Songbird

by Josephine Cox

  His full-on kiss told her it was more than all right.

  “I want you to stay the night,” he whispered in her ear, making her blush. “I’ll only be gone for an hour or so,” he went on. “Oh, and apparently, Sue has made us one of her famous steak pies. She’ll be here any minute, so there’s no need to rush your bath. Young Dave will keep Robin amused.”

  “Oh, that’s wonderful!” Maddy replied, “how about if I cook a few roast potatoes and a fresh cabbage to go with it?”

  “Sounds good to me.” Whistling for Donald, who came rushing out of the house as if his tail was on fire, then slithered to a comic halt in front of him, Brad told Maddy, “I’ll see you later then.” Another kiss, and he was striding away with Donald running and leaping at his heels.

  As she watched him go, Maddy marveled at how easy she and Brad were with each other. Yes, their love was wonderfully passionate at times. But there was more to a true relationship than sexual excitement, and she and Brad seemed to have found it – a deep and lasting commitment which, God willing, would carry them right through their lives together. She knew that tonight, she would have to reveal to him the truth of who she really was – the Songbird, the Pink Lady, ex-lover of a London thug and mother of a darling six-month-old baby boy. But she felt sure that Brad would take all of this in his stride. At least, she fervently hoped so, for Ellen must already be packing for the journey tomorrow.

  In spite of the many setbacks she had endured, Maddy counted herself among the lucky ones. She and Brad had found each other, and that was amazing. The very thought of becoming his wife was what made her days joyous – that, and the prospect of having her son with her again.

  Whenever she closed her eyes she could see his face so clearly, that tiny, baby face with those trusting eyes. But he was months older than when she last saw him, and she couldn’t help but wonder if he would remember her. Yet she could not let herself think like that. All she wanted was to love him, and watch over him, as a mother should.

  Once inside the cottage, Maddy locked the door and went upstairs for a bath. She lay in the hot soapy water, thinking and worrying, about Ellen, and Michael, and the consequences of confessing to Brad this evening. Dressed and back downstairs, she glanced at the wall clock. Ellen had said she would let her know what time she and Michael would arrive at the station in Bedford. A small, niggling worry began to gnaw at her.

  What if she had somehow put them in danger? What if Drayton’s men were watching Ellen, and followed her here?

  She grew so concerned that she abruptly leaped to her feet deciding, I have to tell Ellen not to come! She needs to stay put and keep on her toes, until we think of some other way.

  Try as she might, Maddy could not rid herself of a sense of danger. She didn’t know what it meant, or why she should suddenly feel this way, especially after she and Ellen had talked it through. All she knew was that Ellen and Michael must abort the journey.

  A few minutes later, having donned her boots and long cardigan, she glanced toward the main house and saw Sue’s car parked there, so she knew Robin was all right. Brad wouldn’t be back for a while, so she herself wouldn’t be needed just yet.

  Since this was a highly confidential phone call, Maddy could not use Brad’s home phone. She preferred to use the callbox on the village green.

  The walk to the telephone booth usually took ten minutes, depending on country traffic using the narrow lanes. This evening though, the lanes seemed busier than ever, with cars and lorries, a cart piled high with logs, a horse and rider, and a group of ramblers who stopped her to ask the way.

  “Got to make a detour,” Maddy muttered, “or it’ll be midnight before I get to talk with her.”

  Cutting off to the right, she ran across the field and down the steep incline, before veering off up the bank toward the outer rim of the village. The telephone booth was situated at the bottom of Pound Hill.

  It was not the easiest nor the shortest route, but except for the lanes, it was the only one she knew.

  By the time she got to the red kiosk, the evening was already closing in. Delving into her jeans pocket, she found the necessary coins, and slotted them into the machine; the smaller ones instantly rolled out and she was about to run up to the pub and ask for change, but on a second try, the coins clicked in.

  Anxiously, she dialed the number and waited; it rang and rang, and went on ringing, and still there was no reply. “That’s odd!” Maddy recalled how Grandad sometimes went out to play dominoes of an evening with his pals. But Ellen should be there, babysitting Michael. “Come on, Ellen, where are you?” she muttered frantically.

  Impatient, she began hopping from one foot to the other. “Ellen, it’s me. Answer the phone!” she prayed. She let it ring for a few minutes, then, wondering if she had misdialed, she replaced the receiver, picked up her coins and started all over again.

  When there was still no answer, she began to think all manner of worrying things, then tried to calm herself. There was bound to be an explanation. Then she had another, more disturbing thought. Oh no! Don’t say you’ve already left to come here… Oh please, please, still be there. But she obviously wasn’t, and Maddy was beside herself.

  Maybe Ellen was next door with Nosy Nora? Yes, that was it! She’d have gone next door. Sometimes the old dear would get herself into a pickle. Either one of her light-bulbs had blown and she couldn’t reach to put another one in, or her cooker had gone on the blink, and Grandad and Ellen had to sort it out.

  Frustrated, yet trying hard to convince herself that all was well, Maddy dropped the coins back into her pocket. Knowing Nora, Ellen could be round there for an hour and more, especially if their neighbor started on about her youth, and all the escapades she got up to then.

  Maddy hung about for a while, before trying yet again, without success. Glancing at her watch, she realized it was time to go round to Brad’s farmhouse. Maybe she could use Brad’s phone after all. He had offered before, but the last thing she wanted was for him to get the gist of her conversations with Ellen.

  This time she had little choice. I’ll just have to make certain I’m not overheard, she decided.

  The car was silent and smooth as it cruised the narrow lanes near Brighill Farm. Inside, the two men kept watch, intent on their mission. “Pull over!” The driver was a bony-faced man with thick fair hair and baby-blue eyes; softly-spoken, he could have been mistaken for a true gentleman. But behind the polished veneer, he was a cold-hearted villain with an insatiable appetite for money and power.

  The passenger was hard-faced and hard-cored; possessed of a cold heart and vengeful nature. “What’s wrong, boss?”

  “Check that address again – and don’t put the light on. There’s a small reading light in the glove compartment. Cover it with your hand, we don’t want it showing.”

  Quickly locating the light, the man in the passenger seat bent his head to examine the address. “Brighill Lane – yes, this is it, gov. We’re on the right track.”

  “And have you committed her description to memory, like I said?”

  The other man softly laughed. “Oh yeah. Right down to her pretty brown eyes.”

  “So now, we’re looking for Brighill Cottage. Check it!”

  The address was swiftly checked and confirmed, and so the car quietly glided further down the lane; both men with their eyes peeled for Maddy Delaney’s hiding place.

  Disappointed and deeply apprehensive about Ellen and baby Michael, Maddy trudged home. It was almost dark now, and very lightly spattering with rain. With nothing to keep her dry should the rain come down harder, she quickened her step across the fields.

  She was now back on the road, and halfway along the lane, as she walked under the light of the street lamp, they saw her, from where they were parked in the shadows on the opposite side of the lane.

  “Seems like our luck’s in,” the driver said. “Get out and slip across the other side of the lane before she gets too close. Quick, man! And remember – do
n’t let her see you! And don’t make a move until I give you the nod. I need to make certain it’s her. If it is, for Chrissake make sure you gag her before she starts screaming and shouting. The last thing we need is one of the neighbors raising the alarm!”

  While Maddy was still passing in the light of the lamp, he shoved the other man out. “Stay hidden… be ready!” He kept his gaze intent in the rearview mirror, watching Maddy as she drew closer, and the more he could see of her, the more he knew it was Drayton’s woman; the distinctive sexy walk, the slim, boyish figure and that long rich hair. “Saw you in the club many a time,” he growled, “but you never had time for a nobody like me, did you, eh? Bitch!”

  Satisfied that the other man had slipped unseen to the other side of the lane, he gestured for him to stay back.

  The car was so cleverly hidden that Maddy did not even see it until she was almost opposite it. When she hesitated, the driver quickly gave the nod, and it was too late. Taken completely by surprise, Maddy was grabbed from the rear, her arms pinned tight behind her back and a piece of coarse rag rammed into her mouth. Knocked off balance, she was then shoved forward, her head pushed down to her chest and the rag so far into her mouth that she found it difficult to breathe.

  And no matter how she kicked and fought, she was no match for her abductor’s brute strength.

  Roughly manhandled into the back of the car, her attacker threw her to the floor and, pinning her there with his feet, he pulled her arms tight behind her back until she feared they would snap out of their sockets. The pain was excruciating. She was unable to move or make a sound, except for a gurgling, muffled noise that went unheard by her abductors.

  Wheels spinning over the tarmac, the driver was away in a matter of minutes, and the entire incident was executed so swiftly that no one ever knew they had been there.

  Bruised and battered, fearing for her very life, Maddy was totally disorientated. Yet she was conscious enough to realize that Drayton had tracked her down at last, and that she was at his mercy.

  All she could think of was Ellen, and the baby, and though she feared for her own life, her prayers were offered for them.

  She could hear the driver talking to her; in a distant kind of way she recognized his voice, but didn’t know where from. “You should have known better than to think you could do the dirty on a man like Drayton and get away with it.” His voice was soft, and refined. “You above all people should know, he never lets go. Especially when some silly spiteful bitch goes out of her way to shop him to the police. Well, you’ll pay now, make no mistake about it.”

  There was a pause, during which he seemed to take pleasure in making her suffer. “First though, before Danny Boy tells Drayton the good news, he’ll need a few answers. I mean, he can’t report back with only half a tale, can he? Drayton wouldn’t like that. Y’see, he’s all wound up about the kid. Wants to know where it is, and who’s got it.”

  He gave a velvety laugh. “It’s no use you holding out, or thinking you can lie your way out of it, because then you’ll be treated real bad, until you’ll have no option but to satisfy Drayton’s curiosity. After all, he has a right to know the kid’s whereabouts – him being the child’s father and all.”

  For good measure, the man in the back stamped his foot into the back of her neck, at the same time growling a warning for her not to get too clever!

  Racked with pain, unable to move or breathe easily, Maddy was almost choked when a sudden gush of blood spurted from her nose to trickle, warm and sticky across her neck. She fought to keep her senses, but the pain was too great.

  The last words she heard were from the driver: “Easy, matey, we don’t want to be delivering a corpse, or the two of us will likely get the same treatment!”

  Desperate to have her off his hands, the driver put his foot down and sped out of Brighill. He went at great speed through the Brickhill villages, then onto Woburn and out of Aspley Guise. Once he was through Husborne Crawley, the motorway was only minutes away. “The M1 is just ahead,” he called excitedly. “Another hour before we dump her into Danny’s custody… and I for one won’t be sorry to be rid of the bitch.”

  They had traveled a good distance along the M1 when it happened. Maddy had opened her eyes; she could feel the thrust of a powerful engine driving them along, and knew that they were going dangerously fast. She told herself that either they would all be killed before they got her to this “Danny” they talked of, or she would be handed over and murdered when they were done with her. Killed on the road, or murdered by one of Drayton’s henchmen. Either way she would be a goner, and Michael would be left without his mammy.

  She decided she would pretend to be unconscious, and that somehow, if the chance arose, she would make a break for it.

  She glanced up. In the flickering light from the motorway lamps, she saw that her captor must have realized that she was unconscious, because he was not paying her any attention. Instead, he was yelling at the driver to, “Slow down, you damned lunatic, or you’ll kill us all!”

  Having been held up behind two juggernauts and a car hogging the fast lane for several miles, the driver was losing his temper; one minute he was surging forward, and the next he was shaking his fist and shouting obscenities at every driver who got in his way.

  Seeing his chance to get out from behind the juggernaut, he swerved out in front of a coach, shot past at speed and almost clipped the car in front as he tried frantically to get back in.

  As a result, he was forced to slow down, and allow the coach to pull in front; and all the while there were car horns honking and people shouting through open windows at him, “Bloody fool… shouldn’t be on the road!”

  The man in the back was leaning over the driver’s seat, telling him to, “Use your head, man! Run alongside, until we can get out of here!”

  For the moment, because he was now jammed in, he could do no other, than to run at the same aggravatingly slow speed as the car in front. “Bugger this. We’ll never get there at this rate!” Thumping his fist on the dashboard, the driver was manic. “I’m coming off at the next slip road,” he shouted. “We’ll make time by cutting across. We’ll get back on the motorway at the next junction.”

  Maddy marked the moment and she took it.

  At the place where the slip road ran off, she felt the car brake violently and skew off to the left. When they got to the junction at the top, the car slowed right down, in order for the driver to check the road signs. “It’s right – go right!” the man in the back was telling him.

  So, while her captor was still intent on watching the road ahead, she mustered all the strength she could. When the driver revved the engine and started forward, she sensed it was now or never; she reached up, threw open the door and scrambled out, knowing that whatever happened after that, she had nothing to lose.

  As the air whooshed all around her, both men were yelling; there was the sound of screeching brakes, then she felt her body thud to the ground and catapult into the air. As though in slow motion, she hit the ground, bounced several times, and now she was rolling uncontrollably down a grassy embankment and into a muddy ditch. When she actually heard the sickening sound of her bones breaking, Maddy was convinced that by the time she stopped, she would be cut to ribbons.

  Then all went black, and she knew no more.

  Maddy survived, but she was badly hurt.

  Afterward, she learned that she had crashed through the fencing at the side of the slip road, before rolling into the ditch below, where she remained undiscovered for hours.

  While she lay there, Maddy imagined she heard the voices of her captors, and in her deepest senses, she experienced the feeling of being shaken and moved about. And yet she was told that when she was found, there was no one in sight, no one searching for her – and no reports of a young woman of her description going missing.

  The farmer’s wife was an amateur photographer, who liked to photograph local wildlife at night, in their own habitat. This was what she had
been doing when she came across Maddy’s seemingly lifeless body, lying crumpled in the ditch, doused in her own blood. At first she thought Maddy was beyond help. She ran back to the farm and together she and her husband managed to lift Maddy out of the ditch and on to a makeshift stretcher, before carrying her back to their home and phoning for an ambulance.

  Now, after two weeks in intensive care, following several operations, she was awake to the world.

  Maddy opened her eyes, to look into the concerned face of the doctor leaning over her. “Ah! Awake again? Good girl,” he said. Throwing back the bedcover, he ran his hands over her legs, stroking and tapping and asking if she could manage to move her toes. “Gently now.”

  When Maddy managed to move not only her toes, but to raise her legs as well, he grinned like the Cheshire Cat. “Excellent! Wonderful!”

  He explained that she had been discovered in the field near the motorway. “You’re a very fortunate woman to have been found,” he told her. “If you’d lain there for much longer, I’m certain you would not be here today. It was a very cold night, and you had lost a lot of blood. Can you remember anything about the accident? The police will want to interview you, when you’re feeling a little better.”

  Maddy’s head was all over the place as she tried to remember. She recalled being in the villains’ car and making a break for it. Then after that, nothing!

  Now, agitated, as she tried to move, the pain in her chest was crippling. “Where is this place?” She looked about, realizing this was a hospital, but she had no idea where.

  “You’re in Bedford General Hospital,” the doctor advised her. “When they brought you in, you were in bad shape. You had many abrasions! A dislocated shoulder plus a broken ankle, two broken toes, a fractured rib and…” placing his fingers beneath her left hand, he raised it to where she could see how, in the region where her thumb had been, there was a large dressing. “I’m sorry, but every sinew and bone in your thumb was smashed beyond repair.”