by Tim Adler
"That's fantastic news."
"Wait, there's more. So he asks me to go and see him. Says there's something else he needs to tell me about. Something delicate. So I go round to his office yesterday afternoon. The police have cordoned off Oxford Street. Somebody threw petrol around his office and burned him alive. I was with him when he died. It was horrible, Rupert. The paramedics left us alone in the ambulance when one of them went to get help, and he had a massive heart attack right in front of me."
"Oh, Christ."
"Everything completely gutted. All his records destroyed."
"Bloody hell. Why didn't you tell me?"
"I am now. Then, when I got home last night, we had a message from Alice. Talk about everything happening at once. A ransom demand. She's holding our baby to ransom."
"What do the police say?"
"We haven't told them."
Beneath me ant-like office workers were scurrying to work. For everybody else this was the start of a normal working day, everybody apart from me, that is. I turned from the window.
"There's another complication. She'll tell Mole that we had an affair unless I pay up or if we go to the police."
"She’s obviously a bunny boiler, mate. What makes you think Mole would believe her?"
"Alice told me she never went through with the procedure."
"And you believe her?"
"The clinic said the same thing. If Mole checks, the clinic will confirm that it was a natural pregnancy."
Currie swore and slumped in his chair. "How much does she want?"
"One million pounds."
Currie chuckled and shook his head. "She's having a giraffe. You don't have that kind of money."
I placed both hands down on the table. I had never been so deadly earnest in my life. "This isn't about how much my daughter is worth. This is about my marriage. I am not going to let one stupid mistake fuck up the rest of my life."
Currie raised his hands in surrender. "Okay, okay I get it. I'm sorry I laughed. What do you want to do? I looked at your file. Even if you sell your Berkshire RE shares, that's only going to net you about four hundred thousand."
"I want a bridging loan on the flat. That should cover the rest. It's mortgage free. Once Alice is under arrest, then I get my money back."
"How do you know that? She could send the money anywhere."
"Look, Rupert, that's a risk I have to take. I'm a desperate man. Say we do call in the police and something goes wrong, well, I don't think ... I don't think I could live with myself."
"What's to stop her telling Mole even if the police do arrest her?"
"I haven't thought that far ahead. If Mole wants to walk away because of one stupid mistake" – I shrugged – "then there's not a lot I can do to stop her. First, I need to reunite my family."
"It'll be expensive. This kind of money doesn't come cheap." Currie telephoned his assistant and told her to get hold of a mortgage-provider pal. "They're not your normal building society," he said, covering the phone. "Really, they're money lenders. Equity-release loans. Oh hello, Gary? It's Rupert Currie at Foresight. Yeah, yeah good match, wasn't it? Listen, matey, I've got somebody with me–"
Currie chatted back and forth, and I turned back to the window. Somewhere in this vast country of sixty million people, Alice Adams was out there. Waiting. I felt a kind of roving, hand-wringing despair about my situation. The clock was ticking away, counting down the hours until Alice's deadline. I glanced over my shoulder and Currie was laughing ("I love you so much I want to suck your cock") and scribbling figures on a notepad, giving me the thumbs-up as he put the phone down. "He says he'll do it. Providing all the paperwork is in order. He'll take a charge over your flat, assuming you're the sole owner. He also wants to see two years' worth of company accounts. I told him we need the money fast. Be warned, though, the interest rate's high. This is more like one of those payday loans."
I felt an overwhelming rush of gratitude. For the first time, it felt as if our daughter was within touching distance. "I'll sign anything," I said. "Just tell me what to do."
Somebody once said that battlefields are always strewn with bits of paper. Our kitchen table became a war campaign that afternoon as Mole and I pored over my financial records. The table was covered with documents as we assembled what was needed. A motorcycle courier was waiting downstairs to take the papers to Currie. I kept glancing at the clock, seeing the minutes ticking away. We had less than two hours before the end of the working day. And if we didn't get the deal closed by six o'clock, we could kiss our baby girl goodbye. Selling the shares was the easy part. It was raising the loan on the flat that would take time. And time was our most precious commodity; there was never enough time.
We had a gruesome few hours waiting for the money to come through. Mole paced the floor. Most of all I remember the ticking of the clock and the pitiless click of Mole's heels.
Finally, an email pinged telling us the money was there. For one brief moment, a few seconds at least, I was a cash millionaire, or as much as you can be when everything has been reduced to pixelated ones and zeroes.
Picking up my BlackBerry again, I texted Alice telling her the money had been transferred. We both stared at the phone, willing it to come to life.
"TN17 2FS. COME ALONE."
"It's a postcode," Mole said. "It could be anywhere. Let's put it in the satnav and see where she is." She held me in her arms and looked at me carefully. "We should have called the police. For all we know, she could have been the one who firebombed Wynn’s office. Or slashed the tyres on our car? There’s no telling what she might do next. What if she's got some boyfriend who's put her up to this? He might have a gun or something."
I did my best to seem manly and protective, giving Mole a confidence I didn't really feel. "Look, she just wants her money and to get out. I’m sure of it. She doesn't want to be encumbered with our baby."
Mole followed me into the hall, where I slung on my waterproof jacket. We hugged and kissed, and I told her the next time I saw her I would be holding our baby girl.
The postcode turned out to be an address in the Kent countryside, on the outskirts of a village. I pictured a remote cottage where Alice had laid low as she got bigger with our baby. Then a trip to the cottage hospital as contractions began. Somebody must have accompanied her there, though, a local midwife, perhaps. She cannot have planned this alone; somebody must have been helping her. Perhaps Mole was right, and I was about to come face to face with a sawn-off shotgun. Oh stop being so lurid, I thought, this is a simple financial exchange; yeah, just like you thought hiring a surrogate would be, and look how that turned out.
I passed few cars that night as I plunged deeper into the Kent countryside. Occasionally I saw red tail lights up ahead as the Porsche swooped along the narrow country road. The dashboard provided the only light. Soon I would be holding my child for the first time, and that was the only thing that mattered.
The satnav told me to turn off at the next slip road. Menacing hedgerows crowded the country lane, and the car entered some kind of tunnel of trees whose thick branches almost choked off the moonlight.
Finally the car came to the outskirts of a village. I drove past ugly sixties’ bungalows beside a football pitch. The satnav told me to drive on through the main street, taking a lane off to one side. The car juddered over a cattle grid, leading me to what I guessed was a farm. The track stretched on for what felt like forever. It was so dark that even my headlights seemed dim. I tried to swallow, but my mouth had gone quite dry.
"You have arrived at your destination," the satnav told me.
I pulled up outside a pair of semi-detached red-brick farm-workers’ cottages. Lights were on in the right-hand house. So, this was the moment. I swallowed again, trying to lubricate my mouth. Here goes, I thought. My car door closed with a reassuring thunk. The garden gate clanged shut as I walked up the path and rapped on the door. Somebody was definitely moving about inside.
The woman who answered reminded me of th
e housekeeper in Tom and Jerry. She was obese. Dressed in a sleeveless nylon nightie, her naked arms resembled enormous hams. She also seemed to be trailing some kind of saline drip.
"Yes, how can I help?" she said, looking at me carefully.
I stepped backward off her front step. "I'm looking for somebody who lives here. Alice Adams."
"Nobody here by that name." She jerked her head to the next house. "Young girl with a baby? You want next door." Pause. "Her name's not Alice, though, it's Helen."
"Yes, that'll be her. Thank you so much. Sorry to have bothered you."
So, she was calling herself Helen again, was she? I was so excited that I was already halfway down the path when the woman called out, "You won't find her there, though. She left about an hour ago. I heard her car."
My heart sank. To have come this far and still be denied, it was so bitterly unfair. "I'll leave a note," I said, raising my hand in farewell. It slowly dawned on me that I had willingly given Alice or Helen or whatever her name was a million pounds without really knowing whether my baby was alive or not. My insides knotted with apprehension.
The next-door cottage was completely dark. All the lights were off, and the curtains were drawn. Gingerly I picked my way over a flower bed and peered through a gap in the curtains. Nothing. This whole trip had been a waste of time.
What on earth was I going to tell Mole about the money?
My BlackBerry was blinking like an angry mosquito when I got back in the car. I felt tearful with frustration. My little girl had come so close, and now Alice could be anywhere with my money and my daughter. That was assuming that she hadn't been aborted already. Stop it, you cannot think like that.
"CHANGE OF PLAN. YOUR BABY IS IN A CAR ON THE THIRD FLOOR OF WHITE CROSS CAR PARK, TUNBRIDGE WELLS. KEYS UNDER WHEEL."
It took about forty minutes to drive to the suburban town. Mole said later that Alice must have known we would call the police once we had our daughter. What she needed was a head start. The satnav tracked inexorably towards my destination, a seventies’ town-centre car park. I took a ticket from the battered orange dispenser, and my wheel clipped the tight cement ramp upward as I circled up, all the while scanning for the car containing my daughter.
Finally, I swung round onto the third floor. There, parked at the far end of the cement bay, was a solitary Peugeot hatchback. It had to be the car, it just had to be.
Walking towards the car, my breath steamed and my clothes felt like tissue paper. My God, it was so cold. Then I heard it, a muffled crying coming from inside. I broke into a run. What kind of woman would leave a baby to freeze to death on a night like this?
There, strapped into a car seat, was a baby.
She was bawling, her little face twisted with unhappiness. My heart was pounding so fast, I thought it was going to burst through my chest. "I'll get you out of there," I said aloud. Sure enough, the keys were wedged under the wheel on the driver's side. I kept fumbling with the lock, desperate to get to my daughter. Pulling the passenger door open, I unbuckled her and, lifting her up for the first time, I could smell that heavenly new baby smell and felt an overwhelming rush of love and protectiveness. Beyond this car park, everyday life was going on. People coming home from work or cooking their evening meal, but for me everything had changed. It was if the world had tipped on its axis and then righted itself. Holding her infinitely precious head, I cradled our baby girl back to the car. Finally I gave way to my feelings and I found myself racked with sobs. Our nightmare was finally over.
Strapping our baby into the passenger seat, I couldn’t wait to tell Mole our good news. "I have her. I am holding our daughter, and she's beautiful" were the first words I said, not quite believing them myself. Mole did not reply. Instead I sat there, looking out across the town centre at night, listening to my wife sobbing with gratitude.
Chapter Twenty One
When I arrived home an hour later, a police car was already waiting outside. Good. I had told Mole to give them the address of Alice's bungalow. Soon she would be under arrest, and we would have our money back. I kept glancing at the back seat where our baby girl had cried herself to sleep. The poor child must be starving, and I had asked Mole to prepare some baby formula for when I got home. Carrying the seat across the underground car park, I felt a mixture of elation and apprehension. Looking down at her on the lift floor, our child looked so tiny and vulnerable; how could anybody have done something to harm her? Alice using her as a pawn was unconscionable. My instinct was telling me there had to be somebody else involved telling her what to do; perhaps Mole was right and there was a boyfriend in the background. And where was Alice now? Probably frightened and on the run, knowing the police would hunt her down. It was hard not to feel a moment of triumph.
I unlocked our front door and carried our precious bundle into the sitting room, feeling quite the conquering hero. Mole would meet me at the door, and together we would gaze down at our darling daughter and both of us would dance around the room, whirling faster and faster–
Instead, Mole was seated on the sofa clasping her hands. To my surprise, Detective Inspector Syal was standing beside the picture window. The police must have responded to Mole's call quickly. Turning when she saw me, Syal looked her usual permanently dissatisfied self. There was also another policewoman with her in uniform, a younger woman with her hair in a ponytail. The atmosphere was funereal. This was not the triumphal homecoming I had expected.
Mole rose from the sofa and advanced towards me, eyes glistening. "Oh, darling, she's so beautiful." She bent down and unstrapped our precious girl, lifting her against her chest.
"She needs feeding," I said. "I don't know when she last ate."
"I'll take her and change her nappy," Mole said. "I'll only be next door if you need me."
Detective Inspector Syal waited until Mole had left the room. "We went to the address you gave us," she said.
"The neighbour said Alice had already gone," I said.
"We found Alice Adams there."
My heart leapt. "Where was she? Upstairs hiding? I told my wife there were no lights on when I got there. I tried the front door and looked in through the windows–"
"Alice Adams is dead."
I wanted to burst out laughing. Instead I said, "I'm sorry?"
"We found Alice Adams dead on the sitting-room floor."
The colour seemed to drain out of the room, and I had the peculiar sensation of looking down at the three of us, as if I was floating high up in the ceiling. "My God, she must have killed herself out of remorse."
"The thing is, Mr Cox, in my experience people don't commit suicide by hitting themselves over the head with a blunt instrument."
"I don't understand."
"When we broke into the house, we found Alice Adams battered to death. Somebody had attacked her with a metal ashtray."
"Surely you don't think I had anything to do with this."
Now it was my turn to sit down on the sofa. I looked down at my hands, but they seemed to be useless stumps. I suppose I was going into shock.
"Mr Cox, I want you to take me through exactly what happened. We spoke to the neighbour, who said you arrived at her front door looking worried, anxious–"
"Of course I was bloody anxious. I had just paid a ransom of a million pounds."
"Why didn't you come to us first?"
I shook my head. "What was the point? You would have tried to stop us. Have you ever wanted something, I mean really wanted something? That was how we both felt."
"When you got to the house, are you sure you didn't meet the victim? Before you knocked on her door, the neighbour said she heard raised voices, shouting. The walls are thin."
"I told you. There was nobody home. Then I got a text saying that our daughter was in this car park." Then, as if I had discovered something important, "Wait a minute, how did Alice take our daughter to the car park if she was already dead? There must have been somebody with her. She must have had an accomplice."
; "We only have your word that you were told to go to the car park. Did anybody see you there?"
I shook my head. "I don't think so. I can show you the text if you want," I said, digging into my jacket pocket. "It's from the same number as the ransom demands."
"Look at this from our point of view. You could have sent the text to yourself using the victim's phone. Mr Cox, I don't doubt anything you're saying. However, I do need to eliminate you from our enquiries. Please would you accompany us to the station?"
While this was going on, the younger woman had been talking to somebody on her shoulder walkie-talkie. For some reason she reminded me of a prancing circus horse. She went over to Syal and whispered something. The two women stood huddled in conversation, I asked for permission with my eyes to go next door and see my wife. I desperately needed her support. Syal nodded and carried on listening to her PC, completely absorbed by what the woman was telling her.
I found Mole sitting in the nursery rocking chair, and it took me a moment to adjust to the dim light. Our baby was lying on a pillow while Mole bottle-fed her. It should have been the perfect moment, out little family reunited for the first time, but instead fear gnawed my insides.
"She's feeding beautifully," Mole said.
"Mole, the police want to take me in for questioning. They think I had something to do with Alice's death." Mole would not meet my eyes, she was so fixated with our daughter. "I swear to God, everything I told you was true." I pressed on. "There was nobody at the house when I got there. Then I got the text message."
"I know that. Just tell the police the truth." Mole seemed distracted, unable to decide who to give her attention to. Suddenly I wanted to shake her. This was serious, goddammit, the police had called me in for questioning, and right now I was their only murder suspect. Mole seemed to be in a dream world. I marched forward and stood over them.
"Mole, listen to what I am saying. The police want to interview me. They think I might have killed Alice."
Mole was having difficulty tearing her eyes away from our daughter. "Tell the police what you told me. I know that you couldn't have done anything like that."