Free Hidden by Emma Kavanagh Page A

steadily, towards the camera, then vanish beyond view.
    I wait, thinking that Aden will reappear. Then want to slap myself for being such a teenager. The odd figure drifts by, but nothing of note. And then, finally, I see her. Emily Wilson, walking away from the camera, her dark-blonde curls pulled up into a high ponytail. She is walking quickly, her arms folded tight across her chest, her head darting, left to right. She looks afraid. I study her surroundings, the shadows, wonder if someone is waiting for her there, if this is when it happened – if he followed her, caught her. But she keeps walking, arms folded tight, vanishing from one camera into another: hallway, lobby, then out of the front doors.
    ‘Can I see the car-park footage for this timeframe?’
    Ernie looks at me. ‘Yeah, but you can’t see him, mind.’
    ‘No, I know. But, if it’s all right . . .’
    He frowns slightly, fingers moving ponderously across the keyboard. The car park appears in the right-hand monitor. It is quiet, few cars there at that time of night. A police car, parked by the lobby doors. The floodlights pour puddles of orange light, somehow making the surrounding darkness darker. I wait. Emily appears into view. She is walking more quickly now, seems like she’s almost running. My heart beats faster. I watch her, watch the shadows, the few cars there are, looking for a figure, a face, thinking that at any moment I will see him and my hunch will have played itself out. Emily hurries to her car, a little red Peugeot, slipping quickly inside. I scan the surroundings. Where are you? But there is nothing. Just darkness. The headlights of the Peugeot spring to life and the car slips steadily out of its space. I can’t see Emily now. I try, looking for her face through the windscreen, but the angle is wrong and she is gone. The car drives carefully out of the car park. Now I’m waiting for someone to follow her, for a second car to spring to life, falling in behind her. But long minutes pass and there is nothing.
    Emily is gone.
    I lean back in my chair. ‘Dammit!’
    ‘What?’
    I bite my lip. Unsure how to put it into words. That I can’t accept the Emily’s-death-as-an-accident theory. That coincidences – like calling the police to report a gunman, and then showing up dead twenty-four hours later – give me heartburn. That I need there to be answers beyond the obvious: that sometimes life just sucks.
    ‘Nothing. Just a hunch.’

10
     

The Shooter: Sunday 31 August, 9.15 a.m.

Day of the shooting
     
    THE MUMBLES STREET is still, the world holding its breath. The sun has begun its ascent, the heat of the day beginning to climb, turning my car into a greenhouse. I could open the window, make myself more comfortable, but I don’t. The road in front of me curls down the hill, and beyond that you can see the sea, sparkling blue today. But the sea is irrelevant. All that matters to me is Mara.
    I study the house. It sits on a generous plot, an over-wide drive, the front porch supported by Doric columns. The white light of the early sun has bleached the front windows so that they are blind, and I stare at them, even though it hurts my eyes, watching for movement. I wonder if Mara knows that I am here, if she senses that her time has come. I look down at my phone, at the text message I sent.
Meet me at your house. It’s urgent.
    Does she think about me, I wonder? When she lies asleep in her bed at night, do her eyelids flutter with dreams of me? Does she toss, turn, thinking of what she has done?
    The gun is on my lap. I’m not looking at it, am not taking my eyes off the house, but my thumb caresses it, rolling across the cool metal. It is loaded. Ready.
    It seems that my heart is no longer beating, has stilled. I glance down, look at my hands, as steady as I have ever seen them. I have lived for this day, the relief of it, an ending at last. I know how it will go, it feels like I have done it a thousand times before. I will