Alice wasn’t one for ultimatums. She didn’t enjoy confrontation at the best of times, and she’d never dared give Ben an ultimatum before, but enough was enough! If she’d learned one thing from the last week it was that secrets – no matter how innocent – could have devastating consequences. It was time to stop allowing Ben to mess things up; if someone needed to step in and take control of their lives, then she was prepared to do whatever was necessary to achieve that.
The fact that she was now virtually home alone told her a lot about where Ben’s loyalties lay. Isabella and Faye were still sound asleep upstairs and thankfully hadn’t been woken by the argument that had ensued after she’d dropped the ultimatum.
‘Babe, you know I’d pick you a thousand times over,’ Ben had declared. ‘It’s you and me first every time. But …’
That was the moment she’d dreaded. There hadn’t needed to be a ‘but’. He could just as easily have left things as they were, shown Dave the door and allowed them to move on with their lives.
‘I can’t just feed Dave to the wolves. He’s my brother and I owe him more than you’ll ever know.’
He’d quickly backtracked, maybe sensing her rising anger, or maybe seeing her glowering cheeks.
‘I’m not siding with him, but look at the state of him; he’ll get barely a hundred yards before he can’t go on, and then how would that look? Him being anywhere near our place is as bad as him being physically found here. The police will see that we were involved in his absconding.’
She hadn’t thought that far ahead, and it had troubled her slightly that he’d been weighing up such angles.
‘Let me drive him somewhere safe. Yeah? Somewhere far away from here, to give him half a chance to sort shit out. Don’t forget that the only reason we were at Burley services was to fix the mess your stepbrother caused. If Scott wasn’t a junkie, he’d never have asked Dave for help, he wouldn’t have fucked up and shot at the dealer last Saturday, and he wouldn’t have been busted at the airport. None of this is Dave’s fault, not really.’
She hadn’t been prepared to let Dave off that easily. ‘He could have told Scott to get himself cleaned up, or to get some help. Nobody made Dave set him up with a new dealer.’
‘Give me an hour,’ Ben had continued. ‘I’ll take him somewhere he can sort out his injuries, and we won’t speak again of this night.’
That had been forty minutes earlier, and there was still no sign of Ben returning. He’d left his mobile at home so that if anyone later tried to trace his GPS they’d find he was here the whole time.
As Alice snuggled on the sofa, the television on mute in the background, she wrapped her arms around her knees, pulling her legs closer. She had no idea what time it was, but it was pitch-black outside the French doors, with only a shard of moonlight to show that there was a garden somewhere in the abyss.
After some time to cool down, she’d decided she wasn’t angry that Ben had agreed to drive Dave away from the house – it showed loyalty to his friend and it showed consideration of her feelings. At the same time, she’d rather he was here with her now instead of risking his neck. For all she knew, the police could have picked the two of them up by now. Without his mobile, she had no way of knowing what was happening.
She was tempted to head up to bed – she was certainly tired enough to sleep – but she wanted to be awake when Ben got back, as it was important that they talk before either turned in for the night. Her father had taught her not to go to bed on an argument, and she also wanted reassurance that there would be no further run-ins with the law. Her life in the past week had become a real-life soap opera, and she didn’t want that additional stress. She deserved her own happily ever after.
Trying to picture a future with Ben and a young family, her thoughts returned to the lost life of Kerry Valentine – where was her happily ever after? Snatched away by a man Alice barely knew. Dave had said Abdul was the one who’d sourced the vacated bar for them, and she was sure he’d said he was an estate agent, so obviously he was someone relatively familiar with the town and surrounding area. Did that possibly mean he’d have known somewhere to hide Kerry’s body after what he’d done? Hazelton had said the body hadn’t been dumped in the river immediately, which meant Kerry’s body had to have been stored somewhere. Somewhere the smell of a rotting corpse wouldn’t be noticed. Alice couldn’t begin to imagine what kind of place that was, but if anyone would have an idea, an estate agent probably would. And, hadn’t Abdul also supplied the rope they’d tied up Ben with? She hadn’t thought anything of it at the time, but it seemed a little convenient that he’d just happened to find rope lying around – surely it was more likely that he’d taken it with him.
She pictured their meeting at the wedding – his dark skin, goatee beard, and shaved head, how warm his hand had felt when he’d shaken hers, how he avoided eye contact with her as he’d said he would go to the police station with Dave to offer the police a witness statement. She should have known something suspicious was going on then.
At least he would get his comeuppance now. Even though he and Ben had been close at university, the fact that she hadn’t met him until the wedding suggested the two of them weren’t as close as they once were.
Another memory flashed in her mind. Ben and Dave’s argument earlier: have you spoken to Abdul yet? Is everything still in place?
Did that conversation have anything to do with Abdul being arrested? What was it that was still in place?
Standing, she moved across to the French windows and rested her back against the glass. This was getting her nowhere. She didn’t know enough about Abdul to be certain of his motives for killing Kerry. Had he gone after her and tried to have sex? Had they somehow become embroiled in a fight? Did he know her before that night? Was it possible he was one of her regular clients? She desperately wanted answers, but she knew that in all likelihood she would never really know what had happened, and that made her feel like she was letting down Kerry and Finn.
The living room carpet was suddenly bathed in white light as the security cameras in the garden were tripped. Spinning and pressing her face against the window, Alice searched for any sign of an animal that could have triggered the sensor, but what she saw was a figure in a wide-brimmed hat emerge from the trees at the far side of the garden and race forward across the dry lawn.
Alice froze. She knew she should get away from the imminent danger, but the signal from her brain to her legs was blocked by sheer terror. The only way this man could have emerged from those trees was if he’d scaled the tall fence, or … if he had been there all along. He was clutching something in his hand and was making a beeline straight towards her – he must have seen her backlit by the lamps in the living room. Only the French doors and twenty feet separated them, and Alice could now see there was definitely something familiar about the figure beneath the hat. With only ten feet to go, though, two of the guards in black emerged and rugby tackled the figure to the ground.
They’d underestimated just how strong the man was, and how determined he was to get the letter in his hand to the intended recipient. He rolled over onto one of the guards, using his elbows to fight off the guard immediately on top of him, and as the two men in black loosened their grip, the figure was suddenly back on his feet, stumbling across the patio towards her. As he drew closer, Alice desperately wanted to peel herself away, but her feet wouldn’t budge.
Suddenly he was pressed against the outside frame of glass, but the two guards caught up with him again and slammed him into the window. In doing so, they knocked the hat from the man’s head. Alice’s eyes widened as her colleague Andrew’s large eyes met hers.