Fragile Lives

by Jane A. Adams

  Big mistake, Coran thought. Haines should know better than to give the opportunity for relationships to be established but he’d let that extra bit of opportunistic greed get the better of him this time.

  Coran set the half-empty mug down on the counter and gestured that they should get on with it. Reluctantly, she followed him up the stairs.

  Minutes later the twins were stowed in the boot of Coran’s car, unconscious and, at Tina’s insistence, wrapped in the bed quilt. They were still in the nightclothes they had been wearing the night Haines’s men had taken them from their beds.

  ‘You sure they won’t suffocate?’ Tina fretted.

  Coran sighed. ‘It’s a bloody hatchback. Look, parcel shelf, not some posh saloon with an airtight boot. They’ll be fine.’ Fine as long as Daddy cooperated.

  Coran did not yet know that Goldman was out of the game and sitting in a police cell.

  Twenty-Seven

  It had been hard to get anywhere with Mrs Goldman, the woman was so deeply distraught she couldn’t string a sentence together never mind a consecutive thought.

  The female officer had been, Mac thought, a major help and he doubted he’d have got anywhere without her. She had held Sheila Goldman’s hand, quite literally, and kept them all supplied with coffee strong enough to rival Eden’s. She had found stale biscuits in a tin and gently force-fed Sheila, telling her the sugar would help her think. She told her what to do and slowly Sheila Goldman obeyed and when she told her finally that if Sheila answered Mac’s questions it would improve the chances of getting her children back, she obeyed that suggestion too.

  Mac began to wonder if the officer had been taking lessons from Tim.

  ‘How did your husband get involved with Haines?’

  ‘He did some work for him, Roger used to administer some charity funds. Roger told me he’d borrowed some money. His words. Haines found out and blackmailed him. He’s been blackmailing him ever since, one way or another.’

  ‘Over the same mistake?’

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. I think he just kept dragging Roger a little deeper and a little deeper and now he’s drowning.’

  She showed him Roger’s computer but she didn’t know the password to the files. She thought they might be the children’s names. She told him Randall had been talking about some kind of money transfer and that Roger had said he was blackmailing him too. Roger had been scared of going to prison but that now seemed like an easy option compared to … compared to ‘waiting for the news that our beautiful girls are dead’.

  ‘There’s every reason to believe that Haines has kept them alive,’ Mac said, earning himself an angry look from Penny, the female officer. He didn’t know that, the look said. He had no right to make promises.

  ‘He’s always returned the abductees before,’ Mac added. Almost always. ‘We are doing all we can to find them.’

  She nodded but he could see that hope had died long ago and she could tell him nothing more. She wanted to sleep now, let go of the world for a while.

  He watched as the doctor took her upstairs, promising a sedative. Promising peace. It was starting to get light outside, just a lighter glimmer through the cloud grey.

  ‘Do you really think they might still be alive?’ Penny asked him.

  ‘I hope they are,’ he said. ‘Sometimes that amounts to one and the same thing.’

  His mobile rang. It was Rina. They had, she said, found the farm.

  Twenty-Eight

  Coran had been gone ten minutes when Mac got the call but Rina knew nothing about that. By the time teams had been mobilized, road blocks in place, the police operation underway, Coran and the children were long gone.

  Stan, chafing at the delay, had the premonition that they had left things too late. Unable to settle, he paced the lay-by, even though Rina told him over and over that he should leave. He seemed unconcerned now that Mac might take him in. Chafing at the fact that he had been ready to act and then been talked out of action, the unused adrenalin would not let him rest.

  Fitch, leaning against the car, watched him.

  ‘Take him away, Fitch,’ Joy said.

  ‘You want me to thump him like he did you?’ Fitch half joked. ‘I don’t see any other way of getting into the car without a full-scale row.’

  Joy slumped back against the seat, not wanting her one-time enemy to risk himself any more.

  ‘He has the right to his own choices,’ Rina told her gently. ‘If he wants to stay and let the consequences play out, there’s not much we can do.’

  Lights came up the lane and just before the third car pulled up in the lay-by, Stan slipped into the back of Fitch’s car and lay down out of sight.

  DI Kendal emerged from the police car.

  ‘The redoubtable Mrs Martin, I presume,’ he said. ‘Mac said to tell you he was on his way, but you’re to brief me and Sergeant Tyson here first. He’s our chief firearms officer, he and his men will be the ones taking the risks so …’

  Fitch briefed the officer, Kendal listened as the men fell into the shorthand of those used to military matters. Kendal opened the door and slid into the driver’s seat. ‘Hope you don’t mind but it’s bloody freezing out there and I’m feeling a bit surplus to demands.’

  ‘Join the club,’ Tim said. ‘Definitely spare part material.’ He stuck a hand between the seats. ‘Tim Brandon. Cold, tired, hungry and really desperate for something to do.’

  The girl beside him laughed.

  ‘And I’m guessing you must be Joy Duggan,’ Kendal said.

  ‘Yeah, sure am. And feeling equally spare.’

  The sergeant tapped on the window and Kendal got out again, conversed and then opened the door.

  ‘Go home, Mrs Martin,’ he said. ‘Spin the car around and go back the way you’ve come.’

  Tim took his place in the driver’s seat, swung the car in the narrow lane and began to head back to Frantham.

  ‘What about Stan and Fitch?’ Joy asked.

  ‘So far as I can see they’re both in Fitch’s car,’ Tim told her glancing in the rear view. ‘I’m guessing Kendal chose not to see him dive into Fitch’s car, but I don’t imagine the reprieve will last.’ He sighed. ‘Rina, darling, am I the only one that’s feeling rather, well, deflated?’

  ‘Flat as a pancake,’ Rina told him.

  In the back seat of the car, reaction seemed finally to have caught up with Joy Duggan and she began to cry.

  Arriving back at Peverill Lodge another shock was waiting for them; the mess Haines’s men had left behind when they had come looking for Joy and Stan.

  Rina stared at the smashed glass and the mud from the spilt pot plants, the torn curtains and slashed cushions.

  ‘We should call the police,’ Tim said wearily.

  ‘And have them do what?’ Rina demanded. ‘Compound the mess by flicking fingerprint powder all over the place. I think not.’

  Stan had found the dustpan and brush and begun to sweep up the glass. Fitch, typical ex-soldier that he was, had made a beeline for the kettle.

  ‘Do you think we’re safe here?’ Joy asked a little tremulously. ‘What if they come back?’

  ‘I doubt they would risk that,’ Rina told her. ‘By now they know you’ve both been here and gone. They’ll have seen your wet clothes upstairs.’ She sighed. ‘Oh, I do hope they haven’t made too much of a mess. The Peters sisters will never cope.’ She stiffened her already ramrod back. ‘I’d better go and look.’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ Joy said. ‘I’m sorry, Rina, I feel like it’s all my fault.’

  ‘What? For getting kidnapped?’ Tim asked, which, Joy figured, sort of put it in perspective. ‘Look, it’s just mess. I’ll get the vacuum cleaner out and when we’ve set things to rights I suggest we get some breakfast. I don’t know about anyone else, but all this excitement and all this let-down has left me starving.’

  Fitch concurred as did Stan. Rina led the way upstairs and was relieved to find th
at the intruders had focused their efforts on the ground floor. ‘It could have been a lot worse,’ she said.

  Joy nodded, then she flopped down on Rina’s bed and once more gave in to the tears.

  Rina didn’t try to stem the flow. Pain had to find its way out of a body if the body was ever going to heal. Rina knew all about loss and pain. She sat down beside Joy and put an arm around her shoulders, thankful that all she had lost this time were a few possessions. Belongings could be fixed with a bit of glue, or failing that, consigned to the rubbish bin. It was the people who really mattered and who were, when it came down to it, the really fragile things.

  Those in the farmhouse had been on high alert since Coran had left, not knowing what to expect.

  One man was immaterial, but Coran had said that Stan was not alone. Did that mean just a single addition to expected company or, as Coran had suggested, did it mean that he had indeed co-opted Duggan’s people?

  What they did not expect was a police car to come, bold as brass, down the narrow drive and be joined by a second.

  Looking out of the side window, Grogan could see that they were not alone. Armed police in the field beyond the house and now in the outbuildings, right in the farmyard. Then overhead, the unmistakable sound of a helicopter.

  Grogan swore, convinced now that Coran had betrayed them.

  Kendal was in radio communication with Tyson but had been kept well back, frustratingly well back. Mac joined him at the end of the drive.

  ‘What do we know?’

  ‘Not a lot yet. There are at least six men and a woman inside, we’ve every reason to believe they’re all armed, but the location of the farmhouse doesn’t exactly lend itself to a subtle approach. We’ve just got to hope they’ll see sense and won’t use the kids as bargaining chips. Your friend Rina keeps some odd company, by the way. I’ve got the feeling I should have made a few arrests before we got this far.’

  He looked speculatively at Mac, who shrugged.

  ‘I figured, better to deal with one problem at a time,’ he went on.

  Mac nodded this time. ‘Generally the best way, I find.’

  The radio crackled. Tyson telling them that so far there’d been no response from inside the house. They could hear Tyson’s voice echoing back down the narrow drive.

  ‘Armed police. Come out with your hands up.’

  ‘Last thing we want is a siege situation,’ Kendal fretted. ‘Not with kids inside. How are the parents holding up? Anything from Randall yet?’

  ‘Randall’s house mysteriously burned down an hour after his arrest,’ Mac said. ‘By the time the fire brigade got there it was too late to do anything but watch.’

  ‘You’re kidding?’

  Mac shook his head. ‘Randall is refusing to speak until his solicitor arrives and as he’s coming in from London, we’re still waiting on that.’

  ‘And the Goldmans?’

  ‘Mrs Goldman told me what she could, but it wasn’t much. We’ve taken his computer, but like everything else to do with so-called information technology, I expect it will be a while before we get any. Information, that is. Mr Goldman is sitting tight, refusing to say a word until we’ve found his kids. I can’t say I blame him.’

  ‘Trying to make amends, is he? Bloody fool. If he’d come to us earlier …’

  ‘They’d be dead,’ Mac asserted. ‘If he’d come and fessed up to his first mistake, Haines would have had nothing on him, but that wouldn’t necessarily have ensured their safety. From what I hear, Haines is a vicious bastard and we might well have been dealing with two dead babies instead of two possibly dead children.’

  ‘Not a nice thought. You think there’s a chance they’re still OK?’

  Mac didn’t know what to think. ‘In one sense,’ he said. ‘I’d be more reassured if we do end up with them trying to bargain. If they’ve got something to bargain with, it makes it more likely the kids will survive.’

  From inside the house there was still no word. At the top of the drive, Tyson tried again.

  Mac and Kendal waited, wondering if the continued silence was a good or dreadful sign. Mac glanced at his watch. It was seven fifteen.

  Twenty-Nine

  Dawn had arrived, bright, clear and with a drop in the vicious wind. The skies, though still a tad grey, no longer glowered and the sun made a brave effort to force its way through.

  Staring out through his window, George knew he could not face school that day. Cheryl had said last night that if he needed the day to get his head together, she’d phone in for him and he decided he would accept her offer. What had happened with Paul that previous morning now seemed a long way off but, oddly, the conversation he’d had with Paul’s mother yesterday evening still echoed in his head and sounded in his ears as if it still went on.

  Add to that the fact that he’d had very little sleep.

  He trotted downstairs to talk to Cheryl. She was in the kitchen talking to one of the officers and, from the body language of both, George gathered that they quite liked the look of one another. Would romance blossom from a night of storms and threatened psychopaths?

  ‘You staying off?’ she asked him, seeing him in the doorway.

  He nodded.

  ‘Right you are. Get some sleep and then catch up with your homework, yeah?’

  George turned and went back to his room. He knew he’d now be the subject of conversation in the kitchen. Cheryl was mindful of confidentiality so far as she thought it useful, but she seemed to see it as her mission in life to campaign for sympathy on behalf of her charges and that, George had quickly realized, often led to her indulging in something that was very close to gossip.

  A week ago, he thought, and he might really have resented that. Now he either didn’t care, or he saw it in some odd way as parental and therefore rather comforting.

  Confused by his own thoughts, he tumbled into bed and finally managed to sleep, woken only and briefly by the stampede down the stairs and the second surge as the house emptied into the minibus and departed down the drive.

  Back at the farm they were still playing the waiting game. An hour had passed, no one had been seen through the downstairs windows, but Tyson was reluctant to send his men forward until he had established the risks. The fact that he stood openly on the gravel in front of the house, shouting up at the windows and in full view, he didn’t really class as risk. No one had shot at him in the first few minutes and experience told him that was generally a good sign.

  He’d been told that a negotiator had been mobilized but he was coming all the way from Bristol. Tyson hoped this would all be over long before he arrived.

  ‘You aren’t going anywhere,’ he said reasonably. ‘The place is surrounded by armed police. Lay your weapons down, come out with your hands up.’

  He watched carefully for signs of life, thought he caught sight of something move in an upstairs room, but for all the response he was getting he might have been shouting at an empty house.

  Grogan had moved everyone to the first floor while he considered what to do. He sat on the top step, looking down the stairs towards the front door, listening to the man burning up his lungs outside.

  ‘I count fifteen,’ Thompson said, joining him. ‘And a helicopter. We’re not going to get out of this any way but walking through that door.’

  ‘If Coran hadn’t taken the kids …’

  ‘But he has.’

  ‘They don’t know that.’

  Thompson shrugged. ‘You’re the boss,’ he said, but Grogan could hear the sarcasm in his tone. He got up, went into the first-floor bedroom, keeping low as he crossed to the window. Standing to one side he could see the officer standing in the middle of the gravel frontage to the house. He could glimpse others in the field beyond. True, with a high-powered rifle he could probably have picked off a few, could have got the man in front with what he’d got now, but they weren’t armed ready for a fire fight. Come out fighting, Grogan thought, and they’d all end up dead.

  He rea
ched around, and with the hand grip of his pistol, smashed a hole in the window. ‘Back off, or we’ll kill the kids.’ The reaction from those below told him they had understood. Grogan breathed hard. He had committed them all now, told the police they meant business, he’d demand transport and money and—

  ‘You bloody mad?’ Thompson hissed from the doorway. ‘Look, the kids have gone, there’s nothing we can do, nothing to bargain with.’

  ‘They don’t know that. If they think we’ve still got them we’ve got a way of getting out of here.’

  ‘And what happens when we try to leave and they realize there’s something missing. Like two somethings, about this high.’ Thompson held his hand up as though measuring one of the twins.

  ‘I’ll insist they back off far enough so they can’t see,’ Grogan insisted.

  ‘Oh, sure, they’re really going to do that. Grogan, these are kids we’ve been holding. Little children. We lost the sympathy vote long ago. They want us, Grogan, and dead or alive ain’t going to matter to them, you mark my words.’

  ‘And what do you suggest we do?’

  ‘What the man says. Walk out, hands up. Coran sold us out. We get out of here and we sell Coran, Haines, the whole bloody lot. Bargain.’

  Grogan swung the gun around, Thompson in his sights. ‘One move and I’ll make sure it’s your last.’

  ‘Grogan, don’t be so bloody stupid.’

  ‘Stupid, is it?’

  ‘One shot and they’ll be in here like a swarm of frigging wasps. They think we’ve got kids in here, remember?’

  Grogan turned his attention back to the window. Thompson took up position on the stairs.

  Outside, Tyson realized that there was something going on. He’d caught the tone of a conversation, the sudden anger from the man beside the window even though the words eluded him. He had seen the movement as the gun hand just briefly crossed his line of sight.

  ‘I think we have dissension in the ranks,’ he reported to Kendal.