“Very good,” Hugh says. He pushes his spectacles up his nose and blows his fringe out of his eyes. “I’m impressed.”
“But of course what really happened was that as soon as I left the room, you killed her, probably before she could even sit up. Under the cover of the noise I was making, banging on doors, screaming in the stairwell, you strangled her. But a body that’s been strangled doesn’t look like someone lying there playing dead. You had to keep me out of the room when I came back up the stairs with the authorities. I remember you standing there at the top of the stairs, barring the door, saying Nobody must go in, no one should disturb the body, and you know what”—she gives a bitter, hollow laugh—“you know what, I remember being impressed at your forethought, at the way you knew what to do. But it was bullshit. You just didn’t want me seeing the body of my friend, her face swollen and her arms bruised from you kneeling on them, bruises that weren’t there a few minutes ago. The police surgeons didn’t know—how could they? By the time they came to examine the body, they couldn’t possibly tell if she was murdered at 10:59 or 11:05. And with you and I insisting that we both found April dead at 11:03…”
She swallows.
“Poor John Neville. He never had a chance. I made sure of that.”
“Neville was a pest,” Hugh says briskly. He turns off the engine, and Hannah feels a rush of fear. Oh God, oh God, where is Will?
And then, with a horrible lurch, she realizes the phone in her pocket is no longer burning her leg. In fact, it’s cooling rapidly.
Either Will has hung up or—and the realization comes to her with a sickening certainty, as she remembers the battery bar hovering at the 50 percent mark before she dropped the phone—the battery has died. She is screwed. She staked everything on Will getting here in time, and she has lost, and now she cannot even dial 999.
Just in case, hoping against hope, she presses the power button and the side button together, bracing herself for the siren, but it doesn’t come. She tries the side button and the volume button. Nothing again.
So. This is it. She is alone. It’s just her and Hugh.
But then the baby inside her kicks, and she realizes she is not alone.
And she is not going to die.
“It’s time,” Hugh says.
“But what about why,” Hannah parries desperately. “I told you I knew how, but why, Hugh? Why April?”
But Hugh only turns and looks at her, and then he shakes his head, as if he’s pitying her foolishness.
“I’m not going to tell you that, Hannah. This isn’t a James Bond movie. I’m not going to lecture you for forty-five minutes about my motives. They’re none of your business. Get out of the car.”
“Hugh, no.” She puts her hands over her stomach. “Please. You don’t have to do this. I’m pregnant, doesn’t that mean anything to you? It’s not just me, it’s my baby. You’d be killing my baby, Will’s baby.”
“Hannah,” he says, very slowly, as if he’s talking to someone very stupid, “get out of the car, or I will kick you in the stomach until your baby dies. Do you understand me?”
She goes completely cold.
Hugh is smiling at her pleasantly, and then he pushes his Stephen Hawking glasses up his nose.
“Please,” she whispers. “Hugh please, I wouldn’t tell anyone. I would never do that to you. You’re my friend.”
“Oh please,” Hugh says, and he sounds… amused, and a little sad at the same time. “We both know that’s not true, Hannah. You wouldn’t even turn aside when you thought it was Will you were protecting. Do you seriously expect me to believe you’d do it for me?”
“No,” she says, and her throat is dry. “Not for you, no. But for my baby, I would. For my baby, I would keep this secret. If you let me go, Hugh, I swear—I swear on my baby’s life—”
But he is shaking his head.
“I’m sorry, Hannah, it’s too late.”
He puts his hand in his pocket, and when he takes it out, Hannah goes completely still. He is holding a gun.
“You can’t—” she manages, but her mouth seems to be too numb to speak. “You can’t shoot me here—think of all the evidence—all the blood on your car. It won’t look like a suicide.”
Hugh sighs.
“I am aware of that, thank you. Get out of the car, Hannah.”
She shakes her head. If she gets out, that’s it, and she knows it. He cannot afford to kill her in his car; the evidence will be impossible to remove. Her only hope is to stay here as long as she can. But then, suddenly and without warning, he leans across the gap between them and slams the butt of the gun hard into her bump.
The shock is electric—a jolting pain that seems to run right through her body, making her scream, and the baby inside her flails like a fish, and Hugh shouts full into her face, “Get out of the fucking car, Hannah!”
It’s the first time she’s ever heard him swear, and she knows this is it—she can’t prevaricate any longer—and half bent over, cradling her throbbing bump, she fumbles for the door handle and stumbles out into the drizzling rain.
“Walk over to the cliff,” Hugh says. He is standing on the other side of the car, rain running down his face.
Stumbling, shivering, Hannah does as she’s told. Hugh’s jacket is still wrapped around her, and she has a sudden, piercing flashback to that night, so long ago, when they ran across the Fellows’ Garden together, Hannah wrapped in Hugh’s jacket. That was how it ended for April. And this is how it ends for her.
She is right on the edge of the cliff now. Behind her there is nothing but empty space and the pounding roar of the waves against the jagged rocks, ready to take her body and smash it into an unrecognizable pulp—a raw bloated mess that will cover up any bruises, wash away any DNA. And for Hugh, what’s the worst that could happen? The taxi driver remembers taking her to his house? She has his DNA under her nails? All he needs to say is that she left early that morning, told him she was taking a train. Or a taxi. Yes, she seemed depressed, Officer. No, he doesn’t know where she went.
Oh God, this is it.
“Throw me the jacket,” Hugh says, and, shivering even harder, she pulls her arms out of the jacket and tosses it towards him. It lands in a crumpled heap at his feet. He takes it, and then nods at the cliff edge. “Now, jump.”
Hannah looks behind her, over her shoulder, and shakes her head helplessly, hopelessly. She cannot do it. Not even if the alternative is Hugh shooting her, she can’t bring herself to do it, to throw herself and her unborn child into that sea. She can’t do it.
Hugh raises the gun.
And then Hannah’s heart seems to stop in her chest, and start beating again with a quickening hope. Because above the roar of the sea, she hears a different kind of roar. The roar of an engine, coming closer. And a light, twisting and turning along the narrow lane. It’s a motorbike, and it’s coming fast, faster than is really safe on the rutted, unfinished road.
It’s Will.
Hugh turns, distracted, shading his eyes against the glare as the light comes closer. And then he says something under his breath, something Hannah can’t hear, and he turns to face the track as the rider skids around the last bend and bumps into the clearing.
Will roars to a halt, just a few feet away from them both, and scrambles off without even killing the engine, pulling off his helmet. His eyes are black with fear, but Hannah can tell he is trying to seem calm.
“Hugh,” he says, holding out his hands. “Hugh—listen to me—you don’t have to do this.”
But Hugh—Hugh’s shoulders are shaking.
For a minute Hannah doesn’t understand. She looks from Will, hands outstretched, pleading, and then back to Hugh. Is he crying? He shakes his head helplessly, and then she sees—he is not crying but laughing.