Cloudburst

by Wilbur Smith

  ‘Weird,’ I said.

  ‘Seriously?’ said Amelia. ‘Now who’s being slow? It’s obvious!’ She turned to Xander. ‘You said it yourself: he was a delivery guy. Did you get a look at the front of his helmet?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And was the visor down, and possibly tinted.’

  ‘I think so, yes.’

  ‘With me now?’ she said, looking from Xander to me and back again.

  ‘He didn’t want to be seen,’ I said, dread blooming in my chest. ‘Meaning he didn’t want to be linked to whatever he was delivering.’

  ‘I wonder what it was. Did you see?’ asked Amelia.

  I don’t know how Xander responded as I was already on my way to the reception desk. That horrible instinct I have for knowing something bad is about to happen just before it does had kicked in. The concierge was filling out a form as I approached. His handwriting was extraordinary, regular as type, and very slow to execute. When he finally looked up I said, ‘My name’s Jack Courtney. Has anything been delivered for me?’

  He checked the pigeonholes in the little room behind his desk, and sure enough came back to me with a brown envelope. My name and room number were printed on the front.

  ‘The guy in the motorcycle helmet delivered this, didn’t he?’

  The concierge raised an eyebrow. ‘You know him?’

  ‘No, but I’m sorry to have caused a problem.’

  ‘There’s no problem,’ the concierge insisted kindly.

  But I knew he was wrong. The problem was pulsing in my hands.

  Xander had hobbled over with Amelia beside him. The three of us looked down at the envelope.

  ‘Aren’t you going to open it?’ asked Amelia.

  ‘Yes, Amelia,’ I said, sliding a finger beneath the flap, ‘I am.’

  34.

  The envelope contained a single sheet of A4 paper. It was blank on one side with a typewritten message on the other. The message wasn’t long, just a few lines in fact, but I didn’t read them immediately because my eyes were drawn first to the bottom of the page, where the sender had taped a lock of hair, a single auburn curl, the exact colour and texture of my mother’s. I steeled myself before reading the note.

  To Jack Courtney, son of Nicholas and Janine Courtney. We have your parents. We are holding them hostage and will release them when we receive US$75,000, paid in banknotes directly to our representative. Call the number below immediately for further instructions. Do not contact the police again. If you do, the next envelope will contain a body part.

  I looked again at the lock of hair. It was trembling, as was the whole piece of paper, as was my hand, arm, all of me. But I wasn’t shivering out of fear. No, as the room receded and blackness surged forward to blot out everything but the awful quivering note, it was rage and not fright that rushed through my entire being. Somebody had cut off a piece of my mother’s hair. That wouldn’t have caused her pain in itself, but I knew how much she would have hated the threat attached to the act, and not just because the threat was directed at her: she’d have put two and two together and understood that the ransom note with her hair stuck to it would be delivered to me. She always puts me first, so she’d have been most worried about the effect the note would have on me. Dad, too, would be beside himself. He hates losing control. Being held hostage would be his worst nightmare come true.

  I fought the shivering, forced the page to stay still.

  Amelia had read the note upside down. That didn’t surprise me: if you stare at your phone long enough she’s likely read that over your shoulder too. I didn’t object today. Xander understands that reading another person’s mail is inappropriate. Gently he asked, ‘Well, what does it say?’

  ‘Some creep claiming he’s taken Jack’s parents hostage, and demanding money – $75,000, weirdly – in exchange for their release,’ said Amelia. ‘Plus a bit of Janine’s hair. Allegedly. I mean, it does look like hers but …’

  She petered out as I passed the note to Xander. ‘See for yourself,’ I said through gritted teeth.

  I watched his face, my mind leapfrogging itself. After I’d found and freed my parents from the scum who had sent me this note, what would I do to them in revenge? Turn them in to the authorities ultimately of course, but – my blood really did feel like it was boiling in my veins – only after I’d personally made them pay. I realised I was bouncing on the balls of my feet, my face tight with anger.

  By contrast Xander remained calm. ‘Wow. I’m sorry, Jack,’ he said, handing the piece of paper back to me. ‘But listen, at least there’s a way to get your folks to safety. I know $75,000 is a lot of money, but your mum and dad could pay more than that if they had to. And Langdon can put up the money now. Call him.’

  ‘Why that amount though?’ said Amelia. ‘I mean, it doesn’t even divide neatly in two. Are they saying your dad’s worth more than your mum? Or maybe it’s the other way around.’

  ‘Possibly that’s not the point,’ said Xander kindly.

  ‘The note says to call the number straight away, meaning before calling anyone else,’ I said.

  ‘It’s a ransom note, Jack, threatening to hurt your mother,’ said Xander. ‘The first thing we need is adult advice.’

  This made good sense, yet something in me resisted. ‘Immediately is a pretty clear instruction,’ I said. ‘What if they’re monitoring me somehow. If they think I’m disobeying them and take offence –’

  ‘Xander’s right,’ said Amelia firmly. ‘This is Langdon’s brother and sister-in-law we’re talking about. He’ll want to know they’re in danger right away. There’s no evidence anyone’s “monitoring” you anyway.’

  Amelia’s fingertips made air quotes around the word monitoring. It annoyed me. While she was right that I had no concrete evidence I was being observed, that didn’t necessarily make me wrong. Either way, I felt wary. Amelia knows a lot and thinks logically, but I’d trust my gut instinct over hers any day.

  I read the note again slowly. It told me not to contact the police again, but didn’t say anything about anyone else. Amelia and Xander were obviously sensible to suggest I call Langdon, and I would. But the note was addressed to me. It concerned my parents. And it said to call the number at the foot of the page immediately. ‘Thanks, guys, but this is my decision,’ I said evenly, and pulled out my mobile phone.

  35.

  Nobody picked up.

  I’d entered the number carefully and double-checked it before pressing call. I was expecting whoever was on the other end to answer immediately, but they didn’t. The phone rang for what seemed like ages. Sometimes, if I glance at a clock with a second hand, anticipating seeing it move, the second it should take to tick seems to take forever precisely because I’m waiting for it. Waiting for the kidnapper to answer my call felt a bit like that that, with the waiting stretching time improbably, so much so that I almost hung up. But in reality the delay was probably just the normal length of time it takes for voicemail to kick in, and just as I was about to take the phone away from my ear to end the call, that’s what happened. An automated, sat-nav type woman’s voice said the following simple sentence.

  After the beep please say your name. We will contact you with further directions shortly.

  I did as instructed without knowing why, and explained to Xander and Amelia what had happened.

  ‘Why would they get you to do that?’ asked Xander, echoing my bafflement.

  ‘Isn’t it obvious?’ said Amelia. ‘They don’t have his number. Or they didn’t until now.

  ‘Fair point,’ said Xander.

  ‘They want to take control. By getting you to confirm you’re Jack Courtney, they know it’s you they’re calling back, and they can do that at a time and from a place that they choose.’

  ‘Makes sense,’ I said.

  Amelia gave me a ‘course it does’ look, then said, ‘Now will you call your uncle?’

  I was already scrolling to find his number. He answered after the first ring. I realis
ed, as I began to tell him about the letter, that I didn’t want to sound panicked by it. Was I fighting to keep calm to stop my imagination from running away with itself, or because I wanted to protect Langdon (this was his brother in danger after all) from jumping to his own terrible conclusions? I don’t know. I do remember that I went so far as to suggest to my uncle that the note was partly good news: we knew my parents were alive and well and considered valuable by their kidnappers. All we had to do was follow their demands and Mum and Dad would be set free unharmed, surely?

  ‘Stay put in the hotel. I’m on my way,’ Langdon said.

  He arrived within minutes. I waited just inside reception with a view past the potted palms out onto the street. His big SUV slewed to the kerb in front of the hotel with the passenger’s door opening before the car had quite stopped. Langdon jumped down and walked briskly up the steps, put a hand on my shoulder and steered me in silence, his face grim, through to a corner table on the far side of the bar. Amelia stuck with us, but I’d already handed my uncle the ransom note by the time Xander, clicking on his crutches, caught up. I noticed a sheen on Langdon’s forehead as he read the note, and saw that his Hawaiian shirt was pasted to his sides. Was it the dash across town or fear making him sweat like that? He inspected the note carefully, turned it over, folded and unfolded it again, and took a deep breath.

  ‘What do you think?’ said Amelia, just as he was obviously about to speak.

  I gritted my teeth.

  ‘Your parents understood the risks of coming to the DRC with their … agenda,’ he began. ‘We discussed it at length in advance. This is a volatile country at the best of times, and the battle between conservationists and those seeking to develop the country through mining and other industries is fraught. Add poaching into the mix and the national parks your parents are here to protect, as you’ve seen for yourselves, can be very dangerous. On top of that, most of the police are corrupt, in the pocket of politicians and businessmen who are more corrupt still. Given the general lawlessness, organised crime is rife.’

  ‘We know all this,’ said Amelia bluntly.

  Langdon gave her a sharp look. ‘I’m explaining it again to emphasise the array of people who could be responsible for this … outrageous demand.’ He tapped the ransom note. ‘If your parents made it to one of the parks, they could have been captured by poachers linked to criminals here in Kinshasa. Or your mother’s insistence on visiting cowboy mining operations unlike mine could have put them in the way of any number of mercenary crooks. In addition they could quite simply have been targeted by opportunists on the lookout for Westerners to kidnap for the cash. Lastly, there’s an outside chance that the whole thing is a hoax; someone who has never even met Nicholas or Janine could have got wind that they might have gone missing and be trying to make a quick buck out of the situation before they show up again. One thing’s certain: whoever is demanding the ransom can’t have worked out exactly what your parents are worth, since the sum they’re asking for is comparatively modest.’

  I was pleased he thought $75,000 was a small price to pay for Mum and Dad’s release, but something in his stony expression worried me. ‘I don’t suppose it matters that much exactly who has them, in a way,’ I said. ‘All the groups you’ve mentioned have one thing in common. They want money. Once we’ve paid them and they’ve freed Mum and Dad, we can track them down and bring them to justice with the help of the police.’

  Langdon snorted dismissively through flared nostrils. ‘If only it were that simple,’ he said.

  36.

  ‘What’s not simple about it?’ I said, trying to keep the heat out of my voice.

  ‘First up, it’s a matter of principle: as a businessman here, and more importantly as a member of the Courtney family, I simply cannot give in to demands of this type. If we pay once, we send a message that we’re prepared to pay again.’

  ‘That’s a sound train of thought in the abstract,’ said Amelia loudly. Her voice rose further still: ‘But hello – these are Jack’s parents we’re talking about, one of whom happens to be your own brother.’

  Langdon replied in a steely whisper, ‘Precisely. And he’d never forgive me for bowing down before such a threat. What he – and your mother – would want is for us to track down these crooks and make them rue the day they heard the Courtney name.’

  Langdon’s ire was actually pretty rousing. The flush of anger I’d felt on first reading the note rose within me again. But just as I was about to ask him how he planned to track them down, my phone, which I’d set to maximum volume, chirruped loudly. The screen read ‘number withheld’. I rose from my seat, walked out beyond the pool area – somehow I had to take this call alone – and pressed answer.

  ‘Jack Courtney speaking,’ I said.

  ‘Do what I say and nobody gets hurt. Disobey and your parents die. Understand?’

  The voice was mechanical, distorted, and utterly chilling. All the bravado I’d felt in the wake of Langdon’s ‘rue the day’ speech drained from me instantly. I shut my eyes, saw my mother’s face, and the thought that I’d been holding at bay since discovering that they were missing crashed in. I’d lost my brother. If I lost Mum and Dad too, I’d be alone in the world. I gulped air.

  ‘Hello, you’re still there?’

  ‘Yes, yes, I understand,’ I stammered.

  ‘You have visited the national museum and seen the statue of the tyrant criminal Leopold.’

  ‘Yes, but how –’

  ‘Your mother gave us this information.’

  I was standing next to a gardener’s hosepipe wound in a coil and bolted to the wall. It made me think of a noose, a coiled whip, a poisonous snake. How had they got Mum to reveal this bland fact about our visit? ‘Tell me they’re OK,’ I blurted out.

  ‘They can tell you themselves,’ said the voice. My ear filled with random noise as whoever was holding the phone manhandled it, and my eyes filled with tears at what I heard next.

  It was my father’s voice, shaky with fear but unmistakable, saying, ‘Jack, listen. Do exactly what these guys say. We’re fine for now. It’s just money. Your uncle Langdon will put it up. He knows I’ll repay him. This isn’t a time for heroics. I love you.’

  ‘You will find your mother’s headscarf at the foot of Leopold the butcher’s statue this Friday at 4 p.m.,’ said the mechanical voice after another bout of phone-shuffling. ‘Place the money beneath it in an envelope and leave the museum immediately. Your parents will be at your hotel, safe and unharmed, on your return. If you fail to deposit the money, or attempt to follow the representative we send to retrieve it, we’ll kill them both. Understood?’

  Still blinking back tears, I nodded, only thinking to add a weak, ‘Yes,’ after a pause. ‘I understand,’ I said more firmly. ‘Four o’clock on Friday, under the headscarf at Leopold’s feet. Yes.’

  ‘Good boy,’ the voice replied. ‘Very good.’

  37.

  I turned to see Langdon, flanked by Amelia and Xander, standing in the entrance to the restaurant on the other side of the pool. He had his hands on his hips. There was no way that he could have heard my half of the conversation from over there, but he looked angry with me. Possibly he’d read my body language. I tried to walk tall as I returned to him.

  ‘That was the kidnapper, I take it,’ Langdon said.

  ‘One of them. They keep referring to “we”, so I guess there’s a team,’ I said.

  ‘That’s not a bad thing,’ said Xander, trying as ever to look on the bright side. ‘The more people are involved, the harder it will be for them to keep what they’re doing a secret.’

  Langdon looked Xander up and down and said, ‘Good point. And with my connections, once I’ve put the word out for people to keep an ear to the ground, I’m sure we’ll turn up a lead.’

  ‘What do you mean by connections?’ asked Amelia.

  Langdon ignored her. ‘So?’ he said to me. ‘What did they say?’

  I told him what the kidnapper had sa
id, relaying the unthinkable threat word for word. When I say unthinkable, I mean it: hearing myself repeat out loud what the kidnappers were threatening to do to my parents, my brain put up a kind of shield that stopped me connecting the horror to them. Instead it gave me two random memories in quick succession. The first was an image of Dad with his hands on his hips in a very Langdon-style way. They’re brothers after all. Dad was in the downstairs hall at home and I was viewing him from the top of the stairs. His hands were on his hips because I’d made myself some toast and left everything out with the lids off. He wasn’t particularly angry, just annoyed in an everyday sort of way. The second memory that came to me was equally standard issue. It was just me glancing across at Mum as she steered the car through traffic at night. Headlights swept across her and I saw she had her concentrating face on, lips pursed, eyes alert and glistening. That was it: two normal memories of my parents to blot out the horrible unknown of wherever they were now, and how I’d be unable to cope without them, in the aftermath of the kidnapper’s call.

  ‘They put Dad on,’ I whispered, once I’d lain the full horror of the threat at Langdon’s feet.

  ‘Bang goes your last theory,’ Amelia said to him. ‘It’s not a hoax.’

  ‘She doesn’t mean it triumphantly,’ I felt I had to tell Langdon.

  ‘Of course I don’t!’ said Amelia, confused. ‘I’m just ruling things out.’ As if my uncle wasn’t standing right beside her, she went on: ‘Langdon said the kidnappers might not in fact have your parents, but we can discount that possibility now. The kidnapping is real.’ Seeing me wince, she was kind enough to add: ‘Sadly.’

  ‘I’ve never heard Dad sound so scared,’ I told my uncle.