by James Nally
‘Are you doing a survey?’ he asks brightly.
‘No, I’m waiting for a phone call.’
He raises his arm. I flinch. Calmly, he reaches past me, lifts the receiver, checks for a dialling tone and replaces it. ‘Well it’s working,’ he says chirpily and returns to his pal. Kidnapper? Undercover cop? Mercury Communications telephone angel? Who knows.
A thunderous rumble grows inside the station. I step out from my glass arch to see an army of knackered, dead-eyed commuters march up a walkway towards me, looking set to sack the city. As they storm the ticket barriers, I scan their addled, timetable-enslaved faces.
Ready for anything and everything …
He could be one of them, ready to pluck the bag from my grasp and sprint to a getaway car.
No one stops. No one even looks. All hopes of a swift exchange evaporate.
I sag and step back, my back raging hot against the phone’s cold metal. The money bag’s strap burns a timely reminder into my left shoulder blade; I’m standing here alone with everything he wants. What if he’s watching me, planning to pounce? Who would save me?
I scan again. Those surveillance officers are either very good or very not here. The phone’s shrill ring lifts me six inches off the floor. I pick up, killing the ring and every other sound in the world, as if it has ceased spinning. I picture birds tumbling out of the sky, landing with a thud on Croydon concrete.
Cold hard plastic cools my scorching right ear. ‘Yes,’ I croak.
‘Tom Reynolds?’
‘That’s me.’
‘What’s your car reg?’ demands the Geoff Boycott sounda- like.
My addled mind empties like a toppled glass. I can’t even remember my own licence plate!
I whimper. He barks: ‘Make, model, colour?’
‘Nissan Bluebird. Maroon.’
I hear a muffled rustle. ‘Parked outside the station,’ I hear him say, faintly, as if to someone else. He’s got watchers!
‘Get back into your car,’ he demands, tetchily. ‘Follow signs for the M23 and A23 to Brighton. When you see a sign saying Brighton 8 miles, look out for the next left, the A273. Take the exit. On the left after 200 yards you’ll see a lay-by with two phone boxes. The first is a phone card kiosk. Taped beneath the shelf will be an envelope containing a new set of instructions.’
‘My God,’ I sigh into the dead phone. ‘The world’s grimmest treasure hunt.’
I almost run back to the car to parrot the details, then wait five agonising minutes before setting off south. Signs for Penge, Riddlesdown and Titsey flash past, making me wonder if every Croydon suburb is named after some squalid seventeenth-century disease. It would seem fitting. All I see are rows and rows of houses punctuated by identikit shopping parades, invariably featuring an estate agent, bookmaker, greasy spoon café, off-licence, post office, pharmacy and funeral parlour.
There’s the futility and emptiness of modern life, right there, I think, in my fug of fatalistic gloom. Each cluster of shops tells our real-life story: you buy a house, spend your life paying for it, cheer yourself up gambling, drinking and eating shit, get ill, old and die.
Zap! The suburbs vanish to a vast, velvet night-sky being munched on by tiny, shiny, Pac-Men; on closer inspection, aircraft queueing to land at Gatwick airport.
‘Sunset Boulevard,’ Fintan calls the A23, leading as it invariably does to sun-kissed excess-by-sea. Not tonight. The prospect of messing up in the South Downs yanks my knotted guts to twanging.
Be prepared for a last-second change. A sudden contact.
Crossley’s ceaseless advice drowns out all self-soothing inner monologues.
If he’s going to kill Julie Draper, there’s no reason why he won’t kill you …
Christ, poor Matt. My sweet, adorable stepson. The single best thing ever to happen in my life. Why am I taking this risk?
None of this is Matt’s fault. Stupid selfish grown-ups. I’m sure Zoe and I will be okay. We’re just in bit of a rut right now. Living together but not really living at all. It’s all work, childcare and sleep deprivation. I know I’m doing this for her. I’m just not sure why. To impress her? To prove myself? To make her worry about me? In place of an answer, I’ve coined a mantra: If I get through this, everything will be better. I’ll have proven myself, to her, to me. We’ll get back to how it was. She’ll look at me in that way again, eyes soft and warm. Smile at my corny gags. Sleep facing me.
But doubt, like night, has swallowed the last of the half-light.
A ghostly white sign shimmers in the gusty, malcontent air. I squint it into focus: ‘Brighton 8 miles’.
I slow to 40 and strain my eyes. The A273 slip road loops around so that I’m now heading north again; Brighton-bound A23 traffic pounds past to my left, headlights mercilessly fanning the lay-by like ravenous searchlights. The phone boxes command centre stage, spotlit by an amber streetlight. Good visibility brings mixed tidings; easier to see, harder to flee.
My car creeps into the lay-by, past the phone boxes. I perform a laboured three-point turn, helping myself to a 180-degree, headlight-illuminated view of the lay-by and the A273 beyond. I’m expecting the glint of hidden back-up cars, the outlines of poised police Ninjas. I see neither. Dread claws at my insides like a trapped rat. Surveillance are in front and behind. But they’re not here. It’s just me and him.
‘Right, I’ve pulled up at the phone box,’ I inform the dashboard’s covert radio, squeezing into my baseball cap and forensic gloves. I leave the car engine idling, my headlights beaming so that at least my non-existent back-up can see me.
I lean back, grab the money bag and step out. The trees shiver like widows at the workhouse door. Gravel crunches beneath my feet, but I can’t feel it. Halfway across, I spin 360. Nothing.
I jog to the phonebox, open it, the door squealing like teeth down a violin. I palm the underside of the cold metal shelf, feel paper, yank it free. The small brown envelope has double-sided tape on each corner. I turn over to see a giant letter ‘A’ scrawled in black marker. Christ, I think, how far through the alphabet is he planning to take me tonight?
Sprinting back to the car, I throw the cash in the back, get in, lock the doors and rummage inside the envelope. I flick on my pencil torch and read the instructions, typed on a cut-down piece of A4 paper.
This route will show if you’re being followed.
Continue on B273 for 75 yards.
Take Underhill Lane to right.
After 100 yards bear left (signposted public bridleway).
150 yards down is a small outbuilding on left.
Pick up black bag by red / white cone.
Further message in bag.
On reading the message, transfer money parcel from your holdall into this bag.
Take money and bag with you.
I repeat the instructions twice, then endure the longest five minutes of my life, at least since Matt’s last car-based meltdown. God how he’d hate this; twenty minutes is the most he can take, almost to the second, before he kicks off against his car seat’s straitjacket straps and sweat-sucking foam. I’ve found only one remedy to pacify us both; belting out nursery rhymes at full pelt.
Fuck it, I think, and launch into an impassioned version of Wheels on the Bus. Somehow, it works, banishing all terror so that by the time I take the right turn into Underhill Lane, I’m wondering what a bobbin is and lamenting the existential plight of Incy Wincy spider.
Hedges join hands above me, so it’s a virtual tunnel. Potholes swallow individual wheels whole, rattling my teeth with such ferocity that I have to sing Postman Pat in scat.
I fork left onto the bridle path. My headlights pick out the unmistakeable metallic shape of a car buried deep in bushes. My heart throbs in my ears and behind my right eye.
‘Donal?’ crackles the two-way radio.
‘Jesus,’ I yelp; Crossley’s urgent whisper just snapped my last functioning nerve.
Sounding like a snooker commentator, he husks: ‘The br
idle track is through open fields. He’ll be able to see and hear surveillance vehicles.’
‘Which means?’
‘They can’t risk following you.’
‘Shit.’
‘That’s not all,’ oozes Crossley. ‘He’s taking us so far out of range that our radio signals are getting weaker.’
‘Spit it out for fuck’s sake.’
‘Listen carefully, Donal. Just because you can’t hear us doesn’t mean we can’t hear you. Carry on as before. Repeat his instructions twice aloud and wait five minutes before proceeding. Just make sure we know his plans. Understood?’
‘Great, so any second now, I’ll be completely alone with this madman?’
Silence. Then a faint thwack dices the air; the reverberation of distant rotor blades.
‘If I can hear a chopper then so can he. Call it off, for the love of God.’
‘That may be our sole means of trailing you,’ snaps Crossley, sounding posher now, under pressure.
‘Then don’t.’
The chopper’s blades melt away to deathly silence, save for my juddering trundle.
‘Have you at least got visuals on me sir?’ I beg the silence.
The radio’s dead. I’m on my own. My palpitating heart thrums against the seat belt, creating an unnerving sash of terror.
Four little ducks went swimming one day … I scat, sounding like Tom Waits strapped to a bucking bronco.
Sneering gargoyle vegetation melts away to something scarier; vast and empty night-sky nothingness.
I’m out in the wide open now, alone and exposed, completely at the mercy of this maniac. Of course, he knows that police radio signals don’t work out here. He’s been one step ahead of us all along.
The rutted track slows me to a bumpy walking pace. For all I know, he could be strolling alongside, gun trained at my temple. Maybe he’s just waiting for me to pull up and get out, so he can soundlessly throttle me in the warm night breeze before spiriting away with the cash.
And no little duck came back quack, quack …
‘I’m so sorry Matt, and Zoe,’ I blurt, like some deathbed confessor. How I wish I was home with them right now, where I should be.
‘We’re picking you up again, Donal,’ crackles Crossley’s strangled whisper, jolting me back into cop mode.
‘Thank Christ,’ I mouth.
My feeble headlights suddenly pick out neat vertical lines. I squint, pulling into focus a wet corrugated tin roof weighing down a squat and long-forgotten outhouse. In this ocean of wet black, my eyes seize suddenly upon a luminous mini-lighthouse; a red and white traffic cone.
‘Holy shit,’ I whisper. ‘It’s the endgame. I’m approaching the traffic cone and, I presume, the bag. Sir?’
‘Awaiting instructions.’
I pull up and look around. All black. I figure if he’s here, my best hope of survival is to offer up the cash, the car and no resistance. I get out, headlights on, driver’s door open, key in the ignition, cash on the back seat.
‘Go ahead, Kipper, stitch me right up,’ I cry.
I take a swift 360. Nothing. All I feel is night’s balmy breath. All I hear is water slapping tin. I take another 360, my heart thrashing like a trapped bird.
‘The money’s in the car,’ I shout.
Wind gasps, water splats.
I make out the black canvas ransom bag at the foot of the cone, empty, deflated, expectant. I palm it open, rummage until I feel a single sheet of paper in the base. I take both to the car. Sliding into the back seat next to the cash, I lock the doors, switch on my torch and, as instructed, transfer the daintily-wrapped parcel of cash into his bag. Somehow, he must have guessed that we’d plant some sort of a tracking device in ours. ‘Ah well,’ I soothe my pogoing heart. ‘I should be dumping it soon and getting the hell out of here.’ The note, stencilled in black capital letters, has other ideas. I read it aloud:
Go back to Underhill Lane.
Turn left towards Ditchling village.
Phone box 1.5 miles on left.
Message B taped under shelf.
My tired brain grapples with these latest commandments. To collect his money, the kidnapper needs to be at the end of this ransom trail. That means he can’t be here. Adrenaline zaps off like a light. All life leaves me, clenched muscles melting to jelly.
‘This is good news,’ declares Crossley, sounding like a local radio DJ relinquishing his star prize. ‘We should have no problems with radio signals at that end of Underhill Lane, so we can resume full surveillance. I’ve got an officer on standby briefed and ready to take over from you before then, Donal. You’ve had more than enough excitement for one night.’
‘I’d like to see it through to the end, sir,’ I say, solely because I expect that’s what any decent cop should say.
‘I admire your pluck. Give me ten minutes to get the lead surveillance team into position at the next phone box. Then I’ll be en route with your replacement. Your night is nearly over, Lynch. Good work.’
‘Thanks be to God,’ I mouth, and set about turning the car on the narrow track.
I crawl back towards the overgrowth of Underhill Lane. As I slip into the hedgerow tunnel and radio silence, I help myself to a ‘Thank fuck that’s over.’
Out of nowhere, a red Stop sign appears, blocking the route.
‘What the fuck?’ I protest to no one.
I ease the car closer, spot a square of white card beneath the circular sign. I squint and recognise more stencilled instructions
‘Sir. Sir can you hear me?’
I know he can’t.
My heart revs hard, a pang of sickening realisation sending bile north. I swallow the burn and fight to breathe against that re-clamped chest. The kidnapper sent the cavalry east almost ten minutes ago, and stayed right here. For me. This is his sting-in-the-tail twist. He’s got me precisely where he wants me now, all alone, no back-up, no comms, no hope of rescue, flush with 175 grand.
Shit.
My only way out of this is to do what he wants. I get out, read the instructions.
On wall by painted cross find wood tray.
Do not move tray, sensor attached.
Place money bag on tray.
If buzzer does not sound leave money there.
Remove Stop sign in front of car and go.
He’s watching me. I know it. And he’s killed before. Seven years ago, he kidnapped and murdered Suzy Fairclough. What’s another life sentence to him? I’m totally dispensable.
I remember Crossley’s request that I pick up anything on the trail that may prove evidential. Good little soldier to the end, I remove the cardboard bearing the instructions, take it to the car and read the contents aloud twice, hoping against all common sense that they can hear me.
They can’t fucking hear me! He’s selected this spot for that very reason. And I’m not hanging around for five minutes to confirm it; not with 175 thousand in hard cash! He might lose patience and whack me.
I grab the money bag, walk over to a four-foot wall. Above a white painted cross, a wooden tray sits on a bed of sand. About 30 feet below, I can make out some sort of lane, maybe a disused rail line. A few feet to my right, an oblong metal box must be somehow connected to the tray’s sensor.
Good God, I am so out of my depth …
Somehow, I’ve got to lower this hefty bag of cash onto the tray without tripping the alarm. Face screwed into a tense ball of dread, I lift the bag and lower it slowly, painstakingly, ion-by-quivering-ion onto the tray. It sits, rests, no alarm.
I wonder why I’m standing here and turn to leave. As I remove the Stop sign from the middle of the lane, the tray scrapes the side of the bridge on its way down, courtesy of his improvised pulley system. He’s below, collecting his winnings.
I’m just yards away from the most wanted man in Britain.
Fuck it, I think. I ‘ve got to do something.
Chapter 3
Underhill Lane, East Sussex
Wednesday, June 15
, 1994; 21.50
We know nothing about this bastard. I need to spirit over to that bridge, at least get a visual. I pad and wince in turn, Bambi on ice, gripping that metal Stop sign like a lollipop lady in a tornado. If I can bounce this hunk of rust off his bonce, he won’t be going anywhere.
Oh my God!
There he is below, shovelling spilled bricks of cash into the bag. I raise the metal pole to my chest. If I press Go on this Stop sign, he ain’t going anywhere …
He may have an accomplice ready to kill Julie if anything goes wrong …
If he’s operating alone … we’ll never get a better chance.
The money will not be collected by me, but by a young male who parks up in a nearby lovers’ lane …
Damn it! I can’t be sure that’s our man. I need to find a way down there, grab whoever it is and hold him here until back-up arrives.
No heroics … It’s all about getting Julie back, alive.
What do I do? How I crave a working radio, a direct order.
Below, I hear the splutter and tinny whine of a 50cc engine spurting into life. Good God, he’s wheezing off into the night aboard a ‘nifty 50’ scooter with 175 grand. And I’m the only one who knows. I’ve got to find Crossley.
I dump the Stop sign, dive into the car, gun the engine and floor it east as fast as the lane’s laddered surface will allow.
After a couple of bends, fast-approaching headlights ignite the hedgerows. I screech to a halt. Crossley and DI Mann spring out before their oncoming car even stops.
‘Where the hell have you been?’ demands Crossley.
As I jabber my story, they inspect me in wide-eyed disbelief.
‘Why didn’t you call back-up?’ barks Crossley.
‘The radios aren’t working down here, Guv. You know that.’
‘Dear God,’ spits Crossley. ‘You’ve let him get away.’
‘You said no heroics …’
He turns to his number two. ‘Peter, get back-up there, radio all units that he’s travelling south from Underhill Lane on a scooter or in a vehicle large enough to carry a scooter. Lynch, take me to the bridge.’