The Family Lie

by Jake Cross

  Middleton couldn’t hold his tongue: ‘Someone help my daughter, please.’

  ‘The guy’s pulled out his phone. I think he just got a call.’

  Heads turned as Nick said, ‘Hey, Phoenix van man, that’s Ronnie Kray’s granddaughter you’re messing with. You want your head cut off with one of your own knives? Get lost.’

  ‘Something going on here, boss. Guy just panicked and ran back to his van. Jesus, U-turn in the road and he’s out of there.’

  The DS glared at Nick. ‘That wasn’t very clever, Mr Carter. What if that driver…’

  But he stopped as Nick tossed Miller her phone back. ‘Just put the CD back on for my wife.’

  The phone box on the corner just sat there, innocent, nothing but a piece of street furniture nobody out and about gave two hoots for. But she was terrified to go near it. She fingered the tiny lump under her top.

  ‘Try not to touch the transmitter,’ Bennet said, referring to the small microphone/camera they’d ordered her to wear. ‘Eleven minutes to go. Are you okay?’

  ‘Put Nick on.’

  ‘I’m here,’ he said.

  She looked at the rear-view mirror, where one of the tiny microphones was placed. She smiled at it. At Nick, who would be watching.

  ‘I’m okay. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be back with Josie very soon. Why don’t you make her one of those egg salads for when we get back?’

  ‘I will. Are you sure you’re okay? I wish I was there.’

  ‘It has to be this way. I’ll have a cheeseburger.’

  ‘I know, I know it has to be this way. I’ll make us both a bacon and cheeseburger, and egg salad for Josie. Waiting on the table for you.’ He paused. ‘Try not to be scared. They have police scattered around, so nothing will happen to you.’

  She said nothing. If this was some kind of trick to get at her, she didn’t care. It would mean Josie was gone. Next to that, her own plight meant nothing. But she nodded for the camera, for Nick, for all of them, to keep them calm.

  ‘Ten minutes,’ Bennet said. ‘You should go now and wait in the phone box, just to make sure nobody else can use it.’

  She scanned her surroundings. Nobody seemed to be paying attention to the Corsa in a paint warehouse’s car park, but the Ogres would surely manage that without being spotted themselves.

  Bennet said: ‘We can hear you once you leave the car, but you won’t hear us. We’ll see what’s ahead of you. If there’s a problem—’

  ‘There won’t be,’ she cut in.

  She didn’t want to think that way. She picked up the shoebox of money and got out. She took a breath and started to walk across the car park, feeling the weight of eyes upon her. Ten, fifteen, twenty or so people on George Street, walking this way and that. Dozens more passing by on the main road into the town centre. Hundreds of cars zipping by on the dual carriageway. She was boxed in by myriad eyes, and any of them could belong to a man who might already have put her girl’s blood on his hands. Not knowing who was out there made her feel blind, so she ignored every piece of the whole world except the shoebox, which she carried in both hands like a tray bearing something fragile, and the phone box, which waited to pounce like a predator.

  The tall security camera a hundred metres away seemed to stare right at her as she crossed George Street and approached the phone box. From this angle she could see the busy roundabout, and the train station, so close now, and the supermarket next door. Eight minutes until her world blossomed or wilted. Her legs barely carried her the final few feet to the phone box.

  She hugged the shoebox to her chest to free a hand for opening the door. She wasn’t looking forward to a long wait alone inside the phone box, as minutes that seemed like hours crept by; she was scared that someone would come along and insist on making a call; she was worried that she’d snap mentally, like someone trapped for years on a desert island, and the phone box would become her coffin.

  But the phone rang even as the door was swinging shut behind her.

  The moment she picked up the receiver in her left hand, something seemed to click in her mind. She remembered the order to answer immediately. She had already told herself they were just words, and they would help get Josie back. So there was no shame when she said:

  ‘Hello, my master. I am so scared.’

  She put her other hand on the receiver, as ordered. There was a pause. The fingers of her right hand traced along the inside of the receiver handle as the wait jangled her nerves.

  ‘Pay careful attention to what you feel. It will help you do the right thing. Remember: any trickery and your kid doesn’t see old age.’

  Growing shock made her unable to speak. The same disguise to the voice. It was hard to picture a woman at the other end.

  ‘So you understand the message I’m giving you. Good.’

  She got her mind back on track and remembered the rest of her instructions: ‘I will do whatever you want.’

  ‘We don’t want you to do this. We want your husband to bring the money. Go home and we’ll call again.’

  Click.

  Anna dropped the receiver. It yanked against the end of the cable and cracked into her knee, but she barely felt it. She leaned on the phone book shelf, gripping it tightly with both hands, and laid her head against the wall. For a few seconds, she just stayed like that. Then she stood, removed one hand from the shelf and grabbed the swinging receiver again.

  ‘Hello?’ she cried into it. But of course, there was no answer. The faceless voice had gone.

  She put the receiver back in its cradle, slowly and carefully, and rubbed her hands together. ‘You’ll be okay, Anna,’ she said aloud. It was a careful sentence, designed to ease Nick’s pain and not arouse suspicion if the Ogres were listening. God knows what Nick was going through. And Jane and Father. She picked up the shoebox and rushed from the phone box, eager to get back to her husband, because he would need comfort after her failure to get Josie back. The moment she flopped into the driver’s seat, Nick was right there.

  ‘It’s okay, Anna, it’s okay, they probably want me to do some running around, so there’s no police surveillance, that’s all. Please, don’t be worried. Are you okay?’

  ‘I’m fine. But are you, Nick? This wasn’t what we expected, but it’s not bad news. I don’t want you to worry. Look, I’m coming home.’

  ‘Good. But stay calm, baby, please. Come on back. Everything will be fine, I promise.’

  ‘Let me drive, Nick. I don’t want to talk just yet. Let me get out of the city centre. You know I can’t drive and talk.’

  ‘Okay. But watch how you go. Are you sure you’re okay? Drive carefully, please.’

  Drive carefully? That elicited a wild cackle that quickly transformed into uncontrollable sobbing.

  Part Two

  Eight

  Nick grabbed the radio, shook his head in answer to a question from DS Bennet, and strode from the room in order to speak with his wife in private. In Josie’s playroom, he sat at the table, where Busy Day caught his eye. He put the radio down, and stared at it, and waited for her to speak. He could hear the car’s engine because the channel was wide open at Anna’s end. And the sound of sobbing. But he held his tongue to give her time.

  ‘Earlier this year a woman threw a petrol bomb through a house window.’ Nick looked round to see Bennet in the doorway. ‘It only killed the dog because the owners weren’t in. But she admitted trying to kill the family. It was retaliation for a snowball the owner’s kid threw at her two months before.’

  ‘So this is your snowball story? I get it. People can hold grudges for the slightest thing. Okay, ten years ago I spilled a guy’s pint in a pub in London. Go get him.’

  ‘The kidnappers mentioned you paying dues, Nick, and—’

  ‘This is about her father’s money,’ Nick cut in. ‘He flaunts it. Someone wants it. Sounds to me like this dues thing simply meant I should be the one delivering it, and lo and behold that’s what they’ve now asked for. Seems straightfor
ward and I don’t know why everyone’s worrying. Now, can you please leave me alone to speak to my wife?’

  Bennet came closer so he could watch Nick across the table. ‘Start taking this seriously, Nick. They mentioned dues and now they want you to take the money. Not, as you put it, someone small and frail they can easily overcome. Why pick you, a bodybuilder with attitude, unless these people wanted to get you in a certain place at a certain time?’

  ‘If they wanted to hurt me, they could have done that when I was drugged up in the back of their van. They could have killed my girl in front of me, if getting to me was their plan.’

  ‘Maybe something’s different now,’ Bennet said.

  It was something Nick had already considered. But what mattered was that Anna was out of danger. And if there was trickery ahead, Josie had a better chance of rescue with brawn and anger playing a role.

  Despite his last line, Bennet suddenly changed his mind. ‘Maybe you’re right. Perhaps whatever the kidnappers have planned has been delayed. Maybe they picked you just because you were drugged and they figure you’re still not thinking straight.’

  ‘That’ll be it. Now I’d like five minutes alone, if you don’t mind.’

  Bennet didn’t move. ‘I need you to talk to my DCI about negotiating with—’

  Nick said, ‘So I can learn “pseudo-therapeutic communication strategies”?’

  The DS paused. ‘Someone’s been on the Internet. Did you also read about Red Centre training? DCI Miller has studied for kidnap scenarios, Nick, so it would only be helpful to speak to her on this matter.’

  ‘No, DS Bennet. Okay? No. I don’t care if she knows all the tricks. No tricks are needed. Just a bag of money, which I have.’

  ‘And ego with a dash of inferiority complex. Why are you so averse to help? Early midlife crisis?’

  ‘You’re right, Sergeant, I did go on the Internet. It seems here in South Yorkshire not a lot of kids need rescuing from kidnappers. Suicidal students, though, quite a lot of those need talking down from high windows. Look, Detective, I’m not an angry man and it’s not my go-to emotion when things go wrong. But I’m all over the place because I can’t help my kid. I don’t know how else to act—’

  ‘Nick, are you there?’ Anna said.

  Nick snatched up the radio and waved Bennet from the room. Thankfully, he left without a word.

  ‘I’m here. Are you okay?’

  ‘I’m okay. I know everything will be fine, don’t worry. And when Josie is back with us, we’re going to Iceland. That rocket ship.’

  ‘Yes. For a whole month.’

  ‘And we’re going to get proper security on the house.’

  He picked up a pen. ‘We? Does that mean we’re okay now? Me and you?’

  ‘Let’s not talk about that just now. Are you okay with doing this? Taking the money, I mean.’

  He knew what she meant, of course. He drew a speech bubble above the stick version of himself on Josie’s picture. He knew it wasn’t the right time to discuss their relationship, but he wasn’t being selfish. This was still all about Josie. How could he leave the family home after this? Josie would need extra protection. She would need her big, strong dad to watch her. Until paranoia dissipated, it would take two parents to watch her in shifts 24/7.

  ‘I’m okay with it. Detective Miller just said there’s probably been a delay of some kind. That’s why the kidnappers want to call us later. I’m sure their wanting me to bring the money is nothing to do with me.’

  He wasn’t so sure, but couldn’t say anything that might worry her. He needed to keep her calm. He asked her to tell him all about Iceland’s famous rocket ship church. And as she spoke, he wrote inside the speech bubble:

  I’m going nowhere today, Josie. Never again. Going to stay right by your side until you’re big and strong enough to take care of yourself.

  Nine

  For half an hour, Nick threw his fists and tried to relieve pressure with each powerful punch. When Anna had arrived home, they hadn’t let him say much more than a greeting. She needed to be debriefed while her memory was fresh. So he’d slipped down into the cold cellar to sluice away frustration on an old sofa cushion nailed to the bare brick wall. When his knuckles burned from the heavy impacts, he turned to the pull-up bar. He’d told someone to call him the moment he could have his wife back, but the first he knew of it was when her hands lay on his back as he hoisted himself up, teeth gritted, grunting with exertion and frustration. The shock made him release his grip and thud to the floor. He wanted to turn into her arms, but he didn’t want her to see the rage on his face. He needed to say something.

  ‘We have to prepare for the worst.’

  Anna’s voice was sharp and confident. ‘No, Josie is coming home today.’

  He grabbed the bar again. The effort was putting pain in his muscles and he needed that. Right now, unable to share his wife’s optimism, he needed his brain to focus on something other than the hole in his heart.

  ‘This is my fault,’ he moaned. ‘I was too weak. I did nothing. I couldn’t stop them from taking her. What if I can’t help her this time? I can’t promise.’

  He felt her arms encircle his chest from behind. The extra weight felt good to power against. The extra pain. He wanted the pain. He deserved the pain, for his weakness.

  ‘Well, I will make you that promise,’ she said. ‘I’ll get our little lady home.’

  Nick pushed open the door of the playroom and found Miller on her phone, her back to him. She was at the window, absently running a toy police car back and forth along the sill.

  ‘But I said I can’t, darling,’ she said, her voice cracking a little.

  He stopped, realising he was listening to a personal call.

  The next thing she said confirmed it: ‘No, don’t be like that, Liz, you’ve known about the Sunday rota for weeks. I…’ Her head twitched and Nick knew his presence had been fathomed. ‘Call you later. No, look, I—’

  She looked at her phone, then put it away. Whoever it was had hung up on her. A domestic of some sort, with another woman. He felt awkward overhearing, for all of two seconds. Then more pressing matters took over.

  ‘Bennet said you had some information for us. So let me ask you something while my wife isn’t listening. And I want the truth. The NSPCC has had nearly two thousand cases of trafficked children in the last ten years. Is my little girl on her way to London or abroad even, to go work in a brothel?’

  ‘There’s nothing to suggest that, Nick.’ Still with her back to him, Miller took a moment to raise a finger to one eye, which he figured was to wipe away a tear that hadn’t fallen. Then she turned his way, back to business, wholly professional again. ‘Where did you get that idea? Reading on the Internet? Unwise, my friend. There’s been a ransom demand, remember.’

  He tried to read deception in her face, but it wasn’t there. If anything, she was surprised he’d made such a leap and it made him realise he had, indeed, paid too much heed to a bunch of statistics posted online. He turned to leave. ‘We’re in the kitchen when you’re ready.’

  She got to the kitchen twenty seconds later, carrying a laptop. Anna was seated, Jane was making tea, her fingers fast and deft within her comfortable body space, but Nick buzzed with too much energy and virtually hopped from foot to foot.

  ‘Thank you all for meeting me,’ Miller said, her voice croaky. As she lay the laptop on the table and stood behind it, Anna got up and approached the fridge. The detective was working the mousepad when Anna put a sandwich in foil and a bottle of water – Nick’s packed lunch for a job he no longer had – right down on the keyboard.

  ‘You need water,’ Anna said. ‘And you fed your people but I’ve not seen you eat.’

  Miller looked ready to object, but took a sip of the water and a bite of the sandwich. Just a fragment of each, as if only to appease Anna. Then she leaned over the laptop again and started working the keyboard, doing everything upside down. Her position exposed more of her chest tatto
o – the helmeted warrior had a muscled torso, but the legs of a horse: a centaur. It provoked a strange thought in Nick: No one really knows anyone, do they?

  The map Nick and Anna had seen earlier was back. The ˃ shape that traced the route of the hunted VW Passat from the lock-up garage now looked like an elongated Z, because another pin had been added, this time a mile east of the Nuthall mark, still in Nuthall but on the other side of the M1. The M1 was a line cutting the Z in half.

  Miller waited a few seconds until Jane had put a tea before Anna and taken her seat. Nick stood behind both women, still fidgeting with excess energy.

  Miller tapped the top left point of the Z: ‘03.11 text message from Nick’s mobile. At the lock-up garage.’ She dragged her finger to the top right corner: ‘05.02 call to your home. From the A38 near the two Ashfield market towns, east of the M1.’ Bottom left: ‘The 07.14 call to the hospital. From around the town of Nuthall, west of the M1. And lastly the bottom right point of the alphabet’s ultimate letter: ‘10 a.m. call directing Anna to the Rotherham phone box. Still in Nuthall, but barely a mile east of the call that came nearly three hours earlier.’

  ‘Seems to me they’ve reached their destination if they barely moved in three hours. So it’s Nottingham after all.’ All turned to the voice from the doorway. Middleton. He seemed to take their silence as a point proven, and vanished just as quickly as he’d materialised.

  ‘Ignore him, Nick,’ Anna said, fiddling with a watch she’d recently put on. ‘I’ll talk to him.’

  Miller stared right into Nick’s eyes. ‘Nobody is accusing you of anything, Nick.’ She got back to business to quickly shift the subject. ‘As we’ve shown, they’re probably avoiding major roads like the M1 because of the cameras. The zigzagging south could be so we can’t determine a straight path to a particular place. But the movement west between the 07.13 and 10 o’clock calls is tiny given the three-hour gap. As Mr Middleton said, they might have reached their destination. Nuthall. Possibly the portion west of the M1, location of the 07.13 call.’ She jabbed the bottom left corner of the Z. ‘They might have made a little journey east for the 10 o’clock just to make sure their phones weren’t captured in the same spot. It’s possible they’re hanging around in Nuthall awaiting something and will move on. Of course, it’s possible they had a delay, like a puncture or such.’