The Passengers(49)
Cadman’s pale skin reddened as he nodded, then he moved swiftly back towards the refuge of his team. Libby gave Matthew a nod and a smile as he returned to his seat. Then once again, she looked up towards the speakers. ‘Are you still there?’ she asked.
‘I’m always here,’ the Hacker replied.
‘Why did you allow Claire to say all that about her husband when you knew all along he was dead?’
‘Honesty, Libby, I keep repeating myself about what I require from you, but no one appears to be listening. I gave Claire the opportunity to admit the truth of her own volition, but she chose not to. Instead, she made the decision to portray herself in a certain way to win favour in the hope you’d spare her life over another, perhaps more deserving, Passenger.’
‘But you aren’t being honest either, are you? You’ve yet to give us the rest of her story or tell us why you’re doing this. You’re a hypocrite.’
Libby looked to Claire’s screen again. She was sitting with her face to the camera, her eyes locked on to the lens like magnets, listening intently to Libby’s argument.
‘In Claire’s allocated ten minutes, she hoped her omitting a key fact might encourage you to make an uninformed decision in her favour. If the end result is not to Claire’s liking, then she only has herself to blame. I’m happy to argue with you all day, Libby, but if I can draw your attention to the clock, you’ll see that every minute spent bickering with me is a minute closer to the collision. And if we don’t progress to the next Passenger soon, their deaths will be on your conscience.’
‘For once, please just listen to him and shut up,’ said Jack wearily. ‘Or if you want them all to die then be my guest and keep trying to rationalise with a psychopath.’
Jack was giving the impression of a broken man. The world had plundered his finances, the jury he controlled was in disarray and the Road Revolution he had spearheaded to the tune of billions of pounds of investment was lying in ruins alongside his reputation. Now he had backed the wrong Passenger. But instead of arguing with him for the sake of it, Libby stood down. The Hacker was right; time was running out. She had a gut feeling there would be bigger battles to pick.
‘Cadman,’ continued the Hacker, ‘could you please inform us who has captured the social media’s interest at this moment in time?’
‘Sofia Bradbury, and by a reasonable margin,’ he replied, the eagerness in his voice now replaced by reticence. ‘The public are lapping up her naivety, memes of her are going viral and they’re uploading classic clips of her online.’
‘Then it seems fitting that we get to know her next then, doesn’t it? Fiona, are you ready?’
Chapter 36
SOFIA BRADBURY
‘Bloody thing!’
A frustrated Sofia stopped waiting for a suitable opportunity to remove her hearing aid out of the view of the public eye. Instead, she yanked it out and rummaged through her handbag before inserting it into the rapid battery charger.
A career spent on stages and sets and in front of loud, cheering audiences had taken its toll on her hearing. She hated wearing the aid – regarding it as a sign of weakness – although its ability to translate languages had once helped her to understand the director of a Japanese TV commercial for brandy.
If she had heard properly, then she was not on a reality TV show and this was a real life or death situation. And if, as the images on her screen suggested, it was also being broadcast worldwide, it would have a much larger, global reach than she could have ever imagined. Sofia should have felt terrified. Instead, she had never felt more alive. She valued her life on the stage more than her life off it, and now the whole world was her audience.
She slipped the charged aid back into her ear just in time to hear someone reveal the dead body of the pregnant girl’s husband was hidden in the boot of her car. It was an incredible twist of fate. Sofia had starred in countless dramas that were lauded for their capricious twists and turns. Every producer worth his salt would be chomping at the bit to have a big reveal like that tucked up their sleeves.
Sofia studied Claire’s face and body language. Guilty as sin, she thought. She knew her type; she had met more than her fair share of Claires on the showbiz circuit over the years. They were shrewd and manipulative and stopped at nothing to land the roles they thirsted for.
She bit the soft, fleshy insides of her cheeks to stop her lips from curling into a smile and revealing her satisfaction at Claire’s unravelling. It meant, of course, that Sofia was now in prime position to be saved. But to be sure, she would need to put on an Oscar-winning performance. There was no dead body hidden in Sofia’s vehicle, but there were plenty of skeletons in her closet.
‘Hello, Sofia.’
A female voice startled her. She scanned her screens until she realised it belonged to the juror with frightful hair and a matching frightful plaid suit. She would have preferred a man to have questioned her; she had a much better rapport with the opposite sex.
Sofia noted a clock appear in the right-hand corner of the screen. It began counting down immediately. She imagined herself walking into the Old Vic to rapturous applause. She cleared her throat and offered her audience the warmest of smiles. ‘Good morning to you. And to whom am I speaking?’ Sofia asked.
‘Fiona Prentice.’