Wish You Were Dead

2

If you ask, ‘Papa, how much longer?’ one more time, Detective Superintendent Roy Grace thought, I’ll throttle you! He glared in the mirror at his son, Bruno, right behind him, then at the satnav app. French names — towns, villages, roads. Every town, every village, every road. Except for the one road they wanted. Rue de Joigns.

Was there such a road at all, he was starting to wonder? Could they have been tricked? Might they be victims of an internet con man? A crook like one he had recently locked up? Surely not? Could he and Cleo have booked and paid for a week’s holiday in a French chateau that they were about to find out did not actually exist?

But of course it did! They’d looked it up on TripAdvisor, and it had loads of reviews, almost all positive. It was the rubbish satnav app on his phone that was at fault here.

Roy had started the journey in their rented car — a Citroën Space Tourer — in a very happy frame of mind. He was looking forward to this summer break in a gorgeous house in northwest France — and to rare quality time with his family. It might be their last family holiday for some while, as Cleo was now five months pregnant.

Yet something was starting to niggle him. It was like a darkness steadily rising inside him, just as the sky, loaded with rain, was steadily darkening outside. It was nearly 4 p.m. and it didn’t look as if there was going to be any evening sun today. The tall trees made the road seem even darker, more like night than a summer afternoon.

‘Papa, how much longer?’ Bruno asked.

Roy caught Cleo’s eye and saw she was grinning. She knew how much Bruno was annoying him. Actually, annoying both of them. And she was also pretty sure Bruno kept saying it on purpose — just to really piss them off. It was something the eleven-year-old seemed to like doing. One day, Bruno could put annoying people down on his CV as his hobby.

‘Not much longer, Bruno,’ Roy said. ‘It’ll be great when we get there, I’m sure.’

And it sure looked amazing in the photos on the internet. Château-sur-L’Évêque. A pool, tennis court, bicycles, beautiful grounds, deer park.

Roy took his eyes off the road for a fraction of a second, to glance again at Bruno in the mirror. But all he could see was the back of his iPad.

In the middle of their rear seat sat their delightful, twenty-eight-year-old Californian nanny, Kaitlynn, who had become something of a family friend. She was sandwiched between Bruno and their two-year-old son, Noah, in his child seat. Roy and Cleo had offered Kaitlynn and her boyfriend, Jack Alexander — a Detective Sergeant on Roy’s team — a free holiday. In return she would occasionally look after Noah while he and Cleo went out on some of the long bike rides they’d been looking forward to.

So far as he could tell, Kaitlynn had spent the entire journey either texting or Snapchatting or playing games on her phone. She’d also said that she’d been trying to call Jack to see if he’d arrived safely, but hadn’t had any luck getting through to him.

The rain got worse. This was France, mid-August, and a week of solid sunshine was forecast. So far, not a great start. Cleo peered at the map on her phone, also trying to find the road — she’d been trying for ten minutes now. Rue de Joigns. Then she shouted out, ‘Got it! About three kilometres ahead! The directions the chateau gave us say to turn left off this road, then the entrance will be four kilometres along on the left and we can’t miss it.’

‘Brilliant!’ Roy said. ‘Well done, finally! Please God they can give us something to eat, I’m starving.’

‘We all are,’ Cleo said.

Roy glanced at the clock — 3.45 p.m. ‘Try calling them again, just so they know we’re only minutes away.’

‘Roy, I’m sure if Jack’s already there he’ll have asked them to keep some food for us,’ Kaitlynn said. ‘I’ve texted him as I can’t get through on the phone, to tell him that.’

Jack had had to go to Paris yesterday to take a statement from two French police officers for one of Roy’s cases that was coming to trial. He was going straight from Paris to the chateau, a 200-kilometre drive, and should have been there by midday.

Roy and Cleo had planned to arrive by 1 p.m., to give them time to enjoy their first afternoon on holiday. But the early-morning Newhaven — Dieppe ferry had been late. Then the satnav had taken them way off track, making them even later. They’d tried calling the chateau several times. Each time all they got was crackle and a faint voice shouting, ‘Bonjour... bonjour... hello?’ Then the phone would go dead.

As Cleo dialled yet again, Bruno announced, reading from his iPad, ‘Papa, Mama, listen!’

‘Yes, Bruno?’ Cleo said.

‘It says that next to being in a car, this is where you are most likely to die. Guess where?’

‘In an aeroplane?’ said Cleo, who did not like flying.

‘Wrong!’

‘Your kitchen,’ Roy Grace said.

‘Wrong, that is the third most likely place! It says here the next mostly likely place to die is on holiday. We’re in a car and we are on holiday. Doesn’t that make it probable we are all going to die?’

Roy frowned. Bruno often came up with weird stuff. ‘So it’s lucky we’re not in a camper van, then, Bruno?’

‘Why?’

‘Because they have kitchens. So we would be in a car, on holiday and in a kitchen!’

They all laughed.

A few moments later, Cleo sounded like she was finally getting through on the phone. ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘Bonjour — pardon — bonsoir! This is Madame Grace. Hello? Hello?’

Then she took the phone from her ear and turned to Roy, very cross. ‘Cut off again. Dead.’

‘Maybe the chateau is haunted?’ Bruno said. ‘Maybe they’re all dead too!’