Captured

by Johansen, Tina

  That can’t be right.

  He spoke to her regularly and had always gotten the impression that she missed him and wanted him to join her (he couldn’t think of anything more abhorrent). Now, here she was in a restaurant with her arm draped around some big blond hulk, beaming. He clicked through the images quickly. The same man appeared in several. She had taken him for a fool. He opened Skype, hoping that she was online, but was disappointed. He felt restless now. Standing up, he walked to his bedroom and changed into jeans and a shirt. He’d never sleep tonight.

  The next morning, he felt much better. He was slightly hungover when he walked into the morning meeting.

  “Daniel, I wasn’t sure you were going to make it!”

  He laughed. “Sorry Rich, problems on the Tube.”

  “You look a bit worse for wear.” The other members of the department looked away as Richard continued.

  “Yeah, it was a bit of a late one,” he smiled.

  “What happened to your hand?”

  Daniel looked down. Shit. He paused. “Oh it’s nothing. Some pikey tried it on last night. Wanted my wallet,” he held up his fist and twisted his features into what he hoped looked like a triumphant smile.

  Richard looked shocked. “Sorry man, I was only jibing you earlier,” the older man stood up and walked over, slapping him on the back. “We’ve only just started. Why don’t you give us an update on the Callan account?”

  Daniel smiled and sat down.

  Back at his desk, Daniel unlocked his computer and flicked through his emails. He thought of something, and opened the internet browser.

  “Don’t forget, you’re down for anti-money laundering training today,” Richard boomed as he walked past.

  Daniel looked up and nodded. He had completely forgotten. His calendar told him the session was about to start. If someone had told him four months ago about the sheer number of training sessions one encountered in a large bank, he wouldn’t have believed them.

  It had been easy to place himself in Jones’s path, and easier again to falsify his experience at Bailey Morgan: a Cambridge friend’s father was a partner there. Why anyone would want to work in this hamster wheel hell was beyond him. He stood up and locked his machine again.

  The session had dragged on for three hours. After a late lunch, he finally returned to his desk. He had moved to Kirsty’s old desk after she left: Jones’s attempt to ‘bring the team closer together’. He hated the collegiate chumminess that Jones extolled, but had greeted the announcement with an enthusiastic smile, as if he lived and breathed the team.

  When he finally returned to his desk, he was mentally exhausted. He opened Facebook and clicked through to Kirsty’s profile. Careful to use the screen facing away from the walkway: anyone passing his cubicle had a clear view of his left screen, but the one on the right was more private.

  The bank’s IT policy expressly forbade access to webmail or social networking programs, for fear that unscrupulous employees might transmit sensitive information externally. Facebook was banned from the firm machines. He had never given this much thought at all, but remembered something Susan in the next cubicle had said about accessing the site through another site.

  “Susan,” he called, over the green-fabric-upholstered partition.

  Susan looked up from her keyboard and smiled.

  “What was the name of that website, where you can access Facebook?” he asked, as casually as possible.

  “Why, are you having a slow day? I have a load of offering documents you can review if you want,” she said seriously, before descending into a fit of girlish giggles. It was an incongruous sight: she was in her early forties and still sported a serious amount of puppy fat. ”I’m just kidding. Go to sneaky workaround dot com.”

  This place is full of jokers. Daniel laughed along enthusiastically, cutting off abruptly before the point of sycophancy.

  He typed in the address quickly. Thoughts of Kirsty had started to nag him again; he felt a strong compulsion to have another look at those photos. Maybe he was being too hard on her: she was travelling alone and was entitled to make friends. It didn’t mean she was sleeping with all of them.

  He ignored the updates on his home page and clicked straight through to Kirsty’s profile, in search of the photos that he had seen the day before. He smirked, imagining Simon’s reaction, before remembering how careless his own reaction had made him.

  There they were. In the cold light of day, it didn’t seem as bad as it had the night before. He would have felt guilty, he thought, if it was an emotion he was capable of feeling. It was probably just a holiday snap. Did her smile look strained? Maybe she was just putting up with the guy, and that was why she hadn’t mentioned him.

  He didn’t know why she was getting to him like this. He had only gone after her to teach Williams a lesson; now here he was on this childish site, analysing pictures of her. He sighed, moving his mouse to close the window.

  “She’s looking great since she left, isn’t she?” Susan was standing at his left shoulder, having seemingly materialised out of nowhere. He didn’t know how long she’d been there – he hoped not long.

  “Yeah,” he answered evenly. “The weather seems to suit her.”

  Susan giggled conspiratorially. “And the good-looking boys.” She stopped, her expression suggesting that she wanted him to probe further.

  Daniel pictured her going home at night to a pathetic little house in Kent and curling up with a mangy cat under a floral blanket. “Susan, you’re such a gossip,” he laughed rolling his eyes. What the fuck are you talking about? “It doesn’t look like she’s very pleased to be around this guy at all.”

  Susan tutted, swatting him on the arm. “Not jealous are you love? I thought you had a bit of a crush on her alright.” She moved to his right side and had taken the mouse from his hand before he could stop her. “Look, have you seen the new photos? Someone posted them this morning. They’re all over each other in these ones. They make a gorgeous couple.” She stopped, watching him expectantly.

  He studied the picture and then flipped quickly to the next, and then to the one after that. How had he missed them? Conscious of Susan’s scrutinising gaze, he closed the window. “Good for her, getting out of this place, and meeting some hunk while we’re all stuck here.”

  Susan laughed, nodding and walking around the partition to her own domain. “I know. Some people have all the luck, don’t they?”

  Daniel nodded in agreement and pretended to listen to her for a few moments, nodding and laughing when her pauses signalled it was appropriate. When she was distracted, he quickly put his head down and reopened the browser. He studied the pictures carefully. There were over a dozen new ones, taken in all different locations. This had clearly been going on for some time. There was no mistaking their relationship this time: they were practically fucking in the pictures he thought, remembering angrily how she had been so careful to avoid being seen in public with him. It was no problem for her now.

  He had spoken to her three days ago and she hadn’t mentioned a word about this guy. He opened maps.com and searched for some of the places mentioned in the photo captions. They were all in Laos, but they were spread out across the entire country. There was no way she had covered that distance in three days. She was lying to him!

  He had left work that evening in a state of apoplexy, and couldn’t remember the Tube journey home. It took all his power to sit still when he felt like barrelling through the thronged carriage and hurtling everyone off the train. He felt impotent: she was making a mockery of him, and there was nothing he could do. He didn’t even know where she was! Although... a glimmer of clarity was alight in the back of his mind. She had mentioned that she’d be meeting Grace soon, in Bangkok. She was flying down a few days in advance of Grace’s arrival. Had she said we? The sneaky bitch. He thought back to their conversation but couldn’t remember, although he was almost sure that she had. Parading it right in front of him.

  He raced
home from the Tube station and booked the first flight out to Bangkok, which left the following morning.

  His sleep was disturbed that night; rage intensifying by the minute. Groggy, he had made his way to the airport, checked in and boarded the flight. He still hadn’t slept when he arrived in Bangkok. When he finally reached his hotel, he fell forward onto the bed fully clothed, and slept for eleven hours straight.

  By then, his rage had dissipated. He was thinking clearly now, realising the folly of action without preparation. It was something he had lectured himself not to do, ever since that moonless night sixteen years ago. Now here he was, trying to rectify the results of his impulsiveness for the second time in three days.

  Chapter 15

  “Think, man,” Daniel said aloud, to the bustling city far below. He was standing on his balcony on the fiftieth floor; the penthouse suite. He was wracking his brains, trying to come up with a plan. I’d be a lot different this time, he reasoned. It was a marathon, not a sprint. He shook his head, wondering why he had suddenly started thinking in business jargon. Why was it so difficult to think clearly?

  He knew the answer: she was getting to him. It had been easy at first; he had seen straight away that she was bored with her humdrum life. Why wouldn’t she be, going out with that loser and spending all of her time either cooped up in the office with waste-of-space-Jones or with the loser. Or with that mouthy lawyer friend of hers. Daniel had met her only a handful of times, and wanted to keep it that way. He found her too intense; her clever eyes probing his thoughts in a way he didn’t like. He had felt like she could see right through him. She couldn’t, of course: if she had been able to, he would be locked up forever, of that he had no doubt.

  Once he’d snared Kirsty’s attention, a curious thing had happened: she had captivated his. It took him a while to realise that he wasn’t putting on an act around her; it was the closest he had come to normal in his entire life.

  He had thought that telling her about Simon would push her closer to him, and he had been right. Initially at least. He had quickly taken Simon’s place in her life, and it was all going swimmingly, until that mouthy cow went and put ideas into her head about travelling. Then she was off, ditching him unceremoniously.

  Plan of action, he thought. He was still at a loss.

  He had already called work and announced that he had broken an ankle and would be working from home for a while, choosing to tell Susan. If she exaggerated, as he knew she would, he could legitimately stay away for several weeks. He congratulated himself on having the clear-headedness the morning before to grab his laptop from the living room, where it had sat in its case for several months gathering dust.

  “So where the hell are you?”

  The line was crackly, which Daniel found extremely ironic: it was possible that they were only steps from each other – not that she knew that. Nor did he intend to tell her until the timing was right. For now, he had to play it cool.

  “Bangkok,” she answered.

  Now that he knew to listen for it, he could definitely tell that something had changed with her. She sounded happier than he had ever heard her. He tried to identify the noise in the background, but couldn’t hear anything distinctive. What did I expected? he wondered. The big guy was going to jump on the line and challenge him to a duel? He hoped not: Daniel was going to have to get rid of him somehow, but there was no way he was pitting himself physically against that giant.

  “Wow, lucky you,” he exclaimed. “How’s it been so far? Where are you staying?” he tried to make it sound like a throw-away question.

  “Oh some cheap guesthouse in Bangkok,” she answered, nonchalantly.

  “I know Bangkok, but where?” he asked, trying hard to keep the urgency from his voice. Time was passing by much faster than he wanted.

  “I don’t know. Hey Grant, what district we in?”

  So that was his name. Grant. He played around with the sound in his mind. Grant.

  She came back on the line. “Sukhumvit, apparently. We’re in this grotty little guesthouse called the Welcome Inn, how cheesy?! Why are you so interested anyway, I didn’t know you’d been to Bangkok!”

  “Just wondering.” I’m right here. “Some of us are stuck in work and need a little excitement. Listen, I have to go. Meeting. Everyone says hi.”

  After speaking to Kirsty, he resolved to be as prepared as possible, even though he still had no idea of what he was going to do. He returned to the balcony with an icy gin and tonic, thinking. He couldn’t afford to make a wrong move. He put his drink down with a clink on the glass table, and watched as humidity-induced rivulets of condensation ran down the glass. He smiled: he had finally had an idea.

  He had found the apartment the same day, paying cash to the expat rental agent, who didn’t bat an eyelid. He remembered then all the stories and rumours he had heard about shady foreigners in Bangkok. What was it his friend Kenny had said? “Like moths to a flame, they can’t help themselves.” That was fine by him; he could use the anonymity.

  He walked back to the hotel, in order to familiarise himself with the neighbourhood around Kirsty’s guesthouse. He wore fake Ray-Bans, a pair of stripy cotton shorts and a souvenir t-shirt he had picked up from a stall near the apartment: even if Kirsty saw him today, he doubted she would recognise him. That was vital. He had rented the apartment on the basis of its proximity to the guesthouse, and was surprised to discover it was in close proximity to the hotel too (though that was moot – there was no way he could have brought them to the hotel without attracting attention).

  Options were the key, he thought, before embarking on a cross-city treasure hunt for knives, ropes, needles and industrial bin bags, taking care to return to the apartment each time, and to make his purchases appear innocuous by buying in different areas.

  The gun had been trickier to procure: he’d known he couldn’t contact anyone for recommendations, not even his shadier acquaintances. In the end, he had walked the streets before settling on the seediest expat establishment he could find. He sussed out the owner for several minutes, pretending to be engrossed in one beer after another, before making his move. The guy behind the bar – Daniel couldn’t place the accent but thought he heard a light Northern inflection – looked as if life had thrown him a series of uppercuts to the chin, and he’d grown tired of deflecting them. He looked pathetic enough to trust, but sufficiently rough to be in a position to provide Daniel with the guidance he desperately needed. He looked up, and Daniel realised that he’d been staring.

  “Nice bar you have here.”

  “Hmm,” the bartender nodded, his expression disagreeing. “You British?”

  “Yeah.” Focussed on his mission, he found it difficult to muster the necessary small talk. “Been here long?”

  He zoned out as the other man spoke of his life back in Britain as a long-distance truck driver: the long boring hours, his bitch ex-wife who had left him for his best friend. He certainly looked animated now. Simon nodded when he noticed the man looking to him, expectantly. Silence.

  “I said, ‘you married?’”

  An opening. “Yeah. Well I should be. Except I found out she liked my brother more. We were supposed to get married here actually. But I suppose that’s off now...” he trailed off, sneaking a glance at the other man. “Sometimes I think if I just had a gun...”

  “I know the feeling.”

  “What’s it like over here? I lived in the States for a couple of years, now there I could just walk into a shop and pick one out. Just like that. Come back in a few days, pick it up. Now at home of course, no such luck...”

  A light went on behind the barman’s eyes. “Well you could do that here. Not legal of course, but you can get anything you want in Bangkok. I got one for protection. I knew a guy who knew a guy. Job done.”

  “Your friend also happen to have a friend who could get me something a little stronger than this?” he raised an eyebrow and gestured towards the whisky his new friend had placed in front
of him.

  The erstwhile truck driver laughed a deep hearty chuckle. “I know a lot of people,” he confided, leaning forward.

  His hands were steady as he rapped four times on the peeling red door, as he had been instructed to, and they remained so as an uncharacteristically tall and broad Thai youth frisked him and muttered something in Thai. Then one of the older men had leisurely counted his banknotes, examining some, and nodded his head towards two black plastic bags that were sitting on a filthy dining table. Lifting the bags from their nest of cigarette butts and old brown bottles, he hesitated.

  “You want try?” the oldest man raised an eyebrow and smirked.

  He shook his head and held the man’s eyes, curious at the jagged scar extending from his hairline to his brow. Seemingly satisfied, the man turned away. Daniel’s cue to leave.

  He opened the pill capsules and mixed the white granules with a few teaspoons of sugar early the next morning. He still had no idea how he was going to approach this. He couldn’t stop thinking about Kirsty. Not in that focussed way he usually thought. That might have helped him. No, this was different. Coupled with Grace’s arrival in less than twenty four hours, he felt more pressure than he could remember ever feeling before.

  “Daniel! What are you doing here?” it took her a few seconds for her brain to process the figure standing near the door of the little internet cafe: they had spoken the day before and he mentioned nothing about a visit to Thailand.

  Grant nodded noncommittally to the newcomer, unsure of his relationship to Kirsty and waiting for a less ambiguous response from her, since he couldn’t see her face to read her expression.