Lynda La Plante: Twisted

‘Look at their faces, they are identical, the same eyes.’

He sat down to pull on his shoes. ‘Then it would make sense for you to find her and give her the good news, maybe also fill her in on the repercussions of her actions that I spent half the night telling you about. Maybe she’d even like to apologize to Harry Dunn’s grieving widow.’

‘You can’t blame her, for God’s sake, she was driven to the brink by her mother, and if you had been a good enough detective you would have discovered at the outset Lena Fulford was insane.’

He turned on her and his face twisted with anger. ‘You want to slap me again? The reason I am here is to trace that tiara, because I will be in line for a big finder’s fee, which would set me up nicely and get me out of feeling that I am on the brink of fucking madness like Lena Fulford. I ate and slept months of, as you rightly say, incompetent detective work, but right now I don’t give a shit if Amy is ever found – all I care about is my own self-preservation, and it seems to me that all you care about is getting your hands on your precious girlfriend’s inheritance.’

It was like a red rag to a bull. Jo grabbed at one of the knives still left on the table and came at him with the blade raised to stab him in the chest. He was able to not only twist the knife from her grasp but at the same time draw her arm up behind her back, almost pulling it out of the socket. She screamed and he relaxed his hold, turning her round to face him, and pulling her close, he kissed her. She struggled and he loosened his grip to drag her head by the hair to kiss her again. She stopped attempting to get away, her body deflated, but she did not respond to his kiss, and he released her and watched as she wiped her mouth with the sleeve of her dress. She looked disgusted, yet still ferociously angry, and he felt if he even attempted to move closer she would spit in his face.

Flushed with impotent frustration, he strode past her into the kitchen, picked up his washbag and tossed his razor into it. She was still standing in the same position and he had to brush past her to collect his keys before he walked out. He was throwing his things into the camper van when she came to the front door.

‘Where are you going?’ she shouted.

He paid no attention and got in the van; she ran down the path and gripped hold of the van door.

‘Where are you going?’ she demanded.

He said nothing as he fumbled to insert the ignition key.

‘You can’t leave me here.’ She repeatedly hit the door of the vehicle with the flat of her hand as the engine ticked over. She started crying as he put the gearshift into reverse.

‘Move away,’ he said angrily, and she ran to stand behind the camper van. If he reversed he would knock her over, and he turned off the engine. She came further round as he wound down the window.

‘Where are you going?’ she begged and started crying.

‘I am sorry for what I did in there, but you should not have tried to stab me.’ He was struggling to get the words out. ‘And if you really want to know, I have wanted to do exactly what I did from almost the first time I met you, so I apologize, but now I just want to leave.’

‘Are you going back to England?’

He shrugged, and was astonished when she asked if she could come with him.

‘No, find your own way, Jo; maybe even more importantly, find Amy, then it’ll be up to the pair of you to decide what’s the right thing to do.’

‘But what if I can’t find her?’

‘Not my problem.’

‘But will you report back to your boss that she is alive?’

He sighed and shook his head. In reality he was uncertain what he was going to do, and even if he did report his findings he had no idea of what the outcome would be.

‘I don’t have any money to buy a ticket.’

‘Sell your paintings, or the Land Rover,’ he suggested.

‘What about the tiara – you said you were hoping to get a finder’s fee if you found it.’

‘According to you, Amy has it and is the rightful heir to it. Anyway, as far as I am concerned it’s over and she’s probably sold it by now. Did she take your sister’s passport when she left?’

‘Yes, but can’t you trace her now you know what name she is using?’ she persisted.

‘It’s possible, but that will mean reporting it to the US border police as well as Interpol and London, which will also implicate you as assisting her in the possession of a false identity document and using it to travel.’

‘But will you report it when you get back? I mean, will I be under arrest?’

He looked at her; yet again he found her concern for her own welfare irritating.

‘Like I said, I’m not here working for the Met, and I seriously doubt I will consider returning to work for them. I just needed answers for my own peace of mind.’

She stepped back as he turned on the engine again, and stood watching him as he reversed slowly down the track, turned at the gates and drove off. Going back to the cottage, she picked up the sketches, stacked them together and placed them into the folder. She sat and counted out what money she had left, and calculated how much she might make from selling the Land Rover. She alternated between crying and feeling rejected and angry, but with most of her possessions already packed she decided she would leave – maybe she’d get a few dollars if she sold the hens. Just as Reid had said, it was over.

Reid drove for hours, aimlessly at first, but gradually he began to enjoy the freedom of having no pressure and no deadline. He decided that he would make his way to the desert and take in the atmosphere – if nothing else it was a place to go before he returned to London. He stopped by a roadside market and bought some hand-made leather sandals with thick black soles made of discarded tyres, a pair of loose white drawsting trousers and a white cheesecloth shirt. He even bought a wide-brimmed straw hat and laughed at his reflection in a parked car’s window.

He headed through Culiacán, on to Guasave, and then parked alongside the roadside in Los Mochis, sleeping in the camper van for the night. He kept on driving the following day, in no kind of a hurry and not worried about the passing hours. Every now and again he consulted a map and ate from roadside food stalls as he passed through Navojoa and Obregon until finally he saw the signpost to Guaymas. Stopping only for gas, he drove onto the toll road 15D and then headed onto route 15N. The whole journey had taken ages, but at last he was close to his destination, the Sonoran Desert.

He parked the camper van in what appeared to be a makeshift car park, where wooden boards warned about the lack of any cover, to not to go walking in the heat of the day and to carry plenty of water. There was no other vehicle around and it was as Jo had described, desolate. The one landmark was the sign pointing to the original location of where Catch-22 was filmed, and it was covered in windblown sand. Taking out a rolled-up straw mat and a bottle of water, he began to head towards the massive stretch of desert sand. The heat of the day was fading, but the sand even through his rubber-soled sandals was hot and made him walk with a high step. He paused frequently to take a few deep breaths. Closing his eyes he could feel the most extraordinary emotional release and a satisfying sense of calm and peace enveloped him. He continued for about an hour, hardly able to believe that there was not one other person visible and gradually, as Jo had predicted, the sand and the sky became perfectly divided as if there was a crystal ocean beyond and he belonged there.

Something sparkled as if caught by the sunlight. He blinked in uncertainty but drew his hat lower, kept up his high-step walk and then paused to drink some water. He had never experienced such an expansive feeling, every muscle seemed to relax and his eyes slowly became accustomed to the brilliance ahead, and then he saw the figure nearly a mile away in the distance.