Dead Man's Gift and Other Stories

by Simon Kernick

Tim sighed. ‘His name’s Scope. He used to be married to Diane’s sister.’

  ‘Oh God, Tim. What have you done?’

  ‘Shut up, Mrs Horton,’ snapped the kidnapper. ‘And why did you think he could help?’

  ‘He’s ex-army, and I know he’s been in some tight situations and got out of them. I thought it would be more effective than going to the police.’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t, was it? He’s caused us a lot of problems, which means a lot of problems for you. And for your son.’

  ‘Please don’t hurt him,’ begged Diane. ‘I’ll do anything to save Max. Anything at all.’

  The kidnapper ignored her. ‘We need to bring your dog to heel, Mr Horton. I want you to phone this man Scope right now, using the phone you originally contacted him on, and tell him that if he doesn’t come to your house immediately, then Max will lose a thumb. And keep the phone next to the handset so I can hear the conversation. And remember this: if you fuck up, or try to be clever, we start to really go to work on your son.’

  Tim stole a glance at Diane, wanting to reassure her somehow that he’d do things the right way this time, but her look told him that it was far too late for that.

  Feeling nauseous, he picked up the phone and dialled Scope’s number.

  The phone rang on the coffee table, waking Scope from a dreamless, surprisingly deep sleep. Rubbing his eyes, he reached over and checked the screen, immediately recognizing Tim’s number. He moved to press the Answer button, but stopped himself at the last second. If the kidnappers had already found out that he’d killed one of them, they might be forcing Tim to call him. Which meant it was best not to answer.

  He could be wrong, of course, but if Tim was able to speak freely then he’d leave a message and Scope could call him straight back. He waited while the phone went to message, and thirty seconds later, just as he was beginning to waiver about his decision, a prompt told him that he had a voicemail message.

  He listened to Tim’s desperate words in silence.

  ‘Scope, you need to come straight back here to the house. If you don’t, they’re going to hurt Max. Call back as soon as you get this message.’

  Scope put down the phone and rubbed his eyes. Now he had a real dilemma. If he did as Horton asked, and ended his involvement, he might still be able to get out of this whole thing in one piece. He was pretty sure the police didn’t have enough evidence to connect him to the Phil Vermont killing, and he didn’t think the kidnappers would come after him, either. They struck him as a professional gang who’d accept the loss of one of their number as an occupational hazard.

  But the fact that they were professionals also meant there was a good chance they wouldn’t release Max. It would be far easier simply to kill him. That way he couldn’t provide any leads. Even if Scope cooperated by stopping his search, it wasn’t going to save Max’s life.

  So, for the moment, he was going to risk continuing with it, figuring that if he didn’t answer his phone, then the kidnappers couldn’t take it out on Horton.

  He lay back on the sofa, hoping he wasn’t making a big mistake.

  Tim Horton put the phone back down on the table. ‘He’s not answering.’

  ‘There’s a camera attached to the middle candlestick on the dresser,’ said the kidnapper over the landline loudspeaker. ‘It’s been filming you all evening. I want you to approach that camera, showing the screen on your phone containing your recent calls. That way I’ll know you’re not trying to be clever.’

  Hugely relieved that this time he no longer had anything to hide, Tim did as he was told, quickly spotting the camera now that he knew where to look for it, even though it was barely half an inch long. He held up the phone a few inches away until, seemingly satisfied, the kidnapper told him to put it back in his pocket.

  ‘Right, Mr Horton, I think it’s time we finally got things moving, seeing as you can’t be trusted. Tell me the number of that phone you’re holding in your hand.’

  Tim told him, feeling a growing sense of dread.

  ‘I’m going to text you the address of a hotel near Paddington Station,’ the kidnapper told him, his voice calmer and more controlled now. ‘You’re to get changed into the clothes you’ll be wearing for the select-committee hearing, gather together everything you need, and then head straight there to Room 21 on the second floor. The key to the room is taped to the bottom of the candlestick holding the camera. When you get there, wait for my call.’

  ‘You’re not going to hurt Max again, are you?’ asked Diane. ‘Tim’s doing as he’s told now. He’s not going to do anything else stupid.’

  ‘If your husband does what he’s told this time, your son won’t come to further harm.’

  ‘I will, you have my word,’ Tim said, stung by his wife’s seeming indifference to his imminent fate.

  ‘You need to be at that hotel by five a.m., Mr Horton. And we have cameras there too, so make sure you don’t try to pull another stunt like the last one.’

  ‘I won’t. I told you—’

  ‘And you’re not to use that phone to call anyone unless you have my express permission. I will call you on it periodically. Wait until the third ring before you answer. Now understand this: if I try to ring and I get a busy signal, or it goes to message, it’ll be your son who suffers. Understood?’

  Tim nodded wearily. ‘Understood.’

  ‘Now go,’ said the kidnapper and cut the connection.

  The dining room was suddenly filled with a thick, cloying silence. Horton looked at Diane, but she was staring down at the table. As he watched, a tear dripped onto the mahogany.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said quietly, the tears coming for him now, as he realized all the things that he’d had and never appreciated until now, when it was far too late. ‘I, er …’

  ‘Just get out,’ she said, without looking up.

  13

  Frank Bale was in his study, staring at the live footage of the Hortons’ dining room. Tim Horton had just said goodbye to his wife for the final time. Or, more accurately, he’d tried to. She’d acted like a corpse in his arms as he’d leaned down to hug her. He’d been crying like a baby as he begged for her forgiveness, but she wasn’t having any of it, which Frank thought was a bit harsh. Instead, she’d told him not to let their son down again and sent him off with a dismissive wave. Now she was sitting silently, looking fixedly at the wall, an occasional sob the only sign of her inner turmoil.

  Frank took a long drag on his cigarillo, savouring the hit to his throat, and scratched at the patch of eczema in the fold of his belly with his spare hand. He knew he’d been hard on the Hortons, threatening to have their kid’s thumb cut off, putting them both through the ringer like that. But this was the business Frank was in, and sometimes it involved doling out pain to those who might not entirely deserve it, and anyway it had been Tim Horton’s own fault, bringing in some violent killer of an ex-squaddie, rather than simply doing what he was told. It had taken all Frank’s negotiating skills to keep Vermont’s psychotic fellow kidnapper, Celia, under control when he’d rung to tell her that Vermont had been called away and wouldn’t be coming back before tomorrow at the earliest. At first she’d flipped, saying she couldn’t handle things without Vermont there and demanding to know where he was, but Frank had finally calmed her down with the promise of an extra bonus. He’d also told her to knock the kid about a bit and record his screams, for the benefit of his parents, something the sadistic bitch had been only too effective in doing.

  Now everything was back under control and it was simply a matter of waiting for the next stage of the operation to begin. Frank had always known this was going to be a long twenty-four hours, which was why he’d sent the wife away to her sister’s in Spain for a few days. But the money was going to make it all worthwhile. One hundred and fifty grand in an anonymous foreign bank account. All for one day’s work.

  Frank stubbed out the cigarillo, heaving himself out of his seat. Who said crime didn’t pay?

  Scope wa
s already awake, doing some stretches on Orla’s living-room floor, when his phone rang. It was 6 a.m.

  He picked it up and saw that the caller was T Rex.

  ‘You owe me a lot of money,’ said the hacker. ‘I’ve been working on this all night.’

  ‘What have you got?’

  ‘As I pointed out to you earlier, there are a lot of Franks based round that area of London, and I’ve had to hack into several very sensitive databases, which is why it took so long – and why it’s going to cost you so much. Anyway, I narrowed the list down to four individuals who fit the basic description you gave me. You said he was corrupt, yes?’

  ‘That’s right. I’m pretty certain he’s got links to organized crime.’

  ‘Well, none of the four have ever been investigated, and none of them have any obvious links to Philip Vermont, who, by the way, Scope, is being reported as a possible murder victim. Apparently he died last night. That’s a coincidence, right?’

  ‘Of course.’

  T Rex sighed like a schoolteacher frustrated by a promising, yet rebellious pupil. ‘However, I Google Earthed the home addresses of all four men, and one of them has a particularly attractive property, for someone who’s spent his whole life in the police and is married to a freelance hairdresser.’

  ‘That sounds like our man. Give me the name.’

  ‘Not so fast, Scope. I didn’t mind what you did to the people I found for you before – they were drug dealers with plenty of enemies. But killing a senior police officer? That’s a whole different kettle of fish and it’s going to lead to a much bigger investigation, which I really don’t want to be a part of.’

  ‘I’m not going to kill him.’

  ‘You always say that. And yet somehow they always end up dead. Plus there’s the small matter of my bill. You owe me four thousand, four hundred pounds.’

  Scope stifled a yawn. He hadn’t slept well. ‘Listen. I don’t know anything about you. Anything at all. So nothing I do could ever come back to you. As for your money, you know who I am, and everything I’ve done, so it’s always going to be in my interests to make sure you get paid. So please. Give me that name. It’s urgent.’

  T Rex paused, wheezing down the phone, before he finally spoke. ‘Francis Thomas Bale. He’s a DCI in the Met’s Homicide and Serious Crime Command based out of Wembley, so he’s high up. Age forty-seven, only two years off his thirty years’ service.’ He gave Bale’s home address to Scope.

  ‘Have you got a photo?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Scope gave him a Hotmail address to send it to. ‘I’ll be in touch about the money in the next twenty-four hours,’ he said, ending the call and feeling the familiar pull of excitement. He was finally getting somewhere. There weren’t going to be that many individuals involved in this kidnap and he’d already taken out one. Frank Bale, he was sure, was going to know where Max was, and one way or another Scope was going to get the information out of him.

  ‘So what is it that you’ve done exactly? Aside from killing my boyfriend, that is?’

  Orla was standing in the doorway, watching him silently. She was wearing a black satin gown that was half-open at the top, revealing a line of cleavage that was only partly obscured by her blonde hair. The gown stopped midway down her thighs, revealing shapely, tanned legs.

  Scope couldn’t help looking. Physically, Orla was a very attractive woman. It was her personality that let her down.

  ‘How long have you been listening for?’ he asked her.

  ‘Long enough. You’ve got a loud voice.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you up.’

  ‘Who are you exactly?’ she said, eyeing him suspiciously. ‘You look familiar without the make-up.’

  ‘The less you know about me, the better. And what you do know, you should forget as soon as possible.’ He picked up the piece of paper containing Frank Bale’s address and slipped it in his pocket. ‘Have you got a PC I can take a look at?’

  ‘Use the laptop on the table.’

  He booted it up, before logging on to the Hotmail address he’d given T Rex. There was a new email from an unknown sender, and Scope opened it and stared at a photo of the top half of a fat man with an egg-shaped head topped with a few desperate strands of sandy hair. He was wearing the kind of confident, slightly superior expression you saw on club doormen, and he was dressed in a well-cut suit that looked too expensive for most coppers.

  ‘Christ, who’s he?’ said Orla, looking over his shoulder.

  ‘You’ve never seen him before?’

  ‘Definitely not. I’d remember an ugly sod like that. Is he something to do with Phil?’

  Scope deleted the email and turned to face her.

  ‘You don’t need to know. All I’d advise you to do right now is keep your head down and wait for all this to blow over. Let me worry about finding Tim Horton’s son.’

  Orla looked up at him, her expression serious. ‘Look, I know I messed up with Tim. He was actually quite a nice guy, and I’m gutted that my actions got his son kidnapped, I really am. Whatever you think, I’ve got morals, and I want to help.’

  Scope eyed her as dispassionately as he could under the circumstances, even though a part of him just wanted to tear off that gown and make love to her. It struck him that she could be a useful assistant, as long as he made sure to keep her out of danger.

  He nodded. ‘Okay. But do me a favour. Get some clothes on. We need to get back to my car, and fast.’

  14

  The hotel room was small, bare and cold. Outside the window, Tim Horton could hear the low, rhythmic rumbling of the early-morning commuter trains as they made the final approach into Paddington Station.

  He’d been here for more than two hours now, sitting on the unmade single bed, staring at the wall. Alone and waiting. He looked at his watch constantly, knowing that each passing minute brought him closer to the end. It was less than four hours until Matt Cohen – the sports agent who purportedly knew more about match-fixing in English football games than anyone else – appeared at the select-committee hearing. Tim was sure they wanted him to kill Cohen before he made any dramatic revelations. But how? He was a career politician, not ex-SAS. He was incapable of killing anyone. Even with his son’s life at stake.

  On the way here he’d thought about calling Scope again, this time to find out how close he was to locating Max, but had stopped himself, not just because he didn’t want to risk it, but also because, if Scope hadn’t made progress, then in a way it was better not to know. He needed a sliver of hope right now, however small. Guilt was weighing heavily on him, but only because he wasn’t angry with himself for requesting Scope’s help. Ultimately, he felt he’d had no choice. Not when the alternative was … death. The word was so harsh and final. Just the thought of it made him break out into a cold, nauseous sweat.

  The phone rang in his suit pocket. It was a blocked number. He answered on the third ring.

  ‘Hello, Mr Horton,’ said the kidnapper, his voice calm. ‘I see you’re in the room.’

  ‘I got here a few hours ago,’ Tim said wearily.

  ‘I want you to know that your son is sleeping soundly. He’s fine now, and if you do what you’re instructed to do, he’ll be back safe and sound with your wife this afternoon. That’s what your sacrifice will achieve. A chance for your son to grow up and have his own children.’

  Tim didn’t say anything. There was really nothing to say.

  ‘In the cupboard opposite the bed, there’s a coat hanging up. Remove it from the hanger.’

  ‘I want to speak to my son. I need to check he’s okay.’

  ‘I’m afraid that’s not possible.’

  ‘Look, if I’m going to do this—’

  ‘You are going to do this. And you’re not going to speak to your son. Now do as you’re told.’

  The kidnapper’s words exposed Horton’s impotence. Feeling exhausted and beaten, he slowly got up from the bed and opened the cupboard. The coat –
a tatty-looking black Crombie – looked ordinary enough. And it was. It was what was hanging underneath it that set his pulse racing.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ he whispered.

  ‘Now you know what you’ve got to do,’ said the kidnapper.

  Frank Bale watched the hotel-room interior on the screen in his study. This was the moment of truth. If Tim Horton was going to panic and run, now would be the time. Frank waited until Horton stepped back into shot. The shock was written all over his face, but there was something else too. Understanding.

  He was going to do it.

  15

  Dawn was just beginning to break as Scope walked swiftly down the quiet residential street. He was wearing dark glasses and a beanie hat, and the tanning make-up he’d applied in the car a few minutes ago gave him a Mediterranean appearance. It wasn’t much of a disguise, but it was enough for what he needed to do.

  Frank Bale’s home was one of a new development of five three-storey townhouses set back from the road behind a wall topped with wrought-iron railings and electric gates. The residents’ cars were parked in spaces just in front of their respective houses, and he’d clocked Bale’s black Jaguar outside 25C, the middle one.

  A commuter wrapped up against the cold was hurrying towards him in the semi-darkness, so Scope kept walking, keeping his head down and letting the guy get a good few yards past him before he turned and jumped onto the wall, using the railings to pull himself up. Carefully climbing over them, he scrambled down the other side and bent down beside the Jaguar, planting the tracking device on its underside. Now Bale wouldn’t go anywhere without Scope knowing about it. There were already lights on in four of the houses, including Bale’s, and Scope knew he was exposed where he was. This wasn’t going to be easy. Bale didn’t have any kids, but he did have a wife, and Scope had no desire to involve her in any of this.

  Taking a quick look round, he walked up to the front door to 25C and checked the lock. It was a brand-new card-operated system, and very difficult to get through unless you were an expert, which Scope wasn’t. The door itself was PVC, way too strong for brute force, and a burglar alarm flashed ominously a few feet above his head.