The Stranger on the Train (26 page)

“Oh. I see.” Emma was still recovering from the surprise. Rafe had never mentioned anything about a girlfriend. But then, why would he have?

The door to the police station clattered open. Rafe arrived out on the steps.

“Brrr,” he said, dramatically rubbing his hands together. “I have to tell you, I'm very happy I don't need to deal with that kind of shit anymore.”

Mike said: “You know, mate, you never should have left the job.”

“Yes I should. Best decision I ever made.”

“I don't think so.” Mike looked at him. “You were a loss to us.”

Rafe didn't respond to this. He said to Emma: “We were thinking of going for something to eat. Will you join us? There are a couple of decent old places on the river.”

Emma shook her head. “Would you mind if I went for a walk by myself?” she asked. “I'm grateful, really I am. But right now, I just need to clear my head and be on my own for a while.”

As soon as they'd left her, she went straight to her flat. From the cardboard box at the top of her wardrobe, she took her emergency credit card and driver's license. She wiped a film of dust off the license with her sleeve. The last time she'd driven a car was when she'd managed to pass her test, first go, in Bristol when she was eighteen. Her passport was still in her backpack, along with the map of France she'd bought with Rafe. She stuffed a few more items into the pack and left the flat again without looking back.

At Liverpool Street station, she took cash out of the ATM, as much as the machine would allow her in one go. The next train to Stansted was leaving in two minutes. She hurried to catch it.

When she was settled in a seat by the window, she sent Rafe a text.

“Tired. Going to have early night. Don't call.”

Then she put her phone back in her bag.

It felt wrong, lying to Rafe after all he'd done. But she didn't want to waste her energy arguing. Or get him into any more trouble.

She sat back, pushing her hair out of her eyes.

In a way, she supposed, she'd come to see Rafe as a sort of extension of her and Ritchie. He had come into her life almost at the very moment of Ritchie's disappearance. Ritchie was all they'd ever discussed in any great depth; he was the only thing that filled her mind, and, she'd assumed, Rafe's too. He'd even postponed his trip to South America to help her.

But Rafe had his own life, of course he had. Stupid of her not to have seen it before. With Mike on the scene, and now this Juliet person as well, Rafe was turning out to have a whole other world, filled with people and interests she knew nothing about.

Juliet. The name gave her a funny little thud. It was a lovely name. Classy and romantic. She was probably very beautiful. Rafe wouldn't settle for anything less. Well, he deserved it. Funny, just, that he'd never mentioned her at all. But then, why would he have? The topic had never come up. And it wasn't as if he'd ever acted in any way inappropriately. He'd been nothing but a good friend to her and Ritchie when they needed it most.

She looked out the window. London was behind them now. Scrubby fields spread beyond the tracks. Behind them, trees pointed at the sky: black, spiky pencil drawings on a pink background. Stansted airport was less than fifteen minutes away. Last stop before France.

Emma felt a rush of determination.

She'd been there before, and come away without him.

It would not happen again.

• • •

Her excitement had risen by the time she got to the airport.

“Next flight to Bergerac, please,” she said breathlessly, holding her passport out to the girl at the reservations desk. She waited, tapping her foot, as the girl keyed a couple of sentences into her computer.

“Sorry.” The girl made a regretful little moue. “You've just missed one.”

Emma nodded. “All right, then. I'll go on the next one.”

“No more flights to Bergerac this evening,” the girl said.

Emma couldn't believe it. Of course, Bergerac wasn't a major city, but she'd never thought of there being no more flights for the day. Now what was she going to do? How was she going to wait another whole night to get back to Ritchie?

The girl tapped another couple of keys.

“There's a flight first thing in the morning,” she said. “Seven fifteen. Is that too early for you?”

“No. No, it's not. I'll take it. Thank you.”

It was better than nothing. Emma handed over her credit card and took the precious plane ticket. She folded it into her passport and zipped everything carefully into the side of her pack. Then she stood there, looking around the concourse. Now what? She could hardly hang around here for the night. But she didn't fancy going all the way back to the flat again either.

She bought a sandwich from one of the coffee outlets and sat at the end of an empty row of seats to eat it. It was quiet there, and warm. She must be under a heating vent or something. By the time she'd finished the sandwich and crumpled up the wrapper, not one person had come to sit near her, or even walked past. Emma got up to poke the wrapper through the hole in a nearby bin. A lone passenger wandered in the distance, his footsteps echoing. The airport seemed to have quietened down for the night.

Someone had left an
Evening Standard
folded in half on top of the bin. Emma took it back to her seat. She opened it out, spreading it across the cushions to protect them from her shoes. Then she lay down sideways across three of the seats, using her backpack as a pillow. She got herself into a comfortable position, bunching the backpack up, moving it around so that a soft part of it ended up under her cheek.

She lay for a while, waiting for someone to come and tell her she couldn't sleep there. But no one did. The only sounds she heard were the muted
ding-dong
s
heralding the passenger announcements, followed by various unintelligible speeches in the soothing tones the announcers always seemed to use. It was comforting. Peaceful. It felt right to be here. Closer, in a way, to France than to London.

Emma closed her eyes.

• • •

She was the first passenger to board the next morning. The plane filled up behind her with couples and families, children dressed in shorts and sandals, with fleeces on top as they were still in England. The windows were squares of white, watery light. The air from the doors was crisp and cool.

The plane took off five minutes early. Emma felt a surge of control. She was in an aisle seat this time. The stewardess bumped her shoulder, rather painfully, with her metal trolley a couple of times as she passed. A woman leaned across the aisle to ask if she could borrow Emma's in-flight magazine. The man beside her knocked his laptop against a pile of papers, sending them slithering off his fold-down table onto the floor. Emma bent to help him to pick them up. When you were in the aisle seat, rather than the window, you had no choice but to be part of what was going on around you, instead of a little mote, floating by yourself in the clouds.

All of these people, united on the plane, suspended for a time from carrying out their real purpose.

And her, one of them, with her purpose too.

Very calm.

I know what I'm doing now.

• • •

At the car-hire desk in Bergerac, she had her driver's license out and the correct money ready before the man could even ask her.

The car was similar to the one she and Rafe had had the last time. Out of habit, Emma went to the passenger door. She was actually sitting in the seat, wondering where the steering wheel was, before she remembered that she should be on the other side. She got out again and swapped over, and spent a few minutes in the driver's seat, adjusting the mirrors, checking to make sure she knew where everything was. She folded open the map to the right page and located the green twisty line representing the road to St.-Bourdain. Then she pulled the seat belt around her and started up the engine.

“Keep the bitch in the ditch,” she said nervously to herself a few times as she drove out of the car park, reminding herself to keep on the correct side of the road.

The town of Bergerac was busier than it had been the last time. More people in the shops and on the pavements, more cars and bustle about the squares. Maybe because today was Tuesday instead of Sunday. Emma made her way cautiously through the traffic, only stalling once at a left turn, and was soon on her way to St.-Bourdain.

The weather was more changeable this time, the fields overhung by low gray clouds. Now that she was here, and so close, the house couldn't come quick enough. She refused to let herself think that the Hunts might no longer be there. Antonia had told Rafe they weren't moving for another week or so, but there was a high chance she was lying. Even with the DNA on their side, time was running out for the Hunt family. They must know that Emma wasn't going to give up. They must know she'd be back.
Come on, house, come on.
The green and yellow fields flew past. The tires hummed and swished on the road. In Emma's pack on the seat beside her, her phone began to ring.

Keeping her eyes on the road, Emma felt about in the pack with one hand. The ringtone grew louder, then softer, as the phone kept pushing into things. She got it out before the ringing stopped, and switched it to her left hand, so she could keep the steering wheel in her right.

“Hello?”

“Emma!” It was Rafe.

“What's happening?” Emma was suddenly tense. “Is the DNA back?”

“If it is, I haven't heard,” Rafe said calmly. “The police would have called you.”

“Oh.”

“Not that they'd have been able to reach you,” Rafe added. “I was trying you earlier. Your phone kept saying: ‘Out of range.'”

“Er . . . did it?”

There was a pause.

“You're there, aren't you?” Rafe said. “You're in France.”

“How did you guess?” Emma found she was smiling at the phone.

Rafe said something, swore or something, she couldn't make it out. She thought he might have been smiling too. But when he spoke again, it was in a serious voice.

“Emma, what are you doing?”

Emma concentrated on a tight bend in the road.

“All I know,” she said when the car had straightened out again, “is that I need to be near him. Not hundreds of miles away in another country.”

“Don't antagonize them, Emma. You need to wait for the DNA result. Your case will be a lot stronger then. You'll have the police on your side. Don't give the Hunts an excuse to disappear.”

“What if they already have?”

That threw him, she could tell.

He said: “They didn't seem in any rush when I was there.”

“Yeah, well, I doubt if they'd have filled you in on their plans.”

She was here. There was the sign for St.-Bourdain, tilted sideways into a hedge. Beyond it, the trees rose on the hill. The red roof of the house was just visible at the top. Emma slowed a short distance from the gates. She brought the car to rest in a lay-by behind the hedge. Were the Hunts still there? You couldn't tell just from looking at the roof. It wasn't as if they'd have covered the house in a dust sheet if they'd left.

“Where are you now?” Rafe asked.

“At the house.”

“Man.” He swore again.

Emma pulled up the hand brake. The engine idled, grumbling into the road. She turned the key and the engine shuddered into silence.

“I need to see him,” she said. “Anything else isn't an option. I need to be where he is.”

“I'm not going to talk you out of this, am I?”

Emma said simply: “What else can I do?”

There was a pause.

“Nothing,” Rafe said. “Nothing at all.”

“So, then.”

“Yeah.” A long, heavy sigh. “So, then. I see your point. So, all right, so good luck with your watch. But, Emma, please try to stay out of sight. Don't confront them on your own.”

“I know.”

When she'd hung up, she sat and waited. Gaps opened in the clouds. The light slanted through them in bright, straight lines, like ramps down to the fields.

If the Hunts were there, they'd have to show themselves sometime. She was going to wait here until they did. One more glimpse of him. And then, when she'd seen him, she'd . . . well. What would she do? Start up her car again, and go. Drive away from here. Sit in a room somewhere, and twiddle her fingers, and wait until the police got around to giving her a call.

Rafe had said to follow the rules. He'd said that she had to, because she had no choice. So she'd done as he suggested, and she'd played their game, and in the end it had got her nowhere. Rafe had been wrong.

The sun was out properly now. The car grew warm. Sweat trickled from under her arms. Emma rolled down the window and pushed her seat back from the steering wheel to give herself more space.

If the Hunts were out somewhere, they'd have to come back. If they were in, they'd have to go out. If they drove past her in a car, it might be hard to get a proper look at Ritchie. But perhaps they'd take him out for a walk. Even just onto the driveway, like last time. Every time an engine sounded on the road, she twisted to see if it was them, but it was always some man in a tractor, or a tourist people carrier, packed with children and tents.

She waited.

After what seemed a long time, movement flickered at the top of the drive. Emma sat up. A man, passing between a gap in the trees, carrying something in his arms. Antonia's husband? Emma leaned forward, narrowing her eyes. Too far to see his face. But he was carrying a box of some kind. Heavy looking. He had to use both arms. He went to a car and did something to the back of it, turning sideways to jab at it with his elbow. The boot of the car sprang open. The man loaded the box inside.

Emma thought hard. If that was Antonia's husband, what was he doing loading things into a car? She watched the man as he passed back behind the trees. She kept her gaze fixed on the exact branch where he'd disappeared, waiting to see if anyone else came out. Nothing.