The Other People: A Novel(12)

“You find anything?”

Gabe held up the folder. “Maybe the police can still get some fingerprints—”

“Whoah.” The Samaritan held up a hand. “Who said anything about police?”

Gabe stared at him. “This is the car. The car they told me didn’t exist. I have to call the police. It’s evidence.”

The Samaritan looked at him with his blacker-than-black eyes.

“The police believe your daughter is dead. This car is not going to change that.”

“But what if they can get Izzy’s DNA or identify the body?”

The Samaritan rolled his eyes. “This ain’t like the TV. You know how hard it is to retrieve DNA after all this time, from a car that’s been swimming in Lake Murk?”

“Oddly, no.”

“Almost impossible. Any DNA would have degraded in days.”

Gabe wanted to argue but he got the impression, as far as this subject was concerned, the Samaritan knew what he was talking about.

“What about the body?”

“Even if you can identify your man here, what have you got?”

Before Gabe could reply, the Samaritan continued: “You got a dead dude who has been dumped in the trunk of a car you have been searching for and only one person with a motive to kill him.”

Gabe blinked. “Me?”

“You.”

“So, what should I do?”

The Samaritan nodded at the folder. “You could start by looking at what you have got. Unless you’re planning to keep it for a souvenir?”

Gabe debated with himself, then crouched down and carefully opened the folder. A small dribble of water trickled out. The Samaritan trained his flashlight on him. Gabe took out the Bible first and thumbed through the pages. They were moldy and stuck together in clumps. No divine inspiration. He put it aside and reached for the notebook. If he had been hoping to find a confession and an address inside, he was out of luck. Most of the pages had been torn out. The remaining few were blank. He felt hope begin to wane. Finally, he reached for the map. One of the old-fashioned Ordnance Survey types that nobody had used since the last century. Gabe opened it up. Something fell out.

He stared at it.

A pink hair bobble. Dirty, damp, frayed.

Daddy.

He looked up at the Samaritan. “She was in the car.”

The Samaritan regarded him steadily. “Then I refer you back to my previous point.”

“What?”

“If this is the car, and this is the man who took your daughter—who the hell killed him?”





The young woman behind the hotel reception desk looked no more than twenty-five; her accent was Eastern European. She was polite but disinterested, which suited Fran just fine. A motorway hotel was hardly the Ritz, but it would be clean and anonymous. They could rest and Fran could try to plan their next move.

They had a room available, the receptionist informed them. But because they hadn’t booked online, they couldn’t take advantage of the special rate. Fran expressed an appropriate level of disappointment, tried not to seem impatient and said it would be okay. She paid with a credit card. She had a few, with slightly different names. Surprisingly easy to obtain. She could have paid in cash, but that just made you stand out more. No one paid in cash for anything these days.

“Number 217.” The receptionist gave them their key card. They climbed the stairs and shuffled along the bland, fusty-smelling corridor to their room. Fran buzzed them inside and they threw their rucksacks on the beds. She stared around. It looked, well, like every other budget hotel room in every other city up and down the country. The carpet was worn, the fittings chipped. And it smelled faintly of cigarettes, despite the “No Smoking” sign on the door. But the beds looked large and comfortable and Fran really was exhausted. After almost eight hours on the road, she just couldn’t drive any farther.

When they first fled, she had taken them north, to Cumbria. When the man had found them, she had driven to the opposite end of the country, the tip of the coast. Where now? Scotland? Abroad? But that meant passports, something she didn’t have.

She glanced at Alice, who stood in the center of the room, shoulders slumped, arms hanging at her sides, too tired even to sit down on the bed. The weariness on her small face cleaved Fran’s heart in two. It was like this at the start. Anonymous hotels. Always running, always afraid. No child should live like that. But then, no child should die a bloody, violent death either.

Her throat constricted. Sometimes it hit her like a sledgehammer. Grief. A desperate, unrelenting sense of guilt. All your fault. But she couldn’t change things now. She couldn’t look back. She’d rather be blinded.

She smiled wanly at Alice. “C’mon. Let’s get some sleep.” She bit her tongue to stop herself saying something else, like, Things will look better after we get some rest, because that would be another lie. Instead, she added. “I’ll treat us to a McDonald’s for breakfast.”

Alice managed the weakest of smiles in return and pulled out her toiletries bag. They brushed their teeth in the harsh bathroom light, pulled on fresh T-shirts and leggings, placed their packed rucksacks beside their beds.

Fran checked that the windows were locked and pulled the heavy blackout curtains. They were on the second floor, which was good. She always refused ground-floor rooms. Finally, she slipped the security chain on the door and tested it a few times.