Whatever chance Ruari might have, he knew there was none to be had in crawling back to his childhood. He blamed himself for what had happened, but he blamed his captors more. As the furies in his mind drew closer, chasing him down in every hiding place, suddenly he turned on them and gave a roar of inner defiance that caused him to bite deeply into his lacerated lip. The pain jolted him back to the real world as once more blood began smothering his tongue and trickling from the corner of his mouth. And when he looked out once more he saw not Casey or Mattias or his mother, but a guard with stone-dead eyes watching him from the other side of the room, sneering, and for the first time in his life Ruari knew what it was to hate.
The searchers from the mountain rescue service spotted Casey first. She was lying spread-eagled on a rocky outcrop, her pink and sky-blue jacket vivid against the sunlit snow. Access by land was impossible; the rescue helicopter was forced to hover while a crewman was lowered. He found Casey’s head resting on a pillow of snow, her face turned to the heavens, her eyes open, utterly lifeless.
There was no sign of catastrophe in the immediate area, no broken machine, no further bodies, and this caused much confusion at rescue control. How – and why – a sixteen-year-old girl could have fallen from a helicopter didn’t bear thinking about. What sort of calamity was this?
They intensified their search in the surrounding area and a couple of hours later found their answer. Mattias’s body was poking at an unnatural angle from a pile of freshly disturbed snow at the bottom of a ravine. The injuries were pitiful, he had bounced and tumbled down a rock face for many hundreds of feet, but this had clearly been no accident. The small, circular and ferociously angry hole in the centre of his chest told its own story.
In the circumstances, and in the snow, it was a stroke of fair fortune for the Swiss authorities to have found and recovered both bodies. It was the only luck they were going to have as they searched ever wider, and found nothing.
Harry sat in a chair, towel around his neck, facing the mirror. A frown of indecision was beginning to worm its way across his forehead.
‘So what’s it to be, Harry?’ the tall, middle-aged woman enquired, running exploratory fingers through his hair.
‘I dunno, Tessara. What do you think?’
Harry’s hairdresser stepped back and stared at his reflection in the mirror. ‘Let’s find a cuppa something warm first, then we’ll decide.’
Tessara ran a modest but remarkably popular unisex salon on a backstreet of his constituency, from which she dispensed good cheer and endless cups of tea. Like all good listeners she was remarkably well informed about what was going on in the neighbourhood, and Harry would have been happy enough simply to drop by for the local updates, but she also cut his hair more skilfully than any place he’d found in the West End at five times the price. His hairstyle during his army days had inevitably been unadventurous and over-short, and that had become a matter of habit, but the loss of his ear had required a fundamental rethink, and under the guidance of Tessara’s dexterous fingers he had grown it considerably longer in order to cover the scar. But now he had a new ear. A decision needed to be made, and Harry sat staring at himself in the mirror. The first gentle brushstrokes of middle age were beginning to show through. It happened, dammit, one of those turning points. Perhaps it was a sign of what was meant to be, a new hairstyle along with a new life, with Harry once again flying alongside the other geese, being part of the team. The Prime Minister’s offer had been weighing heavily on him, he knew he would very soon have to decide.
He had drifted off. When he opened his eyes once more he was shocked to see what he thought at first was the face of his father staring back at him. He’d been not much older than Harry when he died, leaving behind a wagonload of money and a lifetime of colourful and often exquisitely painful memories. And Harry, of course. Thinking about it all left Harry feeling suddenly vulnerable, not at the thought of death but at what he would leave behind, and who the hell he would leave it to. People assumed he had everything – status, wealth, a reputation more formidable than almost any man of his time, and yet . . .
‘So what’s it to be, my love?’ Tessara demanded, returning from the kitchen with his tea.
‘Your choice. In your hands.’
‘Leave a bit of length in it, if you ask me,’ she replied, holding up a strand. ‘Ride the waves, as my son always says.’
He closed his eyes once more, accepting. He had so many other decisions to make. At least for the next twenty minutes he had the chance to switch off, allow someone else to take the strain.
‘Come on, then, let’s get you washed,’ she declared, wheeling him to the sink.
She had finished with the shampoo and was halfway through administering a head massage when his phone rang. He groaned, swore under his breath. Idiot, should’ve switched the bloody thing off, would do now, whoever it was, even Downing Street. Stuff ‘em. He pulled out the phone and was about to send it to sleep when he noticed the number. He didn’t recognize it. He hesitated, and curiosity did the rest. With a muttered apology to Tessara and considerable caution he put the phone to his new ear.
‘Harry Jones,’ he announced.
‘Hello, Harry.’ The voice was soft, throaty, a little breathless, female. Just as it had always been.
He froze, his contentment stripped like flesh from his bones. It was Terri.
Harry derided himself for his weakness as he dodged the winter puddles that gathered on the paving stones of Notting Hill in the western reaches of central London. What the hell was he doing? Despite the weather he’d decided to walk from his home in Mayfair across the rain-kissed acres of Hyde Park to Terri’s. He needed to clear his thoughts, but he hadn’t got very far with the process by the time he found himself walking up the Portobello Road with its jumble of pastel-fronted urban cottages and antiques emporia. He passed a small dwelling that when it was built had been a dairy farmhouse in the middle of open fields; now its powder-blue wall was covered almost to the point of obliteration with fly posters for wannabe rock bands. He hurried on. Soon he was turning into a more elegant crescent of tall, stucco-fronted Victorian houses backing onto a private garden square that had once formed part of the shortlived Hippodrome racecourse, a notorious track of clinging mud where fortunes were lost before the developers took over and, in unfavourable times, lost fortunes new. It had been an area of slump and slum until the idle classes took over; now it required a fortune simply to park your car on the street.
He didn’t love her, of course, not after all these years, but she still aroused feelings in him – of hurt, anger, shame and, he had to admit, curiosity, like discovering a forgotten scar. She had reappeared to shine a light on part of him that he didn’t understand, one that he didn’t very much like. And now he was almost at her doorstep.
She had once talked to him about her dream of a cottage with honeysuckle and roses climbing over the door, but this place wasn’t anything like that. It was talking millions. Much of the front garden had been given over to a driveway that led to an underground garage, while the rest was hidden behind a thick high hedge for privacy. A Mercedes roadster was parked on the paved standing, a clutter of umbrellas and road atlases spread across the back seat and a pair of woman’s sunglasses – Terri’s sunglasses – dangling from the mirror. Harry found it a short but weary climb up to the front door.
He’d expected a cleaner or nanny, but she answered it herself, her eyes raw from crying. Neither said a word as she led the way up the stairs to a reception room on the first floor overlooking the garden at the rear. Harry hadn’t even taken off his raincoat. She crossed to the window, stared for some while; he saw her body shuddering while she struggled for control. As she remained silent, her arms clasped tightly around her, his eyes danced around the room and soaked up the objects that were the markers of her life – the books, the family photographs, a stack of jigsaws and games on a bottom shelf, the scattering of personal ornaments and heirlooms. A Christmas tree w
as leaning in one corner, waiting to be set and decorated.
She sighed and moved away from the window. ‘It’s my son, Ruari. I think he’s been kidnapped.’
It was his turn to stand silent for a moment. ‘What makes you think that?’
‘Ruari went for a heli-skiing trip from his school in Switzerland four days ago. He hasn’t been seen since. Now they’ve discovered the bodies of two of the friends he was with.’
‘I’m so sorry . . .’
‘One of them had been shot.’
He had come here dragging his own feelings of anger behind him, but now her fear swept those aside. He sat down on the sofa but still she stood, rigid, as though afraid that if she tried to move her legs would give way.
‘On the day it happened I got a strange call from Ruari – or at least from his phone. Just noise, really, and muffled voices. I thought he’d pressed the speed dial by mistake and I erased it but . . . Now I think it was made from the helicopter. And today I got another message.’ She walked stiffly towards a side table on which stood a laptop. ‘On this. A voice message. Over the Internet. On Skype.’
‘You didn’t record it, I suppose.’
She shook her head. ‘But I remember almost every word. “We have your son, bitch!” it began. Then it said if we called in the police or anyone like that, we’d never see him again.’ The memory was beginning to twist inside her. ‘It said we should do nothing except wait for their next message.’ The tears were flowing now.
‘Did it give you any clues? Who they were, or where they were?’
She tried to bite back her anguish. ‘The voice was white South African, that would be my guess, but apart from that – nothing. Except at the end of the call . . .’ She was struggling. ‘At the end there was just one long scream of pain!’ Now Terri was sobbing her heart out, her manicured fingers ripping at the buttons on her sleeve, her shoulders heaving, her head hanging in despair. Harry wanted to put his arms around her, to comfort her, but he couldn’t. She seemed as though she would break in two, fall in pieces to the ground, but she was battling with her fear and eventually she let forth one final lung-bursting sob before scrabbling for a handkerchief and wiping her eyes, which once more fell on him.
‘Forgive me, but . . .’ He was hesitant, reaching for the appropriate words. ‘Why are you telling me this? What about your husband?’
‘J.J.’s away, out of contact, I don’t know precisely where. There’s some important deal he’s trying to tie up, it’s all ridiculously hush-hush. He’s even taken his head of corporate security with him. I didn’t know who else to call and . . . Meeting up with you again the other day seemed like a sign. Call Harry Jones! Why not? Everyone else does.’ She tried to make light of it, came to sit on the far end of the sofa, her lips struggling to shape themselves into a brave smile. ‘I didn’t know who else to call, Harry.’
He wanted to leave, but couldn’t. She wasn’t the only one at war with their emotions. ‘That cry,’ he said, ‘are you sure it was him?’
‘Yes. A mother knows.’ Her voice snagged on something sharp inside. She began trembling.
‘Don’t, Harry,’ he told himself. ‘Don’t you dare touch her . . .’
She wrapped her arms around herself as though she might burst apart.
‘And what do you want me to do?’ he heard himself saying.
CHAPTER SIX
The message that had capsized Terri’s world and left her drowning had its origins earlier that morning. Ruari had woken from a sleep disturbed by many ghosts to find a guard watching him, impassively and without a word, and it wasn’t long before he found the silence even more oppressive than the pain from his broken nose. He tried to engage the Romanian in conversation but wasn’t even sure the dumb-ass understood him properly. He tried his French in case the guard found that easier than English, but that had fallen on equally barren soil. So when de Vries made an appearance Ruari tried a different tactic, asking if he might have something to read – ‘you know, a comic, book, newspaper, anything. It’ll keep me quiet,’ he promised. But de Vries ignored him, too.
Then the South African returned to the bleak bedroom cell accompanied by another guard, named Nelu, the youngest of the guards, a skinny, gangling youth who wore a crumpled Disney T-shirt and torn jeans and carried a laptop under his arm. For a moment Ruari’s spirits rose. Perhaps they had relented, he thought. It was the last time he would make that mistake.
‘Pity about you throwing that phone of yours away,’ de Vries began, rubbing his stubble-red chin with a knuckle. ‘Could have saved us a lot of trouble. You, too. No need for that busted nose of yours. How is it, by the way?’
‘Still hurts,’ Ruari muttered cautiously, although in truth the pain had subsided to a dull throbbing ache.
‘I’m sure it does. Nasty things, noses. Anyway, we need your parents’ contact details – you know, their private phone numbers and email addresses. And since you’ve thrown your phone away, you’ll have to give them to me.’
‘I’ve forgotten,’ Ruari replied. ‘I just sort of punch buttons, you know?’
‘No, no, I don’t think so,’ de Vries said in his clipped voice, ‘not good enough, Little Shit.’ They all seemed to have taken up the habit of calling him that, never Ruari. He had a name, an identity, but they refused to acknowledge it. His captors knew it would slowly wear him down. ‘Kids like you are sponges, you soak up everything. So don’t pretend you can’t remember. Give.’
‘You can ask.’
‘And I shall receive.’
Ruari glared back and ran his tongue across his injured lip. His defiance seemed not to affect the man, whose tone remained casual.
‘Come on, Little Shit, don’t make it any more difficult than it needs to be. Don’t you want your folks to know you’re OK?’
Ruari, who was on his mattress, stretched himself out full length as though he was going to sleep.
‘That’s a pity, one hell of a pity,’ de Vries announced in the manner of a disappointed schoolmaster. He was standing over the bed. ‘Change your mind?’
Ruari closed his eyes, trying to blot out the sense of fear this man always instilled in him, and turned away, stretching the arm by which he was manacled to the bed. Suddenly de Vries had grabbed his shoulder and was kneeling on his other arm, pinning it down. For a moment they stared into each other’s eyes, the South African smiled. Then his fingers found Ruari’s broken nose and gave it a violent twist.
It felt to Ruari as though he had been hit by a hammer. He screamed. De Vries twisted his nose a second time and all Ruari’s defences were swept away. He began spilling numbers and addresses like a ripped sack of corn. He gave them what they wanted, everything, then he lay back on his mattress sobbing. He could taste the sweetness of blood in his mouth, his body was on fire, he was having trouble focusing through the bombardment of lights that were exploding inside his skull. He was only vaguely aware that Nelu was standing nearby, fiddling with the laptop, and de Vries was talking again, calling someone a bitch, talking about the police, a husband, and messages that would follow. He made sense of nothing until the moment that de Vries crushed his nose once more, and he started screaming all over again.
‘What do you want me to do?’ Harry repeated.
‘Wave a magic wand. Make this go away. Give me back my child,’ Terri whispered, her voice straining with every word.
‘You have time, kidnappers don’t tend to go away. You should wait until your husband comes home.’
‘I can’t wait,’ she bit back. ‘I can’t just sit here and do nothing but snivel. I’m his mother, for pity’s sake.’
‘I don’t think this is something I should get involved in.’
‘You must.’
‘Must?’
‘You have no choice, Harry,’ she insisted firmly. ‘You owe me.’
‘I? Owe you?’ he spluttered.
‘Oh, I know it was a long time ago, but you weren’t the only one to get hurt.’
‘You
covered it up remarkably well.’
‘You weren’t around to see.’
He listened to her in a state of astonishment. For years he’d harboured an image of her as a cynical and hardhearted woman, for no better reason than it was easier for him to pile the blame on her that way, but now she was telling him how much she had cared, felt things. She picked up a silver-framed photo of herself holding the hand of a young boy in school uniform, green blazer, cap, long socks pulled up high, with grass stains on his knee.
‘Ruari?’ he asked.
‘His first day at school. I told him he had to be brave. I think that goes for me, too. I need you to be honest, Harry, tell me everything you can. Don’t try and protect me, I need to know.’ There was an urgency in her voice.
‘What can I tell you?’
‘A great deal, I suspect.’
He took it as a criticism. He thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his coat. ‘OK. That voice,’ he began.
‘The South African?’
‘The first thing I ask myself is why a white South African is involved with an English kid in Switzerland.’ He rose, went to the window where she had been standing, where he imagined her standing looking out at a young boy on a scooter racing across the grass, making sure he was safe. ‘You ever upset any South Africans?’
‘Me? No. I’ve never even been there. Nor J.J., so far as I know.’
The lawn was empty now, nothing but a couple of lazy crows searching for worms. He turned. ‘It’s always possible they might be acting for someone else.’
Old Enemies Page 6
