‘It’s crazy.’ Her eyes flashed, but she stopped for a moment and went on more calmly. ‘Do you think they’ll come back – is that it?’
He didn’t answer.
‘Come on, Nick,’ she said, her tone softer now. ‘You’re the betting man. What are the odds?’
‘Sometimes backing an outsider pays off,’ he said, knowing he sounded truculent and irrational.
She stared out of the monitor at him. ‘You taught me that there are good bets and bad bets—’
‘And this one is lousy,’ he said for her. ‘I know. But what if they live in the area?’
‘I’ve been living in Manchester for over a year – there are neighbours in my street I haven’t seen yet.’ She paused, and he saw a mixture of concern and frustration on her face. ‘Even if you had that little corner of Paris under surveillance twenty-four/seven, the chances are they’ll never go back.’
Fennimore’s head started fizzing. He couldn’t be there twenty-four/seven, but there was a way to improve the odds of catching them if they did return. Kate was speaking and he made an effort to listen.
‘Stop torturing yourself, Nick. It’s a bad bet.’
‘You’re right,’ he said, trying to quell the excitement in his voice.
She sighed, moving closer to the webcam, and he had the feeling that if she could, she would reach out and touch him. ‘But you’ll go anyway, won’t you?’ she said.
5
Abduction, Day 1
Dark.
The ground feels damp under her; the air is thick and musty. Her tongue feels swollen and her throat hurts. Julia Myers coughs and she hears a slight echo – the room is empty, large. A basement maybe. A cellar?
She hears a whimper.
‘Lauren?’ Her voice cracks and she coughs again, the pain tearing at her throat. Instinctively, she tries to move her right hand to soothe it but her wrist is tethered; her left foot too, so that her arm is crossed in front of her and she can’t stretch out. She tests the strength of her bonds – there’s no give. She feels with her free hand – hard plastic. She is seated, her back resting against the same hard something – a metal frame? Yes, a frame – iron, judging by the rusty oxide smell coming from it.
Her feet are cold: she is wearing socks, but her shoes are gone. She reaches down with her left hand and makes contact with cool, gritty stone – sandstone maybe. That and the echo make her think of a church. A church is better than a basement – isn’t it? Entrances and exits – more hope of escape?
Faint scratching sounds to her right. Rats. She thinks she can smell them. A faint tick-tick-tick some distance away. A clock?
Lauren groans, stirring uneasily, and Julia slides her right foot out, making broad exploratory sweeps, and at last makes contact. Lauren must have her back turned to her; Julia strokes it clumsily with the sole of her foot.
Something rustles, moving furtively across the stone floor. Simultaneously, she feels a slight tug of her hair. A high squeak close to her ear – she jerks convulsively and her head cracks against the metal frame. She shouts in pain.
Lauren starts up, kicking her away.
‘No! No! No!’ she shrieks. ‘Get away!’
‘It’s all right,’ Julia calls. ‘Lauren – darling – it’s okay.’
‘A spider! I felt it!’
‘It was Mummy – just Mummy. I’m here.’
‘Why’s it so dark?’
Why is it so dark? Julia casts about, but the darkness clings fast to her and the imagined space seems to shrink, closing in, swathing her, so that she feels half-smothered. If she reaches out, she is certain she will touch something soft, yielding. Her breathing comes fast.
You have to stay calm. You HAVE to hold it together – for Lauren. For both of us.
She forces herself to extend her hand, finds only empty space. She calls, ‘Hello?’ and her voice comes back faintly: ‘Oh?’ like an exclamation of mild surprise.
‘Mummy?’
‘It’s night-time,’ she says, because she can’t think of a more reassuring explanation. Can’t get the words dungeon, cave, pit out of her head.
‘Where’s the man?’ Lauren’s voice is high and strained. ‘Why won’t he let us go?’
‘I don’t know, sweetie. But Daddy will be looking for us. And the police. Anyway, we won’t wait for them – we’re going to find a way out of here – okay?’ She stretches out her foot and feels the pressure of Lauren’s small hand.
‘Okay, sweetie? Lauren?’
‘I’m nodding.’
‘I can’t see you,’ Julia says, trying to make it sound conversational.
‘I can see you a bit.’
‘What else can you see?’
‘There’s something grey up there.’
‘A window?’ Julia turns her head, staring into the darkness, widening her eyes, but sees nothing.
‘I can’t tell,’ Lauren says. ‘Just grey.’
‘Okay. What about on the floor? Can you see anything around you?’
‘A bucket – what’s that for?’
Julia nods to herself. Their abductor doesn’t intend to needlessly humiliate them; he will allow them to retain some dignity, it seems.
‘What else do you see, love? My handbag?’ Her phone is in there, a nail file, maybe even nail scissors—
‘Nnnn … yes! Not your bag, like a shopping bag.’
‘Can you reach it?’
Lauren moves and she loses contact. It feels like her child has been snatched away on a thread, into the void. Stilling the panic that threatens to overwhelm her, Julia holds her breath and listens hard. After a moment, she hears the rustle of a plastic carrier bag. She’s all right. Keep calm. ‘Can you see what’s inside, Lauren?’
‘Not see. Feel. Packets of crisps and biscuits, I think. And there’s something by it. Heavy, got a lid on it.’
‘A water container?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘Can you push it over to me?’
‘I’ll try, but there’s something on my leg.’
Julia feels a fresh spurt of alarm. ‘On it?’
‘Round it – plasticky stuff, but hard, so you can’t get it off.’
So Lauren is bound, too.
‘Just do what you can,’ Julia says, keeping her voice steady, though her heart weeps for her little girl.
Lauren strains and grunts. ‘I can’t – it’s too heavy.’
‘Try pushing with your foot – can you do that?’
Lauren doesn’t answer, but then Julia hears the gritty hiss of something heavy inching across the sandstone towards her. ‘Good girl!’ she cries. ‘Keep going – don’t stop.’ Reaching experimentally with her right foot, Julia is able to hook the container and bring it closer. It’s large, plastic, cylindrical, and she can hear liquid sloshing inside – several gallons, she estimates – which is good, because leaving them that much water must mean he intends to keep them alive for some time.
Steadying the barrel with her right knee, she draws it close to her body and feels for the top with her left hand. It’s a screw-top but it won’t budge.
She tries again – keeps trying until her fingers, the palms of her hand, burn with the effort.
‘Is it water, Mummy?’
‘I don’t know, darling. I can’t—’ She tries again. Her hand slips and she gives a small yelp.
‘Mummy, I’m thirsty,’ Lauren says.
‘I know,’ Julia answers, remembering Lauren asking for a drink as they left the cinema – that must have been hours ago. ‘It’s okay. Wait – I’m going to try something.’ She struggles to get the bottle into a better position, then lifts the hem of her T-shirt and uses it to grip the lid. She wrenches and twists, straining to loosen the bottle top for ten minutes, until her back muscles ache and her hand cramps, but it’s no good – the lid won’t shift.
Julia begins to weep softly.
6
Manchester, Thursday
Kate Simms arrived into Manchester airport mid-m
orning, jet-lagged and exhausted after a journey of delays and re-routes, and missed flights. Nine hours she had waited – in Toronto airport, of all places – for a tornado outbreak to run its course. Finally she took a cab home on a grey summer day in the rain.
The hallway of her Victorian semi seemed narrow and dark after the spectacular blue skies and golden sunshine of St Louis. She lowered her bags to the polished boards and shivered. The English summer had been slow to come and it seemed equally reluctant to stay.
Simms called out, but her voice fell flat in the chilly hallway. Kieran would be at work – English school terms ran later into the summer than in the Midwest – so she listened intently for sounds of her five-year-old playing. The house was silent. She dumped her keys in the bowl on the hall stand and saw a note propped against the mirror.
It was from her mother: ‘Timmy fretting. Couldn’t wait any longer. Back for lunch.’
Clearly her mother still hadn’t forgiven her for leaving the children and Kieran and travelling halfway around the globe. Simms’s brother was a career soldier; she had pointed out that he regularly left his wife and two kids at home while he went on tours of duty. Her mother’s answer was that her son was a war hero. Simms had no argument with that, but she resented the implication that she, on the other hand, was just playing at cops and robbers.
She longed for Becky, her sixteen-year-old, who had completed her GCSEs and was in London visiting some old school friends, a post-exam treat.
With a suppressed sigh, Simms moved through to the kitchen, but even this room – the heart of the house – seemed peculiarly cold and uninviting. She felt like a ghost, an unwelcome visitor in her own home.
‘Welcome home, Kate,’ she murmured.
She needed to sleep: her eyes were dry and scratchy and she felt disorientated, almost drunk with exhaustion, but she was determined to see Timmy first, so she put coffee on to brew while she showered and changed, then opened one of her suitcases and sorted some clothes for a wash. As the washing machine thrummed, she took out her laptop and sat at the breakfast bar, looking through the photographs she’d stored from her trip. Her email notification pinged and she scrolled down the list, smiling at messages of goodwill from the St Louis PD team.
An hour later, nodding over her laptop, she heard the scratch of a latch-key in the front door and flew into the hall.
Her mother came through the door, Timmy a few steps in front of her. Simms could swear he had grown two inches in the months she was away.
‘Timmy!’ She opened her arms wide, crouching, ready for him to come racing down the hall.
He hung back, grabbing a handful of his nanna’s skirt for security.
Simms looked up as her mother placed a reassuring hand on her grandson’s damp cap of curls.
‘Give him a minute – it’s bound to feel a bit strange at first.’ Her tone was conciliatory, but Simms caught a gleam of triumph in her eyes as she said it.
7
Abduction, Day 2
Julia wakes with a start. She feels feverish and her throat aches horribly. For a moment she is comforted by the warm, solid weight of Lauren’s body against her lower leg. She adjusts her position slightly and Lauren stirs. Her daughter’s fingernails scratch the fabric of her jeans. The weight shifts – it feels wrong. Julia struggles to rouse herself. It’s not Lauren, it’s something crawling over her shin. She feels the sickening warmth of the animal through the weave of her sock. Its hairless tail flicks around her ankle and she screams, kicking out. The rat squeals and scuttles out of range.
‘Lauren? Lauren!’
‘Mummy!’ She sounds hoarse, drunk with sleep.
Julia stares into the gloom and thinks she can just make out Lauren’s outline.
‘Are you all right? It didn’t touch you, did it?’ She casts about for something – anything – to use as a weapon. ‘Come here, darling. Come as close as you can.’
Lauren edges closer, and Julia sees her daughter’s face as a pale smudge. Her eyes are becoming dark-adapted and Lauren is now a vague, shifting shape in the uncertain light. She aches to hold her little girl, but the bindings prevent her reaching out. Lauren leans against her and the heat of her little body is searing. She has to get at that water.
Julia reaches for the bottle and tries to break the seal on the cap again – grinding it with her teeth, bruising her lips against the hard plastic. Lauren whimpers.
‘Shhtop it … Mumumum …’
Lauren’s limbs feel floppy and way too hot. Dehydration, high temperature – if Julia doesn’t get her cooled down, Lauren might start fitting. It has happened once before when she was a baby – an ear infection – her temperature soared to 102; she suffered three fits before the hospital team could bring her fever down.
‘Lauren. Wake up. Wake up right now, do you hear me?’ Julia commands.
Lauren groans, lifting her head and Julia catches the dull gleam of something in her hair. A hair slide. Her heart lifts.
‘Listen to me, Lauren,’ she says. ‘I know how to get the water open – I need your hair slide, but I can’t reach it – you have to pass it to me. Do you hear me? Lauren?’
No reply, but Julia feels her daughter’s hands on her shin as she pushes herself upright. Julia reaches under her right arm with her left, straining the overworked muscles.
Lauren starts grizzling. ‘I can’t – my hands won’t work.’
‘Don’t cry, darling. It’s all right. Keep trying.’ Julia swallows, feeling delicate tissue at the back of her throat tear. She coughs, crying out with the new shock of pain.
‘Mummy!’
‘It’s all right,’ she croaks. ‘Just keep trying – please, Lauren.’
Lauren snuffles and complains, but a moment later, Julia sees, faintly, her daughter’s greyish form stretching out towards her. She reaches under her imprisoned right arm again, pulling against her bindings, extending her left arm until it feels like it will be wrenched from its socket.
‘Down a bit, Mummy,’ Lauren says. ‘You’re too high.’
She moves her hand down and her fingertips brush against something smooth. The hair clip.
‘Don’t let go!’ She shifts a little and feels something pop in her back. Ignoring the pain, she extends her index and middle finger, trapping the clip.
‘Good girl! It’ll just take a minute, then you can have the biggest drink ever.’
But she can’t see Lauren’s face any more; only her outline, shifting, formless, as if she is already fading. The dark – it’s just the dark, that’s all. Julia wipes tears from her own face and tries again.
Her hands are sore from her previous attempts to open the bottle, but she works at the hair grip with her teeth and her fingernails until the metal clasp gives.
‘It worked, Lauren – I’m going to get the bottle open.’
Lauren mumbles something.
‘Sweetie, don’t go to sleep.’
No answer.
Julia straightens the metal of the clip. Working one-handed, by touch only, she rasps the point against the plastic of the tamper-proof seal, not wanting to think how she will tilt the bottle sufficiently to let Lauren drink without losing half the water on the dirty floor.
Solve this problem, then we’ll think about the next.
She carries on, her hands raw, sweat dripping into her eyes, but it won’t give. Julia heaves a dry sob and rests her forehead in the crook of her arm for a second.
‘Mummy …’
‘I can’t do it, Lauren – the plastic is too hard.’ She stretches out her foot to find her daughter in the darkness, but the bottle is in the way and she bumps it with her knee. The water sloshes maddeningly and the side of the container gives a little. Which gives her an idea.
She takes the broken clasp of the hair grip and punches a hole in the side of the container, feeling for the first, blessed drop of water. It’s dry.
No. No – this isn’t right. She tries again; still nothing happens. Panic flutters in her chest
. Lauren is dying – you have to work this out. Think!
It comes to her as a line drawing from a textbook – air pressure and vacuums – schoolgirl physics. She feels for the top of the bottle and tilts it with her knee, gauging the water level. Then she punches the clip into the air gap. One, two, three times. Is it her imagination or was that the whisper of expelled air on her cheek? She finds the first puncture hole. There is a tiny amount of seepage. Tentatively, she tastes it.
Pure, sweet water.
Sobbing now, she drives the point of the hair grip in again and again.
‘Lauren.’ She feels for her child with her foot. Lauren is still, a heavy, uncooperative weight under the sole of her foot.
‘Lauren – you have to wake up. Look – it’s water.’
Lauren whines, but does not move.
‘Please, Lauren. Please … wake up.’ She prods the child roughly with the point of her toe. ‘Now you listen to me, Lauren Myers. You wake up. Right now.’
Lauren’s fingers close around the ball of her foot and push her away.
‘Stop it, Mummy. Leave me alone!’
‘Water,’ Julia says. ‘Look – Lauren, look – it’s water.’
Lauren stirs and slowly, painfully slowly, she sits up.
Julia can definitely see her shape now, as through a brown fog. She shuffles the container forward. ‘It’s leaking out of the side. See? Can you reach it?’
‘No. Mummy, I’m too tired.’
‘No. No! Don’t go back to sleep.’ She gives the container another tentative shove.
Lauren says, ‘Ow!’ Then, ‘It’s wet.’
A moment later, Julia hears the happy sound of her daughter licking and sucking the precious water from the side of the container.
8
Once a newspaper touches a story, the facts are lost forever, even to the protagonists.
NORMAN MAILER, ESQUIRE MAGAZINE
Aberdeen, Thursday Evening
The taxi dropped Fennimore at his Union Terrace apartment building at 8 p.m. He climbed the wide, echoing staircase feeling tired after his Paris trip, but with some small hope. The sun hung low over Aberdeen, still a good hour away from sunset at this time of year.
Truth Will Out Page 4
