‘I will.’
‘Or the Carabinieri will be able to trace you.’
‘It’s OK. I’m going to do it.’
‘I’ll see you, Abby.’
‘See you, Matteo. I love you.’
He nodded. ‘Me too,’ he said quietly. Then he hung up.
‘What was that stuff about turning off her phone?’ asked Baroni.
Matteo glared at her. ‘She’s been doing it anyway, as you already know. Or you would have pinpointed her exact position with that new phone she has, which you didn’t bother to tell me about.’
‘We weren’t certain you’d say the right thing. If you called her.’
‘You could have given me the benefit of the doubt.’
But she wasn’t listening, she was on her own phone, calling her superiors, requesting a helicopter.
Matteo followed her up the steps, marched past her. He stopped and blocked her path. ‘I’m coming too.’
She smiled wryly at him, impatient to get going. ‘I don’t think so.’
He held up his phone. ‘Or I call her right back. She’ll pick up the message, you know. And she won’t go anywhere near that hotel.’
Baroni paused. Knew she was beaten. ‘Fine.’ She made to head up the steps again but Matteo called out.
‘Why did you come?’ he asked.
‘Oh. I was going to ask you to call Abby, now we have her number. Only to make sure it all went the way we wanted it to.’ She smiled brightly. ‘Which it did.’
She turned and walked away. Matteo watched her as she went back into the house. Very soon he would see his wife. Then he would get some answers.
FIFTY-ONE
It had felt so good to speak to her husband. Abby hadn’t told Ellie she was going to call him – she hadn’t even known herself until the moment arrived. They’d stopped for a break, just a few minutes to use a bathroom, stamp out the fatigue in their legs. Abby had pulled up at a roadside cafe, a place that offered little more thancroque monsieurandfriteswith a curl of lettuce alongside it.
They’d ordered a cold drink and taken a moment to look at the map, and Abby had seen how close they were to the Spanish border. She’d wondered whether the police knew where they were. If they’d be stopped as they crossed into Spain, Ellie dragged off to a station. Or both of them, actually, for Abby knew she was up to her neck in it as much as her sister.
When Ellie had gone to the bathroom, Abby had risked switching on her phone. She was checking it every thirty minutes just for a few seconds to see if Jamie had rung. There was a message. Her heart raced as she listened to it – but as she’d feared, it was the police, a woman called Baroni. Her third, sympathetically claiming to understand her predicament, pleading with her to call. Abby didn’t trust a word she said.
She’d found herself wondering how Matteo was dealing with it all, whether he was helping the Carabinieri. She missed him terribly. She wondered what he was thinking. What Ellie had said had struck home, that thing about not knowing which sister had pushed Susanna. Abby wondered if Matteo thought badly of her, if he thought her capable of cruelty and harm. It made her incredibly sad to think like that and she couldn’t bear the idea that he might. She’d also wondered if he knew anything, if the police had confided in him. Before she changed her mind, she’d called him.
The sound of his voice had transported her back home. To their house that sometimes she wondered if she’d ever see again. She could hear the sound of the Tyrrhenian Sea lapping against the rocks and knew he was on the platform. She looked around at the plastic formica-filled cafe and felt a tsunami of homesickness.
When Matteo had offered to help, she’d not known what to say at first. It was the first time someone had offered to ease the burden of what she was carrying alone and she’d felt such a sense of relief, she’d agreed. This was the man who had picked her up after her traumatic attack in Florence, who had held her when the nightmares came night after night. He was the one who’d encouraged her to walk the streets again. He had made her feel safe.
After her call, she hadn’t switched her phone off again immediately. There was something else nagging at the back of her brain, something that made her feel off guard. She knew the gun was a Beretta; Matteo had mentioned it once when he’d put it away in the safe. Abby looked around the cafe but there was still no sign of Ellie. She held the phone in her hand and opened up a search page. It didn’t take long to google it. In two minutes thirty-nine seconds she had all the answers. She’d watched the video, noting the position of the safety catch, seeing exactly how to fire it. Only when she’d committed everything to memory did she turn off her phone.
A movement made her look up and she saw Ellie come out of the toilets. Abby quickly stuffed her phone in her bag, smiling as her sister approached.
Abby considered whether to tell Ellie about her call to Matteo but knew almost instantly she wasn’t going to confide in her. Ellie didn’t know Matteo like she did and would likely freak out. Instead they returned to the car and pored over the map together, debating how far they’d get before Abby needed to rest for the night. Abby tried to sound spontaneous as she suggested a place called Hernani.
As they drove off, Abby had butterflies in her stomach. In a couple of hours or so she’d be in a place where she’d arranged to see her husband again. She was nervous the entire drive. As they crossed the border into Spain, Abby half expected to be set upon by a swarm of flashing blue lights, but they drove through without any interruption. She suspected her number plate would register somewhere but defiantly thought she’d be away, lost again in the countryside, before anyone had the chance to act on it.
A warning sign pinged up on the dashboard – a bright orange light in the encroaching dusk. They were low on fuel. Abby didn’t want to risk trying to get to Hernani on what was left in the tank.
