‘Really?’ He laughed. ‘You must be joking. You wore me out.’
She giggled. ‘Yeah. I had to sit down to paint earlier. For some reason my legs were wobbly.’
‘Good. I hope I always have that effect on you.’
Ellerman ended the call and looked at Gillian’s message again. He switched his music on as he sat in the dusk and thought what he should do. Nothing mattered now but the end prize. He turned his music up loud. Alice Cooper was belting out ‘Fire’. He sent a text to his wife:
I’m coming home tonight.
After Carter and Willis left, Harding stayed logged on to the Naughties website. She watched Mark washing down the dissecting tables. She could see him through the window in her office. She loved the way his hands moved. They were a ballet to watch; they were beautifuclass="underline" light, soft, gentle. She turned back to the screen. But they weren’t what she needed, even if he was interested, which he wasn’t. She looked at her messages. Ellerman had viewed her profile. She looked at his. She smiled to herself – tempting…
A message came up on her phone:
Want to play? Sorry it’s taken me so long to get back to you – decided to keep you waiting. I know what you like. You like to be controlled. You like to be made to submit.
Who is this? She didn’t have a name against the number. She looked for previous messages – there weren’t any.
You gave me your number a few weeks ago. You don’t remember? I remember what you said – you like people to watch. You like living dangerously. Ever tried dogging?
Interesting.
Meet me next to the lorry park in Shadwell – in the adjoining car park. See you there at eleven.
Harding looked at her watch – it was seven. She poured herself another glass of wine and contemplated what to do. Another text came through:
I’ll be waiting.
Chapter 15
At seven o’clock, Gillian put three ice cubes in her vodka and tonic and climbed the stairs up to her bedroom. She plonked herself down onto her bed and rested the glass on her chest and lay looking at the ceiling. She thought it through. She didn’t regret the text. She didn’t regret finishing it and she meant it – but then, if that was true, why did she feel so sad? She sat up and opened her laptop and logged onto Love Uniform Dating. She scanned through the men – nobody new, nobody worth looking at. There was the policeman again. There were all the same men that had been on there the last two years. She gave a heavy sigh and lay back on the bed that still smelt of Ellerman’s aftershave. Maybe she should ring him and give him another ultimatum and try to force him along a bit? She wished he’d come back and she could talk it through with him. She’d been hasty maybe. Gillian regretted it now. She’d got into such a state about things. Two weeks of waiting for him to turn up, missing him like mad. She had too much time on her own to stew over things and some things just didn’t add up. But she didn’t want to finish it. She hadn’t meant to get so angry. Now she was lying here on her own; that was not what she wanted. She heard the squeak of her letterbox and waited for the sound of junk mail landing on the mat – it didn’t come; she picked up her drink as she sat up on the bed. It was then she smelt smoke.
She scrambled off the bed and ran to the loft stairwell. Between her and the front door was a wall of fire. She closed the door and grabbed her duvet – jamming it at the bottom of the door. She was crying, her hands were shaking as she found her phone and dialled 999.
‘Help me – I’m on fire – my house is on fire!’
Gillian ran back and forth from the locked window to the door with the phone in her hand as she waited for the sound of the fire engine. She felt the heat building in the room as she coughed and choked on the thin smoky air. She stared at the door and prayed as she listened to the roar from the other side. Then she heard the fire engine and ran back to the window and started to bang on the glass… She slammed her hand against it as she saw the firemen running towards her house.
‘Help me… help…’
She looked back towards the door. It was starting to blacken and smoulder and smoke was beginning to pour through.
The heat was burning her lungs. She felt dizzy.
She screamed as she banged on the window. The front of the house was on fire now. She tried to open the window and her hand stuck to the metal handle. In that second all the holes in the burning door joined up and it exploded inwards.
Chapter 16
At just before eleven, Lolly made her way towards the lorry park in Shadwell. Her legs were so weary that she could hardly move them. Her backpack felt as if it contained rocks instead of her few possessions. The day had taken its toll on her as she hid from the cold, and the last few nights had been all about staying warm. She had nowhere to go. She’d been kicked out of all the hostels because, as hard as she tried, she couldn’t stop taking heroin. The heroin helped her to forget the happy life she’d once had. It was five years ago that her boss discovered she was sleeping in the offices he employed her to clean at nights; that was after she lost her home, after her husband left her with nothing but debts and memories that were too painful. The heroin helped.
Now she knew she had to lie down somewhere before she fell down.
She saw the flicker of a television in the cab as she approached the lorry. She saw the man inside shovelling pot noodles into his mouth as he watched television. She tapped on his window. He opened his door.
‘Suck and fuck?’
He looked at her, disgusted. ‘Wouldn’t give you a pound for it.’
‘Not asking for a pound. Just need a bed for the night.’
‘All night?’
‘Yeah. We can do it again in the morning.’
The driver stuck his head out and made sure none of the other lorry drivers were watching. Then he looked back at Lolly, looked her up and down and nodded as he slid across to open the passenger door.
‘Get in quick.’
She heaved herself up into the cab as the driver turned his attention to a car driving into the adjoining car park. It was an Audi TT, a convertible. He watched it circle and then stop.
Harding drove round to the entrance to the car park and paused as she took stock of the lorries in the adjoining park. She saw the cars to her right. As she drove in one of the lorries flashed its headlights and she was about to make her way towards it when she felt the car begin to rock. Faces grinned at her through the windows – including a mixed-race lad with a nasty-looking dog – and hands yanked at the door handles and started smashing at her window. One of them jumped onto her bonnet and onto her roof. His boot tearing into the fabric. She felt a hand grab at her as an arm came through the hole in her driver’s window and reached in to open the door. She slammed the car into reverse and hit the accelerator hard as they ran after her. She slammed on the brakes and skidded on a frozen corner of the car park as she turned, pulled and locked her door shut, and sped off down the road.
It was midnight when JJ Ellerman crept up the stairs to his bedroom. He tried to be as quiet as possible, as light as a feather on his feet. He didn’t do it because he was kind and didn’t want to wake her. He did it in the hope of catching her out. He hoped to see a moment that revealed what was in her heart, her soul, her bed. He longed to know his wife again.
Chapter 17
The next morning, whilst Willis went to see her mother, Carter went to catch up with Sandford, who was working on Olivia Grantham’s car. The Fiat was just a shell now.