Die Alone

you? The most important person in Alastair’s world was Alastair, and this was never going to change.
It always amused him to think that his wife didn’t know him at all, yet thought she knew him perfectly. He’d enjoyed manipulating her in the early days, making her believe what a kind, generous man he was, and remembered getting a huge kick from proposing to her during a candlelit dinner at Le Gavroche in Paris, barely forty-eight hours after he and Cem had tortured to death an eighteen-year-old Estonian girl with the most exquisite skin Alastair had ever seen, slices of which they’d carefully removed while she’d still been alive.
He and his wife lived near enough separate lives these days. Even so, Alastair knew he’d chosen well. His wife hadn’t come from money so she was content to live the life of a wealthy yummy mummy, lunching and playing tennis and keeping well out of Alastair’s hair, and leaving him to enjoy life’s pleasures.
Alastair had seen things that others could only dream about. He’d wielded the ultimate power – that of life and death – and it was a pleasure so intense as to make all others pale in comparison. The downside was that such pleasure could only be shared with a handful of people.
One of those people was Cem. Alastair had known him since childhood. They’d grown up together. They’d carried out their first kill together, snatching that Brennan girl from her bike as she cycled down a country lane and taking her out to Cem’s old school by the Thames. There the two of them had dispatched her and buried the remains in the grounds, where they would have stayed for ever if it hadn’t been for the greedy bastards on the school board selling a plot of land for development.
That was the moment it had all started to go wrong for Alastair and Cem. A new murder investigation had been launched, the house in Wales where they’d been killing illegally trafficked young women for years had been discovered, and a witness who could testify about Alastair’s involvement in one of the murders had come forward. Thankfully, Cem had managed to get rid of Hugh Manning before he could give a statement to the police, but even so, the authorities had come far too close to Alastair for comfort.
Which was when he’d decided that the time was right to get rid of the last person who could link him to any of the murders.

12
The first thing I did when I got back to the apartment was check the phone Lane had given to me to see if I’d missed any calls.
I had. Two. Both from an unknown number. One at 11.38, the next at 11.49. These could only have been from Lane, and I’d broken rule number one by not answering either of them. I stared at the phone, wondering what her next move would be. I didn’t think she’d throw me to the wolves. Not yet. Not after investing so much in me. But if she had, it meant that armed police were probably on their way here right now.
I opened the French windows onto the roof terrace and poked my head outside. There was no one around. The temperature by now was in the late twenties, but the cloud cover made it feel even hotter. From where I stood I could see both far entrances to the square, and all was quiet. No one, it seemed, was coming just yet.
The phone in my hand rang. The same unknown number.
I retreated inside. ‘Yeah?’
It was Lane. ‘Where the hell were you?’ she demanded. ‘You were instructed not to leave the safehouse.’
‘I had to,’ I said. ‘I pulled a calf muscle doing some exercises and I needed some Ibuprofen. You didn’t supply any.’
The lie seemed to calm her somewhat. She might have forbidden me to leave this place but she didn’t want me injured. ‘How’s the calf now?’ she asked.
I told her it was settling down, then asked, ‘Any news on when our man might be turning up?’
‘Not yet, but you’ll hear as soon as I do. Do not leave the safehouse again. If you miss this chance, I will make sure the police have your current location as well as your brand-new passport photo. Don’t mess it up, Ray.’
She ended the call and I went into the kitchen and for lunch chose a plastic tub of instant seafood noodles from the selection of unappetizing long-life food. It actually tasted quite good, and I was just working out which tinned fruit to have for dessert when the burner phone Tina had given me started ringing.
‘I’ve got information about the car that took you to the safehouse,’ she said.
‘That was quick. Do I owe you any money?’
‘Call it a favour.’
‘I don’t know when I’m ever going to pay it back.’
‘Me neither,’ she said. ‘But that’s not why I did it. Anyway, the car began and ended its journey at some point within a few square miles of a speed camera on the Epping Road in Essex, close to a village called Toot Hill. If you know the shape of the house and the garden you were in you may be able to find it on Google Maps.’
‘Thanks, Tina. I really appreciate it.’
‘Why don’t you just leave, Ray? Run while you can. Don’t try to be a hero. You’ve done it before and look where it’s got you.’
‘I could say the same thing to you, Tina.’
There was a pause down the other end of the line. I could hear kids shouting in the background and the sound of traffic. She was outside somewhere.
‘Good luck, Ray. Whatever you choose to do.’
There was so much I wanted to say to her. That I missed her every day. That I loved her. That I wished it could all have been so different. But there was no point. Instead I just said thanks,