Page 45 of The Trap by Catherine
“It was outside the kitchen window, so yeah... it was.” She frowned. “But then, I suppose that’s an easy assumption to make.”
“Maybe,” Angela said.
They both got into the car.
“What did you think of him—apart from being a creep?” Denise asked.
“I think he’s a sociopath,” Angela said confidently. “A narcissist.”
“He’s definitely that.” She started the engine and put the car in gear. “And if he was physically abusive to his wife, that makes him a violent one. But he has an alibi for Jennifer Gold. So if he did kill Tana—which no one has been able to prove one way or the other yet—that means she isn’t connected to the other cases, and if he didn’t, he doesn’t have anything to do with this at all.” Denise turned to look at her. “So yeah, he’s a bloody sociopath, but is he the sociopathwe’relooking for?”
VALLEY OF SILENCE
She has to be walking against the traffic so she’s facing me but when I pull up beside her, she’s on the passenger side of the car. A couple of times I’ve seen someone and considered driving on, swinging around and coming back so she’ll be in the correct position, but I’ve never actually done that yet.
I stop, roll down my window and call out to her, “Sorry—do you live around here, by any chance?”
Already, the clock is ticking.
Five seconds gone.
There is a car stopped in the road with a man behind its wheel alongside a woman who is about to disappear. Anyone who passes by and sees us could, potentially, retain enough information in their brain to lead the Gardaí straight to my door, starting with my license plate. Someone who knows her could arrive upon us, making it what they call a “positive sighting”, one that everyone is certain is actually of her. They could even stop to say hi, forcing an end to our conversation, so that the next time I pull over on the side of the road to snatch a woman whose phone I can see, this woman will have a story to tell about a man who stopped alongside her a few weeks or months ago, and thenshecould be the one who leads the Gardaí to me.
It’s the riskiest part of the whole endeavor. I have to move fast.
Whatever she says, or ideally before she can say anything, I go straight in with a, “Do you know where Meadow Park is, by any chance?” Or Riverstick Road. Or Lakeview Lane. I just make something up. And she’ll say no, she doesn’t, because it doesn’t exist, and then I’ll shake my head and say something like, “I’m going to be in so much trouble. My phone is dead so I’m just going off my wife’s directions, and I was supposed to be there half an hour ago with the cake.”
And then I jerk my head toward the back seat.
Twenty seconds gone, if I’m lucky.
Remember how I said it was like swimming in the sea? That you don’t go every time but you’re ready to go any time? That you keep all your swimming gear in a bag in the boot?
Well, this ismyswimming gear:
A glossy white cardboard box, the kind a cake comes in.
A waxed carrier bag from a well-known, high-end department store with some tissue paper sticking up out of it.
A bouquet of flowers. Plastic, artificial flowers, but a mere glance at them isn’t going to tell you that.
When I’m out on my drives, Amy thinks I’m at the gym, or gone for a hillwalk, or with my astronomy club (that last one is very useful for night-time excursions). That’s what I tell her, and that’s why—she thinks—I keep a black gym bag in the boot of my car. If she ever unzipped it, she’d find things like thermals, muddy trainers, waterproofs. But if she kept digging, underneath all that, she’d find the empty white box and the department-store bag, packed flat, and, underneaththem, the bouquet of plastic blooms.
I stop in the car park of our local Aldi to take them out of the bag and set them up in the back seat—not because I’m planning to do anything, remember, but so I’ll be ready if I decide to, if the right opportunity presents itself.
If it doesn’t, I stop somewhere else to put them back.
I used to do it in the driveway before I left home at all, until one day Amy belatedly remembered that she needed me to pick up some milk and came hurrying out to say so. I had onlyjustmanaged to get my jacket thrown over them when she reached my window.
Close one, that.
Although I’m sure I could’ve come up with something. I mean, it wasn’t exactly a bunch of cable-ties and a crowbar.
You women aren’t as trusting or naive as you once were, you see. Thanks to all those bloody documentaries and true-crime podcasts, you’ve wised up. You know now that men like me love to use your own sweet and generous natures against you, that we’ll rely on your manners and pleasantness and your being nice, and prey on your fear that the absolute worst thing someone could accuse you of is being a bitch. And you know that serial killers love to pretend to need help, like Bundy and his plaster casts. So there has to be something in the car—in the back seat, so it’s not overtly obvious—that telegraphs, somehow, that I’m not that guy.
Baby paraphernalia was an obvious choice. A baby seat. Baby toys. A “forgotten” bottle or one of those stupid stick-figure baby-on-board signs, or maybe even a family photo tacked to the dashboard because, gosh, I’m just so in love with my family I need to be able to see their facesall the time, even when I’m driving the car and should really have my eyes on the road. But a baby seat is not only a tricky thing to hide, it’s impossible to explain to your wife when you and she don’t have any children.
And what I realized is that, actually, that’s trying to solve the wrong problem.
