(2013) The Catch

by Tom Bale

  “Two years, next February,” Laura said. She sounded strong and confident, and Harry felt in awe of her.

  He added, “Before us, it was a woman in her eighties. She had to go into a home. Mrs...”

  “Stevens,” Laura finished for him. “Eileen Stevens.”

  Harry nodded. He felt sure they were coming across as honest, genuine people, trying their best to be co-operative in extremely stressful circumstances. This was a misunderstanding, nothing more.

  Laura was saying, “Eileen was a spinster. She lived alone—”

  The first man cut her off: “You had a parcel.”

  ****

  Harry felt his wife flinch at the interruption, her knee bumping against his leg. He glanced at her, worried that in desperation she’d invent a lot of nonsense to send them away. She was staring rigidly at the second man, who had taken something from the pocket of his overalls.

  A knife.

  “This week some time,” the first man said. “The parcel was addressed to Mr E Grainger.”

  Sophie was stirring, kicking at her blanket. The bright light and the noise must have woken her. In any case she was due a feed within half an hour or so.

  Thirty minutes. Such a trivial span of time in the scheme of things, and yet Harry realised he had absolutely no idea what their future held: half an hour from now they might be safe and well, deeply shaken but otherwise able to resume their lives; or they might be—

  Another jolt of adrenalin. Harry’s reaction was not anger, exactly, but defiance.

  “Why would we get a parcel for this Grainger, or Renshaw? He doesn’t live here. We have no idea who he is.”

  “We know it came to this address. 34 Lavinia Street.”

  Laura said, “You realise there’s also a Lavinia Drive in Brighton? And a Lavinia Crescent. The post office gets mixed up. We’ve had junk mail for 34 Lavinia Crescent before now.”

  The first man sighed, as though she and Harry were testing his patience. “I don’t think you appreciate how serious this is.”

  He looked at his partner, who nodded enthusiastically. “They need a lesson.”

  CHAPTER 3

  The man with the knife took a step towards Sophie.

  “Don’t you touch her!” Harry yelled. He flung himself forward, colliding with Laura as she made the same desperate move to protect the baby. Laura actually had a hand on the Moses basket when the man jabbed the knife at her face, forcing her to retreat.

  “Relax,” the first man said. “He’s good with kids.”

  It was a voice that demanded attention. Sprawled helplessly across the bed, Harry looked round and saw that the man now held a gun, a small black pistol. Aimed at Harry.

  “Back where you were,” the man said. “And lie still. A dead hero is no use to anyone.”

  Harry had little choice but to comply, but the feeling of impotence, the cowardice, was like a fist around his heart. Laura was ordered to lie alongside him and she obeyed meekly, both of them shaking so hard they could feel the mattress trembling beneath them. Sophie let out a mewling cry of protest: I didn’t wake you; why have you woken me?

  The man with the knife grabbed her blanket, whipping it out of the crib like a magician unveiling a brutal surprise. And there was Sophie, so tiny and vulnerable in her pink floral sleepsuit that the terror Harry felt – the terror of losing her – was more than he could bear. In the past few weeks he’d scarcely begun to adjust to the intensity of fatherhood: a mix of love and pride, anxiety and fear on a scale that had redefined what he thought was possible for one human being to feel for another. Bruce Springsteen had described the reaction perfectly in a song:

  It was all the beauty I could take. Like the missing words to some prayer; a prayer that I could never make.

  Laura reached for his hand, squeezing it as desperately as she had done in the closing stages of a long and difficult labour. Harry was even more useless to her now than he had been then.

  “A lesson,” the knife man said, and in one swift movement he clutched the front of Sophie’s sleepsuit and hoisted her into the air, the way you’d lift a pillow or a soft toy: as though their precious daughter was a tatty old ragdoll that could be pulled and dragged and thrown, or tossed aside and forgotten.

  Harry felt Laura slump against him, not fainting as he thought at first, but simply deflating in horror, in defeat. For this was the reality: their attempts at bravado had been pathetic. The truth was that they were at the mercy of these men. Stranded on their big silly bed in their beloved family home – the one place they’d so naively believed was safe – only to find that their blessed sanctuary from the world was no sanctuary at all.

  ****

  After a second or two when she must have been struck dumb with shock, Sophie let out a wail that seemed to split the air like summer lightning. But for all the effect it had on her parents, it probably wasn’t loud or unusual enough to alert their neighbours to the fact that something was wrong.

  Laura made a lunge for her daughter, recklessly ignoring the man with the gun. But his partner easily dodged back and dangled Sophie out of reach, her sleepsuit stretching like a bungee rope. He lifted both hands to chest height, so that baby and blade were only inches apart.

  “No sudden moves, darling, or I’ll slit her throat. Kid this size ain’t got much blood to spare. You wanna see it draining out over your carpet?”

  Laura groaned, and Harry thought he did, too: the image was too horrifying to contemplate.

  “Be a waste, though,” the knife man went on. “What d’ya reckon, on the open market?”

  The question was directed at the gunman, who gave a curt shake of his head. He moved to Harry’s side of the bed. Point blank range.

  “My friend “Jason” here is a psychopath. He could skin your baby like a rabbit and not bat an eyelid. But he won’t need to do that, because you’re going to co-operate. Aren’t you?”

  The question was clearly directed at Harry, but his mind had snagged helplessly on the idea of Sophie, either killed or badly disfigured because her parents had failed to protect her. He couldn’t speak, but when Laura let out a loud sob he managed to nod, at least.

  Yes, we’ll co-operate.

  ***

  “Let’s relax, shall we?” said the gunman. He signalled to the man he’d called ‘Jason’ – because of the mask, presumably – and his partner dragged the Moses basket a safe distance from the bed, then unceremoniously dropped Sophie into it. A sharp scream was followed by stuttering gasps as the baby, in trying to deal with the shock, seemed to forget how to breathe.

  “Please,” Laura cried. “She’s eight weeks old. Let me take her.”

  Jason shook his head. “Can’t do that.”

  “I’m begging you. She doesn’t deserve this.”

  “No?” said the gunman. “Sounds to me like you’ve come to your senses. This loyalty to Renshaw isn’t worth the life of your daughter.”

  Harry opened his hands, the sort of gesture you make to appeal for reason. Deep down he knew how futile that was, but it was ingrained in him to be polite and decent and reasonable, and it was equally ingrained to hope that others would treat him in the same way.

  “We can’t tell you anything about this man Renshaw because we have no idea who he is. No idea at all. So it’s impossible to give you what you want.”

  ***

  The silence that followed had a different quality to it. Harry wondered if their tormentors had been expecting such a deadlock; hoping for it, even. This felt like silence as a cue to action.

  He was right. Jason moved first, distracting him, and the gunman darted forward and shoved the muzzle of the gun against Harry’s chest. His other hand came down hard on Harry’s face, forcing his head back on the pillow.

  Laura screamed, but the sound was cut off when Jason used the baby’s blanket as a gag. He wrenched the duvet off their bed and straightened up, pausing to study Laura’s body in her silk M&S pyjamas. Harry caught a hungry gleam in the man’s eye
s.

  “Off.” The order was emphasised with a casual swipe of the blade, which pierced the skin on Laura’s neck. The sight of a few beads of blood made Harry writhe in fury but the gunman held him firm, twisting his head to make sure he had a clear view of his wife.

  They wanted him to watch.

  Whimpering helplessly, Laura had started to unbutton the pyjama top when Jason lost patience, ripping it open and exposing her breasts. Again he paused, and made a noise in his throat, an involuntary purring sound that turned Harry’s stomach.

  “Bottoms,” the man said, and Laura closed her eyes while she wriggled out of the trousers, as if that offered her a measure of privacy, or at least denial.

  “I’ll give you another chance to tell us,” the gunman said. “But not until my friend here has had a taste.”

  Jason sniggered. “Taste. Got that right.”

  Harry could see Laura shivering, her arms pinned at her side because she knew that any attempt to cover herself would be punished. She cringed as the man crouched at the side of the bed, and Harry had to resist the urge to shut his eyes. To hide from this would be far more shameful, more humiliating than to watch it happen.

  Jason leaned over Laura’s body, his head a few inches above her stomach. He seemed to be inspecting the effects of childbirth: the loose folds of skin, the silvery stretch marks that were, as Harry kept assuring her, getting better every day.

  It startled them both when Jason nudged the Halloween mask up over his chin. They caught a glimpse of jowly stubble and thin wet lips; a bright pink tongue lolling over the bottom lip as his mouth opened, then clamped down on one of Laura’s milk-engorged breasts. She cried out again, but it was muffled by the blanket: the sound of the man sucking greedily – feeding on her – was far louder, and far more disturbing.

  Harry bucked and fought, pushing the other man’s hand away to free his head, not caring in that moment if he was shot. Death seemed a better option than this, to lie helpless while they—

  Except Laura’s gaze was locked on him, pleading with him not to fight, not to die. Let them do this. And then the gunman rammed a fist into Harry’s stomach and the pain immobilised him for a second, his brain wiped of coherent thought, bile rising in his throat.

  Jason pulled his mouth away with a loud smacking sound, milk dribbling over his lips as he stood up and put the mask back in place, shaking his head and muttering, “Fucking weird taste, that.”

  “You wouldn’t want it in your tea?” the gunman asked drily.

  “Nah. But I’d still fuck her, wouldn’t you?” Jason sniffed, indicating Harry. “Tie him up and we can both do her. Take our time.”

  “No!” Harry said, and the word was as defiant as he could make it. For a second he had their attention, and he had to make the most of that.

  “You’ve got the wrong house,” he told them. “The wrong people. Nothing you do now is going to make Renshaw appear. For the sake of my wife and daughter I’ll tell you anything, but it won’t be the truth. The truth is that we don’t know the man you’re looking for, and I think you realise that.”

  ****

  The speech rolled out of him like the last desperate plea of a condemned man. It was accompanied by visions of a funeral procession. Three black hearses. Three coffins, one of them so tiny that it looked like a toy, like someone’s sick idea of a joke...

  Harry waited. The longest, most agonising wait of his life. He had no idea what their response would be. Perhaps no words at all. Perhaps just a gunshot or the slash of a blade.

  The gunman retreated from the bed, walked round to where his partner was standing and bent to pick something up from the floor. As he did, he began to speak.

  “These are the rules. You don’t go to the police. If you do, we will know. However you go about it, we will know.”

  He’d found a pack of wetwipes. He fumbled with the peelback strip, finding it difficult to open while wearing gloves. In the end he pulled out several wipes in a thick clump.

  “You won’t see us, but we’ll be watching. Report this, and the baby will die first. The police won’t protect you. No matter what they may say, they can’t. Not twenty-four hours a day. Not week in, week out, month after month. Do you understand?”

  Harry nodded. Laura didn’t. She seemed too traumatised to move.

  The gunman turned to her and first tugged the makeshift gag out of her mouth. Then he used the wipes to clean her breast - the one his partner had assaulted. He wasn’t gentle about it, but Laura made no protest.

  “When we find Renshaw – which we will – he’ll be questioned before we deal with him. If it turns out you knew him, or helped him in any way, the same thing applies. We’ll take your daughter when you least expect it and she will die a slow and painful death. Then we’ll come for your wife. Then you. Understand?”

  Harry nodded again. He could hardly dare to believe that this could be ended without bloodshed.

  “Say it.”

  “Yes. I get you.”

  The gun was aimed at Laura. “You?”

  “Yes.” The gun didn’t move, so she said it again. “Yes. I understand.”

  A snort from Jason, but Harry had the impression that he wasn’t completely in agreement with his partner. He was in no hurry to leave. Not while there was fun to be had.

  Harry realised he’d been too quickly seduced by the anticipation of release. This man could so easily reach out and cut Sophie, by way of a parting shot, and there would be nothing they could do to stop it happening.

  Then the gunman said, “Give it back to them,” and Jason scooped Sophie up with one hand, provoking a howl of anguish. He dumped her down on Laura, who immediately wrapped her daughter in a protective embrace, pulling the duvet up and turning away from the two men as if they no longer existed.

  “Stay exactly where you are for ten minutes. And remember: no police.”

  “And don’t be getting cocky,” Jason added. “Don’t wake up tomorrow and remember this any different from how it was. You’re shitting yourselves right now, and that’s how it’s got to stay.”

  They backed up to the door, the gun still raised, and then they were gone.

  Harry and Laura couldn’t have moved if they’d wanted to. They listened to the intruders descending the stairs, then heard the rattle of a bolt being drawn back. The front door opened and shut, firmly, and they were gone.

  It was over.

  It was only just beginning.

  ABOUT TOM BALE

  Tom Bale has had a variety of jobs but none was as exhausting as the several years he spent as a house-husband with two pre-school children. Tom has been writing since the age of seven and completed his first novel at fifteen. After more than twenty years and hundreds of rejection slips his first novel, SINS OF THE FATHER, was published under his real name, David Harrison. With his next book, SKIN AND BONES, he acquired an agent, a pseudonym and a book deal with Random House. He now writes full-time but still manages to waste far too many hours online. To combat this lack of willpower he often writes in cafes, and he counters a lifelong addiction to chocolate by walking, cycling and swimming in the sea.

  For more information, visit his website at www.tombale.net, follow on him on Facebook or on Twitter: @t0mbale (zero instead of ‘o’)