‘Answer it.’
‘What?’
‘He must have called for a taxi. Tell them you’ve already left.’
‘What?’
‘Just do it!’
Scott thumbed the answer button.
‘Hello?’ he said.
‘Mr Cobb? Taxi here for you.’
‘Oh. Sorry, I don’t need one now. Mate of mine gave me a lift.’
‘For fuck’s sake.’ The driver ended the call.
‘What was that about?’ Scott asked his wife.
‘Put them off the scent.’
‘Who? What scent?’
‘I don’t know. It’s what you do, isn’t it? I’ve never covered up a crime before.’
It struck Scott how far out of their depth they both were. They were a law-abiding family, and he was plunging them into an alien world. He began to doubt they could survive for very long here.
‘Gem . . .’ he began.
‘Give me the phone.’
‘What?’
‘The phone!’
He handed it over. Gemma tried removing the back cover, then gave up and took the phone to the kitchen counter, where she used a rolling pin to accomplish the task in an instant.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Taking out the battery and the SIM card.’
‘Why?’
‘They do it on television programmes. Stops the phone being traced, I think.’
She pulled out the guts of the phone, then hit it a few more times with the rolling pin before tossing the pieces into the pedal bin.
‘Gem,’ he said when she came back to him, ‘are we doing the right thing?’
‘What? You’ve just been telling me—’
‘I know. But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe we should come clean, like you said. Face the music.’
Gemma brought her hands to her cheeks. She was clearly floundering too.
‘We need to mull it over,’ she said. ‘We can’t rush into anything. Whatever we decide, we have to be sure it’s the right thing. Where did all this happen, anyway?’
‘By the lift. Cobb came up with us from the eighth floor.’
‘He was coming up to this floor?’
‘No. Daniel had a conversation with him. Cobb said he wanted to leave the building, but he must have pressed the up button by mistake.’
‘Then . . . that’s good. If there was no reason for him to come up to this floor, nobody will come looking for him here. And now if anyone asks the taxi firm, they’ll say he left the building.’
Scott watched as his wife’s eyes darted, her brain frantically working through the possible scenarios, just as his own had done in the corridor. She was on side, but a part of him still wished that she wasn’t, and that instead she would insist on going to the police and throwing the family on their mercy.
‘We can’t tell Daniel,’ Gemma said. ‘The less he knows, the better.’
Scott looked at the closed door. ‘He’ll be worrying about it now. He already believes he’s killed a man. Even Daniel understands how bad that is.’
Gemma suddenly marched towards the door.
‘Where are you going?’
‘I’ll be right back.’
