The Memory of Midnight (44 page)

‘Are you still there, Theresa?’ Martin sounded peevish.

‘Yes, I’m still here.’ She swallowed hard past the constriction in her throat. ‘You . . . you were saying?’

‘Either we’re a family together or we’re not a family together.’

‘Wh-what do you mean, Martin?’

‘I mean it’s your choice, Theresa.’

His voice was light, pleasant. Chilling. ‘Let’s talk about this when I get there,’ she managed as Luke accelerated.

‘That’s what I hoped you’d say,’ Martin said. ‘And this time we’ll have a proper talk, hmm?’

‘Whatever you want.’

‘That’s more like the Theresa I remember,’ he said approvingly. ‘But we don’t want anyone else. This is just between us, isn’t it? Don’t even think
about bringing that oik who interfered earlier with you.’

‘I won’t. I’ll come alone, I promise,’ she said, ignoring Luke’s frown of protest.

He was driving as fast as he could, flashing his lights at the drivers carefully sticking to the speed limit.

‘Can I speak to Oscar now, Martin?’ Tess tried.

There was a pause. She could picture Martin, head to one side, considering. ‘No,’ he decided pleasantly. ‘I don’t think so. I think you should just get here as soon as
possible.’

‘I’m coming, I’m coming . . . I’ll be there any minute.’

‘I’ll be waiting for you,’ he said and cut the connection.

Tess stared down at the phone. She was trapped in a nightmare, jerked between Nell’s horror and her own terror for her son. She couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. Could it
really only be a few hours ago that she had sat in the Museum Gardens in the sunshine? It didn’t seem possible. Time itself was accelerating. Like a high-speed train that had pulled out of
the station at normal speed, it was now rocketing uncontrollably along a track – no, along
two
tracks, past and present, with Tess torn between them.

She wanted to jam in her heels, to make it stop so that she could make sense of the terrifying blur of images flying past. They span jaggedly, like shrieks in her head, one vivid picture after
another: Meg’s face, stark with fear; Oscar, whispering in the background on the phone; Tom, his collar dark with blood; Martin, standing over his son, his hands full of her underwear.

The eerie implacability in his voice had frightened her. He had sounded like a man who had stepped past the point of no return.

‘Hurry, Luke,’ she said.

Luke kept his hand on the horn to warn the wandering pedestrians to move out of the way as the car hurtled along Monkgate, through the bar, careered down Goodramgate, and swung round towards the
Minster. Tess was already opening her door as he came to a dead halt at the bollards blocking the way past the south transept. Before he could stop her, she was out and running blindly for
Stonegate, careless of the tourists who turned to stare as she bolted past them.

Luke caught up with her as she reached the flat and bent over, heaving for breath. ‘Tess, wait!’ He pulled her round. ‘Martin sounds like a psycho. I think we should wait for
the police.’

‘I’m not waiting for anyone. My son’s in there.’ Tess forced herself upright and scrabbled for her keys. Her fingers were as unwieldy as sausages.

‘Then I’m coming in with you.’

‘No! That’ll just make him worse! You have to stay here and tell the police what’s happening.’ Desperately, she tried to get the key in the door one-handed but she kept
dropping it, until Luke, grim-faced but accepting, took it from her and opened the door.

‘Be careful, Tess,’ he said, and she took a breath as she stepped past him and closed the door behind her. It was shadowy in the narrow hallway and the image of Tom’s body
jumped into her mind with a scream of memory. She pressed her palms to her head as if she could physically push it away. She didn’t have time for Nell now. She had to get to Oscar.

The stairs rose ahead of her. ‘Martin?’ she called. ‘I’m here.’

The door at the top opened a crack. ‘Are you alone?’ he demanded suspiciously.

‘Yes. I’m coming up.’

Martin opened the door as she reached the top of the stairs. He looked bizarrely normal in the clothes he had worn earlier. Tess was at the door before she noticed that there was something
strapped to his chest, and her heart seemed to freeze in horrified disbelief.

Dear God, he had some kind of explosive device, and he was holding Oscar tightly by the arm.

He sounds like a psycho
.

Oscar began to cry when he saw Tess.

‘It’s okay, pip,’ she said, forcing down her panic and pinning a reassuring smile to her face. ‘I’m here now. Martin, why don’t you let Oscar go?’

‘No.’ Martin’s expression was petulant. He dragged Oscar back to the front room, leaving Tess to close the door and follow. ‘You only care about him.’

She closed her eyes briefly, fought for calm. ‘He’s just a little boy, and you’re hurting him.’

‘What about
you
hurting
me
?’

‘I’m sorry if I’ve hurt you, Martin, but I’m here now.’ She didn’t want to look at the package on his chest. It was making the air shriek with danger. She had
been afraid of Martin before, of his rage, of his silence, but she had never thought that he would do anything like this. ‘Why don’t we sit down and talk, just you and me like we
said?’

‘You don’t want to talk,’ said Martin, his handsome face sulky. ‘You’re just humouring me. You wouldn’t even have come here if I hadn’t brought Oscar.
You don’t want to be a family any more.’ He didn’t seem aware that Oscar’s mouth was still trembling violently as he tried to control his tears.

Tess ached to snatch him up but she didn’t dare. It was bizarre to be standing there in the familiar room, where everything looked just as it should except for her terrified son and her
husband with a bomb strapped to his chest and a sheen of insanity in his eyes.

‘I’ve done everything for you, Theresa.’ Martin began to pace, dragging Oscar with him. ‘I spoilt you, that’s the problem. I gave you a beautiful house. I showered
you with presents. I sent you flowers. I paid every bill. You had nothing to worry about,
nothing.
’ He swung round, almost pleading. ‘You didn’t want for anything, did
you? Did you?’

Tess licked her lips, her mouth dry. ‘No, you were very generous.’

‘And what do I get in return? Nothing!’

‘Martin—’

‘You never used to be this cold.’ His voice broke. ‘You used to love me.’ He wiped the back of his hand under his nose. ‘You don’t love me any more. I booked
us a beautiful holiday and you won’t go.’

‘I . . . I didn’t take time to look at it properly.’ Tess struggled to pick her way through a minefield of lies and evasions. ‘Look, why don’t I make tea and you
can tell me about it?’

Martin’s mood swung viciously, without warning. ‘Tea?
Tea?
Is that all you can suggest?’ He pointed at his chest. ‘Do you know what I’ve got
here?’

‘No.’ Her throat was swollen with fear. ‘I was . . . wondering what that was.’

‘It’s a smart little explosive device. I put it together myself – one of the advantages of being in electronics.’ He laughed wildly and Oscar winced. ‘See this
switch here? I flick this and poof! me and the boy and you and this grotty little flat will go sky high. So I suggest you stop wasting time with stupid suggestions about tea,’ he said as the
colour drained from Tess’s face, ‘and think about what you want to do.’

‘You’d really kill all of us?’ she whispered.

‘At least we’d be together.’ He was sweating, his eyes glazed, and she wondered what he’d taken. His mood was lurching from the vicious to the pathetic to the sly and
Tess groped for a way, any way, to break through and make him realize what he was doing.

‘We can be together here,’ she said unsteadily, even as her flesh shrank with revulsion.

‘That’s what I want. That’s all I want.’ His eyes filled with pathetic tears. ‘But I don’t know if it’s really what you want, Theresa. I just know that
whatever happens we’re going to be together, the way we’re meant to be. The way you promised we’d be. Till death do us part . . . but it wouldn’t part us, would it? Not if
we’re together.’

Snivelling, he dragged his sleeve over his face. Tess struggled to think. She had to find a way out of this but Nell was too close. She could feel her scrabbling to break through and swamp
Tess’s mind with her own horror, but Tess couldn’t let that happen, not when Oscar was whimpering and straining to get to her. His face was pinched with fear, his shoulders hunched
against a blow.

Somehow Tess managed a smile for him. ‘It
is
what I want, Martin,’ she tried. ‘Of course it’s what I want. We’ll be a family again. It’ll be just
like it was before.’

He stared at her, half hopeful, half sly. ‘Do you mean that?

‘Of course.’

Pain was jabbing at her fingertips but Tess ignored it. She sank onto the arm of the sofa, trying to look relaxed, normal, and gave Oscar another smile that was meant to be reassuring but that
probably looked ghastly. ‘We’re going home with Daddy. That’s good news, isn’t it?’

In the past Oscar would simply have nodded dumbly, but the weeks away from his father had changed him more than Tess had realized.

His voice trembled, but he was disastrously clear. ‘Don’t want to,’ he said.

His timing couldn’t have been worse, but Tess felt a flash of pride in him for standing up to Martin for the first time. There was an appalled pause before Martin jerked his arm furiously.
‘You
don’t want to
. Don’t want to be with your own father? Is that what you’re saying?’

‘I want Mummy,’ Oscar whispered defiantly.

Martin put his face down close to his son’s. ‘Well, you can’t have her, because I want Mummy too, and if I’m not having her, nobody else is.’

Instinctively, Tess got up and took a step towards Oscar, but Martin saw her coming and pulled him back towards the window, away from her again. His face worked. ‘I knew it! I knew it! You
don’t want to be a family again at all!’

Panic roared in her head. She needed to divert Martin’s attention from Oscar, but she was too scared to think. Where were the police? But what could they do? As long as Martin had Oscar as
a shield, no one could touch him.

‘Martin, why are you doing this?’ she said, her voice wavering all over the place.

‘It’s all your fault,’ he spat at her, tiny flecks of spittle at the edges of his mouth. ‘I gave you every opportunity to be reasonable, but you
wouldn’t.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Tell me what I can do to make it better. I’ll go on holiday. I’ll go home with you. I’ll do whatever you want.’

‘It’s a shame you didn’t think that way before, isn’t it?’ Sweat was trickling into his eyes and he swiped it away with the back of his hand. ‘A shame you
didn’t care about your marriage vows. Till death do us part. That
means
something, Theresa. It’s not just words. I said them and I meant them. I’m not going to give up on
my family the way you have.’

‘That . . . that’s one of the good things about you.’ Tess’s chest felt clogged and she was struggling to breathe, but she forced the words through. She had to try
something and Martin had always been vain. ‘You don’t give up.’

His expression flickered and she pressed her advantage. ‘And you’ll do whatever it takes to do what needs to be done. That was a clever idea, bringing a bomb.’ She almost
gagged on the word, but at least Martin was listening and his hold on Oscar had relaxed a little. ‘No pussyfooting around, just getting straight to the point.’

‘I’d been indulgent long enough,’ he said, but she could tell he liked the admiration she was forcing into her voice.

‘Other men would have just given up when their wives left, but not you.’

‘What was the point of whimpering to a lawyer?’ said Martin. ‘Lawyers are all talk. I always say actions speak louder than words.’

‘I knew you would come after me. Nobody else would have been able to find me, but I knew
you
would.’ Tess had no idea where she was going. She just knew that this was her
first chance to make a connection with Martin, and she couldn’t waste it. At least they were having a conversation. ‘It would take more than moving to another city to stop you finding
me, wouldn’t it? I knew that was you in the flat, but I couldn’t work out how you could have been there when I’d locked the door.’

‘I had you watched right from the start.’ Martin preened himself, remembering. He seemed to have forgotten Oscar. ‘It’s easy to get hold of a key when you know the right
people. But then you changed the locks.’ His smile thinned. ‘You shouldn’t have shut me out, Theresa. I had to get the key from your bossy friend, whatshername.’

‘Vanessa.’ Tess clenched her fists. Some friend Vanessa had been!

‘That’s it. I’ve been keeping an eye on her too. I thought she might be handy and it wasn’t too hard to track her down once you’d told me she had Oscar. I had to
listen to her yapping, but she couldn’t wait to hand him over with a key.
She
knows what’s right, even if she does need to shut up for five seconds so a man can
think.’

‘You . . . you’ve gone to a lot of trouble.’

His face darkened. ‘Yes, I have. That’s your fault too, Theresa. You shouldn’t have left me. That was a very, very foolish thing for you to do.’

‘I know. I’m sorry.’

‘Did you really think I’d let you go?’

Why hadn’t she realized before how like Ralph he was? Tess looked at her husband with sudden clarity. Ralph, who had been crueller, less unbalanced and more sure of his own desires, but
who shared Martin’s need for utter control. Sex with Martin had been, in the end, a perfunctory business, but what if she could reach him by appealing to some of Ralph’s more twisted
tastes?

‘It was stupid of me.’ Tess swallowed, willing to try anything. ‘But I knew you wouldn’t let me get away with it. I need you to keep me in line, Martin. I’ve been
reckless and stupid, and I need to be punished.’

She lowered her eyes submissively but not before she had seen his face light grotesquely. ‘Only you have the right to do that.’