by Iris Gower
Jamie felt a cold touch of fear. ‘There’s no signature on this,’ he said, waving the note in the air. ‘The bastard who’s got Fon isn’t giving much away, is he?’
‘You’ll pay it though, boss, somehow,’ Tommy said quietly, his young face creased with worry.
‘If I pay it, Fon will never be returned to me. Dead women can’t talk, sure you must see that, lad?’
For a moment, Jamie felt anger and panic cloud his mind and then he forced himself to think clearly. ‘Arian Smale,’ he said suddenly, ‘where did you see her, exactly where, think?’
‘Not far from the old farmhouse,’ Tommy said, his mind forced into sudden clarity by the urgency in Jamie’s voice. ‘Aye, the land that used to belong to Bob Smale, that’s where it was. I didn’t think anyone was still living there.’
‘I see.’ Jamie sat back in his chair, deep in thought. Arian Smale – what was she doing up on the land so early? The place was deserted now.
The idea exploded into his mind with a suddenness that brought excitement tingling through him. The farmhouse! That was where Fon was being held, he was sure of it. What better place? It was remote enough and yet right under his nose; the crafty bastard who had taken Fon was not stupid by any means.
His first instinct was to get on his horse and ride up there, a shot-gun at the ready; but in that way he would be putting Fon’s life at risk. No, he must move carefully, stealthily; he must outwit this man.
‘What you going to do, boss?’ Tommy asked. ‘You can count on me to come in it with you, whatever it is.’
‘Arian Smale,’ Jamie said, ‘she’s definitely the girl you saw up near the farmhouse – you are sure?’
‘Dunno,’ Tommy said. ‘I thought it looked like her; but, come to think of it, when I was in town Saturday, the gossip was she’d buggered off with some fellah, not been in work for a while, and that Price Davies cockahoop because he had her job and was having it cushy-like.’
‘That’s very interesting,’ Jamie said, his uncertainty turning into a gut feeling that Fon was being held up on the deserted farm. And this Price Davies, what was his involvement in all this? Was he in cahoots with Arian for some reason? The gossips were linking their names together, at any rate.
‘Go up to the farmhouse, Tommy,’ Jamie said. ‘Prowl around, try to find out who’s there. Be careful you don’t arouse anyone’s suspicions, mind. If you are spotted, say you’re looking for some stray cattle or something.’
Tommy looked regretfully at the pan of bacon and then rose to his feet. ‘Right, boss, I’m on my way.’
He ambled towards the door, pushed his feet into his boots with what, to Jamie, was maddening slowness and left the kitchen.
‘I’m starving hungry, Daddy,’ Patrick said plaintively, and Jamie forced himself to smile at his son.
‘Right! Sure your breakfast is coming up in two minutes, my boy. Just hold your horses and give a man time to draw breath.’
He returned to the pan of bacon and forked the slices on to a plate, then cracked some eggs into the fat and watched the transparent whites become opaque in the heat.
Fon – his heart lurched – Fon, my colleen, when I get the bastard who did this thing I’ll strangle him with my bare hands.
For a moment, in the silence of the kitchen Jamie wondered if he’d spoken the words out loud. He looked at the children, but they were sitting quietly, waiting for breakfast to be put before them.
He handed April the plates and sank down into a chair. Taking the note from his pocket, he read it again and again, as if it could tell him more than the words written on it.
‘Bastard!’ It was only when April giggled that he realized this time he had spoken his thoughts out loud. He ached for action, to get up and wreak vengeance on someone, anyone – but that was not the way to win. He must go carefully and outwit the man who thought he held all the cards in his grubby little hand.
Fon’s arms were numb. She glanced across at Mike, who had returned from delivering the note to Honey’s Farm and had been in a mood of taciturn silence ever since.
Fon had searched his face for any evidence that he had seen or spoken to Jamie, but she knew in her heart that he had not. She almost smiled, in spite of the pain, as she imagined Jamie throwing himself bodily at Mike the Spud and demanding to know where Fon was being held. No, there was no way Mike had confronted Jamie in person; otherwise he wouldn’t be standing there now in good health.
‘When are you going to see sense, Uncle Mike?’ Arian’s voice, harsh with anger, broke the silence. ‘Price is going to kill us – you too, maybe – and then there will be no witnesses.’
‘Shut up, woman!’ Mike said in irritation. ‘You are talking a lot of nonsense.’
‘Am I, Mike?’ Arian said softly. ‘Am I?’ She relaxed a little in her chair; her barb had been shot.
Fon looked at Mike intently, and she could see he was rattled in spite of himself. He knew Price was a man not to be trusted, a man with a gleam of madness in his eye that superseded all finer instincts, and he feared him.
Perhaps that was all to the good, Fon thought hopefully; perhaps Mike would be convinced that it would be just as well to release them and to get out of the place himself while he had the chance.
Suddenly Mike gave a bellow that frightened Fon so that she jumped, almost tipping her chair. He rushed to the door, and it banged open as he darted outside.
There were sounds of a scuffle and a cry of pain, and Fon’s mouth was suddenly dry.
‘My God, what’s happening?’ she said in a whisper, her eyes wide as she looked at Arian. ‘Do you think Jamie has come for me?’
Mike fell into the room, swearing and cursing, and he was holding a thin, unconscious figure in his big arms.
‘It’s Tommy!’ Fon said. ‘What have you done to him?’ She heard the near-hysteria in her voice and tried to calm herself, but questions were racing through her head.
‘Keep your mouths shut,’ he warned quietly, ‘for the boy’s sake if not your own. Do you understand?’
Fon exchanged glances with Arian, and it was clear that they both understood perfectly. Tommy’s safety depended on their silence; once he knew they were there, he would be as much a prisoner as they were.
‘We’ll be quiet,’ Arian said and Fon bit her lip, fighting the feeling of unreality that was clouding her mind.
Mike scrambled to his feet and dragged Tommy outside once more, shutting the door firmly behind him.
‘Come on, boy!’ Mike’s tone sounded muffled. ‘Wake up! I didn’t hit you that hard.’
Fon heard Tommy moan, and then there was a sound of cloth tearing; it seemed that Mike had taken the boy by his shirt collar and was shaking him.
‘Now, what are you doing here?’ Mike was demanding. ‘Why are you spying on me? The truth now, or I’ll break your neck!’
‘Duw, I’m not spying – I was looking for some stray cattle, that’s all, man.’ Tommy’s voice was shaking. ‘Fence broke, see, and the cows got out. Boss will be on my tail if I don’t get the beasts back safely; good milking cows they are.’
‘The note,’ Mike said, ‘what did you do with the note?’ His voice had an edge to it and Fon felt sorry for Tommy, who wasn’t very brave at the best of times.
‘What note?’ Tommy sounded genuinely puzzled. ‘I didn’t see no note.’
‘I pinned it on to your coat, boy!’ It sounded as if Mike was shaking the hapless Tommy until his teeth rattled.
‘I haven’t seen any note,’ Tommy persisted. ‘Honest, Mike, I haven’t seen it.’
‘Hell and damnation!’ Mike shouted. ‘Bloody thing must have blown away.’
Tommy was silent, and then Mike spoke again. ‘You get out of here and stay out, or it will be the worse for you, right?’
‘Right.’ The relief in Tommy’s voice was evident.
Fon felt the urge to call to him to help them, but she knew she couldn’t do that to him. She heard the sudden silence and she knew Tommy had gone.
&n
bsp; She looked at Arian. ‘Did you hear that?’ she asked. When Arian shook her head, she took a deep breath. ‘Tommy didn’t find any note.’ She felt despair creep over her, paralysing her. ‘Jamie doesn’t know we’re here – nobody will come to help us!’
Her voice broke. ‘I’m afraid of Price,’ she said softly. ‘I’m not afraid of death so much as of what he’ll do to me before . . .’ Her words trailed away, and she bit her lip.
‘We’ll just have to think of a way of escaping by ourselves,’ she said, suddenly angry. ‘Look, your chair isn’t far from mine; perhaps we can edge together and untie each other’s ropes.’
‘It won’t work,’ Arian said softly. ‘The ropes are too tight.’
‘Let’s try it,’ Fon said, hope springing within her. ‘It’s a chance; at least it’s better than doing nothing.’
Before she had finished speaking, the door was flung open, and, with a feeling of alarm, Fon heard Price’s voice, shouting so loudly that it was obvious he was in a raging temper.
‘Blast the woman!’ he yelled. ‘Got kicked out by her husband for cuckolding him!’
Price strode into the room, his face red with anger, and Mike followed him. ‘Eline bloody Temple!’ He kicked at the leg of the table. ‘She’s only gone and had a bastard child by another man! Who’d have believed it? And her acting the Miss High and Mighty with me.
‘Well, she’s no different to any other woman, and now she’s out of her husband’s bed, she’s finished. He’s divorcing her, and what’s more he’s closed down the workshop, sent everyone packing, me included.’ Price Davies thumped a great fist on the table, taking out his rage on the scrubbed boards.
After a few moments, he spoke again. ‘What’s been happening here? I know something has gone on, so don’t lie.’
He spun round to look at Arian. ‘This one hasn’t been giving any more trouble, has she?’ His hand snaked out and caught Arian around the throat.
‘No, it’s not her, it’s that kid from Honey’s Farm, been up here looking for cattle, so he said.’
Mike was all set to continue with his garbled explanation, but Price bellowed out again, his voice almost hysterical. ‘Christ almighty, is nothing going right?’
He flung Mike up against the wall. ‘You can’t be trusted with anything, you stupid bastard.’ He shook Mike roughly, and the big man stared at him, almost without comprehension.
‘Come on, man,’ Mike said pleadingly. ‘Calm down! We got things to do, mind. We got to figure out how we can get out of all this mess.’
Price turned away. His voice when he spoke was thick with rage. ‘Aye, mess that you got us into, you fool! I’m going for a pint of ale. I can think better then.’
He slammed the door shut, and Fon breathed a sigh of relief. Price had been too distracted to pay any attention to her. She had been given a reprieve, for now; but the day of reckoning would come, and then what would she do?
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
‘Everything’s gone wrong, man.’ Mike was standing near the doorway, staring out in the silent fields. ‘Why don’t we get out of here, while the going is good?’
Price Davies swung round. He was smelling of ale, and his face was contorted with rage.
Mike visibly paled. ‘I only meant that . . .’
Price grabbed him by his collar. ‘You only meant what?’ His voice was dangerously quiet. ‘You were a fool not to keep that boy up here. You’re sure he didn’t see anything or suspect the women were here?’
‘I can’t be sure of that,’ Mike said, ‘but I think the sooner we’re out of all this, the better. For all we know, the constables might be on to us by now.’
‘Or worse,’ Fon said. ‘Jamie O’Conner might be riding up here right now with a gun in his hand.’
Mike glared at her. ‘I’m all for taking the women as far up as we can into the barrenness of the Bwlch Mountain and turning them free,’ he said flatly. ‘They’re more trouble than they’re worth, if you ask me.’
‘I didn’t ask you,’ Price said, glancing at Fon. ‘And you, shut your mouth! If the note had got to him, O’Conner would have been here straightaway. He wouldn’t have waited this long.’
He was right, Fon realized with a sinking of her heart; Jamie would have ridden up to the farmhouse in a fierce rage, he would have confronted both Price and Mike the Spud without any thought for his own safety.
‘I must think,’ Price said, rubbing his hand over his eyes. ‘I can’t just let these women go now; it’s one of the daftest ideas you’ve had.’ He spoke uncertainly for the first time, and Arian, with a courage Fon admired, spoke up.
‘It would be best to set us free right now,’ she said. ‘So far you have only held us here against our will; you have not harmed Fon O’Conner, and, as for me, well, I will get over it, I suppose. Isn’t it better to get away now, while you don’t have our blood on your hands?’
‘Shut up!’ Price moved abruptly, waving his hands in anger. ‘For Christ’s sake, get me something strong to drink,’ he snarled at Mike. Fon heard the chink of a bottle against a glass; both men had their backs towards her.
Arian shook her head in warning as Fon made to speak. It was best to remain silent for now; all the talking had been done.
‘Come on, man!’ Mike was pleading with Price. ‘As the girl said, no real harm has been done; we could put it all down to a bit of fun, like; no-one could take that seriously, could they?’
‘Do you think O’Conner is going to take it as a bit of fun? Shut up, man, and let me think this thing out. Perhaps I can still salvage something from the mess you have made of it all.’
Fon felt a sickening lurch of her stomach. What did Price Davies have in mind for them now? She bit her lip and turned towards Arian with questions trembling on her lips.
Pity filled her as she saw the blackened bruises around Arian’s eyes. Arian’s cheek too was bruised and swollen, and her mouth was cut. She had been ill-treated enough by that oaf Price Davies, and yet Arian had not lost her spirit.
Fon realized she could not – would not – have endured the vile attentions of Price Davies, the beating, the humiliation. She knew with certainty that she would have killed herself first.
‘Perhaps we can take them away from here,’ Price said, glancing to where the two women were crouched in the corner.
‘Now you’re talking, man,’ Mike said eagerly. He glanced at Arian with a gleam of triumph in his eyes that quickly disappeared as Price spoke again.
‘Aye, dump them somewhere so that their bodies would never be found. That’s what I mean. No-one could prove anything, could they?’
Price’s voice was becoming slurred, and Fon realized he was drinking heavily. Arian was aware of it too; her mouth was pressed into a hard line, but whether it was from anger or fear Fon didn’t know.
‘Na,’ Mike said, obviously trying to reason with Price, ‘don’t take the risk, man. We’d be burdened with them; they’d give us all sorts of trouble on the way. We’d be better off getting on out of here without them hanging round us.’
‘They couldn’t give us much trouble if we killed them here, could they?’ Price said slowly.
He turned towards Fon, his hand on his belt, and she shuddered. ‘But first I mean to have my way with Miss High and Mighty, here.’ He smiled unpleasantly. ‘I always keep my promises.’
Fon shrank back against the wall as far as she could go, trying to make herself invisible. But it was no use. Price was coming closer, and there was a manic gleam in his eye that brought terror into Fon’s heart.
Jamie had checked his rifle and then fingered the ammunition in his pocket. His anger, held in check for so long, burned within him, steady and fierce as a forest fire in summer-time.
‘Can’t I come with you, boss?’ Tommy asked, his thin frame tense, his shoulders hunched.
Jamie glanced at him and then shook his head. ‘You take care of the children,’ he said firmly. ‘Make sure nothing happens to them; it’s very important that y
ou be here.’
Jamie forced a smile. ‘I know you’ve got guts, lad; you don’t have to prove it to me. But this job is a one-hander; we don’t want to alert the bastards that we’re coming.’
Tommy nodded, resigned to the sense of Jamie’s argument. ‘The only thing, boss,’ he said, ‘there’s two of ’em up there with the women. Price is the worst of the two, but Mike the Spud is no weakling either.’
‘I know,’ Jamie agreed, ‘but as they don’t know I’m coming for them, I’ll have the element of surprise on my side.’
‘That’s true,’ Tommy said thoughtfully. ‘I’m pretty sure Mike believed me that I’d not seen the note, otherwise he wouldn’t have let me go so easily.’ He rubbed his neck where Mike’s thick fingers had gripped him. ‘I hope he hasn’t hurt the missis.’
Jamie’s grip on the gun tightened. ‘He’d better not have.’ He moved towards the door. ‘But it’s the other one who’s the danger,’ he said. ‘I think the man’s insane.’
Tommy followed Jamie and stood in the doorway looking out at the darkening landscape. This had been one of the longest days of Jamie’s life. He breathed deeply; knowing his wife was up there, within the old walls of the deserted farmhouse, in the hands of a maniac like Price had made him cold with fear. And yet there was nothing to be gained by rushing in half-prepared and giving the two villains a chance to overpower him.
One consolation was that Arian Smale was probably up there too, for Tommy had seen her near the farmhouse. Arian was Mike the Spud’s niece, and it wasn’t clear what her part in all this was; but it was almost a certainty that, if she could, she would bring a calming influence to bear on her Uncle Mike.
Jamie gritted his teeth. If Price had so much as laid a finger on Fon, he would suffer the torture of the damned before Jamie strangled him with his bare hands.
‘Cool head, now,’ Jamie warned himself out loud. ‘Got to keep a clear mind.’ He turned to Tommy. ‘If I’m not back in an hour, send the constables in, right?’
‘Right, boss.’ Tommy nodded emphatically. ‘I’ll take care of everything this end, don’t worry.’