Page 66 of The House Guest

‘I’m not sure ... I really need to get going.’

‘Please, Ruth. I won’t be long, I promise. And it will be worth it.’

She wanted to leave. But she also really wanted to hear what he had to say.

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I’ll wait. But after that, I’m going. I need to get on with my life.’

‘Of course,’ he said, with another smile. ‘I can’t wait to tell you what we can do for you.’

Chapter 29

Krugman came towards me, the gun still pointed in my direction. Two guns pointed at me in one day – but this time, I really believed the person brandishing it would use it. Again, I wished I’d taken the weapon Wanda had offered, though what use would it be if I didn’t know how to use it?

‘Put your hands behind your back,’ he said.

‘Wait ...’

‘Put your fucking hands behind your back.’

I did as he asked, and he marched over and snapped a pair of cuffs over my wrists. He reached into my pocket and took out my phone, switching it off.

‘You’re coming with me.’ He began to pull me towards the door.

‘Wait. What have I done?’

‘Breaking and entering.’

‘But I’ve got a key.’

He ignored me and continued to drag me towards the door. I tried to resist but he prodded the gun into my flank and said, ‘You want me to add resisting arrest?’

I walked. He marched me up the stairs and through the house to the front door, then out on to the front stoop.

There was no one around. While I had been downstairs, another of New York’s summer storms had started, and rain lashed down, emptying the street. A rumble of thunder accompanied me as Krugman made me walk down the steps. His unmarked car, a mud-brown Toyota, waited by the kerb. He opened the back door and pushed me inside. He chucked my backpack, which he’d worn on his way out of the house, on to the front passenger seat.

He got in and started driving. I tugged at the cuffs, but it was no use.

‘Where are we going?’ I asked after a little while. ‘The station house is in the other direction.’

‘Shut up.’

We drove through the city, Krugman swearing at the clogged-up traffic. From the occasional glimpse of street signs, we appeared to be driving south-west. Krugman had a bottle of Diet Coke, which he sipped from occasionally. My mouth was dry, heart pounding. I tried to think of a way out of this. But every time I tried to speak, to ask him where we were going, he snapped at me to shut up.

After a long, slow crawl through Brooklyn, we crossed a long bridge. A sign told me we were now on Staten Island. This was bad. Really fucking bad. Because there could only be one explanation for what was happening. He was part of it. He was one of them.

Krugman kept driving. When I tried to speak again he put the radio on – a station playing classic rock – and turned it up to drown me out. Creedence Clearwater Revival sang about a bad moon rising. At one point, Krugman’s phone rang but he pressed a button to send it to voicemail.

The traffic was sparser here, and before too long we crossed another bridge, heading out of New York City. It was dark now and still raining, the windscreen wipers sweeping back and forth. I watched them, trying to focus on the hypnotic motion in an attempt to stay calm. On the radio, Elton John was singing and I thought of home, wishing more than anything that I was back there now, sitting in the beer garden of a pub with a pint. I tried to visualise myself there but it didn’t work. I wasn’t home. I was handcuffed in the back of a car, speeding down US Route 9, and I felt it in the pit of my stomach. I was going to die.

It took some effort to get the words out. ‘You’re going to kill me.’

He didn’t reply. Instead, he turned off the highway on to a quieter road. A couple of cars went by in the opposite direction, and then we were driving through woodland, along a curving road. There was no one else around. We passed a ‘Deer Crossing’ sign and Krugman slowed down. He appeared to know exactly where he was going, turning on to a track that led deeper into the woods, his headlights illuminating the trees that crowded around us like voyeurs at a public hanging, trying to get a last look at the condemned man.

Once we were a fair distance into the woods, so no one would spot the car from the road, he slowed to a halt.

‘Wait here,’ he said, and opened the door.

Krugman got out of the car and went to the boot, disappearing from sight for a moment. When he came back into view he was carrying a torch – a flashlight, as he would call it – which he’d already switched on. He held a shovel too.

---