house this morning if I thought Mia was in danger – that’s why you phoned to tell me. You knew I wouldn’t stay put in the hotel.’
He studies me with renewed interest, maybe even grudging admiration. ‘When poachers take a herd of elephants, they shoot the young first because they know the adults will gather around the bodies, making themselves an easier target. You played your part very well, Ellen. When you told me your Libya story last night, I knew you’d be perfect for it.’
‘You bastard.’
He shrugs. ‘Whatever.’
‘I couldn’t understand the break-ins at my house either. Whoever came into my house on Wednesday night thought I wasn’t going to be there – that’s why they bolted when I came downstairs. I couldn’t work out why they thought the house would be empty. Then I remembered I’d said in the police station that I’d be going to stay with a friend. Only you, and Holt and my solicitor were in that interview room. That’s why you broke into my house on that first night – you thought I wasn’t going to be there. But I changed my mind. So you had to come back the following day.’
‘Go on. Why?’
‘To gather up anything of Mia’s that I’d kept, that might have her DNA on it. That’s why you took all the baby stuff, in case any of it was hers. Even that first time you questioned me, you were very keen to be sure I’d surrendered everything belonging to Mia.’
‘The break-in could have been Holt.’
‘No. When you came to my hotel last night, it was to find out what Angela Clifton had told me, how much she suspected. But you also thought you’d do one last check through my stuff. Mia’s muslin cloth I’d been keeping in my handbag, it had her saliva on it. I couldn’t find it this morning, because you took it.’
‘This is why we’re here, is it? Because of a stupid cloth?’
‘We’re here because you’ve killed four people, Stuart, and tried to kill two others. Because you started with one murder and you couldn’t stop. You’ve tried to conceal what you’ve become, when the truth is you’ve become everything you’ve always hated.’
‘It’s all so simple for you, isn’t it?’
‘At The Grange when you told me Holt was still there, it was you, wasn’t it?’
He shrugs again, as if the answer is obvious. ‘So, is a rescue party on its way?’
‘I don’t need rescuing, Stuart.’
‘So it’s just me and you for the time being?’ he says, inching forward. ‘Together again.’
‘Just the two of us.’
‘You think you’re going to shoot me, do you?’
‘If I have to.’
He shakes his head. Emphatic. ‘You’re not going to pull that trigger, Ellen. You’re a good person, you don’t have it in you.’
A memory of Dominic Church’s words comes back to me. Two types of people in the world: those who will pull the trigger, and those who won’t. Way off in the distance I hear the faintest rise and fall of a siren. Help’s coming, DS Holt’s coming, but he won’t be here soon enough. There is only one way for Gilbourne to be safe now, to be able to tell his story, spin his own lies without challenge: if I’m dead before Holt arrives.
And there is only one way for Mia to be out of his reach and safe, truly safe: for Gilbourne to be gone.
‘It’s a funny thing, Stuart, but people keep telling me that.’
‘And what did you say the last—’
I jerk the trigger.
There is a punch of savage recoil in my shoulder and in the same moment a horse-kick of pain in my chest, a brutal smashing blow and a flash of brightness in the air between us as both guns go off at once. And then I’m flat on my back and there is pain everywhere, waves of agony crashing over me like surf on a beach, every nerve ending alight with pain.
I lie there for a few seconds, all the air pounded from my lungs, crying out as I raise my head. Gilbourne lies motionless a few feet away, his overshoe-clad feet pointing at the ceiling. My raincoat is splashed with red. The doll lies discarded on the floor between us, its unblinking blue eyes fixed on me with a lifeless stare. I think of Mia sleeping in her car seat outside, a note tucked under her foot, scribbled on a scrap of paper in the moments before I ran into the studio with the doll in my