by Katie Penryn
I ruffled his ears. “Felix has found the man who took the little girl away.”
“What? Around here?” Zag asked, his ruff rising down his back as he pivoted in a full circle scanning our surroundings.
“No silly. On the dark web. It’s not something you know about, but don’t worry. Felix has him pinpointed. We have only to pay him a great deal of money and he will free Nina.”
“You’re going to buy her?”
“Kind of. He wants money and we want Nina back.”
“Come along, boss,” said Felix dragging me by my arm into the study. “The sooner we get this done, the sooner he’ll give her up.”
Felix sat me down in front of his laptop. “Now, you have to buy bit-coins first. Key your password in and I’ll show you what to do.”
“Why do we have to buy bit-coins?”
“Because this is the dark web. Bit-coins can’t be traced. That’s why he’s insisting on them. Don’t you remember Keith Gardener and his purchases on the dark web?”
“Of course, but I wasn’t expecting to pay a kidnapper this way. It’s too sophisticated. Felix, you do realize that this man has to be digitally savvy to insist on this. That could be an important clue to his identity.”
“I’ve noted that. Put your password in.”
One thing I never forget is how to key in the password for my bank account. I have practiced and practiced it so that I don’t get the letters and numbers mixed up. As soon as I was into my account, Felix set up the bit-coin purchase and then the transfer to the villain. Only then did it strike me I hadn’t asked Felix what arrangements he’d made with the villain for the release of Nina.
“Wait until he acknowledges receipt, and I’ll tell you everything,” he said.
We sat anxiously staring at the screen for several minutes until a message flashed up.
“Right,” said Felix. “He’s got the million Euros. Now it’s up to him to keep his side of the bargain.”
A second message flashed on the screen.
“What does it say?” I asked unable to keep my voice from trembling.
Felix read out,
Take the road west to Saintes. Ten miles along, turn off to the village of Vieux Marchand. At the second crossroads, you will come to a roadside shrine. The child will be sitting beneath the cross at 0100 hours. Do not arrive early. The land is flat. I shall be watching. If I see the lights of a police vehicle approaching, the child will disappear never to be seen again. Understood?
Felix typed a message back.
“What did you say?” I asked him.
Understood. If any harm comes to Nina now that you have received the money you demanded, my colleague and I will never stop hunting you down even if it takes us until the end of time.
“That’s telling him,” I said giving Felix a hug. “Now what shall we do? I’m a bit limp after all the stress and we’ve several hours to fill. It won’t take us long to reach the rendezvous.”
“You should collect up blankets and something to eat and drink. Perhaps we should take Jimbo with us even if it’s the middle of the night. He would help Nina to feel safe when we pick her up. She’ll wonder what’s going on being dumped by the side of the road in the dark after being kept captive for days.”
“Good thinking. Should we tell Jean-Claude we’ve arranged things?”
Felix shook his head. “Definitely not. We mustn’t get his hopes up. These arrangements can go wrong.”
“Not this time, surely? We’ve paid the money. We’ve not told the police.”
Felix gave me a warning look. “We’re not home and dry yet, boss. We should warn Gwinny we’ll be out late, and we should have some supper. We’ll need our wits about us.”
At half past eleven we woke Jimbo up and explained we needed him to come with us to fetch Nina. He rubbed his eyes as he sat up, his little face creased in bewilderment.
“Whaaaat?” he asked. “It’s the middle of the night.”
“That’s why we’d like you there. She’ll be sitting by the side of the road all on her own in the dark. Imagine how scared you’d be if that was you,” I answered. “If she sees you, she won’t be so afraid. Remember she’s been locked up by a nasty man for days now.”
He scrambled out of bed and ambled into the bathroom half asleep. Then he was back and dragging on his clothes, his sweater inside out and his T-shirt back to front, but I let him be. He stumbled downstairs for a quick cup of hot tea and some of Gwinny’s cookies. Felix collected up his laptop and a powerful flashlight while I picked up the basket of hot drinks and sandwiches. We’d stowed a pile of blankets and pillows in the car earlier on in the evening. Outside, only the soft lapping of the waves on the beach at low tide disturbed the silence of the seaside town. The night air had a nip in it making us duck into the car quickly. Felix wrapped Jimbo up in a blanket. I checked the time. Ten past midnight. We had about forty miles to travel. As we drove up the hill towards the town’s medieval gates, we met no one but a solitary dog scrounging around the bins on a corner. Here and there a light still shone out of a window where the householder was busy locking up before retiring.
We met little traffic on the main road. As we turned off towards Vieux Marchand the absence of street lighting plunged us into a blackness lit only by our headlights. The earlier moon had disappeared taking the stars with it. Our wheels hummed along the tarred surface eating up the miles far too fast. As we sped through the second crossroads a glance at the dashboard showed it was only twenty to one.
“Slow down, boss,” said Felix. “We’ll be too early. He might take fright.”
I reduced our speed, so we crawled along in second gear. This gave us the chance to scan our surroundings, but there was nothing to be seen in the almost pitch blackness. No houses, no trees and the land proved as flat as the villain had warned us. At last our headlights lit up the white stone of the wayside cross forty yards ahead. Two minutes to one.
“No cars… and no white van,” said Felix staring through the windscreen.
Jimbo’s eyes met mine in the rear view mirror as he took them away from the road for a moment.
“I can’t see anything,” he said.
“This doesn’t look good,” said Felix jumping out of the car as I pulled into the side of the road.
The side of the shrine facing the road held nothing but a low iron railing filled with vases of devotional flowers. A hedge of ornamental shrubs on either side hid the other three sides from our view. I held my breath while Felix ran up to the shrine shining his flashlight from side to side. He turned around and shook his head, but then ran forwards and around the shrubs towards the back. I hurried to catch up with him and reached him as he pushed his way back through the shrubs towards me.
“She’s not here,” he said. “There’s no sign of anyone.”
“The bloody cheat. He’s welshed on our deal.”
“Maybe we missed him,” Felix said as I rushed into his arms and he hugged me close in a brotherly fashion. Jimbo straggled along the road towards us with his blanket hanging off his shoulders and threw himself at us. The three of us stayed locked together for a few moments overcome by the disappointment of the villain’s betrayal until Felix let go of us.
“We should check all around carefully. Maybe he was here. Maybe we got the time wrong,” he said, but a heavy dread had settled deep in my gut. No way. We’d been meticulous over the time and had followed the villain’s instructions to the letter.
Felix wouldn’t give up. He searched about looking for footprints, tire marks and discarded cigarette ends, sweet papers… anything to show that Nina and her captor had been there; to show that her captor had acted in good faith, but he found nothing.
“Come, back to the car. I’ll contact him now before we drive home,” he said at last.
He took his laptop out of the car and placed it on the hood. I watched him type and send an email. We waited for a reply as the chilly night air swirled wisps of an early morning mist around us. Jimbo c
lung to me, scared and shivering in spite of his blanket.
At last a ping. Felix clicked the message open. The screen flashed yellow. Row upon row of stupid smiley faces grinned out at us. That was all.
We’d been had… for a million Euros… and Nina was still missing. What were we to do now?
Chapter 30
Gwinny opened the front door to us. “What are you doing back so early?”
I pushed her gently back into the house in front of me. Felix followed me in carrying a sleepy Jimbo whom he took straight upstairs to his bedroom, leaving me to explain to Gwinny that our expedition had been a failure.
“He’s still got the poor child then,” she said, her hand to her mouth. “What are you going to do now?”
“Right now, we’re going to bed. We need sleep if we’re to analyze this situation tomorrow morning.”
“Do you want some soup?” Gwinny asked hurrying down the hall and into the kitchen. “I made some for the child in case you brought her back here.”
I overtook her and switched off the pan. “Too late, Gwinny. Let’s go to bed, but thank you,” I said giving her a quick hug.
“I don’t know what I’d do if it was my child,” she said.
I blinked at her and stopped myself just in time from issuing a biting remark. Sometimes I found it difficult at the strangest of times to forgive her for her desertion of us. She’d skated blithely through seven years of our young lives without giving a toss about our safety. But now was not the time or the place for such resentment, so I bent down to stroke Zig and Zag before shooing them gently back to their baskets where the little kittens Slinky and Floss lay tucked up nose to tail.
*
I crashed out of a deep sleep the next morning to face the task of having to tell Jean-Claude we’d contacted the kidnapper, had paid over the ransom but he had reneged on the deal.
“Let’s get this over with,” said Felix when I walked into the kitchen. “It’s not fair to keep his hopes up in the circumstances.”
“Nor to crush them,” I answered.
“We’ll think of something,” Felix assured me as we made our way out to the car.
Jean-Claude was crossing the hall on his way to the library when Felix opened the front door of the Château de Portemorency.
I called out, “Hold on a minute, Jean-Claude. We need to talk to you in private.”
He stopped dead and one look at our faces must have told him to expect bad news because he retreated to the far end of the hall and stood waiting for us his face white and strained. He’d developed a tic at the corner of his mouth over the last few days. He fought to control it as we exchanged greetings.
“Well?” he asked. “I can see you don’t have good news. What is it?”
Felix filled him in on all that had happened since we’d left the château the day before. He let out a wild cry, fell back against the wall and slid down to the floor, landing with his legs stuck out in front of him and his chin sagging on his chest like a broken rag doll. Great dry heaving sobs racked him.
I sat down beside him and drew his head onto my chest, cuddling him to give him comfort while he collected himself.
When he could speak he said, “So it’s hopeless. He took your money, but he kept Nina. What does this man want out of me?”
I murmured soft platitudes until Jean-Claude was able to scramble to his feet again. As he straightened himself up and ventured to thank us for what we’d done, the library door crashed open and an irate Dubois appeared in the doorway.
“What have you done?” he shouted at me. “Get in here at once, all three of you.”
I reeled back against Felix who was standing behind me. I’d never seen Dubois so angry. He was quite beside himself. I’d have to have it out with him later. His attitude was out of order when speaking to a distraught father, insensitive and cruel, so unlike Dubois’s usual courteous comportment.
As we straggled through into the library, Madame Fer-de-Lance marched up to us. “See what you’ve done.”
She grabbed Jean-Claude by the arm and dragged him over to his laptop which stood open on his desk.
“Look,” she almost screamed. “This message just arrived.”
Jean-Claude bent over to read it. Felix gasped.
“What?” I asked him. “What does it say?”
Jean-Claude took a step back and fell into the chair Felix pushed under him in the nick of time.
“Tell me someone, please,” I asked them.
Felix put his arm around me and led me to the screen. Once again it was filled with silly smiley faces with a message typed below them. He read it out:
Suckers! A million Euros down and five hundred thousand more to go. Same place, same rules, tonight… or else. And just in case you hadn’t noticed, I’ve poisoned another three hundred of your precious vines... and counting!
Madame Fer-de-Lance thumped her fist down hard on the desk. “What did I tell you? I expressly forbade you to pay the ransom. The Ministry forbade it. You’ve encouraged this madman. He’s escalating his demands and all at the expense of that sweet child. There is something mighty personal about all this.”
Jean-Claude raised his head and said in his defense that he’d had nothing to do with it.
“So it was you?” Madame Fer-de-Lance spat out turning to me.
I had to admit Felix and I had paid the ransom in the belief that the villain would free Nina once he had his hands on the money he wanted. I told her what had happened.
“Huh!” she said and turned aside in exasperation at what she obviously considered our foolish antics. She took a couple of deep breaths and turned to face me again. “Mpenzi Munro, I am very angry with you. You have made a tricky police investigation even more difficult, but I can’t fault your generosity or your kind heart. Please from now on, let’s have a little more head and a little less heart. Agreed?”
Felix and I nodded.
“Do not pay this demand for five hundred thousand, understood?”
Again we nodded.
“Promise,” I said.
“At the very least you should have allowed us to set up police surveillance of the handover point.”
Felix coughed. “We realize that, madame,” he said, “but you wouldn’t have caught him, anyway. He didn’t show up.”
“You don’t know that for sure.”
Felix and I looked at each other. No, we didn’t.
Madame Fer-de-Lance brushed us away with her hands. “You should leave and let us get on with the job we’re trained for.”
“Can you at least tell us what lines of inquiry you’re following, madame?” Felix asked.
She relaxed her hard posture. “That I can do. We’re tracking down all white vans, searching all buildings outward from the ballet school and we have all Monsieur de Portemorency’s competitors and friends under surveillance. You can be sure, we will catch this man.”
Felix muttered under his breath as we walked out of the room, “God help him if we get him first.”
We had a cup of tea with Jean-Claude in the kitchen before we left. He’d calmed down by then and thanked us for what we’d done.
“I can’t believe you paid over a million Euros to get my Nina back. I shall be for ever in your debt.”
“Nonsense,” I said giving him a hug. “We’d do it again today if it would do any good.”
“Steady on, boss,” said Felix. “We don’t have bottomless pockets.”
That made us all laugh. We left Jean-Claude standing at the top of the steps, looking forlorn but with the shadow of a smile on his face.
*
“That was a fierce telling-off,” said Felix on the way home. “I suppose we deserved it. We broke all the rules.”
“What are we going to do now? The police don’t appear to be making any progress in spite of what Madame Fer-de-Lance says. This man is so evil he could quite easily do harm to Nina: leave her locked up somewhere and walk away, or even kill her. Time is running out, Felix.”
I took my eyes off the road to look at him and nearly swerved into the ditch.
“It’s easy for you to say,” I said. “I’ve been wracking my brain trying to think of something I could do, but I can’t think of anything. Our scrying didn’t work. None of the spells I’ve learned so far would do anything. Can you think of one that would be useful?”
Felix said he couldn’t. “I suggest we go through your Book of Spells and see if we can find a new one that would fit the situation.”
“All right. We’ll start after lunch,” I said and continued the drive home in a happier frame of mind. At least we’d be doing something.
Chapter 31
Felix and I spent all afternoon reading through the Book of Spells with only a short break to collect Jimbo from his school bus. Six o’clock found us both with headaches from mental fatigue.
“We need a night out,” said Felix. “Too much work and no play is bad for us. We’ll be more effective tomorrow if we take some time out for fun and exercise. We should go dancing.”
“I couldn’t,” I said. “I’d feel guilty all night long for enjoying myself while Nina is imprisoned and Jean-Claude is heartbroken.”
“Trust me, boss,” Felix went on. “We need it.”
So, Felix and I visited the Club des Blues and danced the night away. I’d been reluctant to revisit the strange stone cavern after what had happened there when I’d performed with Jonny Sauvage, but Felix persuaded me to find out if the bad ghosts had been banished. After all, he said, we’d found Jonny’s murderer and so allowed his soul to rest in peace.
Felix had been right. The exercise, the change of scene, the music and the memory of our success in finding justice for Jonny had relaxed us both and given us confidence. I’d fallen into bed pleasantly exhausted at gone three in the morning.
*
