by Mark Morris
At present Kate is being well looked after. She believes she is in the care of a friend of her father’s, and that her father has been called away unexpectedly on business. As a treat she has been allowed to choose her favourite food for lunch (Hawaiian pizza and Super Noodles, with Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food ice cream to follow) and is now watching her favourite movie Toy Story 3 on DVD.
If you and Mr Locke accede to our request, Kate will be returned unharmed tomorrow morning. If, however, our requirements are not met, then we will kill the child. Please be assured that this is not an idle threat.
The situation, therefore, is clear. Mr Locke will obtain the artefact and deliver it to our clients at the previously specified time and location. It is a simple task, and one which we are certain he will perform admirably. Naturally, neither yourself nor Mr Locke will inform anyone else of the task, or allow them to become involved in its execution. Any suggestion of police involvement – or indeed of the involvement of friends, colleagues or family members who you may feel tempted to contact – will result in Kate’s immediate death.
Any attempt to track this email to its source will similarly result in Kate’s death. Please be assured that your actions are being monitored at all times, and that any attempt to deviate from the course set out for you will be met with the direst of consequences. To remove temptation, we feel compelled to inform you that this temporary email account was created in an internet café, and that all traces of its creator have been excised from online records.
Finally, please don’t think that once the task has been completed to our satisfaction and Mr Locke’s daughter has been returned to him, either of you will be free to entertain notions of justice and/or retribution. It would serve you well to remember that you, Ms Monroe, together with Mr Locke and his daughters, will remain for ever vulnerable.
That was it. No goodbye, no ‘Yours Sincerely’, no name. At some point during the reading my hand had crept up to cover my mouth, as if to stifle a scream. Now I became aware that the hand was trembling, and also that I felt cold, sick, trapped. I leaned against the wall, worried that if I didn’t support myself my legs might give way.
Clover was looking at me, a frown of concern or apology on her face. Although my mind was frozen with shock, I tried to read the email again, searching for clues hidden within the text. The message had been sent at 8.55, but what did that tell me? I had no idea what time the Sherwoods had left their flat and started their journey to wherever they had taken my daughter, which meant that Kate could be literally anywhere in the world by now. Having said that, if the bit about the pizza, Super Noodles and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream was to be believed – and the fact that they were Kate’s favourite foods led me to think that the sender was telling the truth – then presumably she had to be somewhere where those products were readily available. Not that that narrowed things down a great deal.
Toy Story 3. Mention of the film sent a pang through my chest. It was unsurprising that Kate had asked to see it, but combined with what the sender had said about my actions being monitored at all times, it gave me the creepy sensation not only of being watched, but also of my thoughts being accessed. However, even as I recalled how I had reached out for the colouring book in the flat earlier, whilst remembering mine and Kate’s visit to the cinema, I was telling myself that I mustn’t think that way, I mustn’t allow myself to get paranoid. I had no idea who had sent the email, or who – if anyone – he was working for, but I mustn’t start to imagine him as some invulnerable supervillain.
So where did that leave me? And what should my next move be? I didn’t realise Clover was talking until she shouted my name so loudly that it was clear she’d already repeated it several times.
Startled, I looked at her. ‘What?’
‘Are you all right?’ she asked, reaching out tentatively and placing a hand on my arm.
I laughed without humour. ‘What do you think?’
She rolled her eyes as if the question was too big to answer. ‘What I think is that we’re probably out of our depth.’
I scrutinised her face, looking for signs of deception. ‘You really have no idea what this is about?’
She shook her head. ‘Not a clue.’
‘Because what strikes me is that this would be a sure-fire way of getting me to do the job you want me to do.’
Her eyes widened, as if that hadn’t occurred to her. ‘I swear, Alex, this is nothing to do with me. I would never stoop so low…’
‘But how can I be sure? I don’t even know you.’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. You can’t, I suppose.’
‘And this is your job. Your idea.’
‘Then someone must have hijacked it.’
‘Who?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘But who else knows about this? Who else knows about me?’
Either she was a bloody good actress or she was genuinely shocked as the penny dropped. ‘Only Benny.’
‘So it must be him.’ I took my phone out of my pocket, started to dial.
She reached out as if to snatch the phone off me. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m calling him. What do you think?’
‘But what if it isn’t him?’
‘It is. It’s got to be.’
‘But what if it isn’t, Alex? Remember what the email said about not telling anyone else. Are you prepared to take that risk?’
I paused, turned off the phone. Thinking hard, I said, ‘If it was Benny, he would say that, though, wouldn’t he, to keep us off his back? It’s got to be Benny. And if it’s not Benny, then it’s you.’
‘It’s not me,’ Clover said. ‘And I can’t believe it’s Benny either. But if it is Benny, and he’s got Kate, then won’t he kill her if you call him? I mean, you’d still be going against his instructions, wouldn’t you?’ She paused. ‘It must be someone else.’
‘Must it? Who?’
‘Well… Benny could have told someone. Or the Japanese – the Ishikawa Corporation – could have been keeping tabs on us.’
‘That doesn’t make sense,’ I said. ‘Kate’s abduction was no spur-of-the-moment thing. It looks to have been carefully planned. The people who took her were her regular babysitters, friends and neighbours of mine; they’ve been living next door for about a year. They have a little boy called Hamish. But this morning their flat was empty, cleaned out.’
Clover looked baffled, but I could see that she was trying to figure it out. ‘Well… maybe it was just made to look as though they’d taken her, to throw you off the scent.’
‘Maybe, but…’ I thought about it, but I still couldn’t seem to make the pieces fit. There were too many possibilities, too many variables. And too many suspects – including Clover herself. What really baffled me was why I was so important to the plans of whoever was behind this – because that was what it looked like. Someone had gone to great lengths to manoeuvre me into a corner. But why? Why did I have to be the one to steal the artefact? Why couldn’t they get some other guy, someone who was happy to do the job, someone with less baggage? Frustration boiled up inside me and I thumped the desk. ‘Fuck!’ I blurted. ‘Whoever’s behind this has got us over a fucking barrel, hasn’t he?’
‘Looks that way.’
‘Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!’
Clover waited until I’d simmered down, and then she asked, ‘So what are you going to do?’
I pulled a face. ‘I don’t think I’ve got much choice.’
She shrugged, but her expression seemed to confirm it. Nodding at the computer screen she asked, ‘All that stuff about our movements being monitored… isn’t that just bullshit? Scare tactics.’
‘Maybe, but…’
‘But what?’
I grimaced. ‘Monitoring equipment is very sophisticated nowadays. I guess if they’ve got the resources they can follow us pretty much wherever we go – as well as keep tabs on our texts and calls and emails.’
Clover glanced quickly around as if
searching for hidden cameras, a look of paranoia on her face. ‘I hate the thought that someone could be watching us at this very moment. Do you think they’re listening to this conversation?’
‘Who knows? It’s probably a bluff. But in a way I hope they are listening.’
‘Do you? Why?’
‘Because then I can tell them’ – I tilted up my head and raised my voice, addressing the room – ‘that I agree to their terms. That I’ll do their fucking job for them.’
Clover pulled a sympathetic face. ‘I’m sorry you got involved in this, Alex. I can’t help feeling it’s my fault.’
‘Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t.’
‘What will you do until tonight? Go home?’
I thought about it. With Kate missing the spotlight would be on me. What if the police decided to monitor my comings and goings? What if the press got their teeth into it and set up camp outside my building? I couldn’t afford to be under scrutiny, not if it might jeopardise Kate’s welfare.
‘It’s probably best to lie low,’ I said, ‘keep out of the public eye. Can I stay here until it’s time?’
‘Sure,’ said Clover, making a sweeping gesture with her hand. ‘I’ll get Mary to send in some sandwiches.’
Twenty minutes later the two of us were sitting at Clover’s desk, eating ham and cheese toasties and drinking coffee. Clover picked at her toastie, breaking tiny pieces off the corner and nibbling at them. When my phone rang I snatched it from my pocket and answered it without considering the consequences.
‘Hello?’
It was my head of department wanting to know where I was. He told me that there was a lecture hall filling with students and no sign of the lecturer.
‘Sorry, Mike,’ I said. With everything that had happened I’d completely forgotten to inform the college of my whereabouts. ‘My daughter’s gone missing. I’m afraid my head’s all over the place at the moment.’
‘Oh my God,’ he said. ‘When? How?’
I told him that I’d let him know when I had more details, that I wasn’t sure when I’d be back in, and that I had to get off the line in case the police were trying to call. I spent the rest of the day drinking coffee, smoking Marlboro Lights, reading the email over and over, and fielding calls from Candice and – yes – the police. DI Jensen wanted to know where I was (I told him I was staying with a friend because I couldn’t face being in the flat with all Kate’s stuff around me) and informed me that the search of the Sherwoods’ flat had yielded nothing. He also told me that background checks had revealed that Adam, Paula and Hamish Sherwood had never really existed, their carefully constructed false identities stretching back no more than eighteen months. He said that Adam’s and Paula’s likenesses, lifted from falsified online records, had been widely distributed among the nation’s law-enforcement agencies, but that as yet they remained unidentified.
‘Don’t worry, though, Mr Locke,’ he said glibly. ‘We’ll find them. It’s only a matter of time.’
I wanted to scream at him for telling me not to worry, but instead I thanked him and cut him off.
Despite my years in prison, during which I had been forced to turn patience into a fine art, as the day wore on I found myself becoming increasingly stir crazy. By early evening I was pacing Clover’s office like a tiger, all but climbing the walls.
The hours passed slowly.
NINE
MCCALLUM
Kensington High Street, with its swanky shops and posh restaurants, is surrounded by parks and gardens. There’s Holland Park (I’ve taken Kate to the adventure playground there a few times because it’s not far from Chiswick), Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. The rest of the space is taken up by streets and squares lined with big and generally well-kept houses. In one of these lived Barnaby McCallum, the man I’d come to rob.
I left Incognito around eleven and arrived at High Street Kensington station not long after half-past. I was wearing the black zip-up jacket and jeans I’d left home in that morning, plus a dark blue baseball cap that Clover had lent me. The idea of the cap was that I’d be harder to identify if nosey neighbours happened to spot me on McCallum’s street. It made sense, but I couldn’t help feeling I was more noticeable and suspicious-looking with the cap on. As far as I was concerned, I looked like what I was about to become: a burglar.
I didn’t feel too nervous about the job itself; I was just eager to get it over and done with. My main focus was on Kate’s well-being, and any anxiety I had stemmed from the fact that I couldn’t afford any slip-ups for her benefit. I tried not to distract myself with thoughts about whether email man would fulfil his side of the bargain; all I could do was fulfil mine and hope that he would be true to his word. As I travelled across London I wondered whether my movements were being monitored, as email man had claimed. In a way I hoped they were. At least then he and his associates would know that I was doing all I could to follow their instructions, and that if I was stopped or prevented for whatever reason it wouldn’t be my fault.
Clover had given me a key to the French windows that led into McCallum’s drawing room, reiterating several times that I wouldn’t have any problems. She said that McCallum’s street was tree-lined and dark, the houses set back from the road and not too close together. She told me that McCallum had chosen the house specifically for its seclusion, and that whenever she’d been there at night the street had been graveyard quiet.
Although I was eager to get the job done I was anxious not to rush it. I was determined to keep a clear head and take my time. I had over two hours before I had to deliver the artefact to email man’s contacts at the hotel, so I had plenty of leeway. For that reason I stopped and ordered a takeaway latte at the still-open coffee booth in the station concourse. As I waited for my coffee I tried to stay relaxed, to keep looking straight ahead, even though my instinct was to check out the people who were still streaming back and forth even at this late hour. I paid for my coffee and strolled down the road, drinking it. I had a tatty old A–Z (something else which Clover had given me) tucked into the inside pocket of my jacket, but I’d had time during the hours spent mooching around in Incognito that afternoon to commit the route to memory, so I doubted I’d need it.
I didn’t. Crossing the high street, I took a right up Campden Hill Road, and ten minutes later, after another couple of turns, I was standing at the end of Bellwater Drive. By now the only sound I could hear was my own footsteps. I turned up the drive without hesitation, dropping my empty coffee cup over a garden wall as I did so.
Clover had been right. The street was dark. There were street lamps, but the orange glow they gave out seemed to get tangled in the black branches of the trees surrounding them and never reached the ground. I walked up the street slowly, but knowing that there was nothing more suspicious than someone deliberately trying to be unobtrusive I didn’t make any particular attempt to keep to the shadows or stay out of sight. Nearly all the houses I passed had soft light glowing behind at least one or two mostly curtained windows, but I didn’t see a soul, either out on the street or as a silhouetted head staring out of a window.
McCallum lived near the end of the street, at number 56. Not all the houses had visible numbers, but enough of them did for me to tell when I was getting close. I passed number 50, then another house, then one with 54 interwoven into its wrought-iron gate. Then there was a high hedge which looked black and shaggy in the darkness, and all at once I came to an opening in the hedge, and there, through a metal gate a couple of feet taller than I was, was McCallum’s house.
What can I say about it? I don’t know much about architecture, but like the rest of the houses I’d passed it was big and old and impressive. It was mostly white, with stone steps leading up to a front door tucked away underneath a porch supported by pillars. There were tall windows and lots of fancy bits of carved stonework and a rounded tower to the right with a roof that tapered to a point. From my point of view, I was pleased to see that the building was set back from the road beyond
an expansive front lawn, that it was separated from its neighbours on both sides by a high wooden fence edged with trees and shrubs, and that it was completely dark, not a single light burning in any of its windows.
As well as the cap, the A–Z and the keys, Clover had also given me a pair of black leather gloves. I pulled them on and gave the gate a little push. I expected to have to climb over, and was already hoping I’d be able to do it without impaling myself on the spikes on top, but the gate shifted inwards a couple of inches before stopping with a metallic clatter. A quick look showed me that all I had to do was reach through a gap in the ironwork and lift a latch to get in. This I did, pushing the gate open, which creaked, but not too loudly. I shut the gate and stepped to one side, so that I couldn’t be seen from the road. Then I took a minute or so to let my eyes roam across the house and garden, checking out the terrain.
The layout was pretty much as Clover had described. From what I could see, she was right about the lack of security too. There was nothing to indicate a system had been installed since she’d last been there. The building itself, and the grounds, looked reasonably well maintained, though there were enough ragged edges to show that McCallum was no perfectionist. That also fitted with what Clover had said about the old man employing a skeleton staff to keep things ticking over. Pushing myself away from the hedge, I started to walk up the path towards the house, but it was crunchy with loose stones and gravel, so after a few metres I side-stepped on to the lawn.
The grass, spongy from the day’s rain, absorbed my footsteps completely. Not that I expected anyone to hear me. According to Clover the old man was in bed by eleven every night and once his head touched the pillow he was pretty much dead to the world. I knew the French windows that led into the drawing room were round the back, so I made my way there, scanning the ground ahead so that I knew exactly where I was putting my feet. Once the shadow of the house had fallen over me, it was almost pitch-black, only a few shreds and speckles of light leaking in from the street and the sky above to give any definition to my surroundings. I slowed down, worried about tripping over or into something and injuring myself. There would be nothing worse than messing up due to my own clumsiness and stupidity.