Chapter 69

CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

W hen they arrived home, she asked Jonny if he wouldn't mind just dropping her off. ‘I've got a terrible headache. I'm sorry.'

He pulled her to him and kissed her passionately on the lips. ‘Of course not. You've had a stressful few days. Sleep well. I'll message you in the morning.'

Ana clicked on her phone the second she closed the flat door. No message. She stared at it uncomprehendingly. What was he doing? She locked the door and slid the top and bottom bolts that she'd recently installed.

She cleaned her teeth and waited for her phone to ping, but nothing happened. The suspense was driving her mad. She hadn't gotten it wrong this time – she knew it – so why wasn't he responding to her?

She climbed into bed and lay there, tense and anxious, clutching her phone tightly. It got to one in the morning, and still nothing. He hadn't even come back online since reading it. Her eyes began to grow heavy. She needed to sleep off the Valium, but what if he messaged? She turned the volume up full and closed her eyes.

While Sandy and Ray had their barbeque, The Vipers, with Sajid and his mates, searched some local garages. It wasn't as easy as they'd hoped. Many had padlocks and Sajid was against breaking them.

‘It could be any of those padlocked garages,' argued Needles.

‘Most likely is,' agreed Skinner. ‘The Vigilante isn't going to have an unlocked garage.'

Sajid still argued they should search the unlocked ones before breaking into any. ‘Need to keep a low profile,' he said.

Needles agreed on one condition: they started on the unlocked garages, and if they found nothing, they'd move on to the locked ones.

Sajid agreed. He wanted to find The Vigilante as much as Needles did, but there were so many garages that it could take them forever. Unless they had a stroke of luck, it could be months before they found anything. He felt so useless. He was already in therapy because of his guilt for letting Laine die. He shouldn't have ignored her. She wouldn't have gone into the woods if he'd spoken to her and not been so dismissive. He wondered if Needles carried the same guilt. Maybe she wouldn't have gotten upset and run into the woods if Needles hadn't started the fight.

For both Sajid and Needles, finding The Vigilante and taking their revenge was the only thing keeping them going. Only then would they have closure.

They never considered the murderer could have been someone other than The Vigilante.

Ana awoke with a start to the sound of a phone alarm. Memories of the previous night hit her like a sledgehammer, and she grabbed her phone, dropping it in her haste. Clicking into it, she saw three messages and her heart raced. But one was from Beth:

How are you feeling this morning?

Another was from Jonny:

Feeling okay this morning. Free later? Jonny x

The third was from Matt asking if she was coming in to work today.

Damn it, the fucker still wasn't online. What the fuck was he playing at? This wasn't the response she had been expecting. It unnerved her. Surely, he'd make contact soon.

‘Seems The Vigilante is back at work,' said Tom.

Ana sat beside Matt and resisted the temptation to check her phone.

‘You okay?' he asked.

‘Fine,' she said.

Tom was relating how several garages in Ludbrook Grove and Longbridge had seemingly been searched the night before. There were no actual break-ins, as the doors had no padlocks, but the garages had been ransacked.

‘Doesn't sound like The Vigilante,' said Matt. ‘He's usually taking the law into his own hands, not breaking it.'

Ana nodded in agreement.

‘We're looking for someone with a garage obsession, then,' said Beth.

Meanwhile, the pressure was mounting to find The Vigilante. The Lees family wanted to have a funeral for their daughter. Ana surreptitiously glanced at her phone and cursed.

‘DC Wilkins and DC Rawlins check out these garages. See if anything connects them, similar items taken, that kind of thing. DS Harper and I are going back to the murder scene with forensics. We may have overlooked something.'

Everyone scraped back their chairs, and Ana winced. God, she was more stressed than she thought.

‘Ready,' said Matt, looking over at Ana. ‘What about you?'

‘Just need the loo.' She had noticed that Matt had been watching her closely ever since her odd behaviour at the clinic. He seemed puzzled by her friendship with the sex workers, and Ana was aware that he'd noticed her frequent phone-checking. Although he obviously sensed that something was amiss, he refrained from asking her.

‘Ready,' she said, breaking into his thoughts.

Most of the garages had become dumping grounds for storage or workshops for home projects. Some had been converted into workout rooms or man caves. It seemed that only a few were used for storing a vehicle. Not one garage owner had found anything missing.

‘It makes no sense,' said Matt when they returned to the car, but Ana wasn't listening. She was checking her phone and getting more agitated by the minute

‘What's wrong, Ana? I know there is something up. Why don't you share it with me?' asked Matt.

Impatiently, she threw the phone into her handbag. ‘It's just that time of the month,' she said.

Matt sighed. ‘Have it your way,' he said dismissively.

‘What does that mean?'

‘You've become very secretive these days. You're different to when you first arrived on this patch.'

‘Sorry, it's all a bit complicated.'

Matt laughed, but there was no humour in it. ‘It always is,' he said.