Finally the young man returned. He came slowly down the steps. “You promise to keep him quiet?” He said intensely, his dark eyes fixed on mine.
I nodded.
I noticed he had my penknife in his hand. He knelt down beside Nish and quite carefully inserted it between Nish’s hands and the cord and then yanked it through. He had to do it a few times till all the cord had pulled away. Instead of falling down to his sides, Nish’s hands stayed weirdly fixed where they were. If he’d been like that for four days maybe his muscles had cramped up into that position?
“And his feet!” I ordered.
He did the same for Nish’s feet.
I went and knelt straight down beside the lad and began to pull Nish’s shoes and socks off. His feet were frozen to the touch and looked pallid and waxy.
“Oh God…” I muttered. I sat back on my heels. Please God may he not have any tissue death in his feet and hands. He’d never be able to drive again, or play the saxophone… I began to massage his feet and hands, going back and forth between them. After a few minutes they looked a bit less pale, but Nish started to twitch and his eyelids flickered. Oh God. It must be so painful as the blood returned. It must be the worst pins and needles ever. So bad it was piercing his drug induced unconsciousness. I glanced sideways at the boy. He watched on frowning. Nish’s body kept on twitching and flicking. I hardly dared touch his hands or feet again as he jerked whenever I did. His breathing speeded up. I put my hand under his shirt above his heart. His heart rate was uneven and speeding up. I took the lad’s hand and forced him to put it down above Nish’s heart. I kept my hand pressed down on top of his until I was sure he must have got the message. I looked meaningfully at him. “You have to let him wake up.”
The boy sat back on his haunches looking worried.
“A blanket?” I suggested. “He’s really cold.”
The boy got up straight away and disappeared up the stairs. Only then did I let the tears fill my eyes. I brushed them quickly away. I had to keep my head. Nish’s life might depend on it.
He came back with a duvet – presumably off one of the beds upstairs. Why the hell hadn’t they done that right from the beginning? I thanked him, and laid the duvet out on the floor beside Nish with one side rolled up, then got the lad to help me roll him over the lump, and then straightened it out the other side. The nurses did that to change the sheet under me when I was in intensive care and they didn’t want to lift me. Then I wrapped him up like a big fat caterpillar. Now at least he had something soft under him to cushion the pressure points on his skin, and maybe he would stay a bit warmer. The boy retreated and the door slammed and the bolt rammed home. How long had I been here now? An hour? By now Quinn must have raised the alarm surely? We could be rescued quite shortly.
But I’d reckoned without the quick thinking of the men. They must have realised that there was a high likelihood of my having passed information on by some means. Or at least that they must have given themselves away somehow, and that if I’d managed to work it out, then so could someone else. The older two men suddenly burst into the cellar. My heart nearly crashed out of my chest in reaction. They picked up Nish by means of holding the duvet at both ends and humped him up the stairs. I got up to follow but the boy shook his head at me. I swallowed hard, desperate to keep an eye on Nish, but aware that the sharp grimace he’d made at me was a severe warning that I might get hurt if I tried to push my luck. The oldest one, who was the one I disliked the most with his hard eyes and vicious lips, came back in and walked straight at me down the steps. He grabbed my arm and hauled me after him. I didn’t resist as of course I wanted to go with Nish, but even so, he was rough and threatening and he got hold of the back of my neck and shoved me ahead of him as soon as we got outside.
Outside was a white van. Just a bog standard transit van. They opened the back doors, and as the rough one gripped my neck again to shove me up inside, he must have felt the string. He yanked back my collar and tugged at the string. It only sort of came up and he clearly baulked at shoving his hand down my front to fish it out, so indicated to me that I must take it off and hand it to him. Whether it was the dismayed expression in my eyes or my reluctance to obey him, he immediately knew he’d hit on what he’d been sure all along was there. His eyes flashed with instant fury. He snatched it out of my palm and hurled it down, and gave me such a hard shove into my back with the butt of his gun that I fell headlong into the van nearly on top of poor Nish who was already lying in there, rolled up in his duvet. The lad hopped lightly in the back with us, clutching his own gun, the doors were slammed on us, and the engine started up within seconds. The van rolled noisily over the gravel and out through the gate onto the smoother, quieter tarmac. I hauled myself up to a sitting position but a big jolt through a couple of ruts threw me off balance again, and we drove off with a crashing of gears. The lad sat with his back against the doors, his eyes fixed on me, his gun held at a ready angle close to his chest. I got the message.
We drove for at least an hour and then parked up and the lad got out and slammed the door on us. I expected us to be hustled immediately out again. But after a few minutes, the lad got back in, the door was closed up with a clang, and I heard a key turn in the lock. He looked across at me and put his head down to one side against his hands in a signal that I should go to sleep. With signals back, I got him to help me put Nish into the recovery position. I made sure the side in contact with the floor wasn’t the black and blue one with potential for broken ribs. And then, for want of anywhere else to lie down, I curled up on the edge of the duvet with my back to Nish. Despite the alleviation of the duvet, the ridged metal floor of the van was still unbearably hard. I put my arm under my head in place of a pillow and kept waking up with pins and needles in my arm and shoulder. Each time I tried to see if the boy was still awake, stationed with his gun. But it was too dark to see anything. Sometimes I heard rustling movements from his direction. And occasionally a big sigh. He was probably bloody uncomfortable too and wouldn’t dare sleep in case I jumped him. I almost felt sorry for him – but not quite.
In the morning we still didn’t move off. Light was coming through the holes in the van and the edges of the door. For some time now I’d been engaging Shafif in a discussion about his home village in Pakistan. Asking him about his family, his mother and sisters. My game plan was to make him remember the value of the people you love. To remind him that I would be someone’s sister, and Nish, someone’s son and brother. We had got onto the subject of their forty goats.
“Forty?” I exclaimed laughingly. “I can’t even imagine forty goats! Do they all have names?”
He demonstrated to me how to milk one, his fingers moving in a rhythm from top to bottom. I got him to hold my wrist and do it again so I could understand how it worked. He giggled and circled my wrist in the rhythmic action, and then he glanced past me and jerked his head at Nish. I looked quickly round. Nish’s eyes were fluttering open. Then he tried to struggle up. Then he groaned and flopped back again.
“Sssh, Nish,” I said soothingly, reaching out to him and laying a hand on his cheek which was rough with a four day growth of beard. “Stay calm now. Stay quiet. You’re ok.”
His eyes opened again and he stared blankly at me. Then he stared around at the van, and then he closed his eyes again. Then he let out a hiss of pain between his teeth. Well probably, I thought, you’ll probably be ok.
I looked at Shafif. “He needs water,” I said. “He needs to rehydrate fast…”
Shafif shrugged.
“Please, Shafif,” I begged.
He reluctantly backed out of the van and slammed the doors.
Nish’s eyes fluttered open again.
“He’s Shafif,” I whispered quickly. “He’s only eighteen and you’ve got to be as nice as possible to him – he’s their weakest link.”
Nish showed no sign of understanding, but I had to try.
I heard the three men talking together. By now I knew that the na
sty eldest one was Shafif’s brother, and the middle one their cousin. Shafif came back with a bottle of coke. When I pulled a face at him, he shrugged. I suppose we’d all been made to leave in a big hurry, so they wouldn’t have anything much with them. Still, maybe the sugar content would be a good thing for Nish.
I persuaded Nish to sit up, propped back against the side of the van. He yelped in pain and his breathing came fast and he came over dizzy. I had to let him lie down again. Sometime later I tried again and held the coke bottle to his lips. He tried to hold it himself but he complained that he couldn’t work out what his hands were doing – couldn’t feel them. The fingers were all puffy and swollen up like sausages. I bit my lip.
He got about two small swallows down and then he projectile vomited it back out across the van and lay back down groaning. That wasn’t promising. I left him there for ten minutes then made him sip some more. It came straight back up. The third time, he tried to fight me off, but I persisted until he gave up and accepted a mouthful.
“Hold it in your mouth for a minute and then let it just trickle down the back of your throat,” I suggested.
It seemed to work for a moment and then it spurted back out. He lay weakly back down and closed his eyes without even a murmur of pain, like he was too far gone to even groan any more.
I slammed my palm in frustration against the metal of the van. In hospital he’d be on a drip by now and they’d be able to rehydrate him bypassing his stomach.
Shafif was watching me worriedly.
“Where are we parked up?” I asked. “Is there anything out we can bring in for him to throw up into? Or else it’ll be all over the van floor and we’ll be lying in it.”
He didn’t answer my question about where we were, but he retreated again. I wiped the tears away again. I had to keep it together.
After a bit he came back in with a bucket sized plastic tub. It was dirty and weatherworn and had EweMaster Flushing and Tupping Salt Lick written on the side. I frowned. I had no idea what ‘flushing’ and ‘tupping’ was – but the somewhat graphic picture on the side of a ram sniffing the backside of a ewe gave me a bit of a clue. We must be parked up in some out of the way place on the downs where all the sheep were.
“Actually Shafif,” I said. “I’m desperate for a pee.”
He looked blank.
“Pee? Piddle? Wee? Widdle? Piss? Slash?” I tried.
There was no discernible reaction.
I made a psssssing noise and did the male sign of a flick of the finger up and down and a whistle and pointed at the plastic tub. He looked embarrassed suddenly and retreated from van again. I could hear him standing outside and shuffling about.
“Keep your eyes closed, Nish,” I said. But that was a bit unnecessary really, as he hadn’t opened them for ages. I crouched over the tub and nearly groaned with the relief of it. I’d been hanging on for ages. My pee smelt strong and was a dark yellow. I wasn’t that hydrated myself by the look of it.
I avoided the lad’s eyes when he came back in. “Sorry,” I said as he went to the bucket and picked it up. He took it out without comment. God, this was so fucking humiliating. When he brought it back in, it still smelt faintly of urine. I wondered how long we were going to be here like this. They must have found the cottage by now and worked out that we’d been held there. But how would they know to look for this van? Grimly, I pulled Nish upright and forced some more coke down him. He choked and swallowed, then gagged and retched, but this time only a small dribble came out. Maybe that was progress?
I looked across at the boy. “We can’t stay like this for long. Where can you take us that at least has a tap and a toilet?”
Clearly the same thought process had been exercising his own mind.
“How did you get hold of that cottage?”
“Rent it from website. Say ‘Mr and Mrs Khan’.”
“Well surely there’s a ‘Last Minute Berkshire Holiday Cottages Dot Com’ site somewhere online?” I suggested slightly sarcastically. “Have you got a smart-phone?”
He pulled out a very expensive looking phone and began to search on it.
“Have you got a good signal?” I asked surprised.
He nodded.
We must be high up, maybe near a mast. Yes, on the downs, I thought. I hauled Nish up and tortured him with some more coke which seemed to stay down, and then I moved over to sit down by Shafif. “Let me see,” I demanded.
Half an hour later, Nish murmured wearily, “Will you two stop bickering?”
Shafif and I were snatching the phone off each other and having heated discussions about the merits or contraindications of various properties on different websites.
I glanced over at Nish and smiled. That was the first time he’d shown any signs of taking notice of what was going on around him. He stared at me, and then, just ever so slightly, the corners of his own mouth curved back in response.
“Hey, Posh Boy,” I said cheerfully. “What other counties are near to Berkshire?”
“Oxfordshire, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire,” he said, after a moment. “Bucks?” He added with a sort of query in his tone.
I typed them in, one at a time. “What postcode is ‘SN’?” I asked.
“Swindon,” he supplied.
“OX?”
“Oxford.”
“SL?”
“Slough and Maidenhead, which is basically Windsor…”
“What, like where Windsor Palace is?” I queried.
He nodded.
I laughed. “Don’t go there, Shafif, that’s where the Queen lives. There’ll be lots of soldiers there!”
Shafif giggled.
“What are you doing?” Nish sounded irritated.
“Trying to find us somewhere remote to hole up. Trouble is, all the holiday cottages are bang in the middle of Cotswold villages, or really touristy hot spots.”
“Why are we needing to hole up?” He asked vaguely.
“Because you’ve been kidnapped, you idiot!”
He stared blankly at me as though it hadn’t yet occurred to him to wonder why we were sitting around in the semi-dark in a van, or why he was lying there with his ribs kicked in.
“Why?” He finally asked.
“Because they want your Uncle to step down and hand over power to the opposition…”
He was completely bewildered now. “What Uncle? What opposition?”
I tried to explain.
“But I don’t have an Uncle in Pakistan,” he protested. “Mum doesn’t have any family!”
“Yes, she does,” I insisted. “Her brother is the Chief Minister of the Province and he sounds like a right nasty tyke according to what Shafif here has been telling me! Beatings, summary executions, arrests and detentions without trial. Your family out there cut all ties with your mother when she ran off with your father…”
“I don’t believe you,” Nish protested, coughing awkwardly as he tried to sit up, and then wincing. “There must be some sort of mix up.”
“No, your Mother told me herself. And she was giving them a right tongue lashing in Sindhi on the phone, I can tell you. Called them dirty, ignorant, nasty, peasants. So you’re lucky they didn’t come straight off the phone and put a bullet through your head, methinks!”
He stared at me. “You don’t know my Mother.”
“I do now,” I said.
I got the rest of the bottle of coke down him. What seemed like hours later, we heard another vehicle turning in. It had a large engine. A tractor maybe? Immediately we drove off. We drove around for about half an hour then stopped somewhere else. By now I was beginning to feel desperately thirsty and faint and hungry and a bit nauseous myself. I also was beginning to need the other sort of toilet, but how could I possibly do it in the bucket with Nish there and the lad having to empty it? Nish hadn’t needed to pee at all yet, which I thought was a really terrible sign after five days. The van smelt of puke and pee and sour sweat. Shafif was looking utterly hacked off. He kept an eye on Nish w
ith one hand on his gun at all times. What was taking the authorities so long? Please find us soon, please…
Shafif left, locked the door and was gone for absolutely ages. Eventually I curled up on the duvet by Nish. He was silent.
“Sapphie says they’ve got the Foreign Office, MI5 and the SAS all hanging out at your Mother’s house, so I’m sure they’ll find us eventually…” I comforted him.
He stared at me as though I were bonkers and nothing I said made any sense to him at all.
By the time Shafif came back, we’d both fallen asleep again. Shafif was clutching a half full bottle of coke. He handed it to Nish and mimed to him to drink it. Nish struggled to a sitting position and took the bottle and slowly sipped it. I watched Shafif’s face as Nish worked his way down the bottle. For some reason it was really important to him that Nish drank it. When there was only about a third left, he took it back off Nish and handed it to me. Suddenly I knew what was in it. I shook my head. He frowned and jabbed the bottle at me. I knocked it as hard as I could out of his hand and it rolled and bounced across the floor, pouring out most of what was left. Shafif looked angry.
“Why’d you do that?” Nish asked.
Shafif fingered his gun. I said nothing.
Very soon, Nish was fast asleep on the duvet again. I sat protectively close to him as the van jerked away. Maybe it was better that Nish was drugged again if they were going to move us, because he’d be bound to try and struggle and then they’d only hit him about again, or shoot him.
The Way Back Page 15