s comforting, calming.

‘I don’t know what to say.’ A red flush creeps up Theresa’s neck to her cheeks.

I don’t, either. Yes, Chris is a big lad. He plays rugby and is stocky and powerful, but he’s only seventeen! He’s never given me a reason to think he’d harm me. In fact, he’s always been polite and friendly in class, and conscientious with his work. Helpful, even. Always the first to volunteer when I ask for someone’s help. I suspected some kind of schoolboy crush, but kidnapping me? Surely, he couldn’t be capable of that.

So, no, I don’t know what to say. Don’t know what to think. Can only cry at this point. So much has happened in the gap of memories missing from my head, I don’t even know how to process it all. I’m drained. Exhausted. I want to sleep for a hundred years. Or sleep and never wake up. That would probably be better. Then I wouldn’t have to deal with it. I wouldn’t have to think at all.

Summers comes back in the room a little while later. Before he can even say anything, I ask, ‘What happened? Did he admit to kidnapping me? Do you think it was him? Have you arrested him?’

He takes in my puffy eyes and tear-stained face before saying, ‘Chris was very shocked and visibility upset when I informed him that his story was incredibly similar to details you’d given us. He said you were one of his favourite teachers, and he was really sorry something bad had happened to you.’

‘Yes, but he would say that, wouldn’t he! If it were him, he’d deny it! And this can’t be just a coincidence, can it?’

Summers takes a breath. ‘He says he has an alibi for the time period you were—well, for the time period we’re missing.’