‘No. I have no interest in your granddaughter. But neither did the man who tried to take her.’
‘So what is this about?’
‘Have a look at the screen.’
‘What screen?’ she asked, looking around the room, her paranoia reasonably extending to assume he could somehow see where she was sitting. He seemed to know everything else.
‘On the phone,’ he clarified.
Jane took the phone from her ear and felt that cold steel fist for the second time. The little LCD window showed a photograph of Ross. Jane tried to speak but found her throat blocked.
‘Now press the right arrow key on the keypad.’
She complied, accidentally doing it twice. She saw a photograph flash past, replaced immediately by another. It showed a room in disarray, utterly ransacked.
‘These were taken yesterday morning at your son’s apartment in Chassignan.’
She pressed the left arrow key. The previous image was restored: a kitchen in a similar state of chaos. She’d never seen Ross’s place, never visited him in France. There seemed no reason for the man to be lying but no reason why she should believe him either. She pressed forward again. A third picture of the trashed apartment appeared. On one wall, tiny though the image was, she recognised a Celtic poster.
‘Oh God,’ she whispered.
‘Your son is missing, and if you wish to help him, you’re going to have to accede unquestioningly to my requests.’
She swallowed, fighting tears. ‘What do you want? Money? My husband and I don’t have much, but—’
‘No, I don’t want money, Mrs Fleming. I want you.’
‘Me?’ she asked, her incredulity undisguised. ‘In exchange for Ross?’
‘I’m not offering an exchange, but if you want to see him again, you’re going to have to stop asking questions and start following instructions.’
‘And I take it the first of those is not to talk to the police?’ she stated acidly.
‘You may talk to them if you wish, but they will not be able to help you. They will only waste your time and your son’s time, and I cannot stress this enough: time is not something you can afford to lose. Neither is your temper.’
‘Okay,’ Jane said. She composed herself, silenced her questions, calmed her indignation. ‘Okay, what do you want?’
‘I need you, and you alone, to get to the address shown on the final image and I need you to get there by this time tomorrow. That’s twenty-four hours starting now.’
She toggled through the pictures until she came to one showing a black, wrought-iron double gate. Beneath it, there was some text superimposed:
Rue Marisse
Le Muy
Region La Var
France
‘France? Tomorrow?’
Jane immediately began thinking about flights, trying to recall how much money she had in her current account, how much credit on the Mastercard. Then she remembered something dreadful.
‘But I don’t have a passport. It’s away being renewed. I don’t even have a car. It’s just been written off.’
‘Then you can’t help your son. Goodbye.’
‘No, wait,’ she implored, but the line had gone dead. She stared, bereft, at the phone, wishing she knew how to redial the last number, wishing she could believe it would make a difference.
There was a knock at the door. The first-aider opened it a little and stuck her head through the gap.
‘Eh, the police were just wondering if you’re ready to talk to them yet.’
Jane nodded, holding up a finger to say she’d be a minute.
They will not be able to help you. They will only waste your time and your son’s time.
The cold steel fist had gripped again when she saw Ross’s picture and heard the words: Your son is missing. Now it was ready to develop into its full-blown state: the helplessness, the paralysis, the agony of not knowing and the indignity of not acting. Through the door and down the stairs lay a conversation with the police, a deliverance of matters into their hands. It would not be an interview: it would be an abdication, a resignation, and beyond it lay a seat on the sidelines next to Tom to endure an endless, excruciating, impotent wait for other hands to act. It would be the very antithesis of that which had seized her, propelled her, electrified her as she fought to rescue Rachel. Today, she had experienced what it was to feel truly alive, and, despite the circumstances precipitating it, she’d found herself wishing for more. That wish had just been granted. What on earth, she asked herself, at this moment, in this life of hers, did she have to lose?
Only time.
She slipped the phone into her jacket breast pocket, picked up her bag and headed for the stairs. There were two police waiting for her, one male, one female, standing next to a table around which several members of staff were seated. The place had been evacuated apart from witnesses, some of whom were still waiting to give statements. The place was strangely still and quiet, the climbing structure looking somehow smaller now that it was denuded of its regular swarms.
The policewoman stepped forward as Jane came through the door leading up to the ‘party room’, but Jane fended her off.
‘I’ve just got to nip to the Ladies,’ she told her, turning a hundred and eighty degrees to go through an adjacent door.
Jane looked back to check whether she was being watched. Through the wire-meshed glass panel on the window she could see the policewoman had returned to conversation with her colleague. Good. She walked around the L-bend beyond the Ladies and the baby-changing room. The Gents was on the left, and dead ahead was an emergency exit. There was no question that this constituted an emergency, but she knew it couldn’t provide her exit as the door was alarmed, principally to prevent someone doing precisely what had been attempted upon Rachel earlier. On the right was a third door, marked Staff Only. Her long-earned familiarity with the building’s layout told her that it must be the entrance to the kitchen, which she banked on being unoccupied as all of the staff were out front continuing the group self-recrimination exercise they’d embarked upon as soon as they learned what had happened.
She turned the handle and, to her relief, the door opened. As she entered, she had it in her head that there was an outside door at the rear of the kitchen, but couldn’t be sure whether this was something she had noted on her many visits to buy coffees, juice and lollipops; something she had deduced logically from considering a commercial kitchen’s health and safety requirements; or something she had merely decided from raw, desperate need. Jane kept her head low as she entered the room. A tall, stainless-steel shelving unit formed the only screen between the cooking area and the serving counter, from beyond which she might be visible. She darted behind it and was relieved to see that there was indeed an outside door, exactly where she had envisaged it. She notched that one up to memory. For some reason, it seemed important not to attribute it to a lucky break, perhaps because she, more than ever, needed to believe she knew what she was doing.
The outside door was neither locked nor alarmed. She opened it quickly, wincing a little as it squeaked, then pulled it behind her. She had a mind not to close it fully, in case the noise brought any investigation, but there was enough of a wind to threaten that it might bang shut on its own. She delicately pressed it to, released the handle and began walking briskly along the side of the building, heading towards the path that led to the supermarket car park. A snidey voice in her head asked whether she had any idea where she was actually going. It sounded a bit like Tom. She was slightly surprised to already have a firm answer. That other, thousands of years older woman was telling Tom to shut up and turn back to the football. This was women’s work.
She knew exactly where she was going: the airport. She didn’t have a passport, but it was the quickest way to get to the south coast of England where she might exploit softer options than air travel for crossing the Channel. Other means might be less security conscious, especially going in that direction; nobody was particularly wor
ried about the threat of people illegally sneaking out of the country.
First, however, she needed wheels, and her own car wasn’t quite in showroom condition right then. That was why she was heading to the supermarket, where she could call a taxi; she had forty or so in cash in her purse, and reckoned twenty-five or thirty would cover it. Then that particular train of thought derailed as she realised that paying her fare should barely be registering on her list of priority considerations. In fact, if it appeared at all, it would be categorised as an unnecessary and therefore unaffordable expense, and not merely of money. She only had a few minutes before the police came looking for her, and she of all people knew that at rush-hour a taxi could be at least a quarter of an hour in responding to the call-out. To say nothing of the fact that the driver would later be able to tell the cops where he’d taken her, and she might well be caught up with again before she had the chance to get on a plane. Not having broken any laws, they couldn’t physically restrain her, but she felt it imperative to extricate herself from official interference, not least because she wouldn’t fancy answering questions about what the hell she thought she was doing.
She needed a car of her own and she needed it immediately. Her first notion was to head for the supermarket’s petrol station, near the entrance to the car park, but it was on the side of the hill and its forecourt in direct sight of Kaos Kottage. It was also a rather conspicuous spot to be hanging around on foot, even if she didn’t look a standard photo-fit for the type of potential twoccer of whom most drivers were likely to be wary. Besides, who left their keys in the ignition when they were filling up? She looked around. There were dozens, acres of cars lined up in all directions. But not a drop to drink, she thought ruefully. Then her eyes alighted upon the front of the supermarket, and she knew exactly how to slake her thirst.
The car park was enormous, and even at busy times there were plenty of spaces to be found if you drove a few rows back. Immediately to the left of the entrance there was a row of specially reserved spaces for disabled drivers, denoted on the tarmac by yellow badges; while directly in front of the entrance, there was a specially reserved space for four-by-four drivers, denoted by two thick yellow lines.
She didn’t have to wait long, only a few minutes, and there was certainly nothing conspicuous during that time about a lone woman standing expectantly outside the doors of a supermarket, other than perhaps her lack of shopping. A black BMW X5 soon pulled up, and as it approached she was pleased to note that the driver was not hanging off the wheel and looking searchingly into the shop. This was the explanatory body language offered by those who were picking someone up, though it failed to also explain why they couldn’t do this by simply finding a proper space and walking twenty yards. Such inconveniences were presumably for lesser members of society without such hectic and important lives, who could better spare the few seconds it took to perambulate from those parking bays surely intended only for the proletariat and their normal-sized vehicles.
Instead, she hit paydirt, seeing the hazard warning lights flash even before the vehicle had come to a complete stop. The hazards were oscillating a unique form of Morse code that Jane had learned to decipher thus: IN A BIG HURRY STOP JUST NIPPING IN FOR ONE THING STOP CAN’T EXPECT ME TO PARK THIS THING ALL THE WAY OVER THERE AND WALK JUST FOR THE SAKE OF A PINT OF MILK STOP FOR GOD’S SAKE I’LL ONLY BE A MINUTE STOP LOOK I’VE EVEN LEFT THE ENGINE RUNNING STOP.
Oh yes, you even have.
Jane watched the driver get out and jog through the automatic doors. She quickly checked the rear for unseen junior passengers, then opened the vehicle and climbed in. It was an automatic, which would make things simpler. Just two pedals, one steering wheel and several tons of unnecessary bulk. She wished Michelle was here for this moment.
You’ve never exactly been the essence of urban rebellion, have you? I don’t think you’ve ever had a parking ticket.
Yes, honey, but that was the old me. You might prefer the new one. She’s a car thief.
Jane put the beast into drive and hit the accelerator.
She got a bit of a fright when music suddenly started blaring at her from all sides, and realised the stereo must have been changing CDs, like Catherine’s Merc which had that thingy in the boot. It was an old punk-style number that began playing, everyone in the band not so much trying to stay in time as each trying to play faster than the rest. An angry, defiant and so very, very youthful voice sounded insistently over it, entreating her to declare herself an unsafe building.
‘I think I just did,’ Jane said.
‘Hey Lex.’
‘Hey Reb.’
‘You doin’ okay?’
‘You ever shoot two people you’d just met, twice each in the head, and burn their bodies?’
‘Not that I can recall.’
‘Well, that’s how I’m doin’.’
‘What’s your twenty?’
‘I’m currently headed north-west on the A-seven-twenty-six. I don’t have eyes on the target, but I know where she’s headed.’
‘How’s she doin’?’
‘Oh, pretty good. She just aced grand theft auto on the first attempt. Availed herself of a nice SUV, so she’s travelling in style.’
‘Where’s she travelling to?’
‘My money says GLA.’
‘So she gets on a plane to NCE and we take Air Bett back to base?’ Rebekah asked optimistically.
‘Afraid not. She doesn’t have a passport – latest heads-up from Bett.’
‘Shit. So why aren’t we taking her? What’s the point in having your own private chopper if—’
‘I know, I know. That’s exactly what I said to him.’
‘Yeah, right. Sure you did.’
‘He said the parameters hadn’t changed. No intervention. I guess he wants to see if she got game.’
‘Figures. If she can’t manage something as simple as evading border security, she ain’t gonna handle the hard stuff too well. But if it doesn’t alter the parameters, why the heads-up on the passport?’
‘So we’d know she couldn’t just jump on the first flight to the Côte d’Azure. You know the deal: where she goes, I follow, and it looks like I’ll be taking the long way around.’
‘Well, if you glance up from hurling your guts over the side of a ferry, I’ll give you a wave as I pass.’
Jane had to steel herself to ward off the potentially debilitating paranoia that everyone on the road could see she was driving a stolen car, and that the police would be forming road blocks right then somewhere around Rouken Glen. Keep the heid, girl, she told herself, suspecting she’d have to get a lot more comfortable with criminality if she was to reach her destination in time, or indeed at all. Thinking rationally, the only possible outward indicator that she didn’t own the X5 she was driving was that she wasn’t driving it like she owned it, which would of course entail driving like she also owned the road.
She hit a bit of a tailback around Clarkston Toll, and came to a stop behind a silver Saab as a telephone sounded inside the car, accompanied by a blinking light to the left of the steering wheel. She noticed for the first time a tiny black Nokia clamped to a hands-free unit. Tentatively, she reached out and hit the green call button before remembering who the call would be intended for. She was wrong, however. For the second time that day, a call on someone else’s phone was intended for her, though this time the caller was a little less informed.
‘Hello?’
‘Hell …’ he started, a little surprised perhaps to have got an answer. ‘Now listen here. This is the person whose car you’ve just stolen. I don’t know who the fuck you are, and I know you think you’ll get away with this, but I’m tellin’ you, I’m gaunny fuckin’ find you, and when I do—’
‘Excuse me, sir,’ she interrupted. ‘I don’t believe there’s any need for that language, and I don’t think your threatening tone is very constructive either.’
‘Very cons— Who the fuck are you?’
‘I work for S
afeway car-parks’ management. Your car hasn’t been stolen, it’s been towed. We’ve removed the phone to my office here for security reasons.’
‘Towed? But I was only in the bloody shop two seconds.’
‘We’re having a crackdown on people parking in highly inappropriate and inconsiderate places. We’re hoping that if you have to walk a few miles to retrieve your vehicle, you’ll consider it a shorter walk in future if you just park in one of the many clearly marked spaces we provide.’
There was an enormously satisfying silence.
‘Sir?’
‘So where do I go to get my car back?’
‘All towed vehicles are impounded at our main depot in Bellshill.’
‘Bellshill? How am I supposed to … Okay. Right. Jesus. What’s the address?’
‘I’m sorry, sir, you’re breaking up. I think the power’s running out on your …’
With which she hung up, giggling. That felt good. Damn, that felt good. At the back of her mind – well, actually a lot nearer the front than that – there remained the hollow, cold knowledge of why she was doing this, but its sheer imperative compulsion was liberating her from all of her normal concerns and compunctions. Right now, for once in her life, everybody else could … God, it had been so long since she’d said that word … Everybody else could … parenthood and grandparenthood had disciplined her out of using it, and she’d even started thinking in the more guarded and polite terms that she could tolerate the weans repeating. Everybody else could … she’d said it all the time, and worse, when she was younger, before she became Jane Fleming. But today, she wasn’t Jane Fleming, not any more. She was Jane Bell again. Blue Bell. And everybody else could fuck off.
She dumped the X5 in the short-stay car park nearest the terminal. It had been tempting to slew it in front of Departures and just walk away, thus ensuring that it really did get towed and impounded, but she knew from her taxi experience that there would be plenty of polis patrolling up and down, and didn’t want to run the risk of being stopped on her way into the building. Nor would it be wise for the registration to be noted for any reason, given that the owner would by now have ascertained from Safeway that they had nothing to do with his vehicle’s disappearance.
All Fun and Games Until Somebody Loses an Eye Page 16