AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I’m saying, what if someone killed Gabe not to punish him, but to punish YOU? And now they’re set on ruining your life. And the only person I can think of who’s sick enough to do that…”
The message trailed off, but I had gone completely cold, because I knew what she wasn’t saying now.
The only person she could imagine deliberately ruining my life, the only person I could think of who would want to do that, was Jeff Leadbetter.
For a long moment I didn’t reply. I just sat there, trying to process Hel’s suggestion. It couldn’t be true. It couldn’t. And yet… could it? For six months after we broke up, Jeff had made my life a nightmare. Speeding tickets that mysteriously appeared from nowhere. Dropped calls in the night. A two a.m. drug bust at my old flat, in Hackney, with six armed officers battering the door down and storming in while I slept. Anonymous tip-off, love was all the explanation I’d ever got, but I’d known the truth. Jeff. And if I’d been a different kind of person, a more reactive one, or even—God forbid—someone who still enjoyed the occasional joint or bit of coke, the way I had when I was younger, I could have ended up in jail or even dead, if things had gone really wrong.
The middle-of-the-night drug bust was the worst, and it had tailed off after that, going back to silent phone calls and the occasional “random” vehicle search. Finally, when I’d met Gabe and moved in with him, it had stopped completely. Naively, I had assumed that Jeff was frightened of Gabe, or had moved on.
But what if he hadn’t? What if he had simply been biding his time, waiting to punish both of us?
It was fantastical. But then so was every other theory I had come up with.
My phone pinged again.
“Jack? Are you there?”
“Yes, I’m here,” I typed. “Thinking.”
“Thinking what?”
Thinking her theory made no sense, was the honest answer. Jeff? A cop? Staging my husband’s murder just to punish me for some long-ago breakup? It seemed ridiculous—not least because I had seen him at the station right around the time Gabe must have died. But he was the only person I could think of with a grudge against us, and somehow, even as my logical brain came up with a hundred reasons why it couldn’t be true, a question kept whispering treacherously at the edge of my subconscious. Was it my fault? Had Gabe died because of me?
I was sitting there, staring at the screen, trying to think what to say to Hel, when a warning flashed up. 15% battery.
Shit. I had completely forgotten that with no electricity, I wouldn’t be able to charge my phone.
“Listen, my battery’s running low,” I typed out to Hel. “I’d better go. But I love you.”
“Love you too,” she messaged back. “Stay safe, okay?”
“I will xx”
There was a brief pause while I waited to see if she would message back, but she didn’t, and in the end I shut down the phone and simply lay there, staring into the firelit darkness, trying to process what she had said. The more I thought about it, the more unlikely it seemed—Jeff was a dickhead, sure, but he wasn’t a killer. And more to the point, he was a dickhead with an alibi—one I could attest to myself.
But when I closed my eyes, trying to fall asleep, it wasn’t with Hel’s words echoing in my ears, it was Jeff’s own, the words he had hissed at me as I packed my bag that final day, the day I had left him for good. I’ll make you regret this, you stupid cunt. If I can’t have you, no one can.
Back then, I was sure he hadn’t really meant it. I’d put it down to hot air, empty words spoken by a man with an outsize ego and an inability to accept rejection. But now… well, now Gabe was dead. And I wasn’t sure of anything anymore.
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 8 MINUS FOUR DAYS
It was very, very cold when I awoke, and for a while I just lay there, huddled on the sofa, trying to work out what time it was. The fire had died down in the night and was now white ash and black cinders in the grate. I could see my breath every time I exhaled.
I had fallen asleep fully clothed, with a crocheted woolen blanket wrapped around me, which now seemed like a good decision. I might be cold and stiff, but at least I didn’t have to get dressed.
What I did need, however, was to pee—and in spite of my ignoring it for as long as I could, the pain in my pelvis at last forced me upright. It wasn’t just my bladder that hurt. Everything ached. My side where the puncture wound throbbed every time I tried to roll over on the couch. My thigh muscles from slogging through the dunes the day before. My feet from walking six miles on London pavements to Cole’s office, and then three miles back in the opposite direction to Charing Cross. Even my fingers were stiff and sore—probably from clenching my fists to try to stop my hands shaking whenever I passed a police officer or a CCTV camera.
I felt like an old lady, every joint complaining as I pulled myself painfully to my feet, the blanket wrapped around my shoulders against the chilly morning air.
The bathroom was a little lean-to with a corrugated iron roof and was, if it was possible, even colder than the main room. I winced as my bare skin made contact with the freezing toilet seat, and then sat for a long time, my face in my hands, trying to work out what to do.
What I wanted to do was phone the insurance company, put on my pen testing hat, and try to inveigle some information out of them about that policy, even if it was just a time and date for when it was set up. But I couldn’t do anything until my phone was charged. Everything hinged on that.
Which meant the first thing I had to sort out was the electricity.
The second… I had to try, somehow, to figure out if Jeff Leadbetter was behind all this. I just had no idea how to go about that, let alone prove it.
Two coffees later, and with a small fire crackling in the grate, I felt a little less cold and a lot less hopeless—but I still hadn’t been able to get the electricity to work, and without it, I wasn’t sure if I could stay here.
