by T. M. Logan
‘Mia had it on the train with her earlier, along with all of her other stuff in that bag. That’s all I know.’
He studies me, his eyes narrowing, as if trying to decide whether to believe me or not.
‘What I can’t work out, is why this place isn’t already crawling with cops.’ He holds up the coin-sized tracker between his thumb and forefinger, turning it over in his hand. ‘If they know where we are, why haven’t they kicked the door down ten minutes ago?’
‘Maybe they’re biding their time.’
He stares at me for a moment before his face creases into a small, joyless smile.
‘Nice try, Ellen. But I think not.’
‘Why would the police be tracking her anyway?’
‘Who else would it be?’
‘I don’t know.’ I shrug. ‘Unless . . . maybe Kathryn put it in there so she could find her way back to Mia?’
He grunts. ‘Unlikely.’
‘Why?’
He shakes his head, frowning.
He lays the GPS device flat on the table and smashes it with the butt of the knife. The metal case comes loose, revealing tiny circuit boards inside. He hits both pieces again, until they are cracked and bent out of shape.
‘What are you going to do?’ I ask quietly. ‘With us?’
‘Don’t worry yourself about that,’ he says, his voice a flat monotone. ‘It’s best if you don’t think about it.’
‘It’s rather difficult to think about anything else.’
‘If you really want to know, I’m waiting for dark,’ he says. ‘Then the three of us are going to go for a little drive. Somewhere nice and quiet, out of the way.’
My chest tightens, fear settling like a heavy weight on my breastbone.
‘Then what?’
He ignores my question.
‘Dominic?’
His head jerks up. It’s the first time I’ve used his name.
‘I’d advise you to tread carefully,’ he says.
‘Please just let her go. I’ll do whatever you want, but let Mia go. We can drop her off somewhere.’
He shakes his head, a small movement full of finality. ‘You don’t know who she is, do you?’ he says. ‘You don’t have the first idea.’
‘No. But I know she’s three months and one week old today and that she should be with her mother. She needs to be with her mother.’
‘That’s not going to happen,’ he says, looking away.
‘You think just because you’re her father, that gives you the right to do whatever you like?’
‘I’m doing what needs to be done.’
‘Please, Dominic.’ I soften my voice, making an effort to lower it. ‘You don’t have to go down this road. Mia is innocent in all of this, You know she is.’
‘Things have gone too far already.’ He tucks the gun into the waistband of his jeans. ‘Too much water under the bridge.’
‘I know you’re angry but you—’
‘Enough talking,’ he says, holding a hand up. ‘I have to go and fetch something. You need to put her down now.’
I put some sofa cushions onto the floor and lay Mia gently down on them as she sucks contentedly on one of her muslin cloths. Dominic gestures to me to sit back down in the chair, binding my hands with the duct tape again, then holds something up in front of me. My mobile.
‘What’s your unlock pattern?’
I tell him and he traces the pattern with a thick index finger. The phone comes to life, the screen filling with a picture of my tabby cat, Dizzy.
‘You can’t get out of this room, but in case you get any ideas about trying to, just remember that I know everything about you now, OK?’ He points at the phone. ‘I will come looking for you and I will find you. A day or a month from now, you’ll wake up one night and I’ll be standing there, at the end of your bed. Do you understand?’ He slips the phone into the pocket of his jeans.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘But I can’t look after Mia properly with my hands taped.’
‘I won’t be gone long.’
He puts the hood over my head again and the world goes dark, the fusty smells of the fabric filling my nose. Dirt, sweat, blood. I sense him leaning in close, his voice in my ear, hard and low.
‘Don’t move from that chair,’ he says. ‘Scream if you want, but this whole complex is abandoned and due for demolition next year, no one’s near enough to hear you. Miles of corridors and old studios, lots of sound-proofing, car parks on every side. I’m locking this door from the outside and there’s no other key.’
I hear his heavy footsteps crossing the room, the sound of the door closing and locking, his steps retreating into the distance and then nothing. Silence apart from the contented gurgles of Mia as she lies on sofa cushions, her little sounds muffled by my hood. I count off another sixty seconds in my head, my whole body shaking with adrenaline and fear, closing my eyes and straining every sense to hear another step, an echo, any noise to suggest he is still close by. Every instinct screaming the same thing: Go. Get out.
My hands are taped tightly behind me, low against the back of the chair so it is agonizingly painful to raise myself up to a standing position. Painful, but not impossible. My thighs burning, my shoulders feeling like they might pop out of their sockets, I raise myself up inch by inch until I can roll my body forward and slip my hands over the top of the chair to stand up properly. Breathing hard with exertion inside the hood, the dizziness comes on quickly. Don’t pass out. I bend at the waist, shaking my head from side to side until the hood comes off and falls to the floor. I pull in a deep lungful of breath, then another, while my eyes find Mia. The baby is cooing to herself contentedly on the sofa, the corner of a muslin cloth clamped in her mouth. I run to her, look her over. She seems OK.
A memory pulses through me. An image as familiar as my own face: the scorching heat of a silent day, drifting smoke, the acrid stink of burning diesel, vultures circling on thermals high above. Broken bodies lying in the desert sand.
Get her out of here.
There is a connecting door through to a small kitchen at the far end of the room. I rush over to it, my shoeless feet almost silent on the rough industrial carpet, and begin awkwardly pulling open drawers with my hands still taped behind me. Old plastic cutlery, brown-stained teaspoons, plastic straws. Nothing with a blade. But there is a row of old glass jars lined up behind the sink, lidless and clouded with age. In the other corner is a broomstick, cobwebbed to the wall. I back up to it and reach for it blindly, grasping it awkwardly in both hands. Holding it up behind me I swing it against the glass jars and in one quick motion sweep them all off the worktop, a succession of smashes – pop pop pop – as they shatter on the tiled floor around my feet. The sound is horribly loud in the silence and I freeze for a second, leaning towards the hallway, straining to hear any noise in response. Nothing. I kneel, feeling behind me for the biggest, sharpest piece of broken glass, holding it up and sawing against the duct tape that binds my wrists together.
My arms and wrists burn with the effort. Come on, come on. This is taking too long. I shift position, a shard of broken glass stabbing into the sole of my stockinged foot. Gritting my teeth against the pain, I keep sawing at the tape until I feel the first strand start to give, then the next and the next, until finally I can pull my wrists apart, the black tape still clinging to my skin. I kick more shards of glass into the corner as I go back into the conference room. I hop over to the nearest chair, stabbing pains arcing up my leg, and pull out a piece of broken glass embedded in the ball of my left foot, wiping a smear of blood against my sleeve.
One entire wall of the conference room is taken up with a series of floor to ceiling windows, with a sliding glass door in the centre that leads out onto a balcony overlooking the empty car park. The latch on the metal-framed glass door is broken, the lever snapped off. I haul on the door and feel a fresh surge of urgency as it slides noisily open on its rusted track. Just a few inches. I lean into it and haul again with a grunt of effort,
pulling the door open a full foot. It’s enough. Outside the air is cleaner, sharp and cold, the light fading fast. The balcony is functional, rust and dirt and drifts of rotting leaves, a waist-high metal barrier around the edge. We’re on the second floor, twenty feet above the car park and there’s no fire escape – but there is a drainpipe, with supporting brackets holding it to the wall every few feet. I test the pipe with both hands, trying to rattle it from side to side. It doesn’t move.
I can put Mia in the sling.
This is the way out.
A sound from below separates itself from the distant hum of traffic. A car. A big engine. I drop to my hands and knees. The BMW is back.
Bent double as I hobble back inside, my eyes search the room. Shit. Where is the sling? I had put it on the table, I thought, when I took Mia out of it and laid her on the cushions. I circle the room, pulling aside chairs, checking under the table, pushing aside a sleeping bag and a pile of clothes on one of the sofas. I have to find it. I’m pretty sure I can climb down the drainpipe – I’ve handled tougher descents before – but not one-handed. Not with a baby in my arm.
Tap. Tap. Tap. Footsteps on the stairs.
I freeze. The sliding door is there, a few feet away. The hood discarded on the floor, back inside the room.
Choose.
Footsteps in the corridor outside.
I could go, climb down, get away, raise the alarm. Find a house, a car, a phone, have the police here in minutes. That would be the smart move. I can just go.
But it has to be now. And I’d have to go alone.
10
I stiffen at the sound of the door unlocking, trying to slow my frantic breathing inside the hood. I keep my hands held low behind the chair, as if they’re still bound. I can’t leave without Mia. By the time I’ve raised the alarm and police have arrived, Dominic would be long gone, taking her with him.
The big internal door swings open on rusty hinges, closes again. The sound of a bunch of keys dropped on the table. Something heavier put down beside them with a metallic thud. The gun? A rustle of plastic bags. The tearing of a cardboard seal. A soft rustling.
Then silence.
The cut in the sole of my left foot throbs with pain. Have I left blood on the floor? I curl my feet under the chair to hide the injury, my tights torn and sticky with blood. With a jolt of fear I think of the broken glass on the tiled kitchen floor. If Dominic goes in there, he’ll know straight away that—
Mia cries out. Once, twice, little squeals of protest.
I sit up straighter, mustering all my restraint not to rise up out of the chair.
‘What are you doing to her?’ I say, a surge of panic tightening my stomach. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Shut up,’ he grunts.
Mia cries out again, a high-pitched yowl that feels like a knife to my heart.
He swears under his breath.
I plant my feet, get ready to tear off the hood and launch myself across the room at him.
‘Leave her alone!’ I shout.
Mia’s fallen silent.
I flinch as he pulls the hood from my head, blinking as my eyes adjust to the strip lights again.
‘Calm the hell down.’
‘What did you do to her?’ I try to lean around him to see the baby. ‘What did you do, you bastard?’
He stares at me for a moment, his bloodshot eyes on mine, grime caked into lines of tiredness around his eyes. Then he moves away, pulling out a chair from the conference table and collapsing back into it.
‘She’s fine.’
Mia is still there on the sofa cushions, blinking up at the ceiling, little legs kicking contentedly as she sucks on the corner of her muslin cloth. No obvious signs of injury.
I feel my limbs relax slightly.
Dominic takes a remote from the table and turns on the big flat screen TV on the wall, flicking channels until he finds the BBC News. Footage of a cricket match. He took my watch when we first arrived but this must be the end of the national bulletin, so it’s coming up to 6.30 p.m. He mutes the sound, pops open a can of Red Bull and takes a long drink, watching the silent images on the screen for a minute before turning back to face me.
‘I still don’t get it,’ he says. ‘I don’t get you.’
‘What’s not to get?’
‘Where you fit into all of this. If you were police, the place would be surrounded by now.’
I shake my head.
‘I’m not police.’
He thinks about that for a moment, glancing back to the TV again.
‘So who are you?’
‘I’m no one. I met a woman on a train and she asked me to hold her baby for a couple of minutes while she answered her phone.’
‘What else did she say?’
I think back to the conversation. It feels like it happened days ago, not hours, the tingle of adrenaline still keeping me fully present in each passing moment.
‘We just talked about the baby, mostly. She walked off the train at the next station and I found that note in the rucksack.’
He picks the note up off the table, reads it again.
‘And now here we all are,’ he says. His eyes go to the silent TV screen again, the national weather forecast.
‘What did you do to her?’ I say quietly. ‘To Kathryn? Did you shoot her?’
‘What?’ he says distractedly.
‘She was only young, not much more than a child herself.’
‘She knew what she was doing.’
‘You were calling her on the train earlier, weren’t you? Calling her over and over again, trying to find out where she was?’
‘Is that what she told you?’
‘She got off that train to draw you off. To lead you away from the baby, to protect Mia from you.’
He takes another long pull on the energy drink. ‘No.’
‘You were waiting for her at Seer Green. You found her, and then you came to find Mia. How did you even know where we were, anyway? We could have gone anywhere when we came out of Marylebone, and you weren’t on that train. But you still knew where we’d be.’
He indicates the sling, stuffed into his black rucksack.
‘GPS is a wonderful invention.’
I sift through the few facts in my grasp. It is the only explanation that makes sense.
‘You were tracking her too?’
‘I needed to know where she was going.’
‘You were stalking her.’
He snorts but says nothing, turning back to the TV, where the regional London news bulletin is just starting. The presenters, a young blonde woman and a grey-haired older man, stare seriously into the camera, their mouths moving silently as they introduce the first item.
‘But she didn’t know you’d put a tracking device in the sling,’ I continue. ‘So you did whatever you did to her and then came to find Mia, finish the job.’
He finishes the energy drink and crushes the can in his fist.
‘Sounds like you’ve got this all figured out, Ellen. So tell me, if you’re so clever, why didn’t you try to escape when I left you alone just now? I thought you might at least try to get the hood off.’
I curl my bleeding foot further under the chair, glancing again at the half-open door to the kitchen where broken glass is pushed into a corner. ‘I didn’t want to leave Mia.’
‘Someone else’s kid, someone you don’t even know? I don’t get it.’
‘That doesn’t surprise me.’
He shakes his head in disgust. ‘You have no idea what’s going on.’
I hesitate. ‘So tell me.’
‘The less you know, the better. For your own sake. The less danger you’ll be in.’
I look at him for the first time, really look at him, his bloodshot eyes and sallow skin. Try to see Mia’s features in his, in the face of this man who seems set on destroying his own flesh and blood.
‘You don’t have to do this, you know,’ I say. ‘Let me take Mia to the authorities, to the pol
ice.’
‘You really haven’t been paying attention, have you?’
‘You can just walk away. I won’t tell anyone about any of this, about you. I swear.’
‘Oh, you swear, do you?’ His voice is heavy with sarcasm. ‘Well that makes everything all right, doesn’t it?’
‘Just let me take Mia and—’
He shushes me with an outstretched palm. The news report has switched to a reporter standing outside a large redbrick building with a taxi rank behind her, people hurrying past. The screen switches again, to a still that looks like it’s been taken from a CCTV camera. The quality is not great, but there is no mistake who is in the picture.
A woman carrying a baby.
An image of me and Mia.
11
He sits up, rigid in his chair.
‘Shit,’ he mutters, stabbing at the volume button on the TV remote as the screen plays grainy black and white footage of me walking out of Marylebone train station a few hours ago.
‘. . . asking anyone who may have seen the woman in the Marylebone area to come forward with any information,’ the reporter says solemnly into camera.
Dominic hits rewind, his attention fully focused on the screen. He runs it back to the start of the bulletin as the two studio anchors introduce the lead story.
‘Police are investigating the abduction of a three-month old baby this evening and the disappearance of a twenty-four-year-old woman. The baby is thought to have been abducted on a journey into London earlier today. Here’s Alice Durham with more.’
The image switches to a young dark-haired reporter standing outside Marylebone station.
‘Concerns are mounting for the safety of Kathryn Clifton, who was last seen in the Amersham area earlier today and was believed to be travelling into London with a baby.’
The screen changes briefly to a still image of Kathryn, looking younger, smiling in a bridesmaid’s dress.
‘Police are also searching urgently for another woman who was captured on CCTV leaving Marylebone station with a baby earlier today.’ The image switches to the CCTV footage of me walking quickly out of the station, Mia in my arms. ‘Ms Clifton has not been seen since these images were taken and the police are becoming increasingly concerned for her safety. It’s thought that the woman captured in these security camera images could hold vital clues in the disappearance of Kathryn Clifton and the abduction of the baby. Detectives are asking anyone who may have seen the woman in the Marylebone area to come forward with any information. This is Alice Durham for ITV News London.’
