Kidnap

by Philip McCutchan

  Ag busied herself filling the plates. Mr Blundy sat down at the big scrubbed-wood kitchen table, obviously Auntie’s pride and joy, poor old trout. Mr Blundy, wondering when she would be allowed to see it again, ate ham slices and bread and butter with a good appetite and washed it all down with hot, thick cocoa. Ag, after she had taken the old lady’s liquid meal up, sat beside Harold Barnwell and thrust ham into his mouth. The kid, Mr Blundy thought, was doing himself pretty well in spite of what must be, or ought to be, any road, his fear and anxiety as to his future. After some cocoa had been poured in, his face seemed to glow with health — the air, of course, was keen and invigorating up here in the Dales and was doing him good already … Mr Blundy gave a rather maudlin smile. He said kindly, “Nothing to fret about, son. Just fill your boots. You’ll be nicely looked after. The missus and me, we like kids, see. That’s right, eh, Ag?”

  “Yes.” Ag shoved in more cocoa from the mug. “Anything else you’d like, is there?”

  “No.”

  Mr Blundy sat back, smiling still, nodding a little to himself. It was a homely scene, much more homely than he’d ever known it to be in Bass Street, Paddington. The cottage kitchen, the good air, the ham and bread and butter, the warmth from the Calor gas oven … pity about the wind and rain but all in all it was the good life out in the country, no doubt about that, and what with the kid, and Ag looking quite motherly considering … it was great. They might even miss Harold when he had to be decanted back into London’s roar. Depended how long before the Loop got results, of course, but the lad could even come to miss them and this nice homely scene when he went back to that posh school and all the teachers chivvying him around, do this do that, and the bell and all, maybe the cane. They were all sadists in the posh schools, never stopped caning and never mind the law on kids’ rights …

  Mr Blundy became aware of Harold’s eye on him, glinting again. Talk about disconcerting: not for the first time in his life Mr Blundy reflected on the self-confidence that came from being rich. He asked pleasantly, “What’s on your mind,son?”

  The glint increased. “You.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you. You’re both amateurs, aren’t you?”

  Mr Blundy’s face reddened. “Eh?”

  “You both seem what I’d call unprofessional. I’m sorry if I seem rude, but that happens to be the impression you’re giving me.”

  “Cheek!” Ag said, glowering. “Just you shut up and remember where you are.”

  The boy nodded off-handedly. “Yes. I say … that boot of yours. It’s a frightfully old car, isn’t it?”

  “No business of yours,” Ag said.

  Harold disregarded her. “I expect your idea is to abandon it when and if you get the ransom money.”

  Mr Blundy set his lips. The homely scene was evaporating — and there was truth around. Already it had been agreed that the old Granada would become totally lost after Harold had been handed back. Just a precaution, of course, but it was nasty that the facts of kidnap should be so closely approached by the victim. Harold went on with an air of amused detachment. “About time, I’d say. That boot — awf’lly wet and draughty. Awf’lly dismal drive.” He paused, surveying them with a lofty air. “Other things too.”

  “Eh?” Mr Blundy stared. So did Ag.

  “M18,” the boy said with relish. “Boroughbridge. Ripon. Wensleydale. Windersett.”

  “You —”

  “Aunt Ethel.”

  “You little —”

  “Walls, as I’m sure you know, have ears. So have boots. Specially your boot. You must have a split seam like a coal mine down the back seat. And you did talk rather loudly, didn’t you?”

  Mr Blundy shook. “Eavesdropping little bugger.”

  “Well, as I said, you know — amateurishness. It’s that element that’s going to get you caught. It’s so awf’lly stupid.”

  “Look,” Mr Blundy said in a high voice, having just had a suspicion, “you ever been kidnapped before, have you?”

  Harold Barnwell smiled, craftily, Mr Blundy thought. “Yes, I expect you’d like to know that. But I shan’t tell you. If I have … well, the police are going to jump to certain conclusions this time, aren’t they?”

  Mr Blundy, watched by Ag, got to his feet and walked up and down the kitchen, kneading his fingers nervously, back and forth past the Calor gas oven and its open door, thinking and thinking and becoming more and more worried as a result. Surely the Loop would have known about any previous kidnaps, it would be his job to investigate such things. That stood to reason. No, it was eye-wash, just a case of the kid trying to get them rattled once he, Mr Blundy, had given him his opening by asking the question.

  Amateurs!

  Bloody cheek.

  Amateurs at kidnapping maybe, but not at crime and the ways of the criminal and dodging the Bill.

  Mr Blundy stopped his pacing and looked down at Harold Barnwell, smug little brat he’d turned out to be. “Now look, son. It may come as a surprise to you to know I’ve been inside more times than —”

  “Ernest Blundy!”

  Mr Blundy jumped a mile. Ag looked shattered at her own indiscretion. Harold Barnwell gave a shriek of laughter, a real four-ale-bar guffaw. “Ernest Blundy. That’s going to be very useful to know, isn’t it? I did say, didn’t I, that you’re a couple of amateurs.”

  Mr Blundy shook with fear and anger. “Made a bloomer yourself, haven’t you?”

  “Oh? How?”

  “Telling us you know where you are. Daft, that — amateurish. Now we know you’ll be able to shop us after, eh? Lead the Bill to that poor old lady in bed upstairs —”

  “The poor old lady you spoke of as the old besom and the old trout?”

  Mr Blundy waved a fist in front of the boy’s nose. “Don’t push your luck, son. Think we’re going to have you talking to the Bill, which is what you’ll go and do, isn’t it, eh?”

  “Not necessarily.” Was there a touch of the scares now? “It depends whether or not you treat me properly. While I’m in your clutches.”

  “Ah — like that, is it? I said you’ll be treated proper. And you would have been. Different now, innit, eh? Very different — could be. Could be we collect and then do you in for safety’s sake. Didn’t think of that, did you? Daft little kid. Ever heard of High Force, have you?”

  “Yes. Forty-foot waterfall. Near Middleton-in-Teesdale. I’ve been there. It’s on the road to Alston, which is the highest —”

  “All right, all right. May go there again and all,” Mr Blundy said, sounding really savage. “May get chucked in and bloody decimated on the rocks under if you don’t watch out.”

  “Rubbish,” the boy said calmly.

  “Rubbish? Daft little —”

  “Because kidnappers never collect unless and until the victim is handed over, for one thing. For another, neither you nor the fat woman are murderers.”

  “Oh, yes?”

  “I’ve read somewhere,” Harold Barnwell said in a superior tone, “that the photographs of all murderers, and I repeat all murderers, and murderesses, show one feature in common: the eyes are on very slightly different levels, one set a shade higher than the other. Your eyes are not, neither of you.” He shook his head, smiling. “You won’t kill me … so don’t try to scare me that way. It simply won’t wash.”

  Eight

  “Little devil.”

  “Fat woman,” Ag said in an angry hiss. She flopped over in the bed, to fan Mr Blundy’s ear with heavy breathing. “Such cheek, kid of that age! How long before this ends, I’d like to know.”

  “Have to wait for the Loop, Ag.”

  “Go on for ever, most likely.”

  “Now look, Ag.” Mr Blundy sat up in the bed. “Things we have to sort out. One of us must be here all the time. Can’t go out together, see? And don’t let the old bag come down the stairs, not ever, not so long as we’re here. Keep her in bed. Do her gut and rheumatics good, will that. Look after the poor old soul. What she don�
�t see —”

  “Yes, all right, don’t go on and on. I know what I have to do. I just hope you do. Sure that kid’s okay for the night, are you? Wet, in the outside bog.”

  “He’ll be all right so long as he don’t drop down the hole. Auntie’s got her commode so I reckon he won’t get disturbed. And I put the gag back on, not that anyone’s likely to hear his noise.”

  Ag grunted and turned her body back the other way. That outside bog … Yorkshire men and women were tough, had to be to withstand earth closets, but the kid had been brought up posh and soft like. “Give him the blankets and pillows, did you?”

  “’Course I did.” Mr Blundy added with an invisible grin, “You getting fond of him or something?”

  “Not when he calls me the fat woman.”

  *

  Next day was lovely: clear blue skies with little fluffy white clouds scudding helter-skelter over the fells, the wind fresh rather than overpowering. Up and up rose the Pennine peaks, green and grey and mauve, with little sparkling streams running down the gills towards the river. It was a real pleasure to be driving along the A684. Mr Blundy hummed a little tune to himself: he was on top of the world, mentally as well as physically.

  Last night, at 0234 hours, this morning really, a miracle had taken place.

  There had been sex.

  It was really amazing how quickly the human body reacted to the Yorkshire air. Sex had become almost unprecedented in Mr Blundy’s life. He had made Aunt Ethel’s spare double bed shake and rattle like one of those old London trams his dad used to tell him about. The brass knobs had jiggled and spun like all-get-out and he’d wondered what Aunt Ethel would have thought had she been able to hear. And after that, the wonderful morning stealing through the little window — lovely! Even the BBC news broadcast on Ag’s transistor hadn’t been too alarming, no more than had been naturally expected: a kid had been reported missing after the racing at Brands and the Bill was on the look-out down south, but there was no mention of any possible kidnap and listening, as it were, between the lines, Mr Blundy guessed the Bill was dead flummoxed for leads.

  After the news, ham and fried eggs for breakfast and a visit to the outside commode to see to Harold. The kid, Mr Blundy found, was cold but fit, sitting tied to a heavy iron ringbolt set in the closet’s one stone-built wall, the others being of wood.

  “Don’t s’pose you’ve ever seen this sort of toilet,” Mr Blundy remarked as he removed the gag. “Primitive, they are, up here, like.”

  “Oh, I’ve seen them. As a matter of fact we have them at Haverstock.”

  Mr Blundy was very surprised. “You do?”

  “Yes. Only we call them lavatories. Haverstock’s a very old place with big grounds. In the old days, the servants used the earth lavs outside. Some of them had three seats in them.”

  “Cor. Not used now?”

  Harold shook his head. “Only to play hide-and-seek in. We go down on a rope.”

  “With all that dried …” Mr Blundy shook his head in amazement at how the other half lived. “Reckon there’s higher standards down Wapping way. Never know how the nobs live, do you, eh.”

  “We don’t live down there,” Master Barnwell said in a superior tone. “I can’t speak for you and Wapping, of course.”

  “Don’t be so rude. Don’t be so toffee-nosed neither.” Mr Blundy wagged a fist. “Don’t want to be duffed up, do you?”

  Harold clicked his tongue. “What a stupid expression — duffed up. Old-fashioned, too, isn’t it? I imagine you’re one of the illiterates we read so much about. Are you going to cook me some breakfast, or is the fat woman?”

  “Don’t you go on about the fat woman. I don’t like it.”

  “Sorry. Anyway, I’m awf’lly hungry. I’d like bacon and eggs. Lightly fried. Then toast and marmalade. Coffee, of course, not tea.”

  “You’ll be bloody lucky, I don’t think, Your Lordship —”

  “I expect you drink tea.”

  “Yes, I —”

  “The working classes do.”

  “Cocky little bastard. You’ll go hungry for all I care.”

  “Oh?” Harold lifted an eyebrow. “I call that very shortsighted.”

  So, in point of fact, did Mr Blundy. Harold had to be kept nourished. He aimed a swipe at the kid’s head and went back to the cottage and told Ag the kid would like ham and eggs the same as them.

  “Where’s he going to eat it?” Ag asked, busy at the Calor gas stove. “Not out there, is he?”

  “Don’t see why not.”

  “If you don’t, Ernest Blundy, I do. Catch things — it’s not hygienic. Don’t want him ill, do we?”

  “All right. Have him in. But guard the stairs against Auntie coming down.”

  “’Course.” Ag paused, breaking another egg into the frying-pan. “Can’t go on too long, can’t that. Been thinking like. She’s going to smell a rat soon. Auntie’s never been one to take to her bed, not for long she hasn’t.”

  Mr Blundy laughed. “Going to have to be, now.”

  “Nor one to take orders.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Mr Blundy said, steeling himself.

  Ag stopped frying and turned on him, hands on hips. “What’s come over you all of a sudden, getting all bossy?”

  “Yorkshire.”

  “Well, I wonder. Maybe it’s too much you-know-what.”

  Mr Blundy gaped. “Too much? Once after I don’t know how many years and you call it too much —”

  “Oh, don’t go on about it, sound like one of them sex fiends you do. Gives you ideas of being like masterful … getting on top of me like that. Self-control’s a blessing if you give it a chance. By the way, you’d best blindfold the kid before you bring him out in the open, right?”

  “Right,” Mr Blundy said, using self-control.

  *

  Alas for human frailty, every dog has his day but it doesn’t necessarily last all that long. Mr Blundy’s didn’t last the morning. Breakfast over, he’d had something nagging at his mind, he didn’t know why, it just did. A kind of premonition. Thus on that lovely bright morning, still thinking of the you-know-what during the night, he’d driven into Hawes, leaving Ag behind with the kid, to put through another phone call to the Loop. He wouldn’t ring again from Windersett, not so soon after the last call, because you never knew and the Bill might be more wily than he gave them credit for.

  Mr Blundy returned along the A684 from Hawes in a bitter and fearful frame of mind.

  God, how unlucky could you get?

  Already he felt the hand of the Bill upon his shoulder, saw the nick gates close, heard their forbidding thud. How many years for kidnap?

  The wonderful morning had gone, literally. Once again, rain gushed from above the Pennine Chain, cloud sat fast on Mr Blundy, gluing itself to his windscreen. Yorkshire, suddenly and viciously turning its worst face. Mr Blundy lived in a diving bell. All misted up inside and the bloody Sorbo pad left back at Auntie’s for use on the kid. He drove cautiously, peering and peeking, half expecting the Bill to show through the mountain mists. When at last he made the turn for Windersett, just seeing the sign before he hit it, he was almost gibbering to himself. Reaching Auntie’s lonely cottage, he shoved the car round the back, running it into the broken-down barn that he’d used the night before.

  As he approached the back door into the kitchen he heard sounds of anger.

  Ag.

  “Give me any more of your cheek and I’ll do you, rotten little pest!”

  Mr Blundy entered to see Ag’s arm raised and her big face red as a turkeycock, and Master Barnwell, bound but ungagged, smiling with cautious disdain from his hard upright chair. Mr Blundy noted that the kitchen window was curtained; evidently Ag had decided Master Barnwell was not to see an identifiable dale or fell, an unnecessary precaution in Mr Blundy’s view now that the little sod had already spoken of Windersett, but still.

  Ag lowered her arm and said, “Oh, you’re back.”

  “Am and a
ll. I —”

  “I can’t stand much more of that little horror. I can’t put up with his cheek —”

  “I always thought,” Harold said innocently, “that fat people were placid.”

  “There — see?” Ag raised a fist again. “I’ve had a dreadful morning, really dreadful, Ern.”

  “Put him back in the bog,” Mr Blundy said reasonably. “With his gag on.”

  “It’s all very well you —”

  Masterfully, since having been accused of it he might as well act up, Mr Blundy moved towards the upright chair and made to replace the gag and blindfold.

  “Just a moment,” Harold said with that unwelcome gleam back in his eye.

  “What?”

  “I just thought we might have a chat about motor racing. You’re a fan.”

  “S’pose I am. So what?”

  “Who d’you support?”

  “Nigel Mansell.”

  Harold made a rude noise. “Ayrton Senna’s the greatest.”

  “No he’s not. Nigel Mansell —”

  “Nigel Mansell couldn’t drive a bus. I bet you were pretending to be Nigel Mansell when you drove up here, weren’t you? I mean, you can’t drive either. Nigel Mansell —”

  “Any more out of you,” Mr Blundy snapped, “and you’ll get duffed up, all right?”

  “Not that silly expression again. I repeat, Ayrton Senna’s the greatest —”

  “Nigel Mansell, he knocks spots off —”

  “Oh, leave him, do.” This was Ag, large and angry, looming close. “Can’t you see, he’s only trying to gain time out of the bog? You’d fall for anything, you would, call yourself intelligent? I dunno …”

  “All right, all right.” Mr Blundy seized gag and blindfold again and reapplied them to Harold. Slacking off the rope binding the boy to the chair, he lifted him, got him on the move for the door and bundled him out towards the earth bog. “Ayrton Senna my backside,” he muttered balefully as he secured Harold to his ringbolt and came out stern first. Locking the door, he returned to the kitchen, his face working with anger and anxiety, and when he got there he saw that he’d got the kid out just in time: Auntie was down again.