Picture You Dead

40

Monday, 21 October

After dropping Tom off at his friend’s to walk to school, at 8.15 a.m., Freya groaned in frustration at the roadworks that were causing a long back-up of traffic to the route she would have taken to her own school, to avoid the worst of the rush hour traffic by cutting through the backroads of Patcham.

Instead she diverted, heading down Surrenden Crescent to the London Road, where she had to wait, increasingly impatiently, as the heavy commuter traffic into Brighton streamed past in stop-start fashion, with no one having the courtesy to give her a gap.

‘Come on!’ she shouted through the windscreen. ‘Let me out, it’s not going to delay your journey one bit!’

As she edged her little Fiat cautiously forward, staring challengingly at each oncoming driver, a vehicle appeared in her mirrors. A black Range Rover.

She froze.

Then she saw a bus had stopped, politely, for her. Waving a thank-you, she pulled out across the road, checked there was a good gap to her left, and turned right, accelerating away, hard. As did she, she saw the Range Rover had made the dash too and was right on her tail.

Who the hell are you?

Her nerves tightened. For some moments she debated whether to pull over, forcing it to pass her, and get its number as Harry had suggested. But they were now approaching the mini-roundabout at the bottom of Carden Avenue. A white van had already started across it, and she cheekily accelerated across its path, getting an angry blast of the horn from the vehicle, then headed on towards Patcham, white van man giving her several angry flashes and another blast of his horn before he turned off left.

The Range Rover immediately closed the gap between them, looming larger in her mirrors again. She tried to see who was driving it, but the interior was too dark. Someone in a cap was all she could make out. And she was now approaching a long, almost stationary queue of traffic to the big roundabout at the bottom of Mill Road. As she braked to a crawl, the Range Rover appeared to brake harder, as if deliberately creating a larger gap between them. She tried to read the number plate in her mirror, then, realizing everyone in front of her had stopped, stamped on the brake pedal, locking the wheels with a scream of tyres as she almost rear-ended a taxi ahead.

Jesus. Calm down.

She was shaking. Trying to think clearly. To get to her school she needed to turn right at the roundabout. If the car behind turned right also it would be a further indication it was following. She was almost tempted to climb out, walk up to it and ask whoever was in it what the hell they were doing. But of course they might not have been following her, and then she’d have looked stupid. And besides, the cars in front were moving again.

Finally, she reached the roundabout. As she exited, the Range Rover followed.

Another option was looming in a few hundred yards. Worthing, Lewes or to the direction of her school.

But she didn’t want the driver of the Range Rover seeing where she worked. Instead, she drove onto the A27, heading uphill in the direction of the Sussex University campus and Lewes beyond, but she had a plan if the Range Rover still followed her.

Shit.

It did.

A mile ahead, she knew, there was a slip road left, leading to yet another roundabout. She took it.

So did the Range Rover.

Fuck you!

What was its game? she wondered. Trying to intimidate her? Was someone going to get out and confront her when she finally stopped? She glanced at her phone on the passenger seat beside her. Should she dial 999 and ask for the police?

And say what?

Um, there’s a Range Rover that’s been behind me for a while, I think it might be following me. I think it might have followed me before. But I’m not sure.

The call handler would ask her for its registration, which she didn’t have.

She looked at the car clock. 8.42. She was due to take a Geography class at 9 a.m. She couldn’t go on playing this game, she needed to lose this bastard and get to the school. As she reached the roundabout, thinking wildly, it occurred to her what to do. The safe place.

She swung around to the right, reached another roundabout and took the second left, down the hill, past the old Sussex Police CID HQ.

The Range Rover was still following.

And now she was certain. And glad of her plan. Reaching the bottom of the hill, she braked sharply without indicating, and swung, almost too fast, into the entrance of the ASDA car park.

The Range Rover followed.

The superstore opened early morning, and as she had hoped, the car park was already fairly busy at this hour. She made a loop around, passing the filling station and heading towards the store itself. The Range Rover continued to follow as if attached to her rear bumper by a leash. Then Freya saw a space close to the main entrance. OK, Big Boy, showtime. Confront me here if you dare.

She drove straight in, turned the engine off and climbed out of the car defiantly.

And stopped in her tracks.

The Range Rover had pulled into a bay a short distance along, in the row behind, rear door and tailgate both open. A pert yummy-mummy, in skinny jeans and bomber jacket, blonde hair scooped through the back of a jockey cap, was busy unfolding a stroller. Through the rear door, Freya could see a toddler, swathed in pink, in a baby seat.