Alec saw him out. They’d obviously paused for a conversation at the top of the stairs because he was a few minutes coming back, but he sounded happier when he did. Alfie had obviously reassured him, she thought, and felt slightly resentful about that.
‘Seems we’ve both got new jobs,’ Alec said.
TWENTY-THREE
The girls were both sleeping when Binnie burst through the door and grabbed Sian by the arm.
Sian screamed in panic and Bee, forgetting her hand, hurled herself at the man. He shoved her aside so hard she bounced off the bed and hit the wall, and lay there stunned and winded. By the time she had struggled to her feet, Binnie and Sian had gone. Bee hammered on the door, almost relishing the pain from her broken finger. Then, as she realized this was a useless effort, she slid to the floor and wept angry, frightened tears.
Where had Binnie taken her? Would he bring her back? Bee had just about coped with the kidnapping and imprisonment because she’d at least not been alone. Sian had been with her, talked to her, shared the fear and, yes, the shame of walking into trouble. Both girls had felt, totally irrationally (at least on Bee’s part), that they had been in some way to blame. Sian because she had let Binnie dominate her and Bee because she had drawn Patrick into her affairs and probably got him killed as a result.
Abruptly, she stopped crying and retreated to the bed once more. There were footsteps on the stairs, two sets, but lighter than Binnie’s. For a moment she thought it might be Sian coming back but then the door opened and the woman they had seen the day before came in carrying another tray. A man stood behind her; he didn’t fully enter the room, so Bee could not see him properly. Bee guessed he was just the hired muscle.
The woman put the tray down and then departed without a word.
Bee stared at the closed door and slowly she realized that her fear was being replaced by pure unadulterated anger. She was furious at the situation she was in. Scared, yes, of course, but she could feel a rage growing inside her and it was a good feeling. Somehow it made her feel less of a victim, however illogical that really was.
There were more sandwiches on the tray and some biscuits and another apple. Another little bottle of orange juice. More painkillers.
Not expecting any more, Bee had been rationing them. She counted the number in the blister pack; the idea had entered her head that there were now enough to kill herself, should things get really bad. She’d read somewhere that it only took nine paracetamol to bring about fatal liver failure. That didn’t sound like much fun, but who knew what they’d got in mind for her and she found it oddly soothing to know that there might be another way out, even though reason told her she’d probably never take it. She allowed herself two paracetamol; hammering on the door had really hurt her hand, but it was good pain. Self-inflicted, and born of anger and not fear. Or at least not completely of fear.
She wondered about keeping sandwiches back for Sian, but there seemed to be only one portion so obviously the woman didn’t expect Sian to be back any time soon. In the end, hunger took over and she ate everything on the plate.
There had to be a way out of here. She had to try and find one, at least, though she and Sian had spent hours yesterday studying the room and speculating and coming up with more and more outlandish ideas, so she wasn’t sure what made her think today would be any different.
She went back to the door, pushing at it experimentally, even though she knew it wouldn’t move. Running her hands around the edges, she couldn’t even feel a draught. So that left the window. The panes, they’d already established, were far too small for them to get out of and it looked like quite a long way down, but maybe if she tore the bed sheets up and tied them together and then tied them to the leg of the bed?
Even as she thought of it she knew it was a silly idea but she felt she had to do something. Her thoughts went back to the coat hanger in the cupboard.
She tried again to unravel the wire but bruised and bloodied fingers soon told her this was a lost cause. But there was a second, wooden hanger with a metal hook, and with a bit of persuasion the hook came away from the wooden frame.
She took it across to the window and started to poke about, prodding around the frame and then the frame itself, and discovered that actually parts of it were completely rotten and could be picked away.
Bee stepped back and looked at it thoughtfully, wondering if she could remove the middle crosspiece and then pull the glass panes out. She wasn’t even quite sure how windows fitted together or how the glass was fitted in but at least it would give her something to do, and since no one seemed to stay in the room very long – when they came in at all – it was quite likely no one would notice what she was up to until it was too late.
‘Stupid idea,’ she said. But she knew she was going to do it anyway. What else was there?
Slowly and carefully she began to work away around the panes of glass, loosening the old putty and half rotten wood. She was pretty sure that nobody could hear her inside this servant’s wing – which was what she and Sian had decided it was – but she wasn’t so sure about anybody hearing her from the yard so she worked slowly and quietly, pecking away, a fraction at a time.
When Sian gets back she can help, Bee told herself. It was unthinkable that Sian would not return.
TWENTY-FOUR
Annie’s phone began to beep but not in the way it would if she was just receiving a text message. She took it out of her pocket and stared at it. ‘Turn the car round – we need to go home,’ she told Bob.
He glanced at her and then looked for somewhere in the narrow road where he could comfortably swing the vehicle around. The road leading from their house was winding and narrow, not the place to do a U-turn. ‘What’s up? Was that the house alarm?’ About six months before, after an incident at their home, they had installed a remote alarm that rang their mobile phones, and the police, if anything happened. He’d never actually heard an alert until now.
‘It was. Look, there’s a gate over there. The alarm company will have phoned the police.’ She knew that the alarm itself was silent so whoever had broken in would not hear it and be warned, but she was worried about their two dogs.
Bob swung into the farm gateway and performed a clumsy three-point turn before pulling back out on to the road and putting his foot down. They were, he estimated, only about ten minutes from home. He wasn’t sure how long the police would take to get there but, like Annie, he was worried about the two dogs and what might happen if the burglars confronted them. Not so much what would happen to the burglars, the dogs were soft as tripe, but someone breaking in might not realize that, especially if Dexter decided to make his usual ‘I don’t understand what’s going on but I’m going to bark about it’ racket.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘We’ll be back in a few minutes. And the police shouldn’t be long.’
‘It could take them anything up to half an hour,’ Annie said. ‘One of the disadvantages of being in the middle of nowhere.’
Bob glanced at her. He knew that the suggestion that they might stay in the car until the police arrived would not be considered for a moment, therefore he decided not even to make it.
The road straightened slightly and Bob accelerated again, very much aware that had he handed over to his wife, Annie would have driven much faster and undoubtedly a lot better. He could sense her mild impatience but she didn’t say anything.
He swung off the road and on to the track that led down to their cottage. It was single track with passing points cut into the verge at intervals and it curved gradually so that they could not see the house until they were almost there. Bob was surprised to see that there was no one parked.
‘They must have come in through the back way,’ Annie said. Behind their garden were fields and woods.
Annie got out of the car, the front door keys already in her hand. Bob followed, pausing only to take a tyre iron out of the boot.
‘There are dogs, I can hear them barking.’
; ‘They can’t get in here. And besides, I’ve got a gun.’
Sian was horrified. ‘You can’t shoot dogs. You can’t shoot someone’s pet dogs.’
‘Then you’d better hope they don’t get in here, hadn’t you?’
She swung round to stare at the door.
Binnie laughed at her and Sian stiffened. She hated it when Binnie laughed that way. It was cruel and cold and not like the boy she had grown up with.
‘Why are you like this now? What happened to you?’ She’d asked him that same question before and he’d just shrugged or grinned at her as though it was a stupid one.
‘We get what we came for, we get out. Simple as that.’
‘Why did you have to drag me along?’
‘You could have said no.’
‘Could I? From what I remember you didn’t give me much choice. You kidnapped me, took me to that house, locked me up. What choice did I have?’
He laughed again. ‘There’s always a choice,’ he said. ‘You could have made it. You could certainly have made it earlier, before you agreed to help me out with that gallery owner.’
‘I didn’t know what you were going to do. How could I have?’
‘You must have guessed you wouldn’t like it. Pretending to be something you weren’t, pretending to be someone else. Even you must have known that was wrong.’ Binnie laughed at her again. ‘You’re even more stupid than I thought you were. You had a choice then, didn’t you? You just wouldn’t have liked what I’d have done afterwards, but the choice was still there.’
Sian blinked back tears. ‘Let’s just get out of here before they come back.’
The back of the house had been converted into a studio with windows all along one side and more windows in the roof. It was part room, part glorified conservatory, boarded and comfortable, and she could imagine it being cosy in the winter with a log fire at one end. The wall opposite the windows was partly panelled and covered with pin boards and pictures. Canvases, boards and frames were propped against it. She found herself drawn to one of the paintings leaning against the wall. It was a large work, very beautiful. A lone tree with its roots reaching down into the earth and what looked like another world beneath. The painting was unfinished but she could see how wonderful it was going to be. She was distracted by a yelp of triumph from Binnie. He was comparing a painting to a photograph he had in his hand. ‘Is that it?’ she asked.
‘Sure to be. Look for yourself.’
Sian came over to the table and looked at the painting and then at the photograph. They did look the same, and yet … ‘Binnie, I’m not sure—’
‘Not sure about what? Look for yourself. It’s a Madonna and fucking child, isn’t it? Looks the same as the one in the photo, doesn’t it?’
Sian stared at the painting. It wasn’t the same, she was sure of it. This picture was lovely, but there were differences – though she found it hard to say exactly what they were. Abstractedly, she found herself wishing that the photograph was clearer so that she could compare the way the brush strokes had been made and the colour applied. But there was no arguing with Binnie and she wasn’t going to try.
The dogs were barking loudly but the tone had changed. Binnie was too absorbed to notice, freeing the little painting from its easel and shoving it into the canvas bag he had brought with him.
‘I can hear a car,’ Sian said. ‘Listen to the dogs. It’s them, they’ve come back.’ She headed towards the French windows but Binnie, head cocked, stood still and simply stared at the door as she had done earlier but with a slight smile on his face. He wanted them to confront him, Sian realized suddenly. He wanted an excuse to fire his gun.
‘Binnie, we have to go. Now!’
The car doors had slammed and the front door crashed open. Was it just because they’d heard the dogs that they knew something was wrong? she wondered. If there’d been something wrong in her house she would have sat in the car and phoned the police, she wouldn’t have come bursting in like that. She could hear footsteps in the hall, running, and voices shouting, presumably to the dogs. Another door opened.
Binnie stood for a moment longer and then he turned and strode towards the patio doors as though he had all the time in the world. Sian turned as well. She wanted to run but suddenly a door opened at the other end of the studio and a woman appeared. Binnie swung round but the woman also had a gun. It was a shotgun, rather than a handgun, that she held, but at that moment Sian equated size with additional force and the armed woman seemed much more frightening, especially as Sian was standing between her and Binnie. Especially as there was nowhere logical for her to run.
Sian hadn’t even known that second door was there. It was concealed in the panelling with a pin board hanging on the back and she had just not noticed it. All her attention had been on the main door through from the house and through this door a man now emerged, with two dogs.
Binnie turned and fired and the man swore and the next thing she knew the man had grabbed her and she was on the floor with her hands behind her back and the dogs barking at her. She heard the woman fire the shotgun and glass breaking. The man swore again and Binnie laughed.
‘You’ve got her?’ the woman called over, and then Sian was aware that she had run out in pursuit of Binnie. Sian wanted to call to her not to do it, to tell her that Binnie was a nutcase and would shoot before he even thought about it. She doubted Binnie thought about anything much any more.
‘I’ve got her,’ the man confirmed, though the woman was gone and could no longer have heard him. He had both of Sian’s wrists clamped in one surprisingly strong fist and in the other he now had a mobile phone and Sian could hear him speaking to the police.
‘I’m not going to struggle,’ she said. ‘I’m not going to fight you, but please, tell the police he’s gonna hurt my mum and dad. Tell the police they’ve got to look after them.’
The man paused in his conversation and then said, ‘Tell me who they are.’ He stood up, pulling Sian with him, and sat her down in a chair by the wall. The dogs stood guard but the truth was all the fight had gone out of her, and she realized he must be able to see that. He leaned against the table and studied Sian carefully while he finished his conversation and put the phone back in his pocket.
‘The police have promised to send a patrol car to your parents. And they’re on their way here.’
Sian was just terrified about her mum and dad; she no longer cared what happened to her, she just wanted them to be safe. ‘You sure?’ she said. ‘Because as soon as he’s out of here, he will report back and he’ll tell them … he’ll tell them to go and hurt my mum and dad.’
The man regarded her solemnly, head slightly tilted to one side as though considering whether or not to believe her. In his position, Sian thought, she probably wouldn’t have done. Something else occurred to her. ‘Aren’t you worried about your wife? She shouldn’t have gone after him.’
‘Annie can take care of herself. What’s your name?’
‘Sian, Sian Price. I didn’t want to come here. But he said if I didn’t—’
‘Save it for the police,’ he said.
Sian felt as though he’d slapped her in the face. She wanted to tell him, wanted him to know that it hadn’t been her idea. ‘He wanted to damage things,’ she said. ‘I told him he couldn’t do that.’
‘And how would you have stopped him?’
Sian didn’t know and just stared at the floor. Binnie hadn’t actually said he wanted to do any damage but she knew he did. That was what Binnie was like now. Maybe it was what he had always been like.
The woman came back, the shotgun broken over her arm. ‘He had a four by four parked in the next field, took off like a bat out of hell. I’ve got the number but the plates are probably false. Took Jeff’s gate out on the way. Fortunately he has no livestock in the field at the moment or we’d be dealing with cows on the road too.’
She seemed oddly relaxed, Sian thought. As though this was almost an everyday occurrence, as though
it didn’t faze her.
‘The police are on their way,’ the man said. ‘This young woman tells me her name is Sian Price and she’s worried about her parents. The idiot with her apparently threatened them.’
‘OK. Did the police give an ETA?’
‘They said ten minutes when I spoke to the controller. They were already alerted by the alarm. But you know what their estimates are like.’
‘Then I’d best get the kettle on,’ Annie said. ‘What did he take?’ She glanced around the studio and frowned. ‘He took Patrick’s Madonna? Now why would he do that?’
‘Presumably because the young man involved was not an art expert. He must have thought it was Freddie’s.’
The woman called Annie raised an eyebrow but made no comment and absurdly Sian felt a moment of gratification that she had been right. That the painting had not been done by Freddie Jones.
‘Patrick is going to be very upset about that,’ Annie said. ‘When he recovers.’ She looked directly at Sian and said, ‘I’m assuming it was your boyfriend who attacked him at Freddie’s studio?’
‘He’s not my boyfriend. Yeah, it was him.’
‘Well, you may or may not be glad to know that Patrick will survive.’
‘I am glad. I’d no idea what Binnie was going to do.’
‘Though how disabled he will be is anyone’s guess at the moment.’
Sian swallowed nervously. The man that she now realized must be Bob Taylor seemed like a pretty ordinary sort but this woman, this Annie, was anything but. There was a coldness and sternness to her that Sian found frankly terrifying.
The police’s sirens could now be heard and Annie went to welcome them.
Sian, overwhelmed now, began to cry.
TWENTY-FIVE
There were two patrol cars. Two of the police officers came into the studio and looked around and Sian heard them talking to Annie as she was led away into the kitchen. One of the police officers was calling for the CSI to come. Another one bagged Annie’s shotgun and she heard Annie saying that the licence was in the kitchen drawer. Sian gathered that because guns had been involved she was immersed in a whole new level of shit.
Fakes and Lies Page 16
