Hostage to Fortune

by Carolyn McCrae

  “Now I’m old enough to know the truth will you tell me who my real father was?”

  Wave was taken by surprise at her daughter’s question. She shook her head. “No, Jenna, I can’t.”

  “Can’t tell me because you don’t know?” Jenna meant to hurt her mother into telling her the truth.

  “I do know. I just can’t tell you.”

  Wave could not tell Jenna that her father was the man whose politics Billy now followed, the man who was the rich and decadent playboy Warwick Eden.

  There were very few days when she did not think of Fordy and regret those few minutes in the woods with War. If she hadn’t let him do what he did she and Fordy would have been together, he would not have been in Cornwall and he would not have drowned. Whenever she heard in the news that someone had drowned she always thought of Fordy.

  “I do know,” she repeated quietly and Jenna believed her.

  “Why can’t you tell me?”

  Wave went to a cupboard, opened it and reached far back into the corner where never used dishes were kept and brought out a tin. She opened it, took out a wad of notes and handed them to her daughter.

  “Here. Take this.”

  “I can’t! There’s hundreds of pounds here.”

  “Four hundred. Now go. Get away from here. Don’t come back. And don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.”

  “Really?”

  “Stay here and he’ll rape you.”

  Jenna needed no more encouragement. She left before Billy got back, worrying that Wave might be made to pay in some way.

  Sitting in the bus station waiting room she picked up a newspaper and saw a picture of a town in Devon so she decided that was as good as anywhere.

  After only one night spent in a room above a pub she had found a flat share with the girl who worked behind the bar and three weeks later she began work in the library, thanks to the recommendation of one of the regular drinkers.

  When she felt she was on top of her job she enrolled for an Open University course in Modern European Literature and began to be the Jenna Freece she had always wanted to be.

  “Shit!” Wave shouted out, unthinking, as she watched the news on the first Monday morning of September five years later.

  “Shit what?” Billy asked. His hangover was as bad as ever. When he was young he could drink as much as he liked and the next morning he’d be right and bright but now he was finding he could not keep up with the younger boys in his party cohort. He pressed his fingers against his temples to try to ease the throbbing.

  “Warwick Eden’s been fucking murdered.”

  “Who?”

  “Warwick bloody Eden, your fucking hero,” Wave repeated. “Jenna’s fucking father,” she added without thinking.

  “What did you say?” Billy was immediately sober and alert.

  “Nothing.” Wave tried to back track. She had not meant, ever, for Billy to know that the leader of England Force, the party he so fervently supported, was Jenna’s father.

  “Yes you did. You said Warwick fucking Eden is Jenna’s fucking father!”

  Wave said nothing. She just watched as Billy found his phone and after a few moments held it to his head.

  “News desk?”

  “Fucking shit!” he said as he threw his phone to the floor. “They didn’t fucking believe me. Wait till the fucking funeral then we’ll fucking show them. They’ll all be there, won’t they? I’ll fucking show them then.”

  Billy did not want to wait until the day of the funeral but he did.

  After the reporter on the end of the phone had laughed at him he had made himself think through what he had to do. He had to find photographs of Jenna, ones that would show how much she looked like Warwick Eden. They would have to believe him when he showed them the evidence at the funeral. He should have realised before how like his hero Jenna was but then he realised he had never really looked at her face since she was a toddler.

  Three weeks later Wave watched as Billy closed the front door behind him.

  She knew she could not stop him talking to the press any more than she could stop him going to the funeral. She had argued with him, she had shouted at him and she had tried to persuade him but she could find no way to change his mind.

  The only thing she could do was tell Jenna the truth before she found out from the press.

  She picked up her phone.

  “Jenna?”

  “Wave?”

  “I have to tell you something. If I don’t tell you, you’re going to find out anyway and it must be me who tells you.”

  “Tells me what?”

  “About your father.”

  Since she had been in Devon Jenna had given up worrying about who her father was. She had wanted to know when she was younger but now it really didn’t seem to matter.

  “Jenna?”

  “Yes, I’m here.”

  “Your father was Warwick Eden.”

  Jenna recognised the name. “The Warwick Eden? The billionaire playboy come politician who has just been assassinated?”

  “There is only one.”

  Jenna thought for a moment. “Okay. Right. I’m not going to ask you how you knew him.”

  “I’ll tell you if you want to know.”

  “I don’t. He’s nothing to do with me.”

  “You have his hair, and his eyes.”

  “And when I’m his age I’ll probably be turning into a lump of lard just like him. Good bloody riddance is all I can say.”

  “If you and I were the only ones to know there wouldn’t be a problem.”

  “A problem?”

  “Billy knows.”

  “So?”

  “He thinks you’re going to be a way of getting him a very great deal of money. He’s going to the funeral today; he’s going to tell the press, then he’s going to get lawyers involved and everyone will know that you are the man’s daughter.”

  “So?”

  “Have you any idea what that’s going to mean to you? For heaven’s sake girl! You’re the daughter of a billionaire! The heir to billions!”

  “So?”

  “Press? They’ll all be onto you. Every little shit with a phone will be looking to take your photo. Have you any idea?”

  Jenna thought she did, but nothing could have prepared her for the attention that was about to rain down on her.

  The day after the funeral the front pages of the more scurrilous papers were filled with the pictures Billy had given them of Jenna alongside archived pictures of Warwick Eden. The likeness was undeniable but where some red-top tabloids came out on Billy Watkins’ side others claimed that he was simply an opportunistic gold-digger.

  It did not take long for the newspapers to track Jenna down; there was only one Jenna Freece on the electoral roll.

  She brushed their questions away. “That man—”

  “Which one?” the reporters pressed. “Warwick Eden or Billy Watkins? Or is there another man?”

  “Those men,” Jenna corrected herself quietly, “those men are nothing to do with me, nothing to do with the life I want to lead. I have no idea whether that awful politician was my father or not. I really don’t give a shit.”

  “Billy Watkins swears he is.”

  “If my stepfather wants to stir it all up I really don’t care about that either.”

  “You don’t want the money?” one reporter asked.

  “You’ll be a very rich young woman,” another said.

  “Very rich indeed,” a third added.

  She had read the newspaper stories which carried details of the enormous wealth she stood to inherit if her paternity could be proved and she knew it would be.

  Her mother would not have lied to her, not after having kept quiet for so many years.

  “Go away. Please,” she p
leaded.

  “What are your opinions of Warwick Eden’s politics?” The first reporter tried another angle.

  “Do you agree with their new slogan?” another asked with what Jenna thought of as a very sly look.

  “New slogan?” she asked.

  “Make England White again.”

  “Go away! That man has nothing to do with my life. Please, just leave me alone.”

  Jenna shut her front door and, apologising to her flatmate, refused to answer it for anyone.

  For three days talk shows on regional and national radio would not leave the story alone but Jenna stayed silent, refusing to be upset by the ignorant opinions of people who had never known her or Wave or Billy.

  For three days she stayed in her flat, doing her best to ignore the photographers and reporters camped outside her front door.

  For three days she didn’t stop apologising to her flatmate who also refused to run the gauntlet of the paparazzi.

  Eventually, bowing to the inevitable, Jenna packed a bag and, with the help of friends who distracted the press pack for just long enough, she escaped the house and caught the first train that stopped at Tiverton station.

  She didn’t care where it was going as long as it was somewhere many miles away where, surely, no one would find her.

  Chapter 21: Diane and Pat

  Diane sat on the rock watching the pebble-strewn beach getting narrower and narrower as the tide advanced and reviewing her situation.

  The cliff behind her was undoubtedly unclimbable, even by someone braver and more flexible than she had ever been. There was an overhang which meant that she could not see the top nor, she recognised, could anyone who happened to pass on any path or road that might exist there see her.

  Nor could she expect rescue from the sea. She counted ten fishing boats in view but it was highly unlikely any one of them could see her, even if they had time to look towards the land, and they would certainly never hear any cry she might feel frustrated enough to make.

  She had escaped death by drowning only, perhaps, to succumb to death by starvation or exposure marooned as she was on a tiny rock shelf, not that many inches above the waters of the Mediterranean, in a small cove which could be miles from anywhere.

  She still wore the bright yellow shirt and blue jeans she had chosen from her ordered wardrobe that Thursday morning more than two weeks before. Her feet were bare. She had not realised that Arjun, or Guy, had removed them before forcing her off Peabody Three. She could not walk far in bare feet even if she had anywhere to walk.

  Perhaps, she thought, after all was said and done, she should have let Arjun push her overboard.

  At least then it would have been all over quickly.

  As night fell she tried to concentrate on what she should do when she returned to civilisation. She refused to dwell on the possibility, or more likely probability, that she might not.

  Would she call Gordon? He could organise her return to England, to Dartmouth, where she would resume her normal life almost as if nothing had ever happened. It seemed the obvious thing to do.

  But she could not help thinking that Guy must have had reasons for doing what he did: kidnapping her, murdering Warwick Eden, having some other poor young man, Ryan somebody or other, die too.

  Guy was the son of Barford, and Barford had been one of her ‘guests’ and she was very loyal to her guests. She wanted to protect his son, not throw him to the wolves.

  Not just yet anyway.

  Would she call Skye and Fergal? They had been helpful and sympathetic in the summer – was it only two months ago? – when they had been involved in another case. But she decided against that as they were in Gordon’s pay. Anything she told them would get back to Gordon, and she wasn’t sure why she didn’t want that to happen.

  Then there was Pat Bush. Pat, she knew, lived on this coast somewhere.

  She had no idea whether Pat would help her or not. They had much in common but they had not hit it off on the one occasion they had met. If she could get Pat on her side, get her to bring her up to speed with how much everyone knew about everything, then she would be able to judge how much to tell her.

  The problem was she had no idea where, exactly, she lived.

  All she knew was her name and that she lived on the Costa Blanca. But as she looked at the rising tide, gradually covering the rocks just below where she sat, she reasoned that if she ever got out of the cove finding Pat Bush would be a piece of cake.

  After an uncomfortable night Diane had just dozed off when she was jerked into consciousness by the unmistakable sound of a helicopter.

  She rubbed her eyes so she could focus and scanned the skies. It was some way off the coast but flying quite low, low enough to see a sign, if she had made one. The tide was out, exposing a steep and narrow strip of pebble beach. Using driftwood and larger pebbles she marked out the international distress sign S O S and waited.

  She had to hope the helicopter would return before the tide came in and wiped her efforts away. As she watched and waited, her fear and anticipation just about overcoming all pangs of hunger and thirst, she found herself praying to a god she didn’t believe in. The waves crept up the beach and begin to lap at the planks of driftwood that made up the bottom strokes of her letters but there was no sign of the helicopter.

  Tears of frustration flowed unstoppable as, watching the last of her message disappear under the water, she heard the throb of the rotors and saw the helicopter fly over the cliff edge.

  She stood on her rock, frantically waving her arms and crying out ‘help’ but she knew it was hopeless.

  The next morning she repeated the exercise of drawing her message on the beach despite there being no sign of the helicopter. Several boats sailed by well beyond hailing distance and several light aircraft flew over too high to see her.

  A small spring that trickled down the cliff provided her with some fresh water but she was very hungry and was beginning to despair of ever being found when she heard the chug of the engine of a small fishing boat approaching.

  “Hola?” She heard a man’s voice.

  “Aquí! Aquí! Estoy aquí!” she called out.

  A few minutes later she was being hauled into the clinker boat.

  “Inglesa?” the fisherman asked.

  “Si, si!”

  “Bueno, I speak English. I work in a hotel. I speak good English.”

  “Just, please, get me to your village.” She spoke slowly and clearly and was pleased to see the man obviously understood her. “I must make some phone calls and use the internet and, by the way, can I borrow some money? I promise I will repay you.”

  Diane had worried all the previous night about how she could find Pat but her insomnia had paid off. She had worked out a plan. Pat was a lot older than she was; she would be drawing a pension, she would be registered with the Consulate, if not for her pension then for some form of healthcare. In her second call to the Vice Consul in Alicante, a series of lies and fabrications led to her being given a phone number.

  “Pat? You may not remember me.” She began the conversation as she had imagined it through that long night on the rocks but from then on she had had no idea where the conversation would go.

  “And you are?”

  “Diane. Diane Hammill. You may remember me.”

  “Of course I do.”

  “I need your help.”

  “I’ve been more than half-expecting you to call. Where are you? I’ll come and pick you up.

  It was not what Diane had expected her to say.

  “Why call me not Gordon?” Pat asked as she turned onto the coastal motorway and settled the car at a steady speed just under the limit. “He has people searching high and low for that yacht you were on, what was it called? Ah yes, Peabody Three.”

  “You knew that?” Diane was mystified.

 
“Fergal Shepherd and that uppity wife of his were on the case and they traced the yacht. They asked me to drive down to check it out. I saw you, at least I saw your yellow shirt, when you were in Cartagena. But then the yacht left and they lost track of it.”

  “I had no idea.”

  “Why would you?”

  “So Fergal and Skye have been looking for me, have they?”

  “It would seem so, though I have no idea why Gordon puts his trust in those two, it seems they are incapable of staying focused on the task in hand.”

  “Which was to find me?”

  “Yes. Though, I suppose, to be fair, they did track you down despite spending too much effort trying to solve the assassination—”

  “Assassination?”

  Diane knew from the argument Guy and Arjun had had that Warwick Eden was dead and that another young man had been killed, apparently framed for the first murder, but she was not going to say a word until she had learned how much Pat knew about the two deaths and about her abductors.

  “Of course! That happened after you were kidnapped, didn’t it? Warwick Eden! Yes, the notorious and unlamented Warwick Eden. He was shot dead just after you disappeared. And then, two days after his body was found, a young man appears to have committed suicide leaving a note confessing to being the assassin.”

  “Where did all this happen?” Diane asked, thinking that was the sort of question she would be expected to ask.

  “In Dartmouth, didn’t I say?”

  “How dreadfully exciting!”

  “Is it possible your abduction may have had something to do with it?” Pat asked, with a sidelong glance at her passenger.

  “Why on earth should it?” Diane replied, giving no sign that she had been thrown by the question.

  “Coincidence of time and place, I suppose.”

  “I can see how that might look but as far as I know there is no connection. By the way, have you told anyone I’ve been in touch?”

  “No. Should I have done? As soon as I put the phone down I hopped in the car and drove to get you. I have to say you sounded frantic and pretty much at the end of your tether.”