by Dawson, Mark
She collected the belt and the strap.
“Lie down,” she ordered.
Cassidy started down to her knees.
“Not you,” she said. “Just him. You sit down on the bed and don’t move.”
Joel did as she said. She told him to turn around, and he did. She told him to put his hands behind his back, and he did. She quickly looped the belt around his ankles, knotted it and yanked it tight. She took the strap and knotted it around his wrists, taking the long end and knotting it into the belt until he was hog-tied.
“What are you doing?” Cassidy said.
“Be quiet.”
“I haven’t got any money.”
“I don’t want money.”
“Then what . . . ?”
“Listen very carefully,” she cut across her. “I don’t want to hurt you, either of you, and I won’t if you do exactly what I tell you to do. But if you do anything stupid, you’ll be shot, and that’s a promise. Do you understand me?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Good. I need you to come with me. I have a car outside. You’re going to go downstairs first, and I’m going to be right behind you. Close behind you, too close to miss if you do anything other than exactly what I say. You’re going to open the door, go down the steps, go onto the street and get into the back of the car.”
“What for? I don’t . . .”
“We’re just going to go for a drive. And I promise you won’t be harmed if you do what I tell you. Understand?”
“Yes.”
“And you,” she said, looking down at Joel, “I want you to stay here, nice and quiet. Remember, I’ve got Cassidy with me, and I don’t want any distractions from the police. When we’re outside the city, I’ll call them and let them know what’s happened. They’ll come and untie you. Do you understand?”
“Why are you doing this? We’re just normal people.”
She stared at him, hard. “I need you to tell me that you understand.”
“Yes, of course I fucking understand.”
“Okay. That’s good.”
She took out her phone and sent the text that she had already prepared.
Start the car.
She pointed to the hook by the door. “Get your hat and coat.”
Cassidy took a knitted beanie and a leather jacket and put them on.
“Let’s go.”
She took the girl by the arm and propelled her gently to the door.
“What he said was right,” Cassidy said, turning her head to look back at her. “We’re just normal people. I’m just a dancer. I don’t have any money. I don’t know . . .”
“Concentrate on getting down to the car in one piece, please, Cassidy.”
“How do you know my name?”
“Down the stairs.”
They descended to the half landing and then kept going down. The door had swung open, and, outside, Beatrix heard the buzz and electricity of the city. She heard a siren wailing in the distance. Nothing to do with them, she knew, although that would change soon enough.
They descended the steps to the sidewalk, Beatrix walking alongside Cassidy like they were best friends. Her left hand touched the girl’s arm. Her right held the gun, hidden in her sleeve.
“It’s the Impala,” she said, indicating the car. The lights were burning, and the engine was running. “Inside.”
Cassidy opened the rear door and slid inside. Beatrix shut the door after her. She got into the front. Isabella was in the passenger seat. Beatrix handed the gun to her.
“Cover her until we’re out of the city,” she said.
Her daughter turned in the passenger seat and held the Beretta in steady hands.
Beatrix released the handbrake, put the car into drive, and pulled into traffic.
Chapter Twelve
Beatrix drove for two hours straight. It was a struggle, and by the time they were out past Philadelphia, she knew that she needed to stop. She found a drive-thru McDonald’s and pulled into the parking lot. She slid into an empty space at the back of the lot, away from the other cars, and switched off the engine. She squeezed her hands into fists as the pain washed over her.
“Mummy?” Isabella asked.
She closed her eyes until the pain relented. “I’m fine, Bella,” she said. “Are you hungry?”
“I guess.”
She turned and looked back at Cassidy. “You hungry?”
“Yes.”
“What do you want?”
“I don’t know. Burger and fries. Diet Coke.”
She took a twenty from her pocket and gave it to Isabella. “Go and get a burger and fries and whatever you want.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll just have a coffee.”
“You don’t want to eat?”
Her stomach felt like liquid, and the prospect revolted her. “I’m fine. Just a cup of coffee for me. Make it strong.”
Isabella gave her a look of concern but left the car and headed for the bright lights of the restaurant. Beatrix watched her in the rearview until she had disappeared inside.
She refocused and looked at Cassidy. She was extraordinarily pretty, with a delicate and slender face that looked like it belonged in a Renaissance painting. She was slender, like Isabella, and Beatrix doubted if there was even an ounce of fat on her. Everything was graceful and precise: her movements, the line of her eyebrows, the shine of her fingernails. Beatrix found it difficult to credit that her father was the man that she knew him to be. It seemed inconceivable that such a man, both morally and physically repellent, could have produced such a jewel.
“Are you alright?” Beatrix asked her.
“What do you think?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?”
“I’m sorry that this is necessary.”
“That what is necessary? You haven’t said a thing. I don’t understand what’s happening.”
“You’re not going to be harmed.”
“Says the woman with the fucking gun.”
“This doesn’t have anything to do with you.”
“Then what does it have to do with?”
“Have you spoken to your father recently?”
“No. Not for a month. Maybe more. Is this about him?”
“Yes.”
“You know him?”
“I do.”
“So . . . ?”
“We have some things we need to talk about.”
“You didn’t think about just giving him a call?”
“He doesn’t want to speak to me.”
“How can I help with that?”
“You’ll get his attention. Once that’s done, you can go. You have my word.”
There was a moment of silence as Cassidy brooded in the back. Beatrix watched the streaming traffic on the freeway and, overhead, the blinking lights of a passenger jet.
“Where are you taking me?” Cassidy asked.
“We’re going to see him.”
“He’s in the country?”
“You don’t know?”
“He moves around a lot.”
“Since when?”
“Recently. I never know where he is from day to day.”
“He tell you why that was?”
“Business. We don’t talk about it.”
“He’s here on the East Coast. North Carolina. We’re going there.”
The pain, in some ways, was helpful. It made it less likely that she would drift off to sleep at the wheel, but there were still moments when she found it almost impossible to resist the downward tug of her eyelids, as if they had been hung with weights. They were just outside Pocomoke, Maryland, when she was jarred awake by an angry blast from the horn of an eighteen-wheeler. She opened her eyes to find her chin
on her chest. They had been drifting across to the middle of the road, and she had swung the wheel hard to put them right, the lights of the big truck flashing by them. Isabella and Cassidy were asleep and did not awaken. Beatrix focussed on the ache in her bones once again.
They were close now, just two hours away.
Nearly there.
She followed US Route 13 down towards Chesapeake Bay, crossed the bridge and arrived at her destination a little after three in the morning.
It was good timing: Beatrix could barely hold her eyes open, and if there had been just another half an hour to travel, she had decided that they would have had to sleep in the car. She had researched the place she wanted to stay while they were at the St Regis, before they had collected Cassidy. There was a holiday village eighteen miles to the northwest of Chesapeake. It was a series of cabins set in the woods, nice and remote, none of them too close to another. She had booked them in for a week, although they wouldn’t need that long. It would be perfect.
She turned off the interstate, followed Portsmouth Boulevard west and drove until she reached the turnoff. She parked in the lot next to the reception. She had called ahead for the keys to be left for them, and she sent Isabella inside to get them while she stayed with Cassidy in the car.
“Everything alright?” she asked as her daughter got back into the Impala.
“No problem.”
They followed a long, winding, single-lane track that was asphalted only for the first quarter mile. She drove carefully, the Impala bumping up and down, the headlights swooping between the trunks of the trees.
Their cabin was at the end of the lane on the banks of a large lake. The owner had left the lights on, and puddles of golden warmth spilled out across a wooden veranda.
She parked outside the door.
“No scenes,” she warned Cassidy as she switched off the engine. “You saw how isolated this is. We’re in the middle of nowhere. No one would hear a thing, and you’d just put me in a bad mood. We go in, nice and quiet, and then we can get some sleep. This will all be over tomorrow. Do you understand?”
The young woman nodded resentfully.
Beatrix stepped out of the car. The night air was crisp and refreshing, and her tiredness was temporarily beaten back. Isabella got out, unlocked the cabin door, opened the trunk and ferried their bags inside. Beatrix opened the rear door and took Cassidy’s elbow as she slid out. She walked her quickly inside and then returned to the car. She took the length of rope that she had purchased at the same time as the screwdriver, went back to the veranda, turned to blip the Impala’s locks and then went inside and closed and locked the door.
The cabin was reasonably large. There was a sitting room with a log burner, and a kitchenette and a single bedroom. The embers of a fire were glowing in the grate, and Isabella went over and dropped two logs onto it. They caught quickly, orange flames hungrily spreading across the dry wood.
Beatrix uncurled the rope.
“What?” Cassidy exclaimed, pointing. “What the fuck?”
“We all need to rest,” Beatrix explained. “If I were you, I’d wait until everyone else was asleep, and then I’d make a run for it. I can’t have you doing that. This is to make sure you don’t. It’s just for tonight.”
“This is ridiculous,” the girl said, but she didn’t resist and allowed Beatrix to shepherd her into the bedroom. She looped the rope around the girl’s wrists, fastening it with a constrictor knot, and then knotted the other end to the wooden headboard. There was enough play on the rope for her to be comfortable, but not enough for her to get out of the room.
“Lie down,” Beatrix said. She pointed to the bed. “The side away from the door.”
She did.
Beatrix turned to Isabella. “Lie down next to her.”
“No,” she said. “I can sleep on the floor. You sleep on the bed.”
“I’m alright, Bella. I’ll sleep in the chair outside.”
Isabella looked reluctant, but she relented.
She smiled at her daughter. “Get some sleep. Tomorrow is going to be a big day.”
Chapter Thirteen
Beatrix woke at five as the dawn light played in through the window. She had forgotten to close the drapes. The fire had died overnight, and the room was a little cold. Her muscles and bones screamed in protest as she levered herself upright. She paused, assessing herself. The usual wave of nausea passed through her, radiating out from the pit of her stomach, but it dissipated without gathering strength. After a minute, she felt confident enough to arise. She negotiated the room carefully, one hand pressed up against the log wall, and quietly closed the drapes.
Isabella and Cassidy were asleep. She took a homespun blanket from a wooden chest and arranged it carefully over them both. Isabella moaned and twitched, but she did not awaken.
Beatrix went into the bathroom and ran a bath. She stripped off her clothes and stared at her reflection in the mirror. The cancer was eating her from the inside. She had always been slender, but now she looked emaciated. Her ribcage was visible, and the points of her elbows and shoulders were obscenely sharp. She turned to look at the four roses that she had had tattooed on her arm. There was space for another two and, if she had had time, she would have returned to Johnny Ink and had the fifth, for Connor English, etched into her skin. But there had been no time, and his passing had not been recorded. There would be no sixth for Control, either, whatever happened tomorrow.
She leaned in closer. The work had been pristine when she’d had it done, but there had been more flesh on her bones then. She had lost muscle even in the short interval after her return from Iraq. Duffy’s rose, which had been full and ripe, now looked shrivelled and wrinkled. The others were the same. The scarlet petals were shrinking and dying, just as she was.
Beatrix felt a little better when she got out of the bath half an hour later. She heard the sound of movement outside, and as she dressed in a pair of jeans and a black T-shirt, there came a gentle knocking at the door.
“It’s open.”
Isabella pushed it open.
“Did I wake you?” she asked the girl.
“No.”
“Did you sleep well?”
“It was alright.”
Beatrix towelled her hair dry and combed out the tangles.
“What are we doing today?” Isabella asked her.
“I have to go and buy some things.”
“Do you want me to come, too?”
“No, I need you to stay here, Bella.” She nodded in the direction of the bedroom, where she could hear Cassidy stirring. “We can’t let her outside. Not even for a minute. If anyone sees her, this all comes to an end. I need you to stay here with her and make sure she doesn’t leave.”
“How?”
“We’ll let her use the bathroom, and then I’ll tie her to the bed again. If she makes any noise, there’s no one outside to hear her. And I’ll leave the pistol with you, too. Just in case.”
“I’d have to shoot her?”
Beatrix’s conscience flared at the thought of it. “You won’t have to.”
“But if she got away from me?”
“She won’t, Bella.”
Isabella glanced over at the pistol on the table and frowned.
“How long will you be?”
“Just the morning. I know what I need, and I know exactly where to get it.”
“Hey,” came a call from the bedroom. “Hey.”
Beatrix went over to the doorway, fetching the Beretta as she passed the table. Cassidy was sitting on the edge of the bed, the tether stretched taut.
“I need to . . . you know . . . I need to pee.”
Beatrix made sure the girl could see the pistol and then unfastened the knot, leaving it tied to the bedstead.
“Come on, then,” she said, taking her by the arm and
leading her to the bathroom.
Cassidy stepped inside. Beatrix followed close enough behind to block the door with her foot when she tried to close it.
“A little privacy?”
“No. Door stays open. Do what you have to do.”
“Jesus,” the girl said, exasperated. She lowered her trousers and sat down.
Beatrix backed away so that she could maintain her modesty. “You’re going to stay in the bedroom this morning,” Beatrix said to her in a tone that brooked no contradiction. “I’m not going to be far away. If you do anything stupid, and I mean anything, I’ll be back here before you know it. If you do as I say, we’ll be out of your way by this time tomorrow. Understand?” The girl grunted. “That going to be a problem, Cassidy?”
“Do I have any choice?”
“Not really.”
“Then why did you bother to ask me?” She stood, washed and dried her hands and then presented them to her again. “Go on, then. You better tie me up.”
Beatrix did, and then she took Isabella out into the main room again.
“Are you going to be alright?” she asked her.
“Yes,” the girl said, firmly.
“Here.” She handed her the Beretta. “Just knowing that you have it should keep her quiet. You won’t need to use it.”
“Just the morning?”
“Just the morning. As quick as I can.”
She drove into town. Her first stop was at the Chesapeake Square Mall in Virginia. She parked the Impala and went inside. It was early; the shops were only just opening, and there were just a few people there. She asked for directions and followed them to Radio Shack. She knew it would be stocked with everything that she would need. She nodded to the greeter and, collecting a wire mesh basket, worked her way around the aisles in search of the items on her list: a toggle switch, a push switch, a 5mm LED, mono audio jacks, phone plugs, soldering iron and solder, intercom wire, snap connectors, eight AA batteries and a battery holder, alligator clips and a roll of nichrome wire. She added a screwdriver set, wire cutters and a drill with various bits. Finally, she added a Samsung prepaid phone and a windscreen mount.
