Page 79 of The Question of Us
“Fuck.” Samuel’s voice caught in his throat. “Just be careful, okay? And keep the line open.”
I popped the flashlight on my phone and headed for the BMW. “Front seats are empty,” I told him, barely recognising my own voice, it was shaking so hard. “The back too. And the keys are in the console.” I tested the door. “It’s unlocked.”
“Don’t touch anything if you don’t have to,” Samuel warned. “Use your shirt or something.”
Shit.I hadn’t even thought of that.
When I didn’t reply, Samuel checked, “Are you okay?”
“No, I’m fucking not,” I snapped. “Now, are you going to keep asking stupid questions or are you going to let me finish?”
Samuel sighed. “Jeez. Okay, go on.”
I walked around to the boot and stared at it for far too long before finally popping it open with my shirt covering my fingers. It was empty.
The air whooshed out of my lungs and my knees turned to jelly.
“Madigan? Talk to me, dammit, please.” He sounded panicked.
“It’s empty,” I told him. “There’s nothing. No blood. No clothes. Nothing. I’m gonna walk the rest of the car park just to check, but they weren’t here long enough to do much other than dump the car.”
Or so I hoped.
Using the phone’s flashlight, I made a quick survey of the immediate surroundings, including as far as I could see into the valley below, but there was nothing to find. When I’d completed the circuit, I slid back into the driver’s seat and killed the light.
“There’s nothing here,” I told Samuel. “Only the car. I think Marty was just getting it off his property in response to my phone call.”
“Let’s hope so.” Samuel didn’t sound as certain as I’d have liked. “Now sit tight and wait for the pol?—”
“No way.” I cranked the engine and belted up. “If Marty ditched the car without Gazza in it, then something’s not right. Assuming Marty has Nick as well, if Marty wasn’t suspicious about Gazza’s association with Nick, then why not simply leave him with the car and rely on his foggy memory to confuse things? That might even have been the original plan. Drug Gazza. Have his way with him. And then dump him down the road like Gazza had left the party and then pulled over to sleep and sober up.”
“There’s a lot of assumptions in that scenario,” Samuel pointed out, like I wasn’t already aware.
“I know.” I headed for the main road, talking as I drove. “But it makes sense, right? The only reason to hold on to Gazza is because they have Nick and have somehow put the pieces together, meaning they also likely know who I am.”
“Shit,” Samuel hissed. “This is turning into a fucking nightmare.”
“You’re the one who pointed out what a control freak Marty is, remember?” I put him on the spot. “And how he might react to finding out we were trying to help Lee get out of there. Tell me that getting Gazza’s car off the property without him doesn’t mean they’re cleaning up their mess. That it doesn’t mean they’re covering their bases and keeping their options open just in case.”
Samuel said nothing, which said everything.
“You can’t because you know they are. You fucking know it.” My voice rose in challenge. “Just like I do.” I hit the main road and whirled the steering wheel to the right. The car thudded over a tree branch and almost spun out.
“Slow the fuck down,” Samuel ordered. “They’ll hear you coming a mile off, if you don’t kill yourself first.”
He was right and I eased my foot off the gas. “They’re in this mess because I wanted to come here, Samuel. Me. Not you. Me. And I am not going to sit in a fucking car park with my finger up my arse while god knows what’s happening to the man I love.” The words were out before they even registered in my brain and I slammed my hand on the steering wheel. “Goddammit, Samuel, now look what you made me do.Hedoesn’t even know that yet.”
Nick should have been the first person to hear those words, and he would have been if I hadn’t been too much of a chicken shit to say them when I had the chance.
“Madigan, I?—”
“Don’t. We haven’t got time for that,” I was practically shouting. “Because this is Nick we’re talking about, Samuel. Your fucking brother-in-law. If I wait for the police, they’ll only tell me I can’t go on the property without a warrant. Just like you did. They might even arrest me to make sure that I don’t. They’ll want to organise backup and a search warrant and everything that we don’t have any time for. Just let me ask you one thing. If this was Jerry, what would you do?”
The line fell silent just as Marty’s mansion came into view in the distance. I could almost hear the cogs turning in Samuel’s brain before he finally said, “That’s fucking low.”
I huffed. “Of course it bloody is. Now talk to me. I’m almost back at the fire road.”
“Pull in,” he said crisply. “If you’re going to do this, then you can’t just bowl up the driveway unannounced. They’ll be on the lookout and you won’t get past the front door, if you even make it that far. They could toss your sorry arse out onto the road and they’d be fully within their rights to do so.”
