Chapter 64

The vehicle Jude sent for Libby was easy to locate; it was the only car parked outside her complex with its headlights on, interior empty and door ajar.

One last time, Libby gave careful consideration before entering. She peered inside; it was a Level Three at least. The dashboard contained a steering wheel and below it, an accelerator and brake pedals. However, they could easily have been tampered with and rendered redundant. But what would be the point? she asked herself. There were much easier ways to kill her than this, if that’s what Jude wanted.

Eventually her all-consuming need for the truth rose above all else and she climbed inside. The door quietly closed without locking.

Libby’s heart pounded inside her chest as the vehicle set itself into drive mode. Her hands gripped the steering wheel tightly as her foot tested the brakes. They were operable. The journey through Birmingham lasted just ten minutes but felt like much longer before it came to a halt by a kerb.

Libby recognised the location immediately – Monroe Street, the district where she had witnessed three generations of one family wiped out by a driverless car. She exited the vehicle quickly.

Immediately, she was riled by Jude’s choice of meeting place. He must have known how distressing it had been for her to witness that footage during jury duty. Awaiting further instruction, she held his tablet tightly to her chest until it vibrated. ‘Number 360’ a message read.

Shops, predominantly small independent boutiques, lined the road. As the major High Street stores gradually shut to go online, town centres were becoming desolate. Meanwhile, there had been a resurgence in the popularity of smaller, independent stores. By day, Monroe Street was bustling, but with the time approaching nine o’clock, it was now mostly empty. Libby carefully examined each shop frontage until she found number 360, a former café with white, wipe-off paint smeared across the windows to prevent unwelcome eyes. She switched on her phone’s torch and attempted to look through the glass-pane door, but caught only her own reflection.

You don’t have to do this, she told herself. But as much as the thought of confronting Jude terrified her, it would be too much of a struggle to live the rest of her life having walked away now. Tentatively, she pushed against the door handle and it opened. A bell attached to the top clanged louder than its size, startling her.

‘Hello?’ she asked, her voice tremulous. She shone the phone’s light around the room. She was surrounded by a dozen or so tables and chairs that were caked in dust, along with empty counters and shelving. A ladder, paint pots and dustcovers were scattered across the floor. Any redecoration work that had once begun had long since been abandoned.

‘Close the door, please,’ came a voice from further inside. She recognised it immediately and took a sharp, involuntary breath. With her hand in her pocket, she felt the cool metal blade of the vegetable knife she had pocketed while in her kitchen, and out of sight of the tablet’s lens. She clasped the handle and quietly closed the door.

‘You won’t need the knife,’ Jude continued. ‘But keep it with you if it makes you feel safer.’

As she turned in his direction, he switched on a lamp and Libby’s eyes blinked as they adjusted to the light. Now she could see him clearly. Jude was sitting behind a table, hands flat on the surface, a phone next to him.

He was dressed from head to toe in dark colours and fabrics, including a winter coat and thick laced-up boots. His beard was an inch or so thick, his hair short and tousled and he wore glasses. In spite of herself, Libby felt flashes of something for him that she couldn’t put into words.

‘Hello, Libby,’ Jude began and he offered her a thin smile. His tone was a combination of friendly but assertive. She had not met this version of him before.

‘How have you been?’ Jude continued but Libby wasn’t yet ready to respond. It didn’t appear to concern him. ‘I’m glad you came. Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer to sit?’ He pointed to a chair opposite him. Libby shook her head and eyed him up and down like it was the first time they had met. And in many ways, it was. This was not the man she once had feelings for; this man was a stranger. ‘You must have a lot of questions,’ he said.

‘Go ahead.’

She nodded and cleared her throat but try as she might, she couldn’t stop nerves from catching her vocal chords.

‘Of all the places you could have brought me, why did you choose this street?’ she asked.

‘We’ll get to that soon, I promise,’ he replied.

‘How long have you been following me?’

‘In person, it’s been around a couple of weeks now. Through your phone data, tracking devices, spending patterns, internet usage and your public profile, I suppose I’ve never stopped following you. Not from the night we met in Manchester, or even the months leading up to it.’

‘So we didn’t meet by chance then?’

‘No, we didn’t.’

Something inside Libby sank. She was almost disappointed to hear him admit to what she had already assumed. ‘How did you know I’d be in that pub?’

‘We had access to all your personal details, including your emails and diary.’

‘You mean you hacked into them?’

‘Yes.’

‘And when you found out where I’d be spending the weekend, you followed me?’ Jude nodded again. ‘How did you know I’d talk to you?’

‘I didn’t. I pursued you from bar to bar and I waited until after you’d had a few drinks before trying to get your attention. I knew from Facebook photos you enjoyed karaoke and your Spotify playlists told me Michael Jackson was your favourite artist.’

‘The friends you were with. Were they in on this?’

‘They weren’t my friends.’

‘I saw them. You were standing with a group of men.’

‘No, I was standing behind a group of men. I had no more of an idea who they were than they did of me. Like my driverless car, you didn’t think to question what you were seeing.’

‘Why would I? I trust people until I have no reason to. My first instinct isn’t to assume everything I hear or see is a lie. Well, at least it wasn’t until you came along. How could you be sure I’d be attracted to you?’

‘From the profiles you’d filled in when you joined online dating websites. We looked at the type of men whose pages you visited, how long you hovered over each picture, we analysed their personality traits and of course, we took a look at your ex, William. We studied your turn-ons and turn-offs, recreational interests, the online conversations you had and what

qualities someone needed before you’d consider meeting them. I adapted my appearance accordingly. I cut and coloured my hair, wore contact lenses and dressed in the style of clothes you preferred your men in. I became everything you were looking for. The only thing we couldn’t engineer was chemistry. And you cannot deny we had that. When you left, I took your glass with me from the pub and did the Match Your DNA test on it to see if we were genetically designed for one another. Would you like to know the result?’

Libby’s eyes blazed with fury but she kept her fingers rigid so they wouldn’t ball into fists and reveal to Jude how violated she felt. ‘No, I do not,’ she replied through gritted teeth. Quietly, though, she was terrified she might be Matched with a psychopath. ‘The conversations we had that night, they were engineered too?’

‘Some of them, yes.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like my love of foreign films, baking and knowledge of Michael Jackson songs.’

‘But you knew all the words.’

‘My team sent the lyrics to my Smart lens and I was reading them. Then I quickly took it out as you came over to talk to me. But not everything was staged.’

‘What was genuine?’

‘My interest in what you had to say.’

Libby laughed. ‘Do you expect me to believe that?’

‘I don’t expect you to believe anything I say. But if you’re so convinced that I’m going to lie to you then why did you come here tonight?’

Libby opened her mouth, then stopped herself. She didn’t have an answer. ‘What do I call you?’ she asked instead. ‘I assume Jude Harrison isn’t your real name?’

He shook his head. ‘Continue to call me Jude, if it makes things easier.’

‘No, I want your real name.’

‘It’s inconsequential. I’m already buried so deeply in the World Wide Web that by the time you’ve left here – and should you choose to inform the police of our encounter – my real name won’t matter. They’ll be no closer to finding me.’

‘I don’t care. You owe it to me.’

‘It’s Noah Harris.’

The name felt familiar to Libby but her head was swimming with too much information to pinpoint from where.

‘Why call yourself Jude?’

‘ Hey Jude was your late brother’s favourite song. They played it as his funeral. When it reached the chorus, your family rose to their feet, linked their hands in the air and sang along with the “na na” parts. Soon everyone was standing up and joining in.’

‘How dare you! How could you know that?’

‘People record everything these days for posterity. It wasn’t hard to find online.’

Libby shuddered at the depth of his research and knowledge. ‘Of all the people in the world you could have picked, why me?’

‘We needed someone with morals and values and who genuinely cared about the welfare of strangers. For the broadcast we needed a woman who both men and women of all ages could warm to. And for them to invest emotionally in her, she would need to be broken.’

‘You think the world sees me as broken?’

‘Am I wrong?’

‘You’re an arsehole.’

‘We had to give our mark a Passenger to throw her support behind. Who better than a man with a sob story and with whom she was attracted to? The fact you had our shared loathing for autonomous vehicles was of course a huge selling point and one of the reasons why we placed you inside that jury.’

‘ You put me there? I wasn’t randomly selected?’

‘I assumed you had realised that by now. We wanted a personality who’d question the decisions the other jurors made. I must admit, we thought we might’ve made a bad call after the first day when the others kept railroading you and you gave up fighting back. But by day two and shortly before the first hijack, you came into your own. At that point we knew we couldn’t have asked for anyone better.’

Inside, Libby was still seething. She had long come to terms with her manipulation but she hadn’t known how deep the lies ran. She felt like an idiot. ‘But why me specifically? There are millions of women out there who share my views.’

‘But there aren’t any who share what you and I share.’

Libby raised her eyebrows. ‘Which is?’

‘When you arrived here, you asked me why I picked this location. From what I gathered during the harvesting of your data, there are three events that’ve shaped who you are. Finding your brother’s body, your boyfriend fathering a child with another woman, and then witnessing three people die on this road. One of those, we have in common.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘The three generations of women you watched die right outside this door were my wife, my daughter and my mother.’