Lulu didn’t do social media any more, but no one could stay off the internet entirely. One of her many aunties – Auntie Win, a big, loud, ugly woman he remembered all too well from the wedding – had posted the photo on Instagram with the comment, My gorgeous niece and great-nephew, Christopher Duncan!
Christopher Duncan Tidwell was a loser’s name.
Christopher, for God’s sake!
He just didn’t get why Lulu had done it. Why she’d betrayed him like that. Perjured herself, even, to put him away.
The bitch.
The absolute bitch.
But she could wait. First, there was the little matter of Maggie. Or rather, Isla.
The best punishment he could think of for Maggie, for Lulu, was to lose their children. Just like he’d lost his entire fucking family.
See how they liked it!
He’d got hold of Dad and Maggie’s new names right after Lulu had dropped her bombshell, had told him his family were alive and well and staying at a place called Rose Cottage. He’d contacted the agency responsible for letting the place, pretending to be the homeowner, whose name was all over the internet because the silly bastard blogged about what a holiday let guru he was. Nick had made out that he wanted to check the names of the people currently in the cottage as someone had emailed him purporting to be the guests, but he had his doubts.
And it had been child’s play to trace Teresa and Isla Black. While he’d still been on remand, he’d employed a private investigator, a dodgy old guy recommended by a fellow inmate, to find out all about them. It seemed that Isla had left university and was back on the smallholding with Maggie. They had started a joint venture supplying local restaurants with baked goods and organic produce.
Too, too easy.
So.
Do away with Isla.
Then off to Australia. Get his son. Take him to the Bahamas. Nick had secreted a few million in an account there, more than enough to fund a lifetime of ease for himself and his boy. He’d rename him. What, he hadn’t decided yet. But not a loser’s name like Christopher. Something strong but not naff. A traditional name. Maybe Alexander. Or he could go with the Scottish tradition of using a surname as a first name. He liked Kerr.
They couldn’t be Clyde, of course.
LC, the guy in the cell next door who’d become Nick’s fixer, just below Nick himself in the D Wing hierarchy, had contacts on the outside who would set him up with a new identity. He would try to keep the name Nick, but he wasn’t wedded to it.
He looked at his watch.
Five minutes to lights out.
He shut his eyes. Best to get some kip while he could.
It was going to be a crazy twenty-four hours.
The key turned in the lock of the cell door, and LC’s low, growly voice said in the dark, ‘Let’s go.’
How LC had got the keys to his own cell door and to Nick’s, Nick didn’t know or care. He pulled the holdall from under his bed, which he’d packed surreptitiously, bit by bit, throughout the day. As instructed, he was wearing dark clothing, even down to a pair of black trainers he’d swapped with another guy last week for cigarettes.
‘We’ve got five minutes,’ LC hissed. ‘Keep close.’
Nick followed him out onto the walkway around what they called – ironically, surely – the atrium, as if it were a feature in a snazzy hotel. For a musclebound guy, LC moved fast, whipping round the corner and down the stairs and through a door that led to a long, dimly lit corridor.
They met no one.
The screws were lazy fat bastards at the best of times, but he imagined that LC had ensured they weren’t intercepted by throwing around some of the ten grand Nick had transferred to his bank account.
The laundry was close and stifling, even at this time of night. It stank of cheap washing powder and sweat. The sheets were never quite clean. They all smelt of some hairy bastard’s crotch.
LC didn’t put on the light. He flicked on a torch, and in its glow Nick saw his face for the first time, the scar on his eyebrow, the snake tattoos on his thick neck. He always felt there was something familiar about LC, but he couldn’t place him. He’d probably seen his ugly mug in coverage of the man’s trial, although he didn’t know what he was in for. In here, you didn’t ask that kind of question.
Not that Nick would have had a hope of keeping quiet what he himself had been convicted for, even if he’d wanted to. Trial of the decade, they’d called it. But he had no problem with that. Being a serial killer carried a certain cachet. It would have been different if he’d killed kids, but all his victims had been adults. Dean had been nineteen. Perfectly acceptable.