The Guilty Couple(72)
‘I think this is it,’ Nancy says twenty-six minutes later as Google Maps tells us we’re approaching our destination. We’re on the edge of an industrial estate, on a dead-end street made up of a line of garages. I’ve been here only once before and the place was deserted, I didn’t see a single person the whole time we were here. From the dirty, rusty, cobwebbed state of some of the doors it looks like no one’s been here since. I came because I’d inherited a few antique pieces of furniture after my grandmother died and Dominic deigned to let me keep them in his lock-up. The nicer pieces I incorporated into our home and the rest I planned to sell on eBay. I never did get round to it. The chances are they’re still in the lock-up with Dominic’s motorbike and god knows how many spiders and mice.
Nancy glances across at me as I take off my seatbelt. ‘Are you okay? You’re really quiet.’
‘I’ve got a lot on my mind.’
I touch her shoulder as she moves to open her door. ‘Don’t get out yet. We need to wait for Jack.’
‘Right, yeah.’ She settles back in her seat. ‘Has he sent any more messages while I was driving?’
I don’t even have to check my phone to answer her. I’ve had it in my hands the whole time. ‘No. None.’
The garages form a cul-de-sac. From where we’re parked at one end we can see nine garages to our left, each with a corrugated roof in varying stages of decay. After the block of garages there’s a fence protecting an electricity pylon, then another nine garages. To our right is a narrow pedestrian alleyway then eleven garages. There’s a gap after the block of eleven, where we drove in, then another five garages. Anyone arriving on foot would probably enter via the alleyway and anyone driving would take the road further down. Other than jumping a couple of fences there’s no other way in or out and no houses that overlook this small stretch of road.
Five minutes pass. Dominic’s lock-up is the second from the top, to my left. My gaze flicks from its dirty white door to the alleyway, to the gap between the garages where we drove in.
Ten minutes pass. I reach into my pocket for the key and rub my thumb over the cool metal. I so hope that I’m wrong.
Fifteen minutes pass. No sign of Jack or anyone else. The cul-de-sac is as silent as it was when we drove in. Nancy shifts in her seat. She hasn’t spoken in at least ten minutes but I can feel the anxiety radiating off her. She’s never been very good at staying still, or staying quiet.
‘Okay.’ I open the passenger side door. ‘Let’s go and see what’s in there.’
Nancy doesn’t say a word. She just gets out of the car.
A bead of sweat rolls down my back as I insert the key into the lock but my hand is steady and the key slides in first time. As I twist the handle and yank open the door Nancy inhales sharply but there’s nothing inside the garage I wasn’t expecting to see. Dom’s motorbike takes pride of place in the centre and there’s a heavy metal shelving unit to the right. Boxes and tools are stacked up on its shelves, alongside the wind-up torch I bought Dominic as a stocking filler one year. He couldn’t have looked less impressed. Against the back wall, bound in bubble wrap, is the antique furniture I inherited: a trio of 1950s stacking tables, a cupboard and drawers in pale green and a 1930s glazed bookcase, made of oak. Something catches my eye in the far left corner of the garage – something large and white and ugly – incongruous against the delicate shapes of my grandmother’s furniture. I move past the motorbike and walk towards it, dust and damp catching in the back of my throat. A scratchy metallic sound cuts through the silence. The garage door is being pulled shut.
‘Nancy?’ She’s already pulled the door halfway down by the time I turn round. ‘What are you doing?’
She glances at me then tugs the door all the way down, shutting us both inside. I blink, too disorientated to move, as my eyes adapt to the gloom. The only source of light is a broken corner of the roof.
Nancy takes a step towards me, her hand outstretched. ‘Give me the keys, Liv.’
‘So you can lock me in?’ A laugh I wasn’t expecting punctuates my question. When I slid into her car forty minutes ago I was primed for a confrontation but, now it’s happening, I can’t quite believe that it’s real. This feels like a wind-up, like everyone but me is in on the joke.
The emails, the phone call, the texts. Jack didn’t wait five years to get in touch. He didn’t contact me at all. It was Nancy, it was all Nancy, and it took me far too long to figure it out.
There were five people sitting around the table in Ayesha’s living room when we discussed stealing the contents of Dominic’s safe: me, Smithy, Ayesha, Nancy and Lee. All five of them saw the keys (including the key to the lock-up) that were attached to the lanyard when Smithy chucked them onto the table, but only four people were in the room when I told Ayesha where Smithy lives; Lee had excused himself to go to the loo.
Ayesha was on to something when she expressed suspicion that Jack had switched from emailing to calling me. He’d said it wasn’t safe to call because his phone could be traced but he changed his mind yesterday. Why risk being arrested just to say hello?
There were two phones in Dominic’s safe. One belonged to Grace, the other one wouldn’t turn on. It was an iPhone: white, slightly battered with no distinguishing features. It could have belonged to anyone.