Lifting the Lid(29)

Even then, it was guilt that had driven him to try and replace it, so he could hardly be blamed for that. Looking in the wallet which was taped inside the lid? Natural curiosity. He was only human after all. As for taking it away with him… All right, so he’d panicked. Perfectly normal in the circumstances and so was the fact that he’d been in a hurry and forgotten to hand it in at reception like he’d intended. Actually using the ticket to get into the festival and taking the package from the locker was…

Well that was a little trickier to work out, but the upshot was that he had someone who may or may not be a copper after him as well as a gun-wielding psychopathic Scotsman. Then there was this crazy woman sat next to him – also with a gun.

‘Which way?’ he said when they reached the main road.

‘Whichever. For now, I just want to get away from this place.’

Trevor turned left, purely on the basis that he had entered the site from the right, and it somehow seemed like a good idea to head in the opposite direction.

‘So who are you, and why exactly did you nick the envelope from my toilet?’ the woman said after a couple of miles of silence.

‘Believe me, I keep asking myself the same question.’

‘Which one? The who are you one or the nicking one?’

‘The nicking one. I’m Trevor Hawkins.’ He decided there was little point in giving a false name this time. He didn’t have a clue who this woman was, but she did have a gun.

‘I know what your name is. What I want to know is who you’re working for.’

‘Me?’

‘No, I was talking to the bloody dog,’ she sneered. ‘Yes, you.’

‘Well I suppose you could say I’m unemployed at the moment. I’ve just packed in my job at Dreamhome Megastores, you see, and—’

She rounded on him and aimed the gun at his face. ‘Are you taking the piss?’

‘Pardon?’ Trevor frowned back at her.

‘You tell me you don’t know why you stole the envelope from my room, so I can only assume somebody told you to but didn’t give you a reason.’

‘Look, it was a mistake. That’s all. I know it was a stupid thing to do, but there was nobody else involved. I promise you.’

‘A mistake?’

The pistol persuaded him that his best course of action was to tell her the whole story from when he’d first set off in the van the day before to the moment he took the package from the locker.

‘Speaking of which…’ she said when he’d finished and held out her free hand towards him, nodding at his chest.

Trevor unzipped his jacket and pulled out the padded, green Jiffy bag. He passed it to her and, on the edge of his vision, noticed her lay the gun down on top of the dashboard. Not that this was particularly significant. Making a grab for it and forcing her to get out of the van at gunpoint simply wasn’t an option. Hell, he barely knew one end of a gun from the other, and she wasn’t going to sit there and wait while he figured it out.

‘So you haven’t opened it then,’ she said. ‘That’s something, I suppose.’

Trevor wondered how critical this might be to saving his life. Perhaps if he knew what was inside the Jiffy bag, she’d have to kill him, but because the seal was still intact she might just take the damn thing and let him go. – Perhaps.

‘What about the index cards?’ she said. ‘You leave the one with the address and the key in the locker?’

Uh-oh. She was going to kill him after all. He considered telling a little white lie, but his hesitation and flushed cheeks must have given him away.

‘Oh great,’ said the woman. ‘Well that’s me totally screwed then. Two grand for what should have been a perfectly simple job and, thanks to you, I doubt I’ll see a single penny of it now. And then of course there’s the small issue of a dissatisfied client who’s probably got a contract out on me already.’

Trevor kept half an eye on the top of the dashboard. Please don’t pick up the gun. Please don’t pick up the gun. Please don’t p—

She picked up the gun.

Oh bloody Nora. – But surely she wouldn’t shoot him while he was driving. She might end up getting killed herself. That was it. Keep driving. As long as he kept going, she wouldn’t be able to do anything. If she told him to pull over, he’d refuse. Simple as that.

He glanced across at her and saw the last thing he expected to see. Instead of staring into the barrel of the pistol, he was looking at the side of it, and it was pointing straight up under the woman’s chin.

‘May as well end it all now,’ she said. ‘No sense prolonging the inevitable.’