Can't Let Go (25 page)

I walked out of the police station feeling like a
zombie. I was tired and I was filthy and I wasn't sure
whether I should be laughing or crying. Zoey was
dead. But they had already arrested the man they thought
had killed her. Who was it? Did they have the right
person? Was it my stalker? Was it the note-writer? Was I
safe at last? But even if they had arrested the right person,
if they really had caught Zoey's killer, then maybe I was
only safe for a little while. Because – what would he be
saying about me? Would he tell the police why he'd done
what he'd done? Would he tell them about me?

'Beth!'

The man's voice made me jump. I looked across to
where the voice had come from. A tall, skinny, bearded
man was standing in the doorway of an empty shop across
the road, smoking. He was beckoning me over. I stood
frozen to the spot for a moment. He'd been waiting for me.
And then I blinked and I saw that it was Steve, Zoey's
friend. He looked as dishevelled and distraught as I did. I
walked across the road towards him, almost forgetting to
check for traffic. I had never been so glad to see someone.
Close up, I could tell that he had been crying. He held out
his arms to me. He just stood there, saying nothing, and
held out his arms. And I hugged him. It was a busy street,
slightly run-down, away from the centre of the city, and
people were walking past us – normal, mid-morning
Edinburgh people, on their way to do normal things. But
Steve and I stood there, the pair of us, his chin resting on my
head, and we hugged each other, swaying slightly, saying
nothing. His shirt smelled of cigarettes and sweat and it
seemed like the most comforting smell I had ever known.

After a while he said, 'This is so fucked-up. This is so
fucking fucked-up.'

He let go of me, and we stood side by side in that
doorway.

'Did they tell you they've got someone?'

I nodded. I opened my mouth and to my surprise my
voice was still working. 'Yes. They didn't say who.'

'It's some fucking junkie. That's who they've got. I
was talking to one of the cops. He came out for a smoke
and we got talking. He shouldn't have told me, but he did.
I guess they were proud of themselves. They found some
fucking junkie with Zoey's purse, trying to use one of her
credit cards. Apparently he's trying to tell them that the
bag just appeared in his doorway. That he woke up and it
was there. Christ.' He stubbed out his cigarette and trod it
into the ground. I said nothing. I was scared all over
again. This wasn't right. They hadn't got him. They
hadn't found the killer.

'You've got to give them marks for speed, I guess,' said
Steve, his voice bitter. 'They were fast, I'll give them that.
But this is fucked-up. This is fucking crazy. This is so
fucking wrong. Like Zoey would let some junkie into the
flat. Like some junkie would do that . . .' and his voice
cracked slightly. 'Like he'd do
that
to her just to steal her
fucking bag. Can't they see? The guy who did this must
have taken her bag for some reason. I don't know. Maybe
he wanted something from it. God knows. But then he
dumps it. He sees some poor junkie kid sitting in a
doorway somewhere, and dumps the bag on him. And the
kid can't believe his luck, so he tries to use one of the cards
and he gets banged up for fucking murder. This is so
fucked-up. Why can't they see it?'

Steve pulled out his pack of cigarettes and offered me
one. I took it. I didn't smoke, not often, but I understood
why people did. You can stop time when you're smoking,
or at least slow it down. It's something very controlled
that you can concentrate on. You can concentrate so hard
on smoking a cigarette that nothing else matters for a little
while. Steve lit my cigarette for me, and I noticed that his
fingertips, like mine, were still black from the fingerprint
ink. He noticed something else.

'You have blood on your hands.'

For just a moment I thought he meant it metaphorically,
and I wondered how he knew, how he'd
guessed. And then I looked at my fingers and realised that
the dried blood was still caked around my nails.

'I found her,' I said. 'I found her. But I ran away
because I was scared.' That part of the story at least was
becoming a little easier to say.

'Christ,' said Steve. 'Christ. You saw her. You saw
what he fucking did to her.' He pulled deeply on his
cigarette and shuddered. 'How are you feeling?'

I thought for a moment. I leaned back against the
locked door of that empty shop. I watched a young
mother with a pushchair walk past, and a brisk elderly
lady with a shopping trolley. Neither of them looked at
us. 'I feel dead,' I said, and I meant it. I even thought
that maybe I
was
dead, actually dead. Maybe
both
of us
were dead, Steve and I. Maybe no one else could see
us. This was what death was like, this aimless scared
wandering; this sense of not being able to get out of a
nightmare.

'Do you know what I feel?' Steve knocked the ash from
his cigarette with his black fingertip.

I shook my head.

'I feel angry. Fucking angry. And I'm going to go right
back to talk to those detectives and I'm going to make
them see sense. I am going to make a fucking scene and I
will not leave until they take me seriously. We both know
Zoey wasn't killed for her credit cards. We both know
there's got to be more to it than that.'

I must have gasped or something. I must have made
some kind of sound or gesture that gave something
away, because suddenly Steve was staring at me very
intently. The purple circles around his eyes had given
them a curious greenish cast. 'What?' he said. 'What
do you know? You
do
know something, don't you?
Tell me.'

He grabbed my wrist but I twisted away from him. 'I
have to go,' I said. 'I have to . . . get back. Sorry, sorry.'
And I walked away very quickly down that normal,
shabby, busy street. I walked away as fast as I could, and
as I turned a corner I started running and then I was
hurtling through the streets, out of breath and still
running from the nightmare that just wouldn't stop.

The Fringe was still in full swing. Nothing had
changed. The ugly slab of concrete concourse
above Waverley Station at the end of Princes Street
was as bustling as it had been all week. I was sitting on a cold
metal bench by a low stone wall that encompassed a flower
bed, of sorts: a compacted bed of dry soil and cigarette
stubs, a few tenacious shrubs still clinging to life despite the
long dry summer. I was waiting to catch a train, hiding in
plain sight in one of the busiest spots in the whole city. The
giant marquee that served as a ticket office for the Fringe
was packed with people waiting to use the array of
computer screens to buy online tickets to whichever show
the critics were raving about that week. The queue at the
Half-Price Hut was less choosy; people were standing there
weighing up the merits of comics and actors they had never
heard of, deciding which ones were worthy of three or four
pounds for a cut-price ticket.

Crowds of people were milling about, bringing
splashes of colour to the grey city. I watched them with a
new alertness, a new fear. I watched the faces, I looked at
the eyes. I wondered if he had followed me here, if he was
watching me even now. I wondered what he planned to do
to me next.

There were floppy-haired students from university
drama societies, from Oxbridge, or Durham, or Exeter,
promoting their modern-day productions of
Macbeth
or
The Crucible
or
Hedda Gabler,
as if any of it mattered.
There were arty middle-aged people,
Guardian-reader
types, scarves and sandals, beards and berets, linen and
corduroy. And everywhere there were groups of teenage
girls in their uniform of leggings and ballet pumps, with
their cheap chunky beads and their short denim skirts,
their bra straps showing under their layers of brightly
coloured vests and skimpy T-shirts, and their regulation
ironed-straight hair. I had been one of them once,
seventeen years ago, dressed in that summer's version of
this bold, flirty finery, all cheap and brash and sexy and
brave and innocent. And that was how everything got
ruined.

Every few moments someone would walk over to me
and hand me a flyer for a show. 'Are you looking for some
comedy tonight?' was what some of the pamphleteers
asked me. They had no idea how blackly, grotesquely
funny those words sounded. I wondered when – if – they
would hear what had happened; how the news would
spread. I wondered if the festival would come to a huge
grinding halt. Or maybe everyone already knew what had
happened and they were ignoring it. Maybe the festival
momentum was impossible to stop.

I let the pamphleteers give me their pieces of glossy
paper, their postcards, their brochures. Just two days ago
I had been doing the same thing: handing out flyers to
anyone who might be remotely interested in seeing the
show. I looked at the leaflets that I was handed, tried to
read the words, tried to work out what the pictures meant,
but nothing made sense. I put the flyers in a little pile by
my side, straightening the edges so that the pile looked
neat. They were just pieces of paper and cardboard. They
couldn't hurt me. Everything around me was going on as
it had done for the last two weeks. There were jugglers
and fire-eaters and comedians and backpackers. People
looked exhilarated or exhausted or confused. But no one
else was as scared as I was. The world had tilted on its axis
but no one else seemed to have noticed.

I checked my watch. It was time to go. I had several
train tickets in my pocket, for different journeys. I looked
around me, trying to make sure that I wasn't being
followed, and walked quickly down the sloping path to
the railway station underneath the plaza. I had bought my
tickets a little earlier, working out my travel plans with
great care. I had lurked around the station for a while
looking for somewhere to hide, but had felt very exposed
there. But now it was time to put my plan into action. I
asked a guard to show me where the London-bound
GNER train was. I showed him my ticket. I made a great
pantomime of pointing in the direction he had shown me.
I walked across to the dark-blue-liveried train. I walked
up and down the train's length, seeming to take my time
choosing a carriage. I got on and appeared to settle myself
in a seat near a door. I took my distinctive green jacket off
and I stuffed it into my bag. And then, just as the train was
about to leave, I jumped off and lost myself in the crowds
milling around the station. I found one of the small
commuter trains to Glasgow, got on board and held my
breath until it pulled out of the station. I didn't notice
anyone following me.

The train arrived fifty minutes later at an ugly 1960sstyle
station in Glasgow. I got off, and scanned the
information boards for trains to London. I couldn't see
any. I started to feel panicky. I found a guard and asked
him, and I thought I was about to cry. He put a kind hand
on my shoulder, steered me outside and beckoned a taxi
over. He said something to the driver and the next thing I
knew we were driving through the busy city-centre
streets. I wasn't sure where we were going. I didn't know
if I could trust the driver. But just a few minutes later he
delivered me to a covered road that led to a huge
Victorian train station, full of dark wood and arching iron
cathedral-like ceilings. Twenty minutes later I was on a
train bound for London, and as far as I could tell I had not
been followed.

As the train rattled southwards I fell asleep. It was a
disturbed sleep, punctuated by station stops and
announcements about buffet cars and refreshments. I
dreamed about being chased along grey stone streets,
about cobbles and steps and castle battlements. I dreamed
about fire-eaters and jugglers and a man dressed as Henry
the Eighth. I dreamed that I was bleeding from a huge
gaping wound in my stomach, and however hard I tried I
could not stop the bleeding or sew up the wound.

I woke finally when the train stopped in Manchester.
The sky outside the carriage windows was so grey it was
like night-time. Rain was falling from the sky, and as it
landed on the streets and the roofs of cars it bounced up
again, several inches into the sodden air. I shook my
head to free it from the dreams and watched the people
getting on and off the train. Later, as we continued
southwards, I bought coffee and a sandwich from the
refreshment cart and tried to eat. Now was the time to
decide what to do.

I couldn't go back to my flat. That was the first place
he'd look for me. I couldn't go to my parents' house,
either. I didn't want to drag them into this. Sarah, maybe
– but no, it was too late. If I'd wanted to go to her house
in Sheffield then I should have changed trains at
Manchester. Jem? No. Not my family. Not anyone in
my family. I knew that could be disastrous. I couldn't
ask my family for help. It would just make everything
worse. I didn't want to bring them into this whole thing.
I'd already seen what he was prepared to do to people I
loved.

Danny, then. Danny was already involved. He already
knew the dangers. He had told me to ring him again if I
needed him. He was probably expecting me to ring him. I
couldn't go to his flat, I knew that. That was obvious. It
was too close to mine. But he would know what I should
do. He'd be able to think of somewhere for me to hide.
He'd know someone or somewhere. He'd protect me
when I got back to London. I knew he would.

'Hey, you.' Danny's voice was gentle and concerned.
'How are you holding up?'

'Okay, I think.'

'Where are you?'

'I'm on a train. I'm on my way back to London.'

'Oh.' He sounded surprised. 'What did the police
say?'

'They've got someone. They've arrested someone
already.'

'That's good.'

'No, it's not. They've got the wrong person. They
found some homeless guy with Zoey's purse. They think
he did it, but he didn't. They think it's just a robbery gone
wrong.'

'You told them everything?'

I didn't lie to him, but I didn't tell him the whole truth
either. 'Danny, they weren't interested. They just didn't
want to know. And now I'm coming back to London and
he's still out there somewhere, and I still don't know who
it is.'

'Shhh,' he said. 'Shhh. Don't worry. We'll sort this out.
I'll meet you at the station and we'll go somewhere. We'll
find you a hotel or something, just till we get this all sorted
out. It'll be okay. Trust me.'

I'd forgotten how hot London had been that summer. As
I got off the train at Euston it was as if the city had saved
up all the heat that I had missed while in Edinburgh, and
it hit me with it in one hot blast. The air was thick and
stale. It stank of burgers and coffee and body odour. It was
the tail end of the rush hour, and I carved my way through
the crowds on the platform heading for the station
concourse. I was looking for Danny. I was looking for his
tall figure, his cropped head and his reassuring dark eyes.
He'd be in his suit. Or he'd be in his shirtsleeves with his
tie loosened, his jacket slung over his shoulder or one arm.
He'd be there, waiting at the right platform, waiting for
me to emerge from the crowd. He'd be standing right
there, solid and safe, and he'd hug me and tell me everything
would be all right.

But he wasn't there. I scanned the crowds. The train
was ten minutes late. He'd had plenty of time to get
there. There was no reason for him not to be there.
Every man in the crowd who was tall and dark-haired
was Danny for a moment, and then they weren't. He
wasn't there. I walked further out onto the concourse,
looking around me, checking I wasn't being followed,
desperately hunting for Danny. I dug in my bag for my
phone and pressed redial. 'Where are you?' I asked, my
voice frantic.

'Where are
you
?'

'I'm here. I'm standing right by the information booth.
You can't miss me.'

'
I
'm standing right by the information booth.'

I heard crackly sounds behind him, then the distinctive
sound of a station announcement in the background of the
phone call. There was no station announcement at Euston
at that moment.

'Danny, you're at King's Cross, aren't you?'

'Of course I am.'

'I'm at Euston. I told you. I told you I was coming in to
Euston. I caught the train at Glasgow. Danny, you're at
the wrong station.' I was close to tears.

'Shit. Sorry. No worries. I'm not far away. I'll be with
you in five seconds, okay? Don't move. Stay exactly
where you are.'

I did, for a while. I stood there in the middle of the
crowded station and I tried to stay calm. I imagined
Danny running at full pelt along Euston Road. It wouldn't
take him long. He'd be here in minutes. But people kept
pushing past me. All sorts of people. People and people
and people. Faces in the crowd. People staring at me.
A businessman with grey hair, combed over a bald spot. A
smart black woman, all crisp and professional in her suit
and high heels. A woman with an Arab headscarf, a guy in
an old army jacket and with a dark beard, a young mum
with a pushchair – they didn't stop. They came straight at
me. I felt myself being pushed one way and another. I felt
as if everyone in the crowd had decided between them to
push me around. Everyone seemed to be heading straight
towards me, hitting me with sharp-edged briefcases and
umbrellas, rolling pushchairs over my feet. Everyone was
the killer.

I fought the rising panic. Danny would be here soon,
I kept telling myself. I felt in my courier bag for my
keys, knowing I'd feel safer with a weapon. As I pulled
them out of my bag and made a fist with them I realised
there were extra keys on the ring. They were Zoey's
keys, the keys to Zoey's flat, to that haven of calm and
security in Clapham. She had given them to me the night
before she'd left for Edinburgh. She'd known something
or guessed something; she must have done. She knew I'd
need somewhere to hide. Without leaving any time for
thought I darted through the crowd, onto the escalator
and made my way down into the dark, fetid embrace of
the Underground.