For some moments Meg felt in the grip of fear. She desperately, desperately wanted to tell Laura to come home. But she couldn’t, and even if she did plead, Laura wouldn’t agree. Instead, lamely, she said, ‘Please, please, be careful, Laura. It’s really important you look after each other. Promise me you will.’
‘We will, we will. We’re fine, Mum.’
And she really sounded as if she was. From her voice, she seemed so happy, so carefree. They chatted for several minutes, as Laura wanted to know how all her pets were. Then she asked, ‘So, how’s jury service? Have you got a really nasty villain?’
Meg hesitated before replying. ‘Well, I can’t really talk about it, I’m not allowed to.’
‘Is it a murder trial?’
‘I can’t say, darling. So, what are your plans?’
‘We’re going to this place tomorrow everyone says is amazing — a gorge that goes into rapids — and we’re going to do a zip wire right over the rapids!’
‘Zip wire? Isn’t that dangerous?’
‘Mum! Honestly!’ There was reproach in her tone. ‘If it was really dangerous, would I do it?’
Yes, you probably would, Meg wanted to say. Instead, she said, ‘Please be careful. Check everything, especially your harness. And if you don’t want to do it, just don’t do it, OK?’
‘I’m always careful,’ Laura said, solemnly. Then, her voice brightening, she said, ‘Mum, we saw hundreds of iguanas in a park today. A public park where you can just walk through, and the iguanas are literally all around you! It is amazing.’
Meg had to bite her tongue not to give away she’d already seen the iguanas. She had always loved Laura’s passion for animals. ‘So, I’m guessing the next addition to your menagerie here is going to be an iguana?’
‘That would be so cool!’ Then the tone of her voice changed. ‘Cassie reckons there’s a guy following us around. This creepy-looking man with a big camera taking pictures of us. We both saw him in the park this morning. She reckons she’s seen him a couple of times before. She doesn’t think he had anything to do with the spiked drinks because he wasn’t in that bar. We’ve decided if we see him again, we’re both going to challenge him.’
‘No,’ Meg cautioned, alarmed. ‘Just ignore him, don’t encourage him.’
God, she so wanted to warn Laura. To tell her to take a flight back home, today if possible. She’d happily pay for their fares. She felt so damned helpless.
‘The bus is arriving, gotta go, Mum!’
‘I love you, darling. Be safe.’
‘I love you, Mum. Cassie says hello!’
‘Hello back!’
Meg put the phone back down and sat, deep in thought. Not guilty.
How?
Gwen was having a toxic influence over the jury.
The trouble was, based on what they had heard so far, the bloody woman was right. All the evidence they had heard against Terence Gready was compelling. She sat for a long time at the kitchen table, deep in thought.
Who was the juror on her side? Coerced like herself? Pink? And who was the one about to be taken care of? Please God, make it Gwen.
And then?
The remaining nine.
Hopefully one of the witnesses still to be called, or Primrose Brown, would come up with something. Something strong and convincing enough for her to be able to persuade her fellow jurors that there was reasonable doubt.
Her thoughts went back to the voice of her caller. Then the voice of her daughter.
She shook with fear.
Zip wire.
56
Wednesday 15 May
Laura was going to go first. But as she stood at the top, the gorge looked a long way down and she felt scared. Beautiful and sinister, it looked like an open wound slashed through the midst of the dense forest. A brutal torrent of fast-moving river, foaming through jagged rocks before plunging over rapids. It was fed by one stream of clear water, cascading in forked rivulets down an escarpment, and by another that was muddy, like brown volcanic lava, pouring from a cave-sized hole halfway down.
A packed, rickety-looking open-cage cable car was making its way across to the far side, swaying precariously. A short distance from it, a zip wire stretched out across the gorge, sharing the landing platform on the far side with the cable car station.
The two girls had been standing for some while in the searing morning heat, in the queue for the zip wire, licking their ice-cream cones and feeling grateful for the faint breeze that rose from the gorge.
‘I’m worried about Mum,’ Laura said, suddenly. ‘She doesn’t sound right when we speak.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘You know, she doesn’t sound herself. She’s normally all excited to get my news. After Dad and Will — we’ve been really close. But there’s something in her voice recently. I have a feeling there’s something she’s not telling me.’
Cassie licked her ice cream, with a studious expression. ‘Maybe she’s just missing you. First time you’ve been away on your own — apart properly — since — you know.’
Laura nodded. ‘I hope so. But she had a mammogram just before I left — she has one regularly because my nan died of breast cancer. Maybe it wasn’t good news.’ She closed her eyes, momentarily. ‘God, I just couldn’t bear to — to lose her. I love her so much. I couldn’t cope, I just couldn’t cope.’
‘You won’t lose her, L, and you’re just being morbid. Your mum probably sounds down because she’s missing you. She’s all alone. Snap out of it!’ As if to drive home her remark, she snapped off the end of her cone with her teeth and crunched the wafer.
An instant later, they were distracted by a scream.
‘Yaaaaaaa-orrrrrrrr-hrrrrrrrrrrr-eeeeeeeeeee!’ a Japanese man cried, either in terror, or elation — or perhaps both — as he was launched, suspended in the harness, screeching all the way down and across to the platform on the far side. He would return, like everyone else, on the cable car.
‘You sure you want to do this, C?’ Laura asked. ‘Looks pretty scary.’
‘Wuss!’
‘I’m so not a wuss!’ she said, indignant. ‘I’m just not that crazy about dying.’
‘It would be quick — the piranhas would eat you the moment you hit the water!’ Cassie replied.
‘Shut up!’ Then she looked at her friend, concerned. ‘Piranhas? Do they have them in this river?’
‘They’re indigenous to South America, aren’t they?’
‘Yech!’
‘They start with the soft bits — they’d strip your face in seconds.’
Laura looked down again. ‘Really not sure I want to do this after all.’
‘Come on, don’t be a wuss — it’s not the fall that kills you, it’s the sudden stop!’
‘Great. And then the piranhas get to eat you.’
‘I’ll go first and then you can follow if I live,’ Cassie said, grinning, and shot a brief glance over her shoulder, before looking back down at the gorge and inching closer to her friend. ‘Don’t turn around, L,’ she hissed. ‘But Mr Creepy is watching us again. God, he’s weird.’
‘What?’
‘Seriously. He’s on the viewing platform.’
‘The same guy?’
Cassie nodded.
‘The one that was in Guayaquil?’
‘It’s him, I promise you. The one that has no neck. Our stalker.’
‘Let’s go over to him and say hi! Embarrass him!’
‘Not worth losing our place in this queue.’
Laura pulled a handkerchief out of her bag and dropped it on the ground. Kneeling to pick it up, she turned and shot a glance behind her, catching the glint of a lens in the sunlight. Standing up again, she said, ‘You’re right. It is him.’