I don’t like to think about what might have happened to George if I had left it up to Webster to decide what to do with him. George had withdrawn completely after my last question and nothing – begging and coaxing on my part, bored threats on Webster’s – would persuade him to talk again. He looked very ill, his condition deteriorating by the minute. It might have been reluctance to talk that was making him silent, or else he was just too weak to answer any more questions. Eventually, Webster lost patience. He dragged me to my feet and into the hallway.
‘This is pointless.’
‘I know.’
He was standing in front of me, a little too close. ‘What do you make of what he told you so far?’
‘He hasn’t said much.’
‘He said the man who found him had his mugshot. Makes me think it might have been a police officer.’
And you’re a little too keen to make me notice that, I thought. I shouldn’t have been surprised that he wanted to make me wary of the police. He wanted me dependent on him, and him only.
‘You could be right. But why did they want him?’
‘Because he looks like me,’ Webster said, as if it was obvious. ‘If you want to frame me, you have to put me at the scene of the crime. They found someone in the files who matched my description and they went and got him.’
‘That’s assuming they had access to the Met’s files.’
‘Yeah. It is.’
‘Do you have access to those files?’
I know Webster thought about lying to me, but in the end he couldn’t stop the smile from spreading across his face. ‘Maybe.’
‘So there’s no reason to think it was a police officer. It could have been someone like you. George would have spotted a cop a mile away.’ George started coughing and I winced. ‘We really need to take him to hospital.’
‘Not keen, sorry.’
‘John.’
‘I can’t take him to hospital. I’ll get arrested.’
‘Well, you can’t leave him here! He’ll die.’
‘Of course I won’t leave him here.’ Webster hit exactly the right note of wounded outrage, which was how I knew he was lying.
‘I’m not going anywhere until I know he’s safe.’ I folded my arms, as if that would make a difference. ‘We need to get him out of here. We can take him to a public place and call an ambulance if you really won’t take him into the hospital yourself.’
He groaned. ‘That just seems like a lot of hassle and risk, Ingrid. Why don’t you leave it up to me to sort it out?’
‘Because I don’t trust you. Obviously.’ I jerked a thumb in the direction of the kitchen. ‘Is that window really the only way in and out?’
‘I could probably unlock the back door.’ He sounded sulky.
‘You could have done that all along, couldn’t you? There was no reason to make me climb in through the window.’
‘It was more secure that way,’ Webster protested. ‘And I didn’t want George to get any ideas about leaving without my permission. Watching you fall off the sink was just a little bonus.’
Prising the metal screen off the back door proved to be the easy part of getting George out. I tried to wake him but he was lost in his own misery, muttering to himself with his eyes rolled so far back in his head that the whites were showing. He smelled dreadful and careful investigation revealed that the source was his foot. It was bound with a filthy bandage. The limp I’d noticed on the CCTV had an actual physical cause, it seemed.
‘How are we doing?’
‘He’s unconscious.’ I looked up at Webster who was looming over us. ‘I’m really worried about him.’
‘Fine.’ Webster bent and picked him up, sleeping bags and all. ‘You bring the heater and the vodka. Remember the torch. We don’t want to leave any trace of ourselves behind.’
He carried George out of the room with very little effort although the other man was the same height as him and should have had the same build if he had been properly nourished. It was a useful reminder to me that John Webster was stronger than he looked – strong enough to do more or less whatever he liked. Trusting him was like keeping a great white shark as a pet.
I got on with clearing away the evidence that we’d been there, playing the torch over the bare floorboards. I was complicit now in the kidnapping, even if I hadn’t been before. I might not have wanted or asked Webster to imprison George, I thought unhappily, but I hadn’t stopped him. I hadn’t refused to question the homeless man. I had taken advantage of the situation he created for me. I thought of myself as a good person, but when it came down to it, I had gone along with Webster’s plan while it suited me to do so.
‘All right?’ Webster met me in the kitchen and relieved me of the shopping bag that was clanking with bottles.
‘Yes.’
‘You don’t seem all right.’
I turned my face away from him. He was the last person I wanted to talk to about what I had done, and what I was doing now. If I wasn’t careful I would end up just like him. ‘What’s the plan?’
‘He’s bedded down in the back of the van.’
‘The back,’ I repeated. ‘But—’
‘I don’t want him in the front because one, he stinks and two, he’s not well enough to sit upright, okay? It’s not up for discussion.’
‘Right.’
‘I’m going to take you to East Croydon train station. You can catch a million trains from there. One of them will get you home.’
My first reaction was that there wouldn’t be any trains in the middle of the night, but when I checked my watch I realised it wasn’t actually that late. There would be trains, and people. I would need to act normally, which meant I needed to pull myself together.
‘Okay. Where are you taking George?’
‘Somewhere a long way from here.’ Then he relented: ‘I’ll make sure he’s looked after, all right? I need to take him far enough that no one traces him back to here, and to us.’
Us. Webster and I were bracketed together now. I shivered, but he didn’t notice.
‘I’ll find a CCTV blackspot and drop him off. Then I’ll call him an ambulance. I’ll make sure they come and look after him but I’m not going to get directly involved.’
‘Fair enough.’
‘Don’t worry.’ He dragged me into his arms and held me for a moment, burying his nose in my hair and inhaling deeply. I fought, silently and desperately, but I couldn’t get free. He behaved as if he hadn’t even noticed, loosening his grip in his own sweet time and smiling at me. ‘I’ll make sure none of this comes back to you. I’m here to help you, not harm you.’
‘Let go of me.’
‘Can’t you be nice, for once?’ Webster looked hurt. ‘A little civility isn’t too much to ask, is it?’
‘I don’t like it when you maul me.’
‘A small price to pay for my help, I’d have thought,’ he said evenly. ‘But we’ll see. You might have a reason to be more grateful soon.’
‘What does that mean?’
Something like sympathy softened his face and it was unsettling; I knew he didn’t have the capacity for it. ‘You’ll understand eventually. Now go and get in the van. We’ve been here for long enough and I need to lock up.’
Once I got out of the van, in a dark access road five minutes’ walk from East Croydon station, it seemed impossible that the previous couple of hours had really happened. I walked to the station and bought a ticket with cash, on Webster’s instructions. He had given me a hat to wear – a black woollen hat with a ridiculous furry pompom on the top – and watched while I tugged it down over my hair.
‘There. Now you look completely unlike yourself. You’ll probably change at Victoria – you can go straight up to King’s Cross on the Victoria line. Leave the hat at Victoria somewhere. Take it off before you get to the main station concourse. Go straight to the Underground – don’t hang around.’
‘I hate the Underground,’ I had said, all of my attention focused on the jolts and bumps of the journey. I hadn’t seen George since the house but Webster had promised me he was all right – but then a promise from Webster was worthless, and I knew that … and he hadn’t made a sound so far, but then again he had been unconscious, more or less … my thoughts squirrelled around and around unhappily.
‘On this occasion, take the Tube.’ Webster had gripped my jaw hard, twisting my face around so I had to look at him. ‘Act as if you have a perfect right to be there. Behave normally. If you usually stand, stand. Don’t make eye contact with anyone but don’t avoid it either. Forget what you’ve been doing this evening.’
Impossible, I had thought and hadn’t said. But as the train slid into place in front of me and the doors opened, it felt like an ordinary journey after all. On autopilot I sat in a rear-facing seat, ignoring the other passengers who were scattered through the carriage. At Victoria I followed Webster’s instructions exactly, pausing by a bench and putting my hat down as if I needed free hands to get out my phone. Then I wandered away, apparently lost in what was on the screen in front of me. No one called me back. No one came after me.
No one even noticed I was there.
Because I had been told to, I went down to the Underground and used my bank card to tap through the barriers instead of buying a ticket, flagging up where I was and where I was going if anyone cared to check. Being in Victoria station, Webster had explained, was not a crime. It was a positive help to be traceable, if anyone came looking to see where I had been and what I’d been doing. Along with hundreds of others I moved through the tiled tunnels, not hurrying, not walking too slowly. I got on the first Victoria Line train that came and stood in the centre of the carriage, eyes fixed on the ground, listening to the announcements so I knew where I was. Green Park first, then Oxford Circus where half the carriage got off and the same number of passengers got on. Warren Street. Euston. King’s Cross, where I stepped off the train and walked along the featureless passages for what felt like hours before I finally made it to the ticket hall of the station itself, and then up the escalators to the open air.
Emerging from the darkness, I realised that I was tired and absolutely starving. I stopped at a stall and bought a massive burger. Ordinarily I would have waited to get home before I ate it but there was no question of that: I stood near the stall and took huge, inelegant bites of it until it was gone.
The walk back to the flat was a lot easier having refuelled. I went quickly, chilled by the wind and tiredness. My bones were aching. What I wanted was a hot shower, my favourite pyjamas and an early night, I decided.
What I got was nothing of the kind.
I turned the corner to walk towards the gate and stopped. A police car was drawn up just outside the gate, with an officer leaning against the side of it, his head bent to listen to his radio. A second officer stepped through the gate holding a notebook. She glanced left and right casually, saw me and stiffened.
‘Ingrid? Ingrid Lewis?’ She started walking towards me at a brisk pace, as fast as you can go without actually jogging. Her colleague straightened up and fell into step behind her.
Run, a voice in my head said.
Too late. I was always too late.
I walked forward to meet them on legs that felt detached from the rest of me. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘We need to talk to you, Ingrid. We need to bring you to a police station for an interview.’
Incredible that they knew about George Reese already, I thought, and that they knew where to find me. I dragged a word out in response.
‘Why?’
‘There’s been an incident.’
‘What kind of incident?’ I felt a bolt of pure terror run through me. ‘What’s happened?’
‘A friend of yours has been involved in an altercation of some kind. I don’t know the details, I’m sorry.’ She had a confident manner, and a clear voice, as if she was used to people not listening because they were lost in shock. ‘His name is Mark Orpen.’
‘Mark? But what’s actually happened to him? Is he okay?’
It was the big male policeman who answered. ‘Someone beat him up. He’s in hospital.’ And as if I wasn’t looking sufficiently upset for his liking, he added, ‘In a coma.’