Page 58 of The Trap by Catherine
He had already been here, half an hour ago, shouting her name and banging furiously on the door, presumably having discovered that she’d ignored his texts and left the studio. She’d sat in the back, lights off, door locked, hoping he wouldn’t think to check beyond this immediate area for her parked car and, after about ten minutes, he’d finally given up and left.
This might be Lucy’s only shot at getting some answers. She didn’t want them to be disturbed.
“He’s Nicki’s boyfriend,” she started explaining. “He lives—”
“I know who he is.”
There was a challenge in Roland’s tone, an undercurrent ofWho do you think you’re dealing with here?
“Right,” Lucy said. “Of course.”
She motioned toward the chairs and they both sat down.
She’d purposefully arranged them so they were far apart, but the first thing he did was jerk his a couple of inches nearer to hers. She tried not to wince as the metal legs made a loud, screeching noise against the bare concrete floor. Then Roland leaned forward, settling his elbows on his knees, bringing him closer still.
“It was you, wasn’t it?” Lucy said. “Last night. Outside my window.”
Dive right in. Show him that you’re not intimidated.
Or, at least, pretend not to be.
“Busted,” Roland said.
Half his face was in shadow, but she could see a smile.
“What were you doing there?”
“Getting you back,” he said, “for being outside of mine.”
“What?” She tried to look completely confused. “What are you talking about?”
“Oh, come on. You hardly thought you were going undetected, did you? I have some news for you, Lucy: you’re not exactly MI5. So let me ask you the same thing. What wereyoudoingthere???”
She hadn’t planned to start watching Roland Kearns’s apartment; it had just happened. A couple of months ago, when it was still bright outside well past ten o’clock, her insomnia had reached new, torturous heights. She’d tried everything to tire herself out, to get even a couple of hours of restorative sleep.
Marathons ofAir Crash Investigation. Medication, which only left her groggy and increasingly anxious that she might never sleep naturally again. Meditation, which clearly wasn’t designed to quiet the minds of relatives of missing people. Walking, for miles and miles, for hours, throughout the night, which, as the weeks wore on and the sun set earlier and earlier, started to feel dangerous—and unnecessarily risky, seeing as that didn’t work either.
Having accepted her failure, she concentrated her efforts on trying to find ways to occupy the interminable night.
She drove aimlessly at first, around South Dublin in ever-widening loops. Then sometimes to scenic spots that, at crazy o’clock in the morning, were completely deserted, roofed by a breath-taking blanket of twinkling stars, and felt like places in which she could stop and breathe. And then, on one of her drives one night about three weeks ago, she happened to see a sign for the place where Roland Kearns lived.
It was Caroline who had mentioned it, during a conversation about how Roland had called up Tana’s parents soon after she’d disappeared to complain that he’d lost his job and couldn’t get another one because everybody thought he’d killed their daughter. He’d had to move out of the half-a-million-euro house they’d shared and swap it for some awful half-finished rental on the outskirts of Dublin. Caroline had had the name and they’d looked it up online together, gleefully flipped through the pictures, satisfied that he was having to suffer in some small way by having to live there.
That first night, when Lucy drove to the complex, she didn’t have any plan. She didn’t even know what she was doing there, really, other than killing another of the night’s endless hours. She’d parked up, turned off her lights, sat and looked out—and, about ten minutes later, watched a taxi drive past her. It stopped outside one of the blocks at the rear, which, even though it was a ways away from her position, was close enough for her to identify the man who got out.
It was almost four in the morning. Where was Roland Kearns coming from at that hour? And what had he been doing there?
What if he was just as he seemed: a violent, angry man? What if hehadkilled Tana? What if he’d killed Nicki and Jennifer too?
What if, the next time another woman disappeared, Lucy was able to tell the guards that Roland Kearns hadn’t been at home?
What if, if she saw him leave his home in the middle of the night, she followed him?
What if, instead of waiting for someone to answer her questions about Nicki, she pulled on the only other thread within reach that might possibly lead to the answers?
So Lucy did.
She started returning to Roland’s place, not every single night, but most nights, to park outside and watch for him. She never again saw him coming or going—although she had seen him smoke on his balcony a few times, once with a blonde woman at his side, which turned her stomach—but it did make her feel better in some small way.
