by T. M. Logan
‘What the hell were you doing in that bloody café anyway? I was about to come in there and drag you out.’
‘She was hungry, I had to feed her.’
He points over my shoulder, at a road up ahead.
‘Take the next right. The filter lane, there.’
I do as I’m told, guiding the big car into a gap in the traffic.
‘Are you going to shoot me?’
‘I’m thinking about it.’
I drive on, snatching a glance at Mia in the sling against my chest. She’s fretting, whimpering quietly, tiny fists rubbing at her eyes. The warmth of her body radiates through the cotton of my blouse.
‘Shhh,’ I whisper. ‘It’s OK, Mia. You can sleep.’
Mia’s eyes are heavy but she’s still fighting sleep, little grunts and sobs escaping her as she shifts in the carrier.
‘You were the one calling Kathryn when she was on the train,’ I say slowly. I feel a pang of sadness for Kathryn, at what this man might do when he catches up with her. Is he a jealous ex, out to punish her for leaving him, humiliating him by taking their baby away? ‘You’re her other half, aren’t you?’
‘Where the hell were you even going with the baby strapped to you?’
‘To a police station. West End Central.’
‘Christ,’ he says. ‘Good thing I found you then.’
‘Where are we going now?’
He leans closer, his breath hot against my ear.
‘Enough talking. Just drive.’
The right filter light turns green and I accelerate smoothly across the dual carriageway. He’s moved the gun away now, I can’t feel it jabbing through the back of my seat. I run through the possibilities. We’re heading north-west, away from central London. At some point soon we’ll have to stop, to get out again. If there are more people around then, all I have to do is get him to draw the pistol, to show it. One witness calling 999 will bring an immediate armed response from the Met.
Unless he is taking us somewhere remote. Somewhere without witnesses.
I shiver, wondering again if he’s less likely to shoot while we’re moving in traffic, or if he’s deranged enough to do it anyway. It’s better to act sooner, before he can completely control the situation. As if in answer to my prayers, a police car pulls up at the lights opposite us across a box junction. Two officers in front, a man and a woman in high-vis gear. My pulse ticks upwards. I could flash the headlights at them, get their attention. Maybe they would follow us, pull us over. Or I could turn across the junction, right across their path. I could hit the gas and just aim the BMW at them—
‘I know what you’re thinking.’ His deep voice is inches from my ear. ‘And if you so much as give those cops a funny look, the first bullet will blow your spine clean through your chest. Are we clear?’
From behind me comes the unmistakeable click of the pistol being cocked, the blunt steel barrel pushing again into the small of my back. I tear my eyes away from the police car and look down. Rocked gently by the motion of the car, Mia is dozing again, oblivious, her head resting against my chest.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘We’re clear.’
The light turns green and I pull smoothly away.
8
We drive in silence for about fifteen minutes before he directs me off the main road and onto a leafy suburban street. He gets out and opens my door and for a moment I consider running, shouting, trying to get away, but even if I could push past him there’s no way I can outrun him with Mia strapped to my chest. Instead we switch places quickly, as he watches for passers-by with one hand on the butt of the pistol, before pushing me into the back.
‘Now lie down,’ he says. ‘Flat, along the seat. And keep your eyes shut.’
I lie down slowly across the back seat using both hands to cushion Mia’s body against mine. The baby snuffles but doesn’t wake.
‘Where are you taking us?’
‘And stop bloody talking.’
Lying here is uncomfortable, and I have to fold my legs behind the passenger seat, supporting Mia’s head to make sure she isn’t bumped or startled by the sharp turns and hard acceleration of the BMW now that the man is behind the wheel. The baby sleeps on, oblivious. We’re almost face to face, so close I can feel her little warm breaths on my skin. I feel my heart filling again, overflowing with a fierce love, an all-consuming desire to shield her from harm.
This is what Kathryn was trying to protect her baby from. This man. This danger. Dominic.
But he’s found us anyway. And it seems clear to me that his interest is the baby: if he can’t punish his ex, he will take out his anger on what she loves the most. The only reason he’s taken us both is because he couldn’t quickly separate us on St George Street. And now I’m a witness, a loose end, someone who could identify him, his car, his movements.
But the realisation brings no fear with it, only a grim certainty that I have no one else to rely on. I have to get myself – and Mia – out of this situation. Think. I can smell worn black plastic seats. Oil and dirt and fried food. Something else, dark and earthy. I open my eyes a fraction and can make out street lights and trees upright against the grey London sky. The upper floors of office buildings. Moving more quickly than before, but still stopping and starting with traffic and red lights. I can see Dominic’s profile, the angle of his jaw, a trace of dried blood behind his ear. I can’t shake the feeling that there is something else familiar about him, but not from today, not from the train. Something about his face, like someone I had seen or known a long time ago. From an old job? Or had I seen him on the TV or a news story online?
I look in the footwell for anything I can use as a weapon. An empty coke can, a bottle opener, a thick AA map book. Underneath the book is a glimpse of white. Slowly, carefully, I reach down and push the map book out of the way. Beneath it is a white phone charging cable. I stretch out my hand towards it and manage to grasp the end in my fingers. If I could somehow loop that around his headrest, around his neck, and pull tight enough he would have to stop the car and if I can keep the pressure on—
‘Keep your hands where I can see them,’ he says over his shoulder. ‘And keep your eyes shut, like I told you.’
I drop the cable onto the floor and return my hand to the back of the sling.
I count sets of sixty in my head as we drive; I’ve counted fifteen minutes when I feel the car slowing to a stop. I hear Dominic’s door open, the creaking of metal on metal, then the slam as he gets back in. The car moving off, more slowly this time, taking a series of turns close together and then a long slow loop. From my position, flat on the back seat, I can see the top of a roof, a large building, industrial grey, streaked with dirt and green stains reaching down from the roof line.
Finally, Dominic kills the engine and gestures at me to sit up. We’re in a large car park but there isn’t a single other vehicle: hundreds of spaces, all empty, just drifts of leaves and plastic bags and other rubbish stirred gently by the early evening breeze. We’re parked close to the back door of a large high-sided building with no windows, some kind of warehouse, three or four storeys high. It looks abandoned.
‘What is this place?’
As soon as I shuffle out of my seat and climb out of the car, he reaches up and puts some kind of hood over my head. My world goes dark, the cool afternoon air replaced with a reek of dirt and body odour. Something else too, coppery and sharp. His strong grip encircles my upper arm and pulls me forward, Mia’s head still just visible through a gap at the bottom of the hood, glimpses of cracked concrete and paving slabs beneath my shuffling feet. The squeal of rusted hinges as a door opens, closes, a change in the atmosphere. A smell of neglect, of wet carpet and rot, stale air and decay, dark carpet tiles under my feet as we move into the building. Sounds are muffled because of the hood but I can hear the soft padding of our footsteps echoing back to us in the silence. Dominic leads me straight on before pulling me into a left turn, then a right, until I feel him pause.
‘Stai
rs,’ he says.
I take them slowly, one hand groping for a banister rail and the other around Mia’s back in case I stumble, the echo of our shoes tapping back to us against a roof some way above. We turn left at the top of the stairs, another long corridor that smells strongly of damp and mouldering carpet. The flat tapping sound of dripping water. There is another left turn and then he pulls me through a door and slams it shut, the solid click of a lock turning.
He pulls me forward again, turns me until my legs are backed up against something.
‘Sit.’
I sit back slowly onto something spongy and uneven. I can hear him moving around, putting things down, the click of a light switch. Through the bottom of the hood I can see Mia’s peaceful face as she dozes, her head lolling against the baby harness. Then, without warning, Dominic rips the hood from my head and I blink in the sudden brightness. I’m on a stained orange sofa in a large room, the opposite wall made up entirely of glass. The place is – or was – a meeting room of some kind, with a long table in the centre surrounded by orange chairs. Orange fabric sofas against three walls. Above us, circling the room, are poster-sized caricatures of men and women, orange tans and shoulder pads and huge exaggerated grins. Some tattered and ripped, others merely faded with time. A few of the faces look vaguely familiar. Actors? Game show hosts? The whole place has a 1980s faded showbiz feel to it, a sense of former glories long past. It’s a mess, strewn with belongings: clothes, plastic bags, sheets of paper. There’s an old sofa in the corner with a sleeping bag on it, a small camping stove on the floor beside it with tins of food. Dominic is clearing a space at the end of the long meeting table.
‘Put the baby on the sofa over there,’ he says without looking at me.
I stay where I am, both hands around Mia’s back. I have to keep her close, to make sure we don’t get separated.
‘She’s still sleeping,’ I say quietly. ‘I can keep her in the sling for a bit longer.’
He pulls the black pistol from his waistband and holds it casually down by his side, staring at me with red-rimmed eyes.
‘I’m not going to tell you again.’
I stand and lift Mia gently out of the sling, laying her down against the back edge of the sofa so she doesn’t roll off, putting the toy octopus on a muslin cloth next to her. She snuffles and frowns but doesn’t wake.
‘Now take off your jacket, your shoes and your watch,’ he says. ‘Empty your handbag on the table and take everything out of the rucksack.’
‘Whatever’s happened between you and Kathryn, there must be a way to make it right,’ I say. ‘But you can’t take it out on Mia. Please.’
He goes to the sofa and holds the pistol over the baby’s sleeping form, the black muzzle barely a foot from her little chest.
My heart rises up into my mouth.
‘OK, OK, please, I’ll do it.’
‘This is going to get boring really quickly if you want to have a discussion every time I ask you to do something. And sooner or later, I don’t know, my finger might slip.’ He mimes the recoil of the pistol going off. ‘Boom.’
‘Don’t,’ I say quickly. ‘Please don’t do that. Please.’
I do as he asks, placing everything on the table.
‘Now put your arms out just like you’re at the airport.’
He leans in close and pats me down, rough but thorough, running his hands down my front and back, arms and legs, the smell of stale cigarettes strong on his breath. He tells me to sit down again, duct taping my wrists together behind me. He takes off his baseball cap, dark ginger hair flattened against his head. He runs a hand through it, back and forth, raking his fingers across his scalp, then starts to go through my handbag, examining each item as if it might hold some hidden secret. Opening the lipsticks, flicking through the diary, emptying everything out of my purse and feeling inside the bag’s fabric lining.
I study him while he works. He is heavy with muscle, thick knots of it around his shoulders and arms. His beard is too long to be smart, but not long enough to be an actual full beard. Ragged and uneven, more like he has simply stopped shaving and hasn’t bathed in a while. There are deep, dark shadows beneath his eyes.
‘What are you looking for?’ I say. ‘Because whatever it is, I haven’t got it.’
‘You’re not carrying ID?’
‘I’m not at work today.’
‘And where do you work?’
‘I told you, I’m a project manager for an aerospace and defence company.’
He grunts.
‘If you say so.’
Mia gurgles, awake now, and I instinctively try to stand to check on her.
‘Sit.’ He stares at me, his eyes hard.
Slowly I sit back down as he takes a knife from his jacket pocket. It has a short, wide blade and he goes to work with it on my shoes, a pair of soft brown loafers, prising at the heel and the leather inner. As I watch, he works the blade into a gap and saws back and forth until the whole heel comes free with a snap. He studies it, turning it over in his hand, before throwing it towards an overflowing rubbish bag in the corner.
‘Can I at least have my shoes back now?’ I say when he is finished. ‘Please.’
He throws both shoes into the pile. ‘You won’t be needing them.’
I swallow hard, my throat dry, absorbing the implication of his words.
‘What are you actually looking for?’
‘You really want to play this game?’
‘What game?’ I say, trying to keep my voice level. ‘I have literally no idea what you’re talking about.’
He sighs, unscrewing a ballpoint pen from my bag and pulling out the tube of ink.
‘GPS trackers.’
‘Why would I be carrying one of those?’
He doesn’t reply. Instead, he begins working his way through everything in the rucksack, turning each item over in his hand, feeling the seams, shaking the bottles of formula milk, studying them. Paying particular attention to anything solid. He crushes two of the small tubes of ointment under his boot and crouches down to examine the remnants. Finally, he picks up the empty rucksack and shoves the knife into it, ripping the blade through the fabric, slashing at it, slicing off the straps, cutting into the plastic base, pulling out the lining and opening up all the seams. Prying into each piece of the ruined bag, squeezing it, turning it this way and that, before finally sweeping all the pieces off the table with a shout of frustration.
‘Shit!’ he shouts.
Mia flinches at the sudden noise, then goes back to chewing on the tentacle of the octopus toy.
His head swivels towards the baby, studying her, his eyes narrowing.
He stands and walks towards her, the broad-bladed knife still in his hand.
9
Mia whimpers in alarm, the sound like a fist clenching around my heart. Dominic stares down at her with something in his eyes that I can’t quite read. Anger? Pain, maybe. Or grief. After a moment he reaches out towards the baby with his left hand.
‘Don’t hurt her,’ I gasp. I try to rise in my seat but it’s painfully awkward with my wrists taped together behind me. ‘Please.’
He levers the octopus toy out of Mia’s grasp, her little mouth opening in surprise. Then her face crumples and she begins to cry, her little legs kicking in frustration.
He ignores her, going back to the big conference table and examining the toy, squeezing it, rolling the fabric of each tentacle between his fingers. He plunges his knife into it and begins sawing back and forth, prising open the cotton seam to reveal the stuffing inside. Mia continues to cry, a broken-hearted wail that makes every muscle in my body twitch with frustration that I can’t go to her, comfort her.
Without looking up, he says: ‘Get her to calm down, that noise is doing my head in.’
‘I think she wants to be held,’ I say. ‘But I can’t pick her up with my hands taped together.’
He puts the toy down with a whispered curse and comes to stand behind me, slicing
through the tape with a single stroke. The weapon has a serrated edge, and a ridged metal grip that fits across his knuckles. It’s some kind of fighting knife and up close is brutally ugly.
I pull the tape away from my wrists, a few hairs ripping away with it, pick Mia up and hold her against my chest, jigging her gently and trying to shush her.
‘Shh, Mia? It’s OK, it’s all right.’
The baby grizzles, calms for a moment, then gives a short, hiccupping cry that dissolves into more grizzling. She’s been fed less than an hour ago. Could she be hungry again already? I lift the baby higher, turn her and give her a sniff.
‘She needs a nappy change,’ I say. ‘She might quieten if I can change her.’
He gestures to the contents of the ruined bag, scattered across the conference table.
‘Knock yourself out.’
I find a small changing mat in the pile and spread it out at one end of the table, laying Mia on top of it and trying to remember all the things I’ll need in the order I’ll need them. Charlie, my youngest godson, is a wriggler, and likes to try to crawl off the changing table, which means you have to have everything lined up and ready at hand before you start. Nappy sack open, three wipes, tissues, Sudocrem, new nappy, hand sanitiser. What else? A new sleepsuit in case of leaks. I start to undress the baby, gently pulling her little arms and legs out of the sleepsuit, grateful that there are no bruises like those that circled Kathryn’s forearm.
While I work, Dominic continues to attack the soft toy with his knife, as he swears under his breath.
When I’m attaching the Velcro straps of the new nappy, there is a thud as he sticks the knife blade into the wooden table. He comes to stand next to me, looming over us both as I feed Mia’s legs back into the sleepsuit. In the palm of his hand a small metal disc, the size and shape of a two pound coin.
‘Yours?’ he says.
‘What is it?’
‘What do you think?’
‘No idea, I’ve never seen it before.’
‘It’s a GPS tracking device,’ he says. ‘Decent quality, too. Any idea how it found its way inside the toy?’
