by Paul Torday
As the sky began to lighten, I found myself on a road bridge above the M25, approaching Gerrards Cross. I looked at my watch. It was just after six in the morning. I was beginning to feel quite footsore, and I wondered once again how long my shoes would hold out. For the first time I began to doubt whether I would get to Oxford at all, let alone in the next seven hours. It crossed my mind to go into the next town and find a taxi rank, but I suppressed the thought. In my place, I felt sure Ed Hartlepool would have taken the taxi.
I walked on through Gerrards Cross and along a B road that ran parallel to the A40. I was in the zone now, the way it used to be, my feet pounding the pavement in an endless beat. By now I felt I could go on for ever. The flayed feeling on the soles of my feet belonged to a different person in a different world. My whole body was covered in a thin film of perspiration. The volume of traffic had been steadily increasing and was now a constant roar in both directions. I was becoming increasingly aware of the closeness of trucks thundering past, and cars racing towards me. Occasionally someone would sound his horn as a sign of encouragement or derision, I wasn’t sure which. Daylight had crept up on me in the last hour or two without me noticing it. My watch said twenty past eight. I was only just going to make it, as long as I did not slacken my pace. From somewhere a smell of bacon drifted on the air and for a moment I was overwhelmed by the desire to find a café and have an enormous breakfast: a breakfast that would cost me six thousand pounds if I stopped to take it. I kept walking.
Somewhere between Stokenchurch and Wheatley, following a minor road that avoided the heavy traffic, I heard a car behind me and automatically moved closer to the grass verge so that it could pass. It was a bright, clear September morning and I was no longer concerned about being knocked over. All the same I didn’t want to take any chances and looked over my shoulder to see where the car was. A black Range Rover was idling along some twenty-five yards behind me. I turned my head to the front again and kept walking. The road ahead was empty.
There was a brief purr as the car accelerated. The next thing I knew it was right alongside me, crowding me into the edge so that I almost stumbled on the grass verge. I shook my head in irritation and again waited for it to pass me. It didn’t. It had tinted windows through which only the dimmest outline of its occupants could be seen. Then the nearside front window opened and the driver leaned across the passenger seat.
‘Want a lift, old man?’ he asked.
The speaker had a pale, narrow face and pale, curly hair. Enormous wraparound sunglasses obscured most of his features.
‘No thanks.’
‘Good party last night, was it?’
I did not reply, waiting for him to lose interest and drive on.
‘Where are you headed?’
This idiot was beginning to annoy me. I could not hold a conversation with him and continue walking at nearly six miles an hour. If I walked any more slowly I’d lose my bet.
‘Are you lost, old man? Don’t know where you’re going? Get in and we’ll give you some breakfast and then set you on your way.’
I managed to find enough breath to answer him.
‘Would you very kindly fuck off?’
‘Oh, if you’d like us to fuck off, then of course that’s what we’ll do.’
The window of the Range Rover wound up again and then, instead of overtaking, the car pulled into the verge behind me. I resisted the strong temptation to look over my shoulder again and see what the driver was doing. I could hear the motor running. Half a mile ahead of me was a straggly line of houses marking a small village. Suddenly it seemed important to me to get to that village, where there were other people around, and away from the Range Rover. I tried to speed up a little. Behind me I heard the snarl of the engine as the driver gunned it. I thought, thank God, he’s going, whoever he is. There was something about the narrow face of the driver with its enormous aviator sunglasses that had made me feel uneasy.
Suddenly I felt a huge blow to my right side. I was pitched forward into the ditch at the side of the road and my head struck something hard. I was stunned and winded and in so much pain I thought I was going to black out. Then I heard, through the mist of concussion, two car doors being slammed. The next second two sets of hands were lifting me and I was dragged around to the rear of the car, blinking and semi-conscious. The tailgate was opened and then one pair of hands transferred itself to my ankles. With a grunt the two men lifted me up to the height of the tailgate. They must have been strong because I am not a small man, at thirteen stone and six foot two, but they managed it. I was rolled on to the tailgate and then folded up so that I fitted into the rear compartment of the car. Then the tailgate was slammed shut and I was left in complete darkness, the parcel shelf pressing down on me. The car drove off, and I screamed as we went around a corner and I was flung against the side of the car. I remember thinking that I should have looked over my shoulder after all – then I might have seen them coming.
Two
I don’t know how long I lay squashed up in the back of the car. Waves of nausea swept over me, accompanied by stabbing pains in my right side. On top of that I started to get violent cramps in my legs because I could not straighten them. Luckily I was not fully conscious; I kept fading in and out. The blow to my head must have given me concussion.
After what seemed like a long time, I sensed the car was slowing down and then heard the scrunch of wheels on gravel. The car stopped, and a moment later the tailgate opened. Somebody yanked me by the legs and I fell out of the car, winding myself again, as well as getting a nice bit of gravel rash on one side of my face.
‘You’re not going to cause any trouble, are you, old man?’ asked Narrow Face.
Another voice said, ‘Trouble? I don’t think so. Look at him.’
I couldn’t see the speaker, but I didn’t much care what he was saying because at that point I was sick. I managed to move my head so that I didn’t spatter myself and tried to straighten my legs out. They were still screaming with cramp.
‘Who’s going to clear that up, I’d like to know?’ said Narrow Face.
‘You are,’ said the other man unsympathetically. ‘But first let’s get our guest into the house.’
Our guest? Had I inadvertently won a dream holiday for one at a country house hotel? The two men picked me up, hooking my arms around their shoulders as they half-carried, half-dragged me inside. I did not take in much of my surroundings but was aware of a building in grey stone surrounded by lawns and woods. We were at the rear of a large house. Inside I was dragged along a dark corridor and then up a steep staircase and into another corridor, which was better lit and warmer than the first. We stopped outside a door while one of my new friends unlocked it. I was taken in and dropped on to a bed. After that I don’t remember much. I think I slept for a while.
I was woken up by someone asking me my name. I know the answer to that one, I thought. Aloud I said: ‘Richard Gaunt.’
‘And your date of birth?’
That was a bit harder.
‘Third November nineteen seventy-five,’ I told the questioner after a moment. I managed to open my eyes. The speaker was not one of the two men who had brought me here. He was short, dark-skinned, had black hair turning grey and wore a dark blue suit. He leaned over me and shone a torch into my eyes. The stethoscope around his neck was a clue.
‘You are awake. Good afternoon,’ he said. ‘I am Dr Ahmed. I want to do some checking up on you, if you don’t mind.’
Good afternoon? Suddenly memory flooded back. I had been walking, walking to Oxford for a bet: a six-thousand-pound bet. If it was the afternoon, then I had lost the bet, and the six thousand pounds. I swore.
‘Please co-operate,’ said Dr Ahmed anxiously. ‘It is for your own good.’
‘Don’t worry, Doctor,’ I said. ‘Only I’ve just remembered I’m late for an appointment.’
‘Ah. You must rest first and get better. Then we will see.’
He set to work. First of al
l he produced some cotton wool and alcohol from a black bag he had put down on a chair, and cleaned up the grazes on my face. Then he helped me to unbutton my shirt, and inspected the damage to my right side where the Range Rover must have struck me. He applied some ointment, then prodded and poked me, not unsympathetically, until I winced.
‘Unfortunately you may have cracked a rib. I have not the facilities here for an ultrasound scan, but we can be confident it is not broken. You should not exert yourself for a few days. You will have some nasty-looking bruises for a while, but you should heal up as time goes by.’
He checked my heartbeat, took my blood pressure and temperature, and looked again in my eyes and ears with his torch. Then he said, ‘Also you have the remains of some mild concussion. Take two of these paracetamol and we will see how you get on. Otherwise, there is not much wrong with you. You are a very fit man.’
He poured me a glass of water to wash down the tablets, then packed his bag and left the room. I heard the key turn in the lock as he closed the door behind him. I sat up on the bed and looked around me.
The room was small, but comfortable and expensively furnished. It was full of those grace notes beloved by interior decorators: blue velvet curtains with yellow silk tie-backs and a fringed and swagged blue velvet pelmet with yellow tassels; a pair of boudoir armchairs opposite a fireplace with an antique fire screen in front of it; a chair and a writing table by the window. The walls were covered in a blue and cream striped paper, and numerous prints and engravings of flowers hung from the picture rail. The bed I lay on was soft and the room was warm.
After a while I swung my legs off the bed and made a careful effort to get to my feet. It hurt, but not as much as I had feared. I went to the window and looked out at a view that consisted mostly of a large blue Atlantic cedar which someone had planted too close to the side of the house. Beyond it I could make out wide, freshly mown lawns and a fringe of woodland. I had no idea where I was.
Turning around, I noticed another door, half open, that led into a bathroom. Inside fluffy white towels hung on a heated towel rail, and a wicker basket contained everything the forgetful guest might need such as a toothbrush and razor. With some discomfort I stripped off my clothes and stepped into the shower. I experienced the glorious relief of needles of hot water massaging my shoulders and back, relieving some of the pain. Once I’d shaved, cleaned my teeth, dried myself and dressed again, I felt a great deal better, relatively speaking.
It was then that I noticed various things were missing. My shoes were nowhere to be seen. Looking around, I realised that my evening jacket was not in the room. Neither was my wallet, nor the envelope I had taken from the Diplomatic with all the cash and cheques from my evening’s winnings. I couldn’t remember how much money I’d had but it was several thousand pounds, one way or another. My watch, an old Rolex my father had given me, was also gone. It had been an expensive day so far.
I padded across the room to the door that led to the corridor and tried the handle. I hadn’t been wrong: it was locked. What on earth was going on? I appeared to have been kidnapped for no reason at all. Narrow Face and his anonymous friend couldn’t have known I was carrying all that cash. And if it was cash they were after, they would have just taken it and left me in the ditch. After the last two years, and the way I’d behaved, I didn’t have many friends left – to be accurate, I didn’t have any friends at all. But then again, I didn’t have any enemies. There might be quite a few people who disliked me, or would not take my phone calls, or who even might cross the street to avoid me if they saw me coming, but I couldn’t think of anyone who would bother to go to the trouble these people had gone to. The effort of puzzling through these things was making my head ache, so I decided to do what I did best in difficult circumstances – I gazed at the ceiling and let my mind go blank. I’ve always believed in not worrying until you know what there is to worry about.
Time passed. Then there was a sound at the door and a man in a dark suit came in. He was carrying a silver tray with a glass of champagne on it, and he had newspapers clasped under his arm. He set the tray down on a small table beside the window.
‘Mr Khan sends his apologies for keeping you waiting, sir. He wondered if you might enjoy a glass of champagne, sir, and a chance to read the day’s papers. He will ask you to join him presently for a light lunch in the conservatory. I will come back and show you the way as soon as he is free.’
I watched the man leave the room, my mouth open. I suppose I could have mounted an escape attempt, as the butler or whatever he was did not seem especially robust. But at that particular moment, neither was I. Any form of physical exertion seemed like a very bad idea. And trying to escape with no shoes did not appeal to me either. The door closed again, and the key turned. I wandered across to the window and sipped the glass of champagne. It was chilled, and delicious. Then I picked up The Times. There didn’t seem any point in sulking, so I thought I would make myself comfortable while I could. I sat down in one of the armchairs and began to read the papers. A few minutes later the door opened and the man in the dark suit appeared. In one hand he held my shoes, which, despite being badly scuffed and down at heel, looked quite presentable again, having been buffed and polished to a deep shine. In the other hand he held, on a hanger, my evening jacket, which had been brushed and pressed.
‘I’m afraid we couldn’t get some of the grass stains out, sir,’ he said, ‘but you can hardly see them now. If you would be kind enough to follow me downstairs lunch will be ready in a moment.’
I slipped on my jacket and my shoes, and followed the man – servant or secretary – along the corridor, then down a much wider staircase than the one I had been dragged up, and into an entrance hall with a black and white marble floor and oak-panelled walls. Everywhere you looked, the touch of an interior decorator could be seen. Everything – even the older pieces of furniture – looked new, shining with polish, as if they had just been put there.
The servant padded across the hall, then through a large drawing room. This was full of enormous armchairs and sofas, fitted with loose covers in a gold cloth, with yellow corded piping. On the walls hung oils of eighteenth-century ladies and gentlemen, clutching children or muskets. A door had been opened up in the far wall of the drawing room. This led into a vast glass conservatory. At first, all I could see was a profusion of tropical plants and orchids. The hiss of a spray could be heard and I saw an automatic mister travelling along a rail above the beds of plants, showering them in a fine rain. There were two people in the conservatory. One I did not know. The other, stepping from behind a palm tree as I approached, was Narrow Face. A marble table laid for two stood at one end of the room and at the other end was a hotplate, on which various covered dishes had been set out.
The tall, dark-skinned man was dressed in a white shirt and black trousers and he was impressive-looking, in some way I could not at first define. His black hair was slicked back from his forehead with a lotion that gave off a sweet odour of almonds. He had a hawk nose and eyes that seemed very white and clear against his dark skin.
‘Good afternoon, Mr Gaunt,’ he greeted me. ‘My name is Mr Khan. Please come and sit down.’
I looked at him carefully. This was a Pashtun. He might be from the Pakistan side of the border or from the other side, Afghanistan. Either way he came from a difficult part of the world. I stepped forward and shook his hand when he offered it. It was rough and calloused. He waved me towards a chair.
‘You must be hungry after your journey,’ he said. ‘We have some curries here, some lamb, some biryanis. It is nothing much, but I hope it will suffice. I must apologise for the way in which you were brought here. Kevin!’
The smell of the food was so delicious and my hunger suddenly so overpowering that I almost felt inclined to overlook the fact I had been run over by a large car and then kidnapped. Until I had eaten something, at least. But then Narrow Face stepped forward and removed his sunglasses. The result was not an improvement.
Small weak eyes blinked at me as he said, ‘Sorry we bumped into you like that, old man. I was trying to park the car and was a bit careless. Do hope you’re feeling better.’
He stretched out his hand. I suppose he expected that I would shake it and say ‘No hard feelings’ or something equally stupid. Instead I stared at him until his hand dropped back to his side and his smile vanished. He was a mean, psychologically damaged-looking man. One day he would be a physically damaged-looking man if I had anything to do with it. Now was not the moment, though, so I just said:
‘Where’s my money, Kevin? And my watch?’
‘What is this?’ demanded Mr Khan. ‘Do you have some of his belongings, Kevin?’
‘Just for safe keeping, Mr Khan, sir,’ said Kevin. ‘You can’t trust the banks these days, can you?’ He reached inside his jacket and took out my wallet and the white envelope containing the cash. As he did so I saw he was wearing a shoulder holster under his jacket. He took my watch out of another pocket. The glass was cracked and the watch had stopped.
‘We were going to see if we could get the watch fixed for you, old man, but there wasn’t time.’ Kevin stepped forward, avoiding my eyes, and set my belongings carefully on the table. Then he stepped back and stood at ease.
‘Kevin, I am so glad you took these things only for safe keeping,’ said Mr Khan. ‘Because you know, in my country, if someone takes things that do not belong to them, we cut off their hands.’
The last words were spoken softly, but with an emphasis that made Kevin wince.
‘Leave us alone, now, while I give our guest some lunch,’ said Mr Khan. ‘Do not go far away, I may need you later.’
Kevin disappeared in the direction of the hallway. As far as I could tell we were on our own now, unless there was someone else lurking in the undergrowth behind us in the conservatory. The sun had come out and it was warm under the glass. Rich scents of unknown flowers and plants filled the air, mingled with the spicy smells of the food.
