Trust Me - T.M. Logan Page 0,125

bag and a sheet of paper, a delivery note. She turned it over and began to write, watched her hand forming the letters.

Please protect Mia

Don’t trust the police

Don’t trust anyone

She folded the paper once, wrote Ellen’s name on the front and tucked it back into her rucksack.

Do it now. Before you change your mind.

‘Would you be all right with Mia just while I take this call? It’s . . . urgent.’

‘Sure,’ Ellen said, smiling down at the little bundle in her arms, Mia’s tiny hand wrapped around her index finger. ‘Go ahead, we’ll be fine for a minute.’

‘I’ll just be down there.’ Kathryn gestured over her shoulder, down the carriage. ‘I’ll be back.’

Ellen looked up again, her smile fading.

‘Kathryn, are you sure you’re all right?’

‘Yeah.’ Kathryn got up out of her seat. ‘Thank you, I won’t be long.’

She reached out a hand and touched her fingertips gently to the baby’s head, praying that this would all be over the next time she saw her sister’s beautiful baby girl. The panic was making her hands shake and she wondered if Ellen had noticed it. Just go.

She walked to the end of the carriage and stood by the door, calling for a taxi to pick her up from the station as soon as possible. It seemed to take forever for the train to slow, to pull in and stop, and she was first to step onto the little platform at Seer Green. Thrusting her hands into the pockets of her coat, she hurried away from the train. She couldn’t look back. If she did, she might change her mind. But there was a tapping on the window as she walked past, Ellen’s face a picture of confusion, still cradling Mia in her arms.

‘Sorry,’ Kathryn mouthed silently at her.

She turned and hurried away down the platform with a handful of other passengers, through the barriers and out into the car park at the front of the station. There was a pull-in for taxis in the corner, a chain-link fence separating the car park from the platform and the track. She called the taxi firm again to be told – again – that a car was on its way to her.

From here she could see the train as it pulled out of the station, engine grumbling, moving off as it headed south-east towards London. Kathryn felt her veins bubbling with panic, her knees almost buckling beneath her. Oh God, have I done the right thing? She couldn’t take her eyes off the train as it moved away, picking up speed, carrying Mia further away from her with every second. She was still watching the end of the train recede into the distance as a car pulled in behind her. The sound of an engine, a door opening, footsteps on the tarmac.

She turned. Not a taxi driver. A familiar face, his eyes widening in surprise for just a moment as he saw she was alone.

Just her.

No baby.

But he recovered quickly, moved closer to block her escape. In his gloved hand, the glint of something metallic.

‘Hello Kathryn.’

‘You,’ she said.

67

Detective Inspector Stuart Gilbourne faces me across the studio.

A white one-piece boiler suit covers his clothes and he has plastic overshoes on his feet, an angular black pistol held low at his side in one latex-gloved hand. He looks calm, composed. In control.

‘You,’ I say, nausea rising up from the pit of my stomach. ‘You’re the Ghost.’

He gestures at me with the pistol. ‘Put Mia on the floor and take three steps back.’

‘Where’s Noah?’ I say, clutching the baby tighter to me. ‘What have you done to him?’

‘He’s fine.’

‘Bring him out, show him to me.’

‘All in good time, Ellen.’ He gives me a small, cold smile. ‘Thanks again for last night, by the way. I really enjoyed myself.’

I feel dizzy, sick, bile burning the back of my throat. There are a dozen things I want to say, a hundred things. I want to scream, shout at him, hurt him, make him feel a fraction of the anger and fear and betrayal and shame pulsing through me at this moment.

‘You bastard,’ I say. ‘You used me, to get to Mia.’

‘I did what I had to do.’

‘Angela was right about the Ghost.’

‘Half right,’ he replies. ‘She just picked the wrong horse.’

‘That’s why Kathryn told me not to trust the police. She knew one of you was dirty but you’d spun her around so much by that point that she didn’t know which way was up. You or Sergeant Holt. Or