The Backs (2013) Read Online Free PDF Page A

comprehensively shutting you up.
    She’d stood defiantly in the flames then, while feeling nothing and refusing to see her life blistering and the scars forming. Anger could deceive like that until the moment it was extinguished. That’s the moment when she’d run the first time.
    And, for the same reason, the second time too.
    The lock on the door was being opened even now, and all she wanted to do was run yet again, but this time she guessed she’d never get the chance.
    Two officers had come for her, one male, one female and both of them just a little older than Jane herself. Only the woman was in uniform, and unless the bloke was someone random, like a junior doctor or a cub reporter, she guessed he was the senior of the pair.
    He spoke first, introducing them both, but Jane blanked out their names and avoided eye contact too, deliberately not engaging.
    They led her into the underground car park and then headed for their car. The woman held open the rear door immediately behind the driver’s seat. Jane stepped in and slid right over to the other side of the car. If she sat behind the front passenger, then the only person able to observe her properly would be the driver, and he’d be too busy watching the road.
    The door closed behind her and through the window she could see only their mid-sections. She watched them talking and the policewoman offering him the car keys. He must have said no because she dropped them into her other palm. He glanced at his watch, a plain-faced analogue. It reflected the light from the overhead panels, and for the first time Jane realized that she didn’t even know whether there would still be daylight outside. It would take three hours to get to Cambridge, give or take, but that didn’t really matter when she didn’t know when she was leaving here or likely to arrive.
    She’d become adrift from time, unanchored, and in some way that consoled her. Perhaps she could stay like that on every level: returning to Cambridge without having to attach herself to her own history, family or personal responsibilities. But that would only work if she could be in and out quickly.
    The detective was sitting in the passenger seat in front of her now, while the PC was negotiating the narrow gaps between the bumper-scuffed concrete walls leading to the exit.
    Jane spoke, but to neither in particular. ‘Who do I need to see?’
    It was the detective who answered. ‘Detective Inspector Marks will be talking to you initially.’
    Initially.
    ‘Then who?’
    He twisted in his seat and studied her for a moment or two before replying. ‘I don’t know, actually. Maybe only DI Marks.’
    ‘And what does he want?’
    ‘You’ve been missing since you were fifteen.’
    She half-closed her eyelids, setting her jaw so that she barely moved her lips as she spoke. ‘There has to be more than that.’
    He said nothing in reply, just watched her further and waited for her response.
    She allowed her jaw to jut a little more stubbornly and turned her gaze to the rain-splattered window. She then counted the street lights as, one by one, they flitted in and out of her life. She’d never see them again. Or recognize them again. She was disconnected. Anonymous. Unanchored. She would allow herself to be steered to Cambridge, then drift right back out again.
    Not a problem.

FIVE
    On leaving Cambridge, Sue had said she’d do the first half of the journey and leave Goodhew to drive the, other eighty miles. But it seemed to DC Goodhew that, once she got her hands on a steering wheel, Gully was reluctant to let it go. That suited him fine; in fact, never having to drive at all suited him pretty well. It gave him time to think.
    She’d shown the same reluctance to hand over the keys when it came to the return journey, too. Sue was an efficient driver and they’d cleared the first hundred miles already, even though the roads were swamped with both traffic and the kind of driving rain that fills the windscreen before