Stick or Twist

by Diane Janes

  So he hadn’t liked Rob Thackeray. So what? It could have been social prejudice, as much as anything else. Robin Thackeray had that rich boy look which tended to wind him up right away. Blue jeans worn with a noticeable belt, an immaculate white shirt, open at the neck, expensive cufflinks and a fancy watch. Brushed-back hair, good teeth, suntan. The smallest hint of encroaching weight above that brown leather belt suggestive of good living. A guy who’d grown up with a sense of entitlement.

  Would Rob Thackeray have harmed his sister? Not personally, of course. Suppose he had paid a hit man? Peter Betts cast his mind back to an early case conference when that theory had been among the suggestions on the table, but he knew that it was a needlessly elaborate idea that didn’t really work. If Robin Thackeray had wanted his sister dead, he needn’t have bothered with an elaborate preamble. A professional hitman could have broken into the cottage, abducted Jude and got the business done in a matter of hours, making it look like a burglary gone wrong.

  The Thackeray money. What was it that Hannah had spotted about the money angle? He noticed that he always thought of her as Hannah these days, rather than as McMahon.

  After almost an hour in the car park, he became conscious of the fact that he was very hungry and thirsty. He couldn’t leave the car for long, because he didn’t want Hannah to return to a locked car and be left standing out in the rain, but he figured that there was probably some kind of vending machine near the hospital entrance, so he slid out of the car and sprinted across the damp tarmac, rejoicing that he was possessed of the health and strength to dodge the slow movers on their walking frames and sticks. Inside the hospital entrance he encountered a young couple pushing yet another guy in a wheelchair. You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. Seize the day. He thought of the latest message from Ginny, assuring him that he still had plenty of time in which to decide. That had been more than a fortnight ago. Ginny was still waiting for his answer.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  ‘So?’ Jude prompted.

  They were sitting facing one another on separate couches in the sitting room of the cottage. A meeting of sorts – like an interview, Mark thought, fraught with discomforts which were entirely incidental to the hardness of the furniture. His back still felt vaguely damp under a hastily donned shirt, his chinos were still creased from the suitcase. Jude had retained a physical distance between them as he got into some clothes, then suggested that they should go downstairs, so that he could explain his problem. There had been no further mention of mixing martinis.

  Mark had readily agreed to this, because he reasoned that she was just kidding when she said she couldn’t help him out. Everyone’s knee-jerk reaction was to say that they couldn’t spare a dime. She’d got all sorts of money behind her. It was probably no more than a question of a phone call. All he had to do was get her onside.

  He had assumed his naughty little boy face and told her a tale – largely true – about a run of bad luck. How he had been given some bad advice from someone he’d mistaken for a friend, and it wasn’t until he was in up to his neck, he said, that he realized he’d fallen in with loan sharks.

  Up until now he had kept his eyes on his fingers, drumming compulsively on his knees – a nice touch, he thought – making him look nervous and contrite, unable to look her in the eye, but now he risked a glance at her face, from under lowered eyelashes. She was watching him, her face absolutely expressionless. He re-focussed on the fingers, endlessly performing piano scales against his patellae.

  ‘I had no idea what I was getting into. They’ve started to get nasty. Threatened to harm me – threatened to harm you.’ (This was a lie but it seemed like an inspired touch, on the spur of the moment.) He paused, glanced up again, but she remained impassive. ‘I need to pay them off.’

  ‘So you thought that if you married me …’

  ‘Oh no, Jude, darling.’ He made to get up and go to her, but the wooden expression on her face changed his mind and he decided it would be better to stay put. ‘I adore you. I’m the luckiest man in the world. I would never have married you if I hadn’t been in love with you. Surely you know me better than that?’

  ‘What I don’t understand,’ she said slowly, ‘is why you can’t get money from your own family? Your father left millions.’

  ‘How do you know what my father left? We’ve never discussed that.’

  ‘Perhaps we both did our homework before committing.’

  ‘Then you did yours badly. My father’s estate was worth a lot because it included all of his business assets – a factory and machinery isn’t the same as hard cash. Anyway, he left all that side of things to my brothers. I told him I wanted out of the family business years ago – in fact I never went into it. The old man expected me to. Monty and Michael became directors virtually straight from school, but there was no way I wanted to be stuck up in Yorkshire, worrying about the price of acetylene or ball bearings.’

  ‘So you got nothing?’

  ‘I got a little – and I invested it, but as I’ve already told you, a lot of things went tits up and—’

  ‘Don’t you have any life insurance – something you could cash in?’

  ‘What would I want with life insurance? I’m only thirty-four for goodness’ sake.’

  ‘So basically, you’ve got big fat nothing and you need me to help you out?’

  She rose to her feet and he sprang up alongside her, arms outstretched, but she waved him away, almost imperiously. ‘Leave me alone,’ she said. ‘I need to think.’

  The rain had stopped, but it was still grey and damp outside. He followed her into the kitchen and stood watching as she shrugged on a coat and pushed her feet into some shoes.

  ‘Jude.’ He was about to try another appeal. Offer to go out for a walk with her, or better still beg her to stay inside. Maybe re-ignite that suggestion of a couple of martinis. After all, she was supposed to love him. For better, for worse. Not that you actually said any of that stuff at a register office wedding.

  ‘Don’t even think of following me.’ She flung the words over her shoulder as she left, slamming the cottage door behind her. He hastened back to the sitting room, attempting to watch her from the patio window, but she disappeared round the side of the cottage, heading in a direction which led to neither the parking place nor the path down to the shore.

  Once out of his sight Jude quickened her pace, glancing over her shoulder every so often, to make sure that he was not following. She headed for a grassy knoll to the north east of the building, where she and Rob had discovered by experimentation that there was a phone signal. Much nearer than the lane, you sucker, she thought.

  It was only when you reached the summit of this miniature hill, that it was possible to see the lean-to construction of stone, topped off by sheets of rusty corrugated iron, which had been built into the northern side of the slope, a ramshackle affair, its previous use un-guessable. She and Rob had agreed that its hidden location in comparative proximity to the cottage would serve their purposes very well. It provided the perfect place for anyone who wished to stay concealed nearby, yet sheltered from the weather. However as the rain was still holding off, there seemed no reason to retreat inside and after a final glance to confirm that Mark had not followed her, she glanced at her phone to check the signal, then instigated her call.

  The moment she heard a voice on the line, she plunged in: ‘We’ve fucked up. Mark hasn’t got a bean. Not even life insurance. We’re totally screwed.’

  ‘Who the hell are you talking to?’

  She gave a yelp of surprise, instinctively cutting off the call as she turned to see Rob emerging from behind the wall of the redundant barn.

  ‘I said, who are you talking to?’

  Jude stood rooted to the spot, staring in disbelief, as Rob advanced the couple of steps it took to bring him right next to her. Whereas swift reaction might have availed her some advantage, hesitation was fatal. He grabbed the hand which held the phone and twisted her wrist so ha
rd that she shrieked and relinquished her grip. In a second he had grabbed the phone and turned his back on her. She knew instinctively that he was redialling the last call. She tried to reach around him, lunging at him in a vain attempt to regain the phone, but his body was broader and his reach several inches longer, rendering her efforts as ineffectual as a butterfly fluttering into the trunk of an oak.

  She guessed that he had achieved a connection, because she heard him say, ‘Who’s this?’ as he elbowed her away, hard enough to make her stagger and slide on the damp grass.

  ‘He cut me off,’ he said as he swung around to face her, deliberately dropping the phone on the ground and stamping his heel on it twice. Even from several feet away, she could see that it was broken. ‘Who is he?’ he asked.

  ‘Who?’ Her voice sounded hoarse and she knew it was a stupid question, but she was at sea, with no idea what to do next. None of the careful planning had covered this eventuality. Run. That was the answer. Get back to the cottage and bar the door. Get to Mark’s car keys and drive away – drive anywhere. It made no difference now, with everything going so completely wrong.

  He anticipated the move and grabbed her even as she attempted to sprint away. ‘Who were you talking to?’ he thundered.

  In the past she had always been the one who needed to urge him into action. She knew that he was capable of violence, but until now she had never had any cause to be afraid of him.

  ‘Get off me!’ She struggled to pull free, but he tightened his grip, using his free hand to deliver a stinging blow to her face. When she cried out in protest, he struck her again and began forcing her down the slope in the direction of the cottage, while she continued her futile attempts to pull free.

  After a few yards their feet became entangled and to save himself from lurching over completely, he flung her to the ground. Landing face down, Jude took a second or two to recover: she pushed herself up onto her knees, then froze when she caught sight of what he was holding in his hand. Silver grey, shining dully in the last of the daylight, there could be no doubting the veracity of her eyes.

  ‘You’ve got a gun,’ she whispered. ‘Rob, where did you get a gun?’

  ‘Insurance policy.’

  ‘You wouldn’t shoot me.’ It was not exactly a statement, not exactly a question.

  ‘Don’t bank on it.’

  ‘You love me. We’re in this together.’ She attempted conviction, but it wasn’t easy, with that mesmerizing cylinder, not four feet from her face.

  ‘I’ll ask you one more time. Who were you talking to on the phone?’

  She took a deep breath to steady herself. ‘I can’t tell you.’

  A fresh thought appeared to strike him. ‘Where’s lover boy?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The bridegroom. That prat, Medlicott.’

  ‘He’s waiting for me, back at the cottage.’ She paused, before adding, ‘Unless he’s followed me after all, and seen you waving that gun around. In which case there’s just a chance that he’s done a runner, got as far as his car and rung for the police.’

  ‘Get up … Come on …’ He didn’t wait for her to obey, impatiently dragging her to her feet and pushing her ahead of him again, while she complied as best she could, weaving a course which mostly enabled her to keep the weapon in his hand in view. So far as she was aware, Rob had never handled firearms. Neither had she, though a teenage flirtation with crime fiction had left her with the impression that a gun could easily go off by mistake, if it fell into the wrong hands.

  As they passed the sitting-room window, she noticed that Mark had switched on the table lamps. He was hunched on one of the lumpy sofas, with his back to the window, but something – perhaps the sound of their feet on the paving stones of the patio – made him glance up; and though she doubted that he had seen the gun, her own dishevelment, coupled with the unexpected presence of her supposed brother, replaced the expression of dejection on his features with one of alarm. As they entered via the kitchen door, she thought of yelling out to him to run for it, but there wasn’t really time. He was still in his original position when Rob flung the sitting-room door open so violently that it crashed against the inner wall and bounced back towards them, only failing to hit them when it was kept at bay by Rob’s outstretched foot.

  ‘What …?’ Too stunned for more, Mark watched in astonishment as his new brother-in-law hurled the woman who had lately become his wife onto the sitting-room rug, then applied a hefty kick to her backside which made her cry out in surprise and pain. Mark had jumped to his feet as they entered the room, but any gentlemanly instinct to intervene in this unexpected family drama was stifled at birth by the sight of the elegant little handgun, which his brother-in-law was toting in his right hand.

  Reaching into his left-hand pocket, Rob withdrew a handful of cable ties and tossed them onto the coffee table. Jude, who had twisted around to face him, was attempting to inch her way towards the wood burner, with a view to maximizing the distance between them, but halted abruptly when Rob ordered her to stand up. She glanced across at Mark, but he seemed mesmerized by the gun.

  ‘Tie his hands.’

  Now Mark finally looked at her and she read the confusion in his eyes, alongside an undoubted level of fear.

  ‘DO IT.’

  She hesitated for another fraction of a second, then slowly bent to extract a plastic tie from among the little group which lay scattered on the table. She worked in slow motion. Trying desperately to come up with something – anything – to get herself out of this. Mark untied could be an ally. Mark tied up was useless.

  ‘HURRY UP.’ Rob lunged as he spoke, lashing out at her again.

  As she pulled Mark’s hands behind him, he found his voice at last. ‘Jude? Robin? What the hell is going on …?’

  She couldn’t see the gun, but out of the corner of her eye, she saw Rob raising his arm. ‘Please hold still and let me do this.’ There was no concealing the fear in her voice. ‘I’m afraid he might shoot us both if I don’t.’

  Mark evidently sympathized with this conclusion, for he made no further protest, obediently bringing his hands together behind him, while she wrapped the tie around his wrists. Her hands were shaking as she tightened it. If she pushed him forward hard enough, might he cannon into Rob, taking him unawares long enough for her to make it out of the room? Crazy idea, crazy, crazy. A stunt like that and they could both end up dead. With Mark’s hands secured, she stepped aside, job done.

  ‘Right, you sit down.’ Rob accompanied this instruction with an aggressive jerk of the gun in Mark’s direction. He appeared to have grown into his role, confident in his ability to control them while holding the trump card. ‘And you—’ he indicated Jude – ‘stand over there with your back to me and your hands behind you.’

  Quick as a cat, Jude leapt for the door, but Rob was too fast for her, grabbing the arm of her coat. She managed to wriggle out of the coat, but he swiftly grappled her into immobility, the gun to her temple.

  ‘Try anything like that again, and I’ll kill you.’ He released his grip slowly, ready to apply restraint if she attempted flight again, but she put up no further resistance, though she managed to cast a look of mute appeal in Mark’s direction as she turned to face the wood burner. Rob would have to put down the gun and turn away from Mark, because tying someone up was a two-handed job. If Mark could manage to throw himself forward and get Rob on the ground, while she still had her hands free, maybe she could grab the gun and turn the tables. After all, hadn’t Mark had a public school education, where they stuffed you full of ideas of chivalry or better yet, dog-eat-dog survival skills? If ten years of school fees hadn’t garnered you a bit of initiative then what the heck was it all for? Surely this was exactly the sort of thing which had made the upper classes into leaders of men?

  She held herself taut, in readiness to respond in a millisecond when Mark made his surprise attack, but nothing happened. As she mechanically obeyed Rob’s orders to turn around and sit on the
other sofa, facing her hoped-for rescuer, she recalled that Mark was not after all upper class, but merely the son of a jumped-up, self-made industrialist. As if from another plane altogether, she noticed that she was entertaining some pretty bizarre thoughts, given her situation.

  ‘Don’t move, either of you.’ Rob’s voice was perfectly steady as he addressed them both. ‘Now then—’ he turned his eyes exclusively on her and she flinched as if struck – ‘I’ve asked you a question and I want an answer. You might recall us playing a little game once, where you had to pretend to hold out on me when I wanted some information. I’m going to give you a few minutes to consider your options, then when I come back you can choose how things are going to be, because either you tell me who that guy on your phone is, and what the fuck is going on, or we can resume the process of extracting information as practised back in Elmley Green – only this time, it won’t be a game. Get it?’

  She had turned her head away, but he grabbed her hair and forced her to look up at him. ‘I said, get it?’

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘I get it.’

  A solitary tear found its way into the corner of her mouth, its salty tang mingling with the unmistakable taste of blood where he had already hit her.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Stefan balanced his phone on the palm of his hand, watching as if he expected it to make a sudden move of its own volition, but the phone remained still and silent. He had cut the call off the moment he realized that it was a man’s voice on the line. Medlicott, he assumed. He’d never heard the guy speak, and even if he had, he probably wouldn’t have recognized his voice from no more than a snatch. ‘Who’s this?’ An angry voice – aggressive. Something must have gone wrong. He must have caught Jude using the phone and grabbed it from her, to see who she was calling. Stefan ran through the sequence again. The phone ringing, his own ‘hello’, followed by the interrogatory two words. Once he had cut the call off, the phone had not rung again. That must mean that Jude had sorted it. Jude was quick off the mark and always knew what to say.