The Catch (7 page)

He sighed. From downstairs came the sound of the toilet flushing, then Joan’s heavy footsteps on the kitchen floor. A burst of music from the radio, before she lowered the volume. Any second now the alarm on his mobile phone would be trilling—

His mind jumped back to
radio
.

TV.

News
.

He sat up too quickly, making his head spin again. Thought about skipping a shower, then decided he shouldn’t depart from his normal routine. Trudging into the bathroom, he automatically locked the door, then with a shudder he flipped the bolt back, barely able to comprehend how it would feel to have that mundane power taken away from him.

There was a sour smell in the room, a couple of nasty stains on the floor where Louis had been less than diligent in cleaning up. Dan found a bottle of detergent and used a wad of toilet paper to remove the mess. Another foretaste of prison life: mopping up other people’s bodily wastes.

By the time he had shaved, showered and dressed, it was almost seven o’clock. Descending the stairs, holding fast to the nonchalant expression he had perfected in the bathroom mirror, Dan felt he was beginning the first day of a new life, in an unwelcome new skin.

The skin of a liar, a coward, a killer.

****

As their surrogate mother, Joan prided herself on preparing breakfast for ‘her lads’. Somehow Louis was able to get away with declining, grabbing an apple or a cereal bar because he was invariably running late. Thus it fell to Dan to submit to a proper breakfast, knowing it gave shape and purpose to the start of his aunt’s day, even though he would have been happier with toast or a pot of yoghurt.

Joan didn’t seem to notice anything untoward as they exchanged greetings. She indicated the mug of coffee already waiting for him, then went back to monitoring the bacon under the grill.

‘Ready in a jiffy.’

‘Lovely. Thanks.’

‘Louis said not to wake him till nine.’

She sounded doubtful, but Dan shrugged. ‘It’s up to him to know his own timetable.’

‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘Yes, it is.’

The radio was on at a low volume, tuned to the BBC. Dan couldn’t change it to a local station without arousing suspicion. He took his coffee into the lounge, put the TV on and went searching for local bulletins. Joan came in as he caught the tail-end of a weather forecast.

‘More rain, likely as not,’ she remarked. With some good-natured tutting about poor table manners, she had brought his plate in on an ancient wooden tea tray.

Dan had dreaded this moment, having to fake his eagerness to consume a plate piled high with scrambled egg, bacon, mushrooms and toast. In fact, his stomach gave an urgent grumbling at the sight of it, and he realised he was starving.

While he ate, he switched back and forth between the two main channels and eventually saw both segments of local news. There was no mention of any hit-and-run in West Sussex; mostly it was the same old bureaucratic shenanigans and travel chaos.

Once or twice Joan popped in and stood, dishcloth in hand, watching the screen with her head tilted to one side. Clicking her tongue, she would issue one of her customary pronouncements: usually ‘Shocking, the way people treat each other,’ or ‘I don’t know what the world’s coming to, I really don’t.’

When Dan carried his plate out, having devoured every last scrap, she said, ‘I do hope your car starts all right.’

It threw him for a second. Somehow he’d managed to forget all about the Fiesta. There was no way he could use it in daylight. As he pictured them now, the dents were practically an imprint of Hank O’Brien’s body.

‘Oh, er, no.’ He smothered his confusion in an air of weariness. ‘I don’t want to risk it cutting out on me. I’ll walk.’

Joan nodded, but went on gazing at him. She was his dad’s older sister, short, grey-haired and comfortably plump. But there were times, especially when she frowned, that he could see enough of a family resemblance to imagine how it might be to have his father standing here now, regarding him with the same tender concern.

‘Daniel, dear ... is everything all right?’

‘Fine. Just had a bad night.’ He took a glass from the cupboard and ran the cold tap. ‘You haven’t seen my blue fleece, have you?’

‘I think I put it in your room. Unless it’s still in the ironing pile ...’ Mumbling to herself, she made for the dining room, where newly washed clothes were stacked on a chair ready to be ironed or put away.

As soon as she was gone, Dan rooted around in the odds-and-sods drawer and found the spare key for the garage. He slipped it into his pocket and took a sip of water. Joan returned, looking mystified.

‘Are you sure it’s not upstairs?’

‘Maybe. I probably just didn’t notice it.’

With a chuckle, she said, ‘You men are all the same. Can’t see what’s right under your nose.’

Dan struggled to maintain his smile, imagining how the same feeble defence might be offered up in court.

Cate spent a restless night trying to sleep, one minute too hot, then too cold. Even with an entire king-size bed at her disposal, there never seemed to be enough space to stretch out and relax. It already worried her how often she ended up sleeping diagonally. If the opportunity for another serious relationship came along, she wasn’t sure how she’d feel about relinquishing half the space she had at present.

She feared that this was how it began, the conversion to permanent spinsterhood – with an unwillingness to compromise on the little day-to-day preferences.

Bloody Martin. She had turfed him out with a promise, made under duress, that she would call him in a day or so, once she’d had a chance to let the news sink in. It was his plaintive declaration that had done her in.
I’m not sure if I’m having a kid with the right woman
.

But what did he mean by that, exactly? That he wasn’t committed to the relationship with Janine? That he regretted running out on Cate, and wished he was having a child with her?

If so, he certainly won top marks for irony, not to say bare-faced cheek. This was the same Martin who’d told her, time and time again, that he wasn’t ready for the demands of parenthood: ‘I don’t want the little brats interfering with my lifestyle.’

And when she had caught him shagging Janine, he’d had the temerity to blame the affair on Cate. In his view, their marriage had soured because of her unrelenting desire to have children, which had compelled him to seek relief elsewhere. As he had put it: ‘We want different things, that’s all.’

‘Yeah,’ she had agreed. ‘I want a child, and you want to act like one.’

****

And now this. Cate told herself it was the hypocrisy that upset her most, but the doubts had come creeping up on her during the night. The truth was, she didn’t just feel angry; she felt jealous. Her longing to be a mother was as powerful as ever, but there was precious little sign of a prospective father on the horizon.

And that prompted a truly ghastly thought: perhaps she didn’t just envy Janine because of the baby growing inside her – but because Janine had Martin and Cate didn’t. Was it possible that she still had feelings for her ex-husband?

‘No chance.’ Cate said it aloud, as she lay defiantly sideways in bed. Sod the next occupant, whoever he might be. They’d get separate beds.

The brooding meant she was awake earlier than normal. Enough time for a run, if she wanted. It was only half an hour down to the Hove lawns and back. Burn off that eleven o’clock pastry in advance.

Yeah, right
. Better to go into work early and steal a march on the day. There was a huge backlog of non-urgent emails in her Inbox, all the routine stuff she ignored until it reached critical levels.

But that plan was thwarted, too. Her phone rang as she was brushing her teeth. Much as she’d like it to be Robbie, finally apologising for last night’s fiasco, there was little chance of him calling at this hour.

She had a good memory for numbers, and this one wasn’t at all familiar. She answered with a cautious: ‘Hello?’

‘Good morning,’ said a cheery, well-spoken male voice. It sounded quite rich and appealing, Cate thought.

‘Who is this?’
A wrong number, but maybe I should ask what you look like
.

‘Detective Sergeant Thomsett of Sussex Police. May I ask who I’m talking to?’

‘Uh, Caitlin Scott,’ she said, her voice wobbling on a note of alarm. ‘How did you get my number?’

Silence for a second or two. Then he said, ‘I’d rather explain that face to face.’

****

Dan left the house at a quarter to eight. It was a still morning, warmer than of late, with only a few wisps of cloud in a sky criss-crossed with slowly dissolving vapour trails. A fresh-washed day, full of promise and opportunity. He ought to have been strolling down Ditchling Road with nothing on his mind but his plans to open a coffee shop and be his own boss.

Instead he kept reminding himself to savour every precious moment of freedom, but it was impossible while he was fretting about how and when that freedom would be taken away.

The spectre of incarceration had him pondering Robbie’s advice. Forget it happened. Hank was a nasty bit of work. Nobody would miss him.

But was that true? Robbie had seemed sure of it, but then Robbie would say whatever it took to convince you to see things his way. Hank might have a partner, although the fact that he’d come on to Cate suggested not. And children, maybe, though it was a fair point that they’d probably be grown up. Older, at least, than Dan was when—

When the same thing happened to me
.

Eager for a diversion, he pulled out his phone and dialled Robbie’s number. Tough luck if it woke him.

Robbie answered with a bleary, ‘What?’

‘Day off, is it?’

‘Gotta go in later.’

‘We need to discuss what happened last night.’

‘Nothing happened last night. Nothing worth talking about
on the phone
, if you get my drift?’

Dan frowned. Surely it was paranoia to believe their call would be monitored by the security services – MI5 or GCHQ or whoever it was?

Then it occurred to him that Robbie had a far shrewder concern: a fear that Dan was recording the call, trying to entrap him.

‘So let’s meet up.’

‘Yeah. I’ll ring you later.’

Dan sighed, put the phone away and continued down the hill. He pictured the country road they’d driven along, now bathed in a soft morning light, farmers and postmen and early commuters making their regular journeys. How soon before a driver, perhaps in the cab of a truck or high on a tractor, spotted something that didn’t look quite right?

Once found, the body would tell its own tale. Hit and run. A pedestrian knocked down by a vehicle and left to die in a ditch.

You were driving, Dan. Not me
.

That was undeniable. Even though Robbie had grabbed the wheel, Dan couldn’t prove that, and no one would believe it for a second. So if he was going to hand himself in, it had to be with the certain knowledge that he, and he alone, would be taking responsibility for what had happened.

As if emerging from a daze, Dan found he had reached the busy Fiveways intersection. He paused, gazing absently at the small parade of shops across the road. An ideal location for his dream cafe, this: an affluent part of Brighton, with plenty of small commercial properties to rent or buy ...

Except that it was never going to happen. The banks wouldn’t lend to him and neither would Robbie’s mum. Dan’s future had been precarious enough before last night. Now it lay in tatters. Even the most lenient of sentences would put his ambitions beyond reach for ever.

And without the business there was little prospect of owning property, of getting married. Everything had rested on Dan and Hayley striking out on their own.

But it didn’t have to be this way. Did it?

He stared at the shops, a row of recycling bins lined up outside the Co-op; at the cars queuing impatiently at the lights, the drone of their engines like white noise. There was a definite moment when he felt the tension ease, and he understood that in the depths of his primitive subconscious mind, programmed over millennia for survival against the harshest of odds, a crucial decision had been made and would not be reversed.

He wasn’t going to take the punishment on Robbie’s behalf.

He wasn’t going to own up to the crime.

Robbie would have gone back to sleep but for the text he received while he was playing stress counsellor to Dan. It said:
Jimmys in cab 2 gatwck 4 day at haydock & overnite. Cum c me pleeese! Xx

Bree.

Robbie sighed. His head said no, he had better things to do. Another hour’s sleep, a decent breakfast to soak up last night’s booze, and then some actual work. He had calls to make, clients to sweet-talk, a new property to view somewhere near Lewes.

He was still lying there, debating it, when she texted again:
Like NOW hun. Im wet 4 u xxx

At which point another part of his anatomy made the decision for him. He tried to argue against it, because it wouldn’t just be sex. There was a power play at work here. He’d been guilty of indulging her, especially while he was trying to rustle up the three grand to pay O’Brien. But now that cash was back where it belonged, stashed in his floor safe, so he had no reason to waste time with Bree and her stupid bloody schemes.

But it was no good. On matters like this, rational thought was no match for his libido. He shot back a text:
20 mins. Stay wet
. Then dragged himself out of bed to answer the call from his bladder, his mood lifted by a glimpse of sunshine through the blinds: the first morning in ages which hadn’t begun with mist or rain. Maybe it was an omen.