As I waited on the platform at Slough my phone rang in my pocket.
‘Hello,’ I said.
‘What does it take to get you to do as you’re told?’ said the whispering voice.
‘More than you could ever know,’ I said, and hung up.
What he probably didn’t realize was how frightened I had been at what he might do. In fact, I still was.
I called Eleanor.
‘Are you free from now on for the night?’ I asked.
‘All weekend,’ she said happily.
‘Good,’ I said. ‘Please will you pack a bag now. Put everything from your room that you absolutely couldn’t bear to lose in your car and go to Newbury station and wait for me there.’
‘Geoffrey,’she sounded worried. ‘You’re frightening me again.’
‘Eleanor, please,’ I said. ‘Do it now and quickly. Get away from the hospital and the house and then call me.’ I was thinking fast. ‘Are you in your room or in the hospital?’
‘In my room,’ she said.
‘Is there anyone else with you?’
‘No. But there are still a few in the hospital.’
‘Call them,’ I said. ‘Get as many as you can to come over to the house and be with you while you pack. Ask someone to get your car to the door and then go. Do it. Go now.’
‘Right,’ she said. ‘I’m on my way.’ The urgency of my voice had clearly cut through her reservations.
‘And make sure you’re not followed,’ I said. ‘Go round roundabouts twice and stop often to see if anyone stops behind you.’
‘Right,’ she said again.
‘I’ll be at Newbury in forty-five minutes,’ I said. ‘Try and keep on the move until then and don’t take lonely lanes. Main roads only.’
‘OK,’ she said. ‘I get the message.’
Good girl, I thought.
I sat restlessly on the train until Eleanor called to say she was safely away from Lambourn and she was now on the M4, travelling eastwards between junctions fourteen and thirteen.
‘Is anyone following you?’ I asked her.
‘Not that I can see,’ she said.
‘Good,’ I said. ‘I’ll see you at Newbury station.’
‘Right,’ she said. ‘There are two exits at Newbury. Come out of the station on the same side as the platform you get off the train. I’ll be there.’
She pulled up outside the red-brick station building as I struggled through the narrow doorway with my suitcase and the crutches. I tossed the suitcase onto the back seat of her car and climbed into the passenger seat. Eleanor leaned over and gave me a kiss.
‘Where to?’ she said, driving away.
‘Oxford,’ I said.
One of the good things about having a room in an ex-prison was that it was just as difficult to break into as it had once been to break out of. My room at the hotel was as safe a place as I could think of to spend the weekend, especially as the cell-door locks were now controlled by the person on the inside.
I made Eleanor drive twice round the roundabout where the A34 crosses the M4 but, if there was someone tailing us, I couldn’t see them.
‘Do you really think that someone would have come to Lambourn looking for me?’ asked Eleanor.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I do. I think these people will stop at nothing. It’s no longer about Steve Mitchell any more, it’s to do with them not getting convicted for the murder of Scot Barlow. Once you’ve killed one person, it’s much easier to kill again.’
I’d once been assured by one cold-bloodied client, following his well-deserved conviction for a string of murders, that, after the first couple, it had been as easy as stepping on a spider.
For the rest of the journey Eleanor spent almost as much time looking in the rear-view mirror as she did watching the road in front, but we made it to the hotel safely without hitting anything, and also without seeing anyone tailing us.
As we pulled up at the hotel entrance, Eleanor’s phone rang.
‘Hello,’ she said, pushing the button. She listened for a few moments. ‘Suzie, hold on a minute.’ She put her hand over the microphone and turned to me. ‘It’s Suzie, one of the other vets at the hospital. Seems a young man has turned up there asking for me, says he’s my younger brother.’
‘And is he?’ I asked her.
‘I’m an only child,’ she said.
‘Does the young man know that Suzie is making this call?’ I asked.
Eleanor spoke into the phone, asked the question and listened for a moment.
‘No,’ she said. ‘The young man has talked his way up into my room and is waiting there. Suzie is downstairs.’
‘Let me talk to her,’ I said.
Eleanor spoke again into the phone and then handed it to me. I tossed my own phone at Eleanor. ‘Call the police,’ I said to her. ‘Tell them there’s an intruder in the house there with a girl on her own.’ That should bring them coming with the sirens blazing.
‘Suzie,’ I said into Eleanor’s phone. ‘This is Geoffrey Mason, I’m a friend of Eleanor’s.’
‘I know,’ she said, laughing. ‘She’s talked of nothing else for weeks.’
‘Are you there on your own?’ I asked her, cutting off her laughter.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Except for him upstairs. The others have gone down the pub, but I didn’t feel up to it.’
‘Suzie, this is a serious situation,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to alarm you too much, but the young man is not Eleanor’s younger brother. She doesn’t have any brothers. And I fear he could be dangerous.’
There was silence from the other end of the line.
I went on. ‘Eleanor is talking to the police now.’
‘Oh God!’ she said shakily.
‘Suzie,’ I said urgently, not wanting her to go into a complete panic. ‘As he’s asked for Eleanor, go and tell him that she’s gone to stay with her boyfriend in London. He might then go away.’
‘I’m not going up there again,’ she said with real fear in her voice.
‘All right,’ I said calmly. ‘If you can leave the house without him seeing you, then go straight away. Go round to the pub, and stay there with the others.’
‘OK,’ she said rapidly. ‘I’m going now.’
‘Good. But go quickly and quietly,’ I said. ‘Are you talking on a mobile phone?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Then keep talking to me as you leave the house. Do it now.’
I could hear her breathing and also the squeak of a door being opened, and then it slammed shut.
‘Bugger,’ she said to the world in general.
‘Quietly,’ I hissed into the phone, but I don’t think she heard me.
There was the sound of her feet crunching on the gravel as she ran down the path.
‘Oh my God,’ she screamed. ‘He’s coming after me.’
‘Run,’ I said.
I didn’t need to say it. I could hear Suzie running. Then the running stopped and I heard a car door slam.
‘I’m in my car,’ she said breathlessly. ‘But I haven’t got the damn keys.’ She was crying. ‘Help me,’ she shouted down the phone. ‘Oh my God,’ she said, her voice again in rising panic. ‘He’s walking down the path.’
‘Can you lock the doors?’ I said to her.
‘Yes,’ she said. I heard the central locking go click.
‘Good,’ I said. ‘Does the horn work?’
I could hear her bashing at the button but there was no noise.
‘It won’t work,’ she cried, still bashing. It obviously needed the key in the ignition.
‘Where’s Eleanor Clarke?’ I could hear Julian Trent shouting, his voice muffled by the car doors and windows.
‘Go away,’ screamed Suzie. ‘Leave me alone.’
It was like listening to a radio drama – all sound and no pictures. The noise of Trent banging on the windows of the car was plainly audible and I could clearly visualize the scene in my mind’s eye.
‘Go away,’ Suzie screamed at him again. ‘I’ve called the police.’
‘Where’s Eleanor?’ Trent shouted again.
‘With her boyfriend,’ shouted Suzie back at him. ‘In London.’
Well done her, I thought. It went quiet, save for the sound of Suzie’s rapid shallow breathing.