17 Church Row

by James Carol

  Following Sarah Ryan was easy.

  By putting my hacking skills to use, I was able to keep tabs on her twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. It wasn’t long before I knew everything about her. Where she worked, how much she earned, where she liked to eat out. No detail was deemed insignificant since each piece of the puzzle added to the bigger picture. I discovered that she now preferred red wine to white; that she had just bought a new car; that she used Tampax in preference to any other feminine hygiene product.

  And, of course, I found out where she lived.

  Since leaving Father, Sarah had done well for herself. She had landed a high-flying job with a six- figure salary and all the perks. She had a new man in her life too: Simon Carr, forty-three, six foot, 160 pounds, hair black, eyes blue, twice divorced, investment banker. She had a flat on the twenty-third floor of a brand-new tower block in Docklands. In short, Sarah had hit the fast-track running.

  As I familiarised myself with her new life, a plan began to form. I wouldn’t kill her straight away. That would be too easy. She needed to suffer for what she had done. With that in mind, I went to work. Each day she returned home to find her hallway jammed with junk mail – begging letters from charities; life insurance companies wanting to look after her nearest and dearest in the unlikely event of her death; double-glazing firms promising snugness and warmth at very affordable prices. For no apparent reason her credit cards were cancelled. Then she started to receive telephone calls. Disembodied voices came for her in the middle of the night. All night. Every night. Voices telling her she was going to die. Voices demanding sexual relief. Taunting voices. Whispering voices.

  After a couple of weeks of this, Sarah had become an emotional and physical wreck who went through her daily routine in a permanent daze. The self-assured woman that Father had known so intimately had been replaced by a robot. This was a creature he would barely have recognised.

  It was time.

  Chapter 39

  The world came back into focus slowly, one fractured second at a time. At first Nikki couldn’t work out why she was feeling so tired, not when she’d just been sleeping. That was her first fully-formed thought. The second was to wonder why her bed was so hard. She tried to open her eyes but they wouldn’t obey the commands being sent from her brain. She tried again and saw that she was lying on the kitchen floor. That was when she remembered Laura Santos jabbing the needle into her neck, the darkness rushing in to claim her. Her last thought as she tumbled into the abyss was that she would finally get to see Grace again. That was the thought she had taken with her as she had drifted deeper and deeper.

  Bella.

  Nikki struggled to get up. She had to make sure Bella was all right. She was moving as fast as she could. Too fast. One second she was on her knees, the next she was down on the floor again.

  ‘Bella.’

  Her yell came out as a hoarse whisper. She tried again but her voice wasn’t working. She struggled to sit up and for a moment all she could do was sit with her back against the work island, aware that she didn’t have time for this, and equally aware that if she moved too fast she would end up back on the floor. She took a deep breath then used one of the stools to pull herself up.

  ‘Alice, where’s Bella?’

  No response.

  ‘Where’s Bella?’ she repeated.

  Still nothing.

  The kitchen monitor was dark. All the appliances were off. The overhead lights were off too. Nikki took a deep breath then stumbled across the kitchen, using her forward momentum to defy gravity. She made it to the door and steadied herself against the frame. And now she was stumbling along the corridors, using the walls to stay upright, calling out Bella’s name. Every door she passed was open, every light off; all the electronics were off too. It was as though the house had died. She called out Alice’s name again, her fear increasing with every step. Her panic was increasing too, making her head swim and the black dots swimming through her field of vision made it difficult to see straight. She felt sick; she felt like she was going to pass out. Neither of those things was an option though. She had to keep going.

  Bella’s door was wide open when she got there. The lights were off, the screen was off too, and scrawled on the glass in bright red lipstick: NO POLICE. Nikki felt her legs buckle and grabbed hold of the doorway. Somehow she managed to stumble across to the bed. She sat down heavily, wanting to believe there was another explanation and knowing there wasn’t. Someone had drugged her and she had woken up to find her baby gone. She put her head in her hands, pushing hard on her temples to hold her thoughts together, desperate for things to make sense. The only thought going around in her head was that Bella was gone. Panic filled her head. Nikki could feel her heart racing; the sweat on her palms and her back was cold and slick. She pushed back against the panic and opened her eyes, hoping she’d somehow read the situation wrong, hoping beyond hope that Bella was going to suddenly appear and surprise her. The lipstick words screamed out from the monitor and the room was as empty as it had been a couple of seconds ago. As empty as it would be a couple of seconds from now. As empty as it would be forever more.

  No!

  The word rang loud in her head. She clenched her hand into a fist, fingernails digging into her palm, and punched her leg. She punched again and felt the pain bloom. She kept punching until the panic was tamed and all she could feel was the pain. She needed Ethan. He wouldn’t know what to do any more than she knew, but at least she wouldn’t be alone.

  Nikki felt in her pockets for her mobile. It wasn’t there. The last place she remembered seeing it was on the kitchen island. She struggled to her feet and made her way back through to the kitchen. She still felt as though her legs might give way at any moment, but no longer believed that was actually going to happen. Her thigh ached from where she had punched it and that provided enough of a distraction to keep the panic at bay. She found her mobile on the work island. A second mobile was lying beside it, a Nokia she had never seen before. Nikki picked it up with a trembling hand and switched it on. The directory was empty. There were no numbers in the call log. The phone was a blank canvas. It had never been used. For a moment all she could do was look at it, sitting there in her shaking hand. Any thoughts she’d harboured that she might be mistaken about what was happening had just vanished, erased by the reality of this phone. She put the Nokia down carefully and picked up her own mobile. Ethan answered on the sixth ring. She counted each one. The pain in her leg was receding and the panic was building again. Counting the rings helped distract her.

  ‘Hi, Nik. Is everything all right?’

  ‘I need you to come home,’ she replied, her voice trembling as much as her hands.

  ‘Why? What’s happened?’

  ‘Come home now,’ she said in a dead voice, then hung up.

  Ethan called back straightaway and Nikki let the phone ring out. There was a short stretch of silence, then it rang again. She switched the phone off and slapped it down beside the Nokia. Ethan had a right to know what was happening but not over the phone. The explanation would take too long and she needed him here now. She picked up the Nokia and walked through to the reception area. Every couple of steps she would call out Bella’s name. She knew she was gone, but still wasn’t ready to accept this. If nothing else, calling out her name drove the silence away, and that was good because that silence was threatening to suffocate her. The front door was wide open when she got there and, beyond the courtyard, the main gate was wide open too. Laura’s car was long gone.

  Nikki sat down in the doorway to wait. From here she could see along the whole length of Church Row. The first time she had driven here she had been impressed with how safe the neighbourhood had seemed. Sitting here now she could see how wrong she had been. When Grace had died she had thought that things couldn’t possibly get any worse. She could see how wrong she had been about that too. They said that lightning didn’t strike twice. Bullshit. She had lost Grace and she now had to deal with the
crushing certainty that she was going to lose Bella too.

  She was still sitting there, hugging herself tightly and clutching the phone, when Ethan arrived. Ten minutes might have passed since she called him; it might have been twenty. However long it was, it felt like an eternity. His car skidded to a halt in front of the garage and he practically fell out of it. He ran across the courtyard to where she was sitting.

  ‘What’s going on, Nik?’

  ‘Bella’s gone.’

  His face creased with a mix of confusion and concern. ‘What do you mean, gone?’

  ‘She’s been kidnapped.’

  Chapter 40

  ‘What? Are you sure?’ Ethan asked. He looked down at her and shook his head. ‘Fuck, of course you are.’ His eyes were going in all directions at once. To the open front door, to Nikki, to the main gate, back to Nikki. ‘We need to call the police.’

  He stated this as though it was a done deal. There was no way she could risk him doing that. Calling the police had been her first thought as well. It was a natural reaction. Something bad happens: call the police.

  ‘Laura Santos took her. She said no police. Whatever she wants, we give it to her. If that means giving away every last thing we own, I don’t care. We do whatever we need to do to get Bella back. Do you understand?’

  Ethan said nothing. His head was still moving in all directions as his brain fought to get a handle on this.

  ‘Do you understand?’ she repeated, her voice beginning to crack.

  He nodded once then sank to his knees and took her in his arms. All the emotions she had been bottling up came out in a rush, like the dam had finally burst. She was trembling from head to toe and the world looked fractured through the kaleidoscope of her tears. After the accident, she had promised to keep Bella safe forever. That had been no empty promise, it had become a way of life for all of them. Only now, when it mattered most, she had failed Bella. She had dropped her guard and Laura Santos had swept in to steal her baby away. Nikki grabbed Ethan tighter and buried her face into his chest, suffocating herself, just wanting to disappear. Having him here was both a comfort and a reality check – a reality check because his presence made this real in a way that it hadn’t been a couple of minutes ago.

  ‘We’re going to get her back,’ he whispered, and she so wanted that to be true. He pulled away and stared her straight in the eye. He looked as lost as she felt. ‘We will get her back.’

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘I promise,’ he said, even though this wasn’t his promise to make. It wasn’t a promise either of them were in a position to make.

  They looked at each other for a moment longer, reading the lies in each other’s eyes. Ethan looked away first. The truth was that this situation was already out of their control. Ethan noticed the mobile clutched in her hand. He was staring at it as if he’d never seen a phone before. Frowning, he looked at Nikki.

  ‘This phone was on the work island when I came back around,’ she explained. ‘I’m assuming Laura is going to use it to contact us.’

  The frown deepened. ‘What the fuck is going on?’

  Nikki said nothing. At this point she had no more answers than he did.

  ‘What actually happened?’ he asked, softening his tone.

  ‘I was talking to Laura in the kitchen. Someone called her and she went out of the kitchen to take it. When she came back, she drugged me.’ Nikki’s hand had moved subconsciously to her neck and she was rubbing the spot where the needle had gone in. ‘I remember her laying me down on the floor and then nothing else until I came around.’

  ‘The person who called must have been an accomplice. Did you hear what they said to her?’

  Nikki shook her head. ‘I couldn’t even tell you if they were male or female.’

  Ethan turned and looked towards the main gate. ‘Why is the gate still open? Come to that, why was it open when I got here?’

  ‘Laura managed to disable Alice.’

  ‘Was Alice still working when you were drugged?’

  ‘I think so. Why?’

  ‘If Alice had seen that happening, she should have put the house in lockdown.’ Ethan stopped talking for a moment. He was staring along Church Row again. ‘Laura definitely wasn’t working alone. This is too big an operation for one person to carry out on their own. For starters, someone needed to disable Alice while Laura was dealing with you.’

  ‘There was no one else in the house, so it must have been someone working from the outside. They must have hacked into her systems.’ She paused. ‘You told me Alice couldn’t be hacked. Remember? But there’s no such thing as a computer system that can’t be hacked.’

  Ethan nodded at the mobile clutched in her hand. ‘I wonder when they’re going to call,’ he said, changing the subject.

  Nikki followed his gaze. ‘What – what if she’s dead?’

  ‘She’s not dead. If she was, then why leave the phone?’

  Nikki said nothing.

  ‘Listen,’ Ethan said sharply. ‘She’s not going to die. That’s not going to happen.’

  The statement provoked a sudden flashback. They were in the house on Bedford Street, trying to come to terms with what had happened to Grace. Ethan had said something similar, and she had so wanted to believe him. He’d been wrong then; what if he was wrong now? If he was, then she wouldn’t be able to go on. She wouldn’t want to. Being cut adrift in this world without Grace was bad enough, but being without Bella as well was just too much to even begin to comprehend. She looked at the phone, clutched tight in her hand, and willed it to ring.

  Chapter 41

  They walked to the kitchen in silence, Nikki still clutching the Nokia like her life depended on it. This electronic talisman was the only thing that connected her to Bella, and it just didn’t seem enough. It was the thinnest of threads, so fragile that it could snap at any moment. Ethan had tried to take it from her, but that wasn’t going to happen. He only asked once.

  A fresh wave of panic hit her as she walked into the kitchen. The room was like one giant trigger. Even just glancing at the stool she had been sitting on was enough to get her heart racing. The memories were so real it was almost as though it was actually happening all over again. She could feel the prick of the needle. And she could feel Laura’s hands on her as she laid her down on the cool tiles. And she could feel her heart breaking all over again as the realisation that Bella was gone hit like it was the first time rather than the hundredth. Ethan must have sensed something, because he reached for her hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. He led her over to the island and she sat down, avoiding the stool she had been using earlier.

  ‘The electric’s off,’ he said. ‘Laura must have tripped the main circuit breaker.’

  Before Nikki could respond, Ethan was already walking away.

  ‘Where are you going?

  ‘I’m going down to the basement to see if I can get it back on.’

  All she could do was watch as he walked away. She wanted to follow him, but she could remember all too well how dark it had been down there when the lights went out in the gym the other day. Staying here on her own wasn’t much better, but at least there was light. She listened as his footsteps disappeared into the distance, kept listening until all that was left was silence and she was alone again.

  She placed the Nokia on the work island, lining it up with her phone, willing it to ring. It didn’t. It just lay there. Inert. Dead. What if it isn’t working? She snatched it up and switched it on. The screen immediately flared to life. The battery was at 99 per cent. She switched it off, placed it down carefully and picked up her own phone. There were no new emails, no texts, no messages. It was as though the world outside these walls had ceased to exist. That was what it felt like too. It was as if the universe began and ended in this room, a universe without Bella in it.

  She had been adamant that they shouldn’t call the police, and Ethan hadn’t argued, but was that a mistake? No. They couldn’t involve them. Laura Santos had made t
hat clear. If they went against her instructions how would that impact on Bella? Maybe Laura expected them to go to the police and had posted the message to scare them. Then again, what if they contacted the police and she killed Bella? It was a risk they couldn’t afford to take. The kitchen lights came on and the appliances buzzed back to life. The monitor was still blank, though.

  ‘Alice?’

  No answer. Nikki turned towards the doorway, listening hard for the sound of Ethan’s footsteps, wishing he would hurry up. A minute passed with no sign of him. She gave it another minute then picked up the Nokia and walked out of the kitchen. She stopped at the top of the basement stairs.

  ‘Is everything okay?’ she called down.

  There was still no response, and now she was getting worried. She took a long look at the stairs then walked down them. ‘Ethan,’ she yelled out. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ he called back. ‘I’m just trying to get Alice working again.’

  She followed his voice to the computer room hidden away at the far end of the basement. One wall was lined with servers, all of them off. The air-conditioning had kicked in again and the temperature in the room was cold enough to give her goosebumps. Ethan was standing in the middle of the room, looking confused.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ he said. ‘The electricity’s back on so the servers should be working.’

  ‘Maybe we need to reboot it.’

  ‘How?’

  Nikki’s gaze drifted across the servers. Ethan had a point. There was no obvious way to reboot the system. No big green button marked ON. She walked over to the closest server. The front of it was black and the dead LED’s looked like little black pearls. She ran a hand across it and it felt cold to the touch. She was about to step back when the server at the far left suddenly came to life. A second later the one beside it came on. Like falling dominoes, the rest came on one at a time until they were all working and the room was filled with the gentle hum of the fans and the blinking, twinkling glow of the LEDs.