The tackle caught the backs of her legs, James’s full weight barrelling into her and sending her sprawling, her hands not quick enough fully to cushion the impact so that her chin snapped against the pavement and flashes erupted before her eyes.
Copper blood bloomed in Emma’s mouth as she felt James grab her under her arms and haul her up and lead her away.
Fifty
‘Emma.’
She couldn’t look up at his face, couldn’t bear what she’d see there. On the other hand, if she didn’t look at him, she’d be unprepared for what was about to come.
She was torn.
Still dazed from the collision between her jaw and the pavement, Emma had allowed herself to be bundled back down the road towards the BMW. She could have struggled, made a public spectacle; there seemed to be more people about under the streetlamps than there had been when she’d been running. But James had pressed close, murmuring in her ear, ‘Don’t cry out, and don’t fight me. Or I’ll have to hurt you,’ and she’d complied.
The BMW was still in working order. Emma sat staring dully through the windscreen as they travelled a few more blocks. Part of the way up a hill, James pulled in and killed the engine.
Emma let him help her from her seat and towards a house, this one at the end of a terrace and in darkness. He unlocked the door and pushed her gently ahead of him. She began moving along a corridor in the direction of what looked like a living room but he said, ‘No. Down here.’
James pushed open a door to the right. Beyond it, stone steps led down towards, presumably, a cellar.
At the bottom, James flicked a switch, producing bright light. The room was clean and bare, with nothing in it but a pair of foldable chairs propped against one wall. He brought them over and opened them up, taking Emma by the shoulders and lowering her into one of them. He stood by his, but didn’t sit.
‘Emma. I’m sorry about this.’
She said nothing. The faint noises of the city were barely audible down here.
‘Sorry I had to plant those devices on you.’
Had to? she thought.
‘And I’m sorry about all this, tonight.’
Something in his voice made her slowly raise her gaze to his face.
‘I really didn’t mean to hurt you. And I’m not going to hurt you any more. Not physically, anyway. But there’s something I’m going to tell you that you’ll find deeply upsetting. Once again, I’m sorry to have to be the one to do so.’
There was genuine sympathy in his voice, Emma realised. And when she stared at his eyes, they weren’t hostile.
James said: ‘It’s about your husband.’
‘Brian?’ She never used his name in James’s presence. Absurdly, to do so had always seemed to compound her betrayal of him. But this was different. She was hardly in a clinch with James at the moment. Nor would she ever be again.
As if he’d been waiting until he got a response from her, James sat down. He leaned forward, his legs splayed, his forearms resting on his knees. His eyes peered at her intently.
‘How much has he told you about his time in the armed forces?’
Despite her fear, Emma found herself remembering the exasperation she’d felt at Brian’s caginess when it came to his military years. The chuckling way he’d tended to change the subject. She’d always assumed he’d had experiences he’d rather forget, and she didn’t press him; but at the same time she’d felt slightly resentful that she was always forthcoming with the gory details of her own work, yet he kept his from her.
‘Not much,’ Emma said. ‘He spent time in Iraq, which was a worry, of course. Then, when we discovered I was pregnant with our eldest, he left.’
James would have been in Iraq around the same time Brian was serving there, she knew. Sometimes she’d wondered if the two men had ever met, but she’d avoided asking James. She wanted them to be unconnected in every way.
‘And then he became a sports coach at a boys’ school.’ James watched her carefully.
Emma shrugged. ‘He’s always been a very physical person. After he’d left the Paras he was never going to take a desk job.’
‘Those weekend coaching sessions. Those rugby trips away for a few days. Have you ever wondered about them, Emma?’
‘What?’ The brightness of the room, the faint mustiness suggesting the cellar wasn’t used much, the panic and confusion of the last hour, all began to make Emma feel disorientated. ‘You mean, have I ever suspected Brian was lying about them? That he was having an affair, or something?’
The idea was ludicrous. Gentle family men like Brian didn’t have affairs. Unappreciative, needy, chronically dissatisfied women like Emma, on the other hand, did, she thought with a pang of self-loathing.
James’s gaze was unnerving her. He said: ‘I don’t mean an affair.’
She waited for more. Instead, he glanced away for a moment.
‘Those devices I planted on you,’ he said. ‘The bugs. They weren’t meant for you. They were intended for your husband. To monitor what he was saying.’
Her mouth opened, stayed that way though no words came out.
James went on: ‘It would have been easier to wire up your house. But he’d have found the devices. He’ll be sweeping the home regularly for audio surveillance.’
Despite herself, Emma let out a laugh. ‘Brian? Sweeping for — that’s ridiculous.’
‘Emma, listen to me. Your husband isn’t who you think he is. He’s been deceiving you. And so have I.’ He clenched his teeth for a moment as though trying to bite back his words. ‘Your husband has been under my surveillance for the last six months. He’s — ’
‘Wait a minute.’ Emma realised she’d half-risen from the chair. James made a sitting motion with his hands and unconsciously she obeyed. ‘You’re telling me that you and I — our affair — was just… cover? That you used me only to get to Brian?’
‘No.’ His voice was emphatic. ‘It was more than that. Much more. I like you, Emma. I’m strongly attracted to you. I’ve enjoyed our time together as much as I’ve always made obvious. None of that was faked.’
‘But that was all just a happy extra,’ she whispered. ‘A perk along the way. The main thing was to get to my husband.’
He watched her silently for a few seconds, then: ‘Yes. Essentially.’
‘You bastard.’
She rose fully from her chair this time. Her palm cracked across his cheek. His head flinched sideways, but he kept his arms down. Slowly he turned his face towards Emma again, a furious red mark growing on his cheek.
She sat down. Somewhere, deep down, there was rage, and humiliation, and a guilt so corrosive it was a wonder it wasn’t eating her inside out. But at the moment all she was aware of was a grey numbness.
‘Why the surveillance?’ she said dully. ‘What’s Brian supposed to have done?’
Again, though James’s face was burning from the slap, Emma saw unfeigned compassion there.
‘Bad things, Emma,’ he murmured. ‘Things which are so terrible, you’ll understand why I did what I did. Even if you never forgive me — and I can understand why you wouldn’t — you’ll at least understand.’
Brian’s face appeared in her mind’s eye. So reassuring. So bland and unthreatening. Cold terror clutched at her gut. Oh God. Not… something to do with the schoolboys he coached? Not that.
James said: ‘Brian Tullivant is a murderer.’
Fifty-one
When Tullivant realised what had happened, he cursed himself for an idiot.
Should have seen that one coming.
He was seated outside a café on the South Bank, two hundred yards from the entrance to the pub, the babbling summer-evening crowds providing a perfect screen which would render him all but invisible. His Mazda was parked round the back in a side street. The display on his watch said it was five past nine.
He’d been there twenty minutes. When he’d got home and Emma had given him her usual spiel about how she’d been called out, he’d glanced at the clock on the kitchen wall and estimated she was going to be late for her nine p.m. meeting with James Cromer. And by the looks of it, he was right.