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Laura relaxed and the cares of the day dropped away. She thought of Joe waiting for her and smiled. She would soon be home.
The red tail lights of a car in front were coming up fast and she changed down a gear ready to overtake. There was plenty of time before the bend. No doubt about that. She pulled out.
Lights. Headlights. Full on and heading straight for her, fast. Where the hell—Adrenaline pushed the thought from her brain before she could finish it. Too late to fall back. She was committed. Her foot stamped down on the pedal and she’d never been so glad that she drove a sports car.
The seconds played out in slow motion. The lights dazzling, filling her head, illuminating the channels of rain running down the windscreen, illuminating her white knuckles on the wheel. The ear-splitting, never-ending blast of a horn, sowing madness in her mind. Waiting for the impact, for the smash and crash of tearing metal and flesh.
Then she was past. Intact. Back on the right side of the road. Wide, terrified eyes looking in the mirror. The car she’d overtaken was far behind, dwindling at an alarming rate. It had slowed right down, maybe stopped. But where was the other? The one that had almost killed her. No sign of it at all and that was a scary thing, because the road was straight and it had to be there.
Not as scary as the other thing though. The thing that had the alarm bell in her head ringing out loud this time. She had recognized that car. It was the four-wheel drive again. The monster. And now it had disappeared.
Suddenly the big bend in the road was upon her. In her fear she had forgotten it and she hit it far too fast. Braked too hard, wrenched the wheel too far, the car went out of control. It skidded across the wet road and up onto the bank on the far side. For a moment it teetered, poised to turn over, a toss-up which way gravity would take it. Tails you win, heads you lose. The wheels came back down to earth.
It was the bank that saved her, saved her from the trees she would have ploughed into if the land had been flat. It slowed the car enough for her to wrench back control. Thank God there had been no one coming the other way.
Laura stopped the car, pulling off the road at the entrance to a wide track leading into the woods. Her arms and legs were jelly. She opened the door, swung trembling legs to the ground, and sat, eyes tight shut, sucking in great breaths of the cold, wet air.
The sound of a car made her open her eyes nervously and she watched with a jolt of panic as a drop of something more solid and sticky than rain fell on her skirt. There was another … and another. She touched it; put the finger to her lips. Tasted blood. The mirror showed a bloody gash, above and through her left eyebrow.
Another car passed. She could see the faces of the occupants, a young couple looking out at her curiously as they went by. She felt terribly vulnerable. What was she doing sitting alone and injured by the side of the road in a dark wood? She must get out of here. Suppose someone stopped, suppose the four-wheel drive came back?
She was cross with herself. She didn’t scare easily, she shouldn’t let herself get in a state. She’d had a near miss, that was all; a nasty near miss but it was over now. As for the 4x4, she thought she’d recognized it but how could she be sure? There were dozens of them, all the same, hard to tell one from another. But hadn’t she heard that same music again as it tore past her? That heavy beat pulsing in her skull.
She shook her head to clear it and blood spattered on the dashboard. She was a bit dizzy; she wasn’t sure she should drive.
Call Joe. That was the best idea. Get him to come out and collect her. They could leave her car and pick it up the next day. But she didn’t much like the idea of it being left there overnight. She hesitated.
More cars coming, that decided it. She would call him. She reached for her bag on the passenger seat but it wasn’t there. Saw it, fallen on the floor, and stretched down to pick it up and take out her mobile. The movement made her feel faint. She stopped with her head bent down and waited.
She listened to the noise of an approaching car. There was something wrong with it. It was different but she couldn’t work out why. She left the bag, pulled herself upright and as her eyes came level with the passenger window she saw it. In the wood, lights blazing.
That was why the noise had sounded wrong, she realized. It was coming from the wrong direction, it was charging up the track towards her. It was the 4x4.
There was a locked barrier across the track, about thirty feet into the wood from where she was parked. It stopped access for the general public but allowed in forestry vehicles whose drivers had the key. Surely it would stop the monster.
Something told her not to bet on it. Not to wait and see. She knew she had to move. But she sat for vital seconds, fascinated, unable to drag her eyes away from the oncoming lights. No wonder, she thought, that rabbits froze, transfixed in the road, waiting to be run down. With an effort she slammed shut the driver’s door, yanked on the seat belt and started the engine.
It was perilously close to her now but still she hesitated. Vaguely her mind registered that this must be how it had appeared and disappeared so suddenly – by using the woodland tracks. It came to a slight rise in the ground, and as Laura watched, appeared to rear up before her, a huge, malevolent metal beast, eyes piercing and engine roaring. She jammed in first gear and fled, tyres shrieking. Behind her, the barrier disintegrated.
The feeling of faintness had gone, swept away by fear. Her head was clear of everything except the need to get away. She was only seconds ahead, had moved only just in time. She looked in the mirror, saw her pursuer turning out of the wood and onto the road.
There was no doubt any more that it was pursuing her. Who was the driver and what did they want? A small part of her brain told her to observe. Read the licence plate, identify the make of car, pin down the details. Gather the clues to the who and the why. Vital for later, but worthless now. The rest of her brain cared only for safety. It told her to run and run, find sanctuary, nothing else mattered. The chase was on – she was the wildebeest, injured and fleeing for its life.
Sanctuary. Where was sanctuary? On a dark night, an empty road, still eight miles from home.
It was gaining on her. She knew these roads, she was driving a fast car, but it was gaining on her, for God’s sake. Headlights – on full beam, blinding her – filling the car, filling her head. Drive faster, panic yelled in her head, but she took no notice. She knew that if she did, she was going to crash, she was a dead woman.
Sanctuary was other people. She had to reach them. They would make her safe. It could not pursue her then. But she daren’t try to find her mobile; it was in the bag on the floor and she needed all her concentration for the road. In any case, no one could get to her in time.
There was no time. It was right behind, pushing, intimidating, inches from the rear bumper. She heard the music blasting, saw the monster looming over her. Jesus, it was going to hit her!
She tensed for the blow, but it didn’t fall. A car was coming in the opposite direction. The 4x4 backed off a fraction. She started pumping the horn, flashing her lights, hoping for help. It did no good. The car came and went, its driver probably delighted to give them both a wide berth.
The monster surged back and she felt a sudden dread. Oh yes, she thought, I know what you’re going to do. You’re going to overtake, jam on your brakes and force me to stop.
Faster. Go faster. Panic was shouting to her again, screaming at her to run. The Audi could beat off the 4x4 with no trouble. Race away, top speed, before it’s too late, but self-preservation stopped her. She wasn’t ready to die yet.
There was a turn-off not far ahead, she remembered. A narrow road; little more than a lane. She might be safer there, less room for her pursuer to manoeuvre, more chance for her to persuade an oncoming car to stop. Or maybe not. Maybe a narrow lane would be a trap. Should she take it? She couldn’t decide. Her brain felt hot and choked.
The lights behind moved and the engine revved. It was coming out, it was overtaking. Her decision was made.
It was level with her now and she forced herself to look. Observe. Log the evidence. She was a lawyer and lawyers were supposed to be good at that. But there was nothing to see. Desperately, she stared into the night but there was just the rain on the tinted windows and darkness beyond. Impenetrable.
It stayed put. Not passing by, just staying level, getting closer and closer to her. Dear God, she thought, it’s going to run me off the road!
Where was the turning? She should have reached it by now. Please let it be there, she prayed. And then she was on it, almost missing it. She wrenched the wheel violently to the left, so sharply that for a moment she didn’t think she would make it. She felt the back of the car skid on the wet tarmac, collide with the side of the four-wheel drive before peeling off alone into the lane. She changed down into second, brought the car under control, and slammed her foot to the floor.
Nothing in the rear-view mirror. Her pursuer was gone. A wave of euphoria buzzed through her, ridiculous, of course, because it couldn’t be long before it was back. But for the moment that didn’t matter. She had shaken it off, if only briefly, and that was just great. Tears of relief filled her eyes. Hell, she thought, now I can’t even see where I’m going. She wiped away the tears and felt the side of her face sticky with blood.
No sign of it. She couldn’t believe it. Kept looking in the mirror but it stayed clear. She thought that time was playing tricks – that what seemed to her, in her terror, like an eternity, when the 4x4 could have turned round and caught up with her three times over, was in reality just a few seconds and it might only now be turning into the lane after her. She stared at the clock on the dashboard and when another whole minute had gone by, she really started to hope. Another turning in the road. She took it. Took every turning she came to, kept driving fast, with no idea or care about where she was going, but each one making her feel a little bit safer, twisting and turning away from danger.
She felt like she was driving round in circles, her heart stopped by every passing car, her eyes strained for lights in the woods as she imagined it chasing her across country, her brain punch-drunk, unable to focus on finding the route home. It was almost ten minutes later that she made it out of the lanes onto a main road she recognized, and joined a welcome convoy of traffic.
Reaction set in seriously then. Her arms were shaking, her teeth were chattering and it was with tremendous relief that she saw the service station. She pulled in, parked by the café and tottered inside.
The man behind the counter looked worried and when she caught sight of her bleeding, tear-streaked face in the mirror, she could understand why. He wanted to call an ambulance but she told him she hadn’t been physically assaulted and she wasn’t drunk or drugged and he settled for her phoning her husband and handed over what she needed most – a strong black coffee.
She sat huddled over it, trying to remember. But there was nothing, nothing she could recall but the dark and the fear and the noise. No make, no model, no part of a licence plate that could be dredged from her subconscious. No clue as to who the driver had been. Not a single fact to tell the police. And she knew the police – without facts and details and evidence, she was wasting her time.
The door opened and she looked up. Joe. How fast he’d arrived, a white knight charging to her rescue in record time. Her battered heart gave a thump of joy. Tall and solid and hugely comforting. Things would be all right now, she thought.
CHAPTER TWO (#u195f25f4-df13-5fe1-a696-89f6f603e37b)
It was 4 a.m. and Harry Pelham lay awake thinking about the poisonous, scheming bitch who was doing her best to hang him out to dry. He smiled bitterly to himself. No, he wasn’t thinking about his wife, though she also fitted the description; he was thinking about her lawyer, Laura Maxwell.
She had been responsible for the nineteen-page divorce submission designed to crucify him. It damned him as a bully, a wife beater, and a bad father. He could remember every word of those nineteen pages. They sent him into a frenzy of rage and resentment. It was a vile, disgusting diatribe, full of lies and exaggerations. It had lodged in his brain like splinters of glass.
His wife had no doubt provided the raw material but she’d been egged on by the toxic Maxwell woman; she wouldn’t have done it by herself. The weaving together of that deadly, distorted whole, calculated to tick every box against him, had been the lawyer’s work. He was sure of it and he hated Laura Maxwell for it.
His own solicitor, Ronnie Seymour, usually so shrewd, had been like a lamb to the slaughter. He played through in his head the previous day’s conversation with Ronnie.
‘Slight problem, Harry,’ Ronnie had said on the phone, ‘nothing to worry about, though. Come over and we’ll talk it through.’
How many times in the last few months had he heard those words ‘nothing to worry about’ from Ronnie Seymour. Inevitably, they meant the opposite.
Ronnie had been his good friend and trusted adviser for more than twenty years. He had sorted out, with no trouble at all, the frequent problems that Harry had run into with his property development empire. When Harry had gone too far, had bent the rules, had tried rather too aggressively to ‘persuade’ people who stood in his way, Ronnie had been there to smooth out the consequences. Like a few months ago, when old Charlie Rhodes refused to sell part of his back garden, a crucial piece of land that Harry needed for one of his developments.
Late one evening, Harry knocked on the old man’s door with a higher offer. Charlie yelled at him to piss off, called him a piece of shit and Harry lost his temper, pinning the pensioner against the wall by his throat and telling him how much better for him it would be to take the offer. It turned out that Charlie’s son was a police officer, and shortly afterwards, the police arrived at Harry’s office to question him about the ‘bullying and harassment’ of Charlie Rhodes. It was only because of Ronnie’s efforts that Harry avoided being charged.
Ronnie was a fixer and the business had flourished. Harry was rich. That was why he’d been so keen that the man should also sort out his marriage break-up. Ronnie knew his secrets and Harry didn’t want a stranger nosing around in his financial affairs. But although Ronnie might be clever, and spot on when it came to property law or criminal law, he was no expert on divorce or family law. That was another thing, another thing entirely, and Harry thought Ronnie wasn’t up to it. Correction. Harry knew that Ronnie wasn’t up to it.
‘They’ve frozen your business bank accounts,’ Ronnie told him as soon as he arrived. ‘It’s a nuisance but there’ll be no problem getting them unfrozen.’
Harry glowered at the tall, blond-haired lawyer and gritted his teeth: ‘You said there’d be no problem over money. You said the undertakings we gave the court were enough, you said—’
Ronnie held up his hands to stop the protest, his usual smooth manner just a tiny bit ruffled.
‘Different judge, I’m afraid. Frankly, I’m surprised at this. It’s quite unnecessary.’
‘How long before I get them back?’ Harry growled.
‘Depends how quickly we can get it listed for a hearing. Then, when we get it overturned, the court order has to reach the bank.’ He smiled reassuringly. ‘Shouldn’t be too much of a delay.’
‘How long, Ronnie? That’s what I want to know,’ Harry demanded. He had learned long ago never to expect Ronnie to give a direct answer containing a specific fact for which he could be held accountable later. That was the way with all lawyers, wasn’t it? You just had to keep on asking the question.
‘Of course, I can’t give you a date,’ Ronnie said, nettled, ‘but take it from me, it will be all right.’
‘If you say so,’ Harry said without conviction.
‘There’s something else. I’d like you to see a psychiatrist,’ the lawyer said, successfully distracting his client from the bank accounts.
‘Me? You must be joking.’
‘Unfortunately not. The allegations they’re making about the emails, we need to take them seriously.’
Ronnie was on home ground now – the emails had the whiff of crime about them and he was an astute criminal lawyer. He had wanted chapter and verse on everything in the divorce submission. Everything except the email allegations. He didn’t want to hear about them. If Harry had broken the law, and Ronnie knew about it, he wouldn’t be able to act for him in criminal proceedings if Harry chose to deny it later. Better, then, that he didn’t know.
‘Are you intending to say I’m mad?’ Harry snarled. ‘I thought you were supposed to be on my side.’
Ronnie was annoyed. He was doing his best for the man. He’d said at the beginning he didn’t want to take on the divorce. He’d made it clear he was not a specialist but Harry had insisted. Ronnie understood why, but still thought his friend should hire an expert. He had assured Harry that financial disclosure to another lawyer could be ‘finessed’. But Harry would not budge. In the end, Ronnie had reluctantly agreed. He wasn’t going to take any flak, though, now the going had got tough.
‘I’m sorry if you’re not satisfied with the way I’m handling things.’ Ronnie’s tone implied that Harry would be most welcome to go elsewhere.
‘I don’t want to see a shrink.’
‘It’s the only safe way. We need a mental health defence in place in case the allegations cause problems. Prepare the ground for saying that whatever you did, you did it when your mind was unbalanced by the stress and trauma of your marriage breakdown.’
‘If you say I’m crazy I’ll never get to see my daughter,’ Harry said, furious.
Ronnie looked at him impatiently.
‘You’ve got to be realistic, Harry. You’ll just have to take your chances over Martha. There’s a lot of very nasty stuff alleged about what sort of husband and father you are. The priority now has to be to look after yourself and your assets.’
‘That fucking lawyer has twisted everything. It’s lies, all of it. She needs to be taught a lesson, needs to learn she won’t get away with it.’ Harry spat out the words.
Lying sleepless in his bed, the desire for retribution was strong, like acid eating into his soul. He was not going to let some smart lawyer destroy him, a lawyer who had turned his wife into a vindictive, ungrateful bitch of the first order.
Harry had met Anna eleven years ago when she was twenty-two and had applied for a post as his PA at his main office in Hove. By halfway through the interview he was craving her. Not surprisingly, she got the job. A year later they were married. He was thirty-five, his property development business had taken off, and he wanted a wife and children. He had thought her so sweet, so loyal, and so terribly in need of him. But he had been wrong, totally wrong. She had thrown his love right back in his face.
Now her solicitor was demanding a ludicrously large settlement. If she got it, she would close on wipe him out, though Ronnie kept telling him that some of his assets, salted away over the years in various overseas accounts, could be kept safe and undisclosed. But Ronnie’s assurances were proving less than reliable.
‘This Laura Maxwell your wife’s using,’ Ronnie said soon after the divorce began, ‘the judge isn’t going to like her tactics.’
What garbage that had turned out to be, Harry thought savagely. The judges barely seemed to grasp the issues involved let alone the strategies of his wife’s malicious lawyer. Despite the five court hearings he had so far attended and the growing pile of paperwork associated with his case, he’d never seen the same judge twice.
Harry knew the financial damage would be bad. Most of his assets were visible, and however hard he tried, he couldn’t hide the fact that he was a wealthy man. Equality was the yardstick in divorce settlements these days and didn’t Laura Maxwell just know it. Equality – what a joke that was. Harry lay on his back, his body rigid with fury, sweat on his forehead though the night was cold.
He had made what he considered to be a generous offer to his wife, a very generous offer indeed, and a lot more than the greedy cow deserved, but Laura Maxwell had dismissed it out of hand. All she wanted was to confront him and crush him.
Gone 5 a.m. and still no sign of sleep. He thrashed around in the bed. Harry Pelham was good at fighting. He’d needed to be to survive in the cut-throat world of the property developer. He was forceful and physically intimidating. Six foot two, brawny, with a thick black moustache, and dark, deep-set eyes that looked you over as if he couldn’t care less about you, but at the same time, he was sizing you up – calculating your strengths and weaknesses. At forty-five, he had learned to be as hard-nosed as they come.
Harry wasn’t used to losing and he wasn’t going to get used to it now. He’d made other plans. With that comforting thought, he finally fell asleep.
The first time they knocked they didn’t wake him. The second time they would have woken the dead.
Damn postman, he thought.
He dragged himself out of bed, downstairs and opened his front door. Four men stood before him. They didn’t look much like postmen.
‘May we come in?’ said one of them barging past into the hallway.
Harry Pelham was under arrest.
CHAPTER THREE (#u195f25f4-df13-5fe1-a696-89f6f603e37b)
Laura made tea while Sarah Cole sat miserably in her office clutching the Hakimi file to her chest and picking nervously at a corner of it. Sarah’s dark hair was greasy and her eyes were tired and puffy. She put the file down on her lap, took a Hobnob from the packet in front of her and nibbled at it.
‘Oh my God, it’s such a mess!’ she said.
Laura set two mugs of tea down on the desk and pulled round a chair so she could sit next to Sarah.
‘Don’t worry; I’m sure it can be sorted out.’
Sarah shook her head. ‘There’s no way. Have a look; you’ll see what I mean.’ She handed the file to Laura and took one of the mugs. Her lower lip trembled and she put it back on the desk.
‘The thing is, it’s not my fault. She should have told me,’ Sarah said defiantly, screwing her mouth into a scowl.
Laura opened the file and began to read and Sarah hoped that with all her experience and all the successful cases she had under her belt, Laura just might be able to come up with a solution. She picked up the mug again, dunked the biscuit, and watched as a lump of it broke off and disappeared under the surface of the tea. That was just typical, she thought, of her luck and her life these days.
Her eyes went to the photo on Laura’s desk. A summer’s day somewhere on the South Downs with Laura standing beside a horse, her husband Joe next to her, his arm around her waist. Joe looked outrageously gorgeous with his bright blue eyes and the cleft in his chin. It was a picture that made her wince and hate the world for being so unfair. Sarah’s long-term partner, Andrew, had left her eighteen months ago and moved in with one of her best friends.
Laura remembered the Hakimi case because Sarah had asked her about it at the beginning. It was a situation she had dealt with several times before and she’d been happy to advise how to handle it. That advice had been fine; the mistake had come later, with an awful result.
‘The boy is in Tunisia!’ she exclaimed in dismay before she could stop herself.
‘I know. It’s hopeless, isn’t it? We’ll never get him back from there.’
‘It makes it a bit tricky but not impossible,’ Laura replied with a supportive smile, and carried on reading. Sarah took another Hobnob from the packet. She had put on two stone since Andrew left.
