by Jo Bannister
She raised her voice. ‘I need everybody to stay right here. We’re all witnesses to a criminal act, and it’s important that we tell the police what we saw while it’s still fresh in our minds.’ Even as she was speaking she had her phone out, her fingers keying the number automatically.
Before Hazel had finished speaking to Meadowvale Police Station, Elizabeth Lim had raced across the playground to the scene of the drama she’d seen unfolding from the principal’s office on the second floor of the secondary school next door. ‘Is everyone all right? Miss Kelly? Gilbert, Guy? Miss Best? You’re sure? Thank God for that. What happened?’
Hazel used her free hand to calm the anxious teacher. ‘Everyone’s fine. The police are on their way. But I need to call Gabriel. I need to let him know there’s been an attempt to kidnap his children. Another one.’
THREE
It was just as well Norbold wasn’t full of people itching to get into a bookshop, because even those few who were interested were barely through the doors before they were being turned out again. It was the shortest official opening anyone could remember, and it only lasted as long as it did because Hazel arrived at Rambles With Books in time to pour the mayor a second cup of tea. White-faced, Ash was already heading for his car before it occurred to him to ask where his sons were now.
‘Highfield Road,’ said Hazel. ‘Frankie’s with them, so are a couple of coppers. Just in case. Everybody’s fine, Gabriel – everybody but you. Don’t drive. The area car’s right behind me – they’ll take you home.’
When she’d seen him safely dispatched, she returned to the shop. The mayor raised an interrogative eyebrow: Hazel replied with a sickly smile. ‘You didn’t really expect everything to go smoothly, did you?’
Parsons gave a prodigious sniff. ‘I remember when Norbold were that quiet you could have a reign of terror with a balloon on a stick. Look at it now. Murders. Abductions. Drug dealers, corruption … What’s the place coming to?’
Some sort of answer seemed to be required. ‘I wasn’t here when it was that quiet,’ said Hazel politely.
‘No,’ rumbled the mayor darkly. ‘I know you weren’t.’
‘This was Cathy,’ said Ash.
Hazel felt her eyes rounding, her jaw dropping. ‘Someone saw her?’
‘No. She’s too smart to come here in person – she’s still too high on Scotland Yard’s wanted list. But this is her doing.’
By the time Hazel was able to shut the shop and drive round to the big stone house in Highfield Road, Ash had got over his first, entirely natural reaction which was panic. The boys were indeed fine: Hazel hadn’t lied about that. Frankie too was largely intact, although she was going to have bracelets of bruising on both arms where she’d struggled with her assailant.
Ash had tried to make her go to bed for an hour while they waited for Detective Inspector Gorman to arrive, but the tiny Filipino woman, with her sun-touched skin and her glossy black hair, only looked like a delicate doll. In fact she was as tough as a Royal Marine, and she was more concerned with calming her young charges than going to bed with a cup of hot sweet tea. She had lit a small fire in the sitting room – the June day was mild but there was a chill on every heart – and was kneeling in front of it with them, toasting marshmallows and talking quietly about what had happened. Hazel and Ash, and Patience, were in the kitchen.
‘I don’t see how that’s possible,’ said Hazel reasonably. ‘Cathy must be half a world away by now. She knows she’d be arrested on sight anywhere in Britain.’
‘Who else could it be?’ Ash was now struggling to contain his second entirely natural reaction, which was fury. ‘They’re not princes of the blood, or heirs to a great fortune. They’re two unremarkable young boys. The only people they have any value for are their father and their mother. We already know what Cathy would do to get them back. She killed one man. She almost killed me.’
It was true. There had been a time when they’d thought Ash’s sons had been kidnapped to keep him from exercising his skills as a government security analyst. But that, it turned out, was Cathy too. His wife and sons had been living comfortably in Cambridge for four years while Ash, believing them dead, went mad with grief and guilt.
Hazel sucked in an unsteady breath. ‘If it was her, she won’t stop because her hired hands got run out of town. You’re going to have to look at your security.’
‘What do you suggest? Bodyguards?’ He meant it as a joke. But before the words were out, Ash knew that was exactly the kind of security he would have to look into. They had been lucky at the school. The next attempt would be made somewhere quieter, with no bystanders to get in the way, when Wonder Woman was busy doing her laundry, when only Ash or Frankie stood between the boys and their mother’s twisted love, and it would succeed. Next time the hired hands would be hired guns.
‘Yes,’ said Hazel simply. ‘Gabriel, you need the best protection you can buy. Don’t wait until she tries again.’
‘I’m not sure how Dave Gorman will feel about that.’ Ash was finding it hard not to snarl at her, and that was crazy; he owed his sons’ safety to Hazel’s quick thinking, and he knew it and was incredibly grateful. But he was so wound up by the episode, so full of anger and adrenalin, that being in the same room with him was like cleaning out a tiger’s cage with the tiger still in it.
‘He won’t like it,’ agreed Hazel. ‘But it’s not his sons who are in danger. I promise you, if it was, he’d want the best too.’
She tried to explain in a way that was fair to Detective Inspector Gorman without misleading her friend. ‘He’ll tell you that protecting the public is the job of the police. And he’s right. He’ll do his level best to keep the boys safe. But Norbold CID’s best is the area car running up and down the street two or three times a night. We don’t have the budget to do anything more. You need someone who has only one job to do, only one task to focus on, and that means a security expert specialising in close protection. I’ll make enquiries, if you like – help you find someone suitable.’
It was a big step to take, to entrust the safety of his family to someone working outside law enforcement. It wouldn’t gain him any Brownie points at Meadowvale. ‘You really think it’s necessary?’
Hazel’s eyebrows rocketed. ‘You don’t? Gabriel, if I’d hit traffic lights driving across town, you’d be sleeping in this house alone tonight. They were seconds away from succeeding. Those men would have pushed Frankie out of the van a mile up the road, got onto the motorway, changed cars at the first truck stop and vanished. We’ve been lucky to get a warning. We won’t get a second one.’
The bell jangled at the front door, making both of them jump. DI Gorman wasn’t alone: he’d brought two of his DCs. Emma Friend went through into the sitting room to join the marshmallow brigade, Mark Lassiter went upstairs and pulled a chair near to Gilbert’s bedroom window, watching the street from the shadow of the curtain.
Dave Gorman helped himself to coffee from the pot on the kitchen table. ‘Nasty business,’ he growled. ‘I take it we’re all thinking the same thing?’
Ash nodded grimly. ‘Cathy.’
‘Have you heard from her recently?’
Ash’s eyes widened briefly, then narrowed. ‘I haven’t heard from her at all. I promised to tell you if I did.’
‘No offence, Gabriel,’ said the detective. ‘Only, I know how you felt about this woman.’
‘That was before she traded my soul for a nice flat in Cambridge! I haven’t seen or heard from her since she left me bleeding on the floor of a houseboat on Ullswater. All right?’
‘All right,’ agreed Gorman. ‘I had to ask.’
‘Now you know the answer.’
Gorman nodded. He was a solidly built individual, not so much heavy as square, as if he’d been designed by someone determined to pack as many people as possible into a panel van. Hazel, who had considerable respect and even affection for the DI, nonetheless suspected that when anthropologists found the missing link between man
and the apes, it would look very much like Dave Gorman.
He said, ‘I need to talk to the boys, and your nanny. Now, while everything’s fresh in their minds.’
Ash frowned. ‘Frankie’s finally calmed them down. I’d rather they didn’t get wound up again just before bedtime.’
‘Talking about it is better than not talking about it,’ offered Hazel. ‘They’re better getting it out of their systems than trying to pretend it didn’t happen.’
Reluctantly, Ash agreed.
Hazel gave her own account first, providing as much detail as she could remember. There wasn’t much: the whole episode had lasted no more than a minute, and for most of that time Hazel had been acting rather than looking. She rather felt that a trained police officer should have done better, but Gorman seemed satisfied, even quietly impressed.
He talked to Frankie next, just the two of them in Ash’s study. Then he had Ash bring his sons in one at a time, and talked to them. Guy was his usual helpful self, doing his best to answer the questions put to him; but it soon became apparent that the speed of the attack had overwhelmed him. He had nothing useful to contribute. The only description he could give of the two men was, ‘Big.’ But Guy Ash had just turned seven years old: most people seemed big to him.
Four hours on, Gilbert was beginning to get a perverse pleasure from his close encounter with disaster. He enjoyed being the focus of attention and having his words closely listened to, but so far as his father could judge he was resisting the temptation to exaggerate. His description of the men with the van tallied closely with Hazel’s. The one who grabbed him and Guy was the bigger of the two, and also the older – he was going bald. But the other man, the one holding Frankie, seemed to be in charge. He drove the van, and he was the one who’d decided it was time to leave.
Gorman nodded appreciatively. ‘That’s good observation, Gilbert. That’ll help us find them.’
Ash wanted to believe him. He wanted to believe that Gorman would have the men in custody by midnight, and by breakfast tomorrow they’d have led him to Cathy. He desperately wanted to believe that the sudden intrusion of violence into the life he was building for his sons would not be repeated. Realistically, though, the two men could be anywhere by now. If the police found the van, there would be nothing to link it to any identifiable individuals. The only chance to apprehend them had been at the scene, and it had been missed. There would only be another if there was a fresh attempt to abduct the boys.
‘Until we do,’ continued DI Gorman, ‘I’ll make sure there’s always a police officer close at hand to keep you safe. There’ll be someone there when you come out of school, and they’ll see you safely home, and then they’ll keep an eye on the street.’
‘For how long?’ asked Ash.
Gorman wasn’t going to lie to him. ‘For as long as I can.’
‘I could hire a specialist.’
The policeman looked straight at him. ‘I’d rather you didn’t.’
‘Because …?’
‘Because a specialist in close protection will want to carry a gun, and there are very few situations which cannot be made worse by someone carrying a gun. Even specialists make mistakes. It’s not always the bad guys who get shot.’
‘They’re not your sons,’ gritted Ash.
‘No. Gabriel, I understand how you feel. But the best thing you can do is leave it to us.’
Gilbert was following this exchange as astutely as ever. ‘You don’t need to worry about me and Guy.’
Ash forced a painful smile. ‘Of course I worry about you. I’ve only just got used to having you around – I don’t want to have to get used to not having you around again!’
The boy grinned at that. ‘No, I mean, it’s not us you need to worry about. It wasn’t us they were trying to kidnap.’
Dave Gorman frowned. ‘What do you mean?’ He switched his gaze to Ash. ‘What does he mean?’
Gilbert favoured him with the exasperated look that any parent of a nine-year-old would recognise: the one that says, And there was me thinking you couldn’t possibly be as stupid as you look. The one he practised regularly, on his brother, his father, his teachers and just about everyone else he had dealings with.
‘I mean,’ he said distinctly, ‘that it wasn’t me and Guy they were trying to put in the van. It was Frankie. I tried to help her, but the big one wouldn’t let me. That’s why he was holding us – so we couldn’t help her. It was Frankie they were trying to kidnap.’
FOUR
‘Could he be mistaken?’
Ash shrugged helplessly. Frankie was putting the boys to bed so he and Gorman had the study to themselves. ‘Of course he could be mistaken. He’s nine years old, and this came out of the blue and was over in about a minute. There wasn’t enough time to make a reasoned assessment of what was going on – who was being pulled and who was being held. But if you’re asking whether I think he was mistaken, then the answer is no. My elder son is stubborn, arrogant and often rude, but he is very, very smart. If he thinks it was Frankie those men were interested in, I’d put money on him being right.’
DI Gorman looked bemused. He’d hurried to the house in Highfield Road thinking he knew what he was going to be dealing with. He was familiar with the family’s history, and knew that one day Cathy Ash would try to get her sons back. The suggestion that someone had tried to kidnap their nanny had his brain spinning its wheels. It was as if he’d raced to investigate a murder, only to have the corpse sit up and insist it was all a misunderstanding.
‘But … who the hell kidnaps nannies?’ he demanded plaintively.
‘I don’t know.’ A hard edge was creeping into Ash’s voice. ‘But I know who to ask.’
Employing Frankie Kelly had been one of Gabriel Ash’s all-time best decisions. She had moved into a chaotic household where Ash was struggling to apply what he could remember of parenting to two boys who hardly knew him, who had been living almost as outlaws, and one of whom was as clever as he and less scrupulous; and within days – perhaps within hours – she had established rules, boundaries and incentives which not only convinced Social Services that he was a fit person to raise two children but also gave Ash the first heart-swelling hope that he might actually enjoy the process. Before Frankie, he had been so overwhelmed by the granting of his dearest wish that it seemed his sons might complete the job of driving him insane.
But what, in all honesty, did he know about her? She had come from a respectable agency, but he hadn’t followed up her references. He hadn’t known what questions to ask her, or how to interpret her replies. She had seemed so exactly the answer to his desperate prayers that he had welcomed her into his household, into the lives of his two young sons, with less caution than perhaps he should have done. Apart from the fact that she was born in the Philippines, had two teenage children of her own living in Manila with their grandmother, and had a framed certificate from the college she attended on the chest of drawers in her room, what Ash knew about Frankie Kelly was limited to what she had shown him of herself. That she was good at her job. That she was reliable: when she said she would do something, it would be done. That she had a strong sense of what was appropriate, mitigated by a down-to-earth cheerfulness.
And it wasn’t enough. He had trusted her with two living souls he cared about more than anything in the world – for whom he was ready to die. If there was something in her past that made her the target for violent men, it wasn’t only Frankie who was at risk, it was also his sons.
She knew from the tone of his voice that something had changed. When he’d reached the house and found his sons safe, he’d been intensely grateful to her for protecting them. She’d explained gently that he was thanking the wrong person, that Hazel alone was responsible for thwarting the kidnappers, that she herself had been helpless to resist and they would all have been in the hold of a banana boat with sacks over their heads if it had been left to her to save them.
But even as she deflected his gratitude, she’d known
he wasn’t really capable of taking it in. He was so inexpressibly glad that the boys were safe, so shocked at how close he had come to losing them, that he just kept nodding and thanking her.
Somewhere in the last hour, though, there had been developments. When she came downstairs, Ash asked her back into the study because Detective Inspector Gorman had some more questions for her. But he didn’t ask her to sit down, and there was a reserve in his manner, a coldness even, that she had not seen before.
Dave Gorman waited for as long as seemed reasonable, but when Ash still said nothing he vented a small sigh and gestured towards a spare chair. ‘Do sit down, Miss Kelly. Is that right, or is it Mrs Kelly?’
But Frankie knew she was on trial here, and she gave him a small, polite smile and remained standing. ‘Miss Kelly is fine. I am in fact a widow, but I never used my married name professionally.’
That was something else Ash hadn’t known about her. There were too many things – things he hadn’t known, and hadn’t known enough to ask. He’d been desperate, and he’d been new to the business of hiring staff; and if it turned out that his naivety had exposed his children to fresh dangers just when he’d thought the old ones dealt with, he would carry the guilt to his grave.
Gorman nodded and made a note. He didn’t return her smile, but he was scrupulously polite. ‘Miss Kelly, then. I want you to think about this before you answer. Had you ever seen either of the men before?’
She did as he asked, but it didn’t help. ‘I hardly saw them this time. The one who had hold of me grabbed me from behind – I only saw him when Miss Best knocked him sideways, and then he was mostly turned away from me. I don’t think I’d recognise him if I saw him again. I can’t be sure if I ever saw him before.’
