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Sam watches the door of the building, people trickling out one by one. He has been sitting in his car, lights off, for over an hour, in the business park at the edge of Conley. Just the sight of the place – with its sandstone pillars at the entrance and Scalextric-like road layout, the industrial units and bland offices – makes Sam feel heavy inside. He’d always felt lucky working at the paper; rarely resented going in. Agencies had been in touch offering him marketing or managerial work on developments like this. So far, he’d managed to stay out of their grasp, avoid real life, but for how long?

He starts to wonder if he’s missed Martin, but finally he emerges into the autumn evening, manoeuvring himself into his coat.

Sam gets out of his car, slamming the door loudly. Martin looks once and then twice but tries to make it seem as though he hasn’t noticed Sam. The quickening of his pace, the speed he puts his head down, give the bluff away.

Sam shouts Martin’s name across the car park, but Martin just pops up his collar and breaks into a strange half-run, half-hop again, like at the lake.

‘Martin!’

Martin is at his car now, fumbling with the keys in the lock.

‘Aaron!’ Sam shouts and Martin stops what he’s doing then. ‘AaronInBetween.’

Martin turns around slowly. He looks at Sam then hurries to try to get into his car, all fingers and thumbs. Sam runs over.

‘I know that you’re AaronInBetween on the website, Martin. On SomeoneMustKnow.’

More of Martin’s co-workers are filing out from the office now.

‘Will you stop shouting?’ Martin hisses.

‘Well, talk to me, then.’

‘Get in the car,’ Martin says, getting into the driving seat himself. He starts the car before Sam has a chance to put his seatbelt on and drives out of the car park. They don’t speak until they reach a lay-by, where Martin pulls in. He takes the keys from the ignition. On balance, Sam unclips his seatbelt, just in case.

‘What the hell are you playing at, coming to my work?’

‘I needed to see you,’ Sam says. ‘You ignored my texts about meeting up.’

‘Damn right I did after the other day. I don’t know what has got into you, Sam.’

‘Oh, spare me the wounded act, please. Was it you? Started the threads on SomeoneMustKnow?’

Martin pinches the top of his nose like he has a sharp headache.

‘Is there something you want to tell me, Martin?’

Martin grips the steering wheel and lightly bounces his head off the centre of it a few times. The atmosphere is uneasy in the dark car. Sam repositions his feet to make sure he can get out quickly if it kicks off.

‘Do you know something, Martin? About what happened to Victoria?’

Martin doesn’t speak but he keeps shaking his head, more insistent.

‘Will you please just stop pecking away at me like this?’ Martin’s breath is shallower and faster but Sam’s blood is up too.

‘Why did you have mud on your trousers the night she died, Martin? Why were you agitated after?’

Martin lifts his head from the steering wheel now. ‘What?’ He starts to breathe as if into a paper bag. ‘This is getting out of hand now,’ he says between gasps.

Sam looks straight ahead. He isn’t falling for the panic attack routine and he wants to make sure Martin knows it. This feels like his first breakthrough. His grip is only tightening.

Martin turns his head to the side. ‘You can’t think that I had something to do with it? With that girl’s death?’

‘I think you’ve not been straight with me. And I’m wondering why,’ Sam says. ‘You’ve forced yourself into this investigation. I’m struggling to see why.’

Martin straightens himself up. ‘You’ve got this all wrong.’

‘So, tell me.’ Sam does a mental calculation of the three moves he’d need to do to get out of the car. It’s completely dark outside, there’s no ambient light where they are. All Sam can see is himself and Martin reflected back.

‘I was there,’ Martin says, finally. ‘But I never touched her.’

Sam doesn’t dare to speak. Martin’s gaze is pointing down into the footwell.

‘I went up there to… meet people,’ he says.

‘Meet people? Meet who?’

‘Just people. Please don’t make me spell it out, eh? It’s excruciating enough as it is.’

‘I’m listening,’ Sam says.

Martin’s breathing is more regular again. ‘I was there… waiting in the erm… well I was walking round the car park… you know, to see if anyone was around. It started to rain. Such heavy rain. And so no one came that night. In the end, I decided to just get back in the car and go home.’

‘So, hang on, who were you meeting?’

‘For Christ’s sake, that isn’t the point. It doesn’t work like that. You just go up there. It was all arranged word of mouth then. Whoever turns up turns up.’

‘You weren’t meeting Victoria?’

Martin’s face reddens. ‘No, not bloody Victoria! Probably a lumpy middle-aged couple, to be honest. Jesus, do you want to hear this, or don’t you?’

‘Sorry, go on.’

‘So, as I was leaving because of the rain, that’s when I saw her. Victoria.’

The air in the car feels completely still. Sam doesn’t dare speak.

‘I didn’t… I don’t… want people to know I was up there. Why I was up there. And let’s face it, there isn’t really another reason I can say I was up there. Not at that time of night.’

‘I see,’ Sam says.

‘Finally! But no one showed up that night,’ Martin says. ‘Because of the rain, no doubt. So I waited for a while but you know, the er… the moment had passed, so to speak. So I set off home again. And I saw her… Victoria… in the car. It wasn’t the taxi, definitely not. I’ve seen that in the reconstruction and in the paper. It was a different car.’

‘Was she alive?’

Sam’s breath is held again, his chest tightening. The windows in the car are steaming up from their breathing.

‘Oh yes, she was alive. She looked like she was having an argument with whoever she was with. Nothing violent. But… heated, I’d say.’

Sam tries to take it in.

‘OK. So why didn’t you just come to me? Tell me straight what had happened? What’s all this AaronInBetween business? Lurking about on SomeoneMustKnow?’

‘Fuck’s sake,’ Martin says. ‘I feel a bit of an idiot, to be honest. I’ve always followed the case. And I saw Victoria’s mum on the news and I had to do something but I didn’t know what. But now you can see why I couldn’t just come forward. I don’t really want my name attached. So I thought if I got something new going on SomeoneMustKnow about the case, maybe that would push some new information out, like it did in those cases in America. And it wouldn’t matter any more that I hadn’t come forward personally. But I’d still know I’d helped, that I hadn’t just let it go.’

Sam stares at the sloping windscreen of the car.

‘And AaronInBetween? What’s that all about?’

Martin’s face brightens a bit at that. ‘Aaron. It’s Elvis’s middle name, isn’t it? AaronInBetween. Get it?’ He looks pleased with himself.

Sam slaps his own forehead lightly and groans.

The mood in the car darkens again. ‘I’m not the only one telling porkies, am I?’ Martin says.

‘How do you mean?’ Sam doesn’t follow.

‘Your man on the dirt track, following your sister in the car when you were young.’ Martin puts quote marks round his words. ‘That isn’t true, is it?’

Sam straightens up. ‘Why do you say that?’

‘Just didn’t ring true,’ Martin says, ‘Not when you said it and not now either.’

‘It did happen.’ Sam fidgets in the seat. He’d got carried away when he’d told Martin the story, trying to justify himself. The interest in Victoria’s case had felt grubby sometimes, something to be ashamed of. Like the times he lied about reading true crime books, pretended it was something more academic or literary.

‘If you say so.’ Martin isn’t convinced.

Sam had seen something that night, not his sister, like he’d said. The man had been there and he’d come towards Sam. He’d felt uncomfortable and he’d run away. But the car hadn’t followed Sam; the man never got out. That was where the story took off on its own; that’s how it went when Sam’s mind had skipped ahead at the time.

‘OK, I’ll be straight with you,’ Sam says. ‘I don’t have a sister. I just wanted to make you believe I care about Victoria’s case and making this documentary. Because I do. I wanted you on side.’

‘Well, that’s better than saying something like that about a real sister, I suppose.’ Martin’s demeanour is friendlier again.

The heat has gone out of the atmosphere in the car, something of a truce.

After a while, Martin says, ‘So, do you want to know what else I saw that night or not…? It’s about the driver.’

Sam twists in his seat towards Martin, glad the spotlight is off him.