The Undivided

by Jennifer Fallon; Jennifer Fallon

  ‘Has someone called my lawyer? She’ll be royally pissed if she finds I’ve been moved and nobody’s notified her.’

  ‘Everything has been taken care of. You have nothing to fear.’

  ‘Who are you guys?’ Ren asked, as they hurried him into the elevator.

  Suit One looked at Suit Two for a moment and then the woman smiled. ‘We are with Interpol.’

  Interpol! Ren thought in alarm. What the fuck have I done now? ‘Show me some ID.’

  ‘Very well.’

  The woman reached into the pocket of her jacket and took from it not a wallet with a badge as Ren was expecting, but a handful of blue powder.

  Before Ren had time to turn away, the woman blew the powder into his face and he slumped unconscious into the arms of the man behind him.

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER 26

  Groggy and unsettled by his nightmares, Ren woke to the worst headache he had ever experienced. It was beyond pain. It was as if someone had drilled into his skull through his eyeballs and was digging out the grey matter with a jackhammer. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t speak. He could barely breathe. In the end, he passed out again, with only the vaguest notion of what had happened to him.

  He woke again some undetermined time later, feeling much better. The jackhammer had faded to a dull thudding.

  Ren jerked awake at the sound of a relentless whooping alarm. He sat up sharply, banging his head on the bunk above. Looking around, he figured he might be on a boat. He was in a cabin — possibly below the waterline, given there was no porthole — the sloped walls of which were painted khaki in places and bare metal in others.

  Warily, Ren swung his legs around and put his feet on the floor. There was a slight trembling movement underfoot that indicated they were under way. The alarm was still going, but his headache was easing.

  I’m dreaming, he decided, rubbing his gritty eyes. His hands came away with a fine blue powder on them. He stared at the blue powder for a moment, wondering why it seemed familiar …

  And then he remembered the Interpol agents.

  Fighting back a sudden rush of panic, Ren took a deep breath, trying to remember what he’d been told about situations like this.

  When Ren was eleven, Kiva had acquired a stalker, who was utterly convinced she was speaking to him directly from the screen. He believed she was begging him to save her from the terrible life in which she was trapped, where she was held captive by an evil demon named Norman. The guy was a complete nutter — a paranoid schizophrenic who’d gone off his meds. For over a year — until the security guards had tasered him as he was climbing the wall of their rented house in Prague where she’d been filming a movie about the French Resistance in World War Two — Kiva and Ren had been virtual prisoners.

  And not without cause. The stalker — when they’d caught him — was armed, manic, and carried two cyanide pills, which he later told police he was planning to use on the Spawn of Satan — Kiva’s son — whom he believed was an agent of the demon, Norman. Ren was there, the stalker claimed, to guard his beloved Kiva like a Doberman Pinscher, expressly to stop the man she truly loved from coming to her rescue.

  For much of that year, they had lived surrounded by high walls, bodyguards and extraordinary security measures. Ren hadn’t been allowed out of the house without an escort, not even to play in the garden with Neil and Hayley. Kiva had taken him out of school and brought in a tutor. In fact, after a couple of months of living on a knife edge, jumping at every unexpected sound, Kerry had hired a local housekeeper to look after Kiva and taken her own children back to Dublin. Ren had been desperate to go with them, but Kiva wanted him close by.

  How to behave if he were ever kidnapped had been drilled into Ren during that time. He racked his brains now, trying to remember the rules.

  Avoid being restrained. That was the first rule. Once you’re tied up, it’s much harder to escape.

  Second rule: fight. Do it immediately. The moment they grab you. Windmill your arms. Kick. Scream. Punch. Scratch. Go for the eyes … the genitals … Do whatever it takes. You may not get a second chance.

  Well, I blew that one …

  Rule three. Pay attention. Ren remembered Kiva’s bodyguards drumming that into him. Remember as much as you can about your kidnappers — what they’re wearing, eye colour, hair colour, tattoos, scars … If they have guns, don’t look down the barrel. Look at their faces. Look them in the eye. People generally fix on the weapon when it’s pointed at them, they told him, and later find they can’t describe their abductors at all.

  Listen. If they’re speaking a language you don’t understand, try to make out individual words, they’d urged. Listen for names. Better yet, never travel to a country where you don’t know at least a few key phrases you might need if you find yourself in trouble. Ren remembered that rule well, because he could pick up whole languages in a couple of weeks, if he heard enough of them.

  Learning of that gift was the only time Ren could ever remember impressing those big, surly, humourless men charged with protecting his life.

  Run if you get the chance, they said, even if they have guns. Kidnappers motivated by money don’t want to kill you, the bodyguards assured Ren. Neither do sexual predators. They have even more reason to keep you alive.

  Never run in a straight line.

  Make a ruckus.

  Get somewhere public as fast as you can.

  Ren was surprised how well he recalled the rules. For all the good they were now. Nobody had mentioned phoney Interpol agents, blue dust that knocked you unconscious or what to do if you found yourself held captive on a ship.

  This wasn’t a stalker on the loose, Ren was certain. This was organised. Premeditated. Well thought-out.

  Organised crime, maybe? Or perhaps this was about that drug dealer … what was his name? O’Hara? Maybe Ren had been abducted by some drug lord’s enemies.

  Bad call if they think I know anything useful, Ren thought sourly.

  He sighed. Would anybody even notice he was gone? With Hayley’s life in the balance, his fate wasn’t that important. Although his abduction was a distraction the Boyles didn’t need right now. Murray Symes would probably accuse him of arranging to get himself kidnapped as some sort of attention-seeking behaviour.

  Ren pushed himself off the bunk. Time to get this over with. Kill me or let me go. Forcing himself to ignore his headache, he crossed the cabin in two steps.

  He banged on the door with his fists. ‘Hey! Who are you guys! Where am I! Let me outta here!’

  The door opened almost immediately and the alarm miraculously stopped screaming at the same time. There was a man standing outside in the passage wearing jeans and a plain black T-shirt. Last time Ren saw him, he had been posing as an Interpol agent. He looked much younger without the suit. Not much older than Ren.

  ‘There’s no need to shout, Rónán. If you’d tried it first, you’d have discovered the hatch wasn’t locked.’ The man spoke in an accent not unlike Trása’s indefinable brogue.

  Ren stared at him, stunned into silence by the unexpectedly friendly greeting. What was going on? Were they hoping to win him over? Was this the first stage of their plan to seduce him to their cause? If they were being extra nice, hoping for the Stockholm Syndrome — which had been explained to him in excruciating detail by Kiva’s bodyguards — to kick in by giving a bit of a push, they were very optimistic.

  ‘My name’s not Rónán.’

  ‘You’d rather we called you Ren? As you wish.’

  ‘Where am I? What was that alarm?’

  ‘You’re on a barge,’ the young man said pleasantly. ‘The alarm was … well, I’m not sure. Mechanical things aren’t really my area of expertise.’ Then he smiled and shrugged apologetically. ‘I realise you’re probably used to better treatment than this. Sorry we couldn’t come up with anything more salubrious, but it won’t be for long. Did you want to bathe? Have something to eat?’ He was staring at Ren intently, almost as if he could
n’t believe what he was seeing. But whatever it was about Ren that seemed odd, it was making this kidnapper very happy, because he didn’t seem to be able to wipe the smile off his face.

  Ren studied him warily. He was talking as if they were old friends. ‘I want to call my mother,’ he said.

  The young man nodded, still grinning stupidly. ‘Why don’t we get you cleaned up and have something to eat, first? Follow me.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘To the showers.’

  Ren didn’t budge from the door of his cabin. ‘That’s what the Nazis said to the Jews getting off the trains at Auschwitz,’ he said.

  ‘Nazis?’ His kidnapper squinted at him blankly for a moment. Then he nodded and smiled even wider. ‘Ah, yes! A regime that achieved some notoriety in your twentieth century.’

  Your twentieth century, the man had said. Not ‘the twentieth century’ or ‘our twentieth century’, but your twentieth century.

  Brilliant. I’ve been kidnapped by a bunch of … what? Looney conspiracy theorists? Aliens?

  ‘The Nazis killed millions of people,’ Ren felt compelled to point out. Whatever crackpot theories these people held about time, there were certain facts here that couldn’t be disputed. ‘A lot of them in showers, incidentally.’

  The kidnapper seemed amused. ‘I can assure you, Ró— Ren, our showers are quite safe, if a little temperamental. Much like the rest of the ship.’ He turned and headed down the corridor. He didn’t bother to check if Ren was following.

  Ren debated staying put. He didn’t debate it for long, however. There didn’t seem much point. Whoever these people were, they didn’t seem hostile. It was probably just about money.

  Whatever … Ren thought. He wasn’t in handcuffs and they were offering him a shower and food and hopefully a change of clothes. He might as well play along.

  I wonder what they think I’m worth?

  ‘Do you people have names?’ Ren asked, as he followed his kidnapper down the rusty companionway.

  The ship creaked and groaned alarmingly. If these people had abducted him in the hopes of making money out of him and had hidden him on a rusty barge, they clearly thought the negotiations were going to take time, despite his captor’s assurance he wouldn’t be here long. Were they planning to move him? Or were they chugging across the Irish Sea, about to meet up with another ship sailing under a foreign flag and he’d never be heard of again?

  They didn’t seem bothered about him being able to identify them. That could mean they were confident of not being caught. Or that their politics were such that getting away wasn’t an option …

  Ren hoped the latter wasn’t the case. People with political agendas weren’t squeamish about death, or about taking their hostages with them when they died.

  ‘Brógán is ainm dom.’

  Ren stared at the young man in surprise. His abductor was speaking Gaelige. Or a strangely accented version of it. That meant they were locals. Irish.

  Oh God, no … I’ve been kidnapped by the IRA.

  Aliens might have been better.

  ‘Brógán is my name,’ the kidnapper added in English. He glanced over his shoulder, and pointed to a metal staircase leading upward. ‘My … colleague’s name is Niamh.’

  ‘Ah … the lady with the deadly blue powder.’

  Ren grabbed hold of the cold handrails, which left flakes of paint on his palms, and began to climb the gangway after Brógán. ‘What was that shit, anyway?’

  Brógán glanced over his shoulder and grinned at him. ‘A deadly blue powder.’

  ‘Great,’ Ren muttered. ‘Not just a cheerful IRA grunt … this one thinks he’s a comedian, too.’

  ‘It’s called Brionglóid Gorm,’ Brógán added.

  ‘Blue dreams, huh?’ Ren translated, to make certain he’d heard right.

  ‘Brógán!’ a tinny, female voice called over a loudspeaker. ‘You’d better come up here.’

  The woman, too, had spoken Gaelige. It was a somewhat different dialect to the one Ren was used to hearing, the one they taught at school, but alike enough for him to make sense of it. Maybe they were from one of the Gaeltacht regions outside Dublin, Ren thought, where the locals spoke Irish first and English as an afterthought. That would account for the difference between the formal language Ren was used to, and the much more colloquial version these people spoke.

  ‘I guess this means we’re going to the bridge first,’ Brógán said with a sigh. They reached the next deck and headed up another set of rusty metal stairs. There was no sign of any other crew. Were these two and he alone on this rusty old barge? The idea gave him hope. How hard could it be to get away from only two of them? Particularly as they didn’t seem to be armed.

  Ren followed Brógán silently, wondering what the temperature of the Irish Sea was at this time of year. If he jumped overboard, would he get away? Or would he drown before anybody could rescue him? Die of hypothermia?

  When they finally stepped onto the rain-swept deck a few moments later, Ren guessed the answer was ‘you’ll die of hypothermia’. The sea was dull and relatively flat, but a steady, icy rain was falling, making the deck slippery and treacherous. Ren shivered as he grabbed the slick rail and followed Brógán forward, doubting he’d last even ten minutes if he tried escaping over the side. A quick scan of the horizon confirmed his suspicion they were out of sight of land.

  Jesus … where are they taking me?

  Wherever it was, Ren consoled himself with the idea that people would already be looking for him. Kiva would be calling in every favour she was owed. And there was the minor matter of appearing to have escaped police custody.

  Shit … what if they don’t realise I was kidnapped? What if they think that O’Hara simply busted me out of gaol …

  Ren was still worrying about that when they reached the bridge. It was warmer inside. Brógán slammed the sliding door shut, before fighting with the lock for a few moments to ensure it stayed that way. Niamh didn’t look up. Her gloved hands were clamped to the wheel, her eyes fixed on some point on the misty horizon through the rhythmic thump and squeak of windscreen wipers in need of new rubber. She didn’t realise, Ren thought, that Brógán wasn’t alone.

  ‘This rain is going to make it almost impossible to —’ she began. She stopped abruptly when she saw Ren and actually paled a little. ‘Leath tiarna!’

  Half-Lord she’d exclaimed. ‘Excuse me?’

  Niamh recovered herself quickly. ‘I am sorry, Rónán,’ she said in English. ‘I wasn’t expecting you.’

  ‘Who were you expecting?’ he asked. Pay attention. Look at what they’re wearing, how they speak, eye colour, hair colour …

  Niamh would be easy to remember, he thought. She had long, wavy dark hair flecked with the occasional strand of grey, sharp blue eyes and an air about her that suggested she was used to being in charge. She was much older than Brógán, too, he realised, now he had time to notice. She was closer to his mother’s age.

  Niamh didn’t answer Ren’s question. ‘Has Brógán fed you, yet? Offered you a chance to clean up? Is there anything you want?’

  ‘You could drop me off at the nearest port,’ Ren suggested. ‘And let me go home.’

  Niamh smiled. ‘Never fear, Rónán,’ she said. ‘If I can promise you nothing else, I can promise you this, Leath tiarna: we are taking you home.’

  CHAPTER 27

  ‘Better the blood of two innocents, than the blood of twenty thousand.’

  Ren extracted his finger from the soft, determined grip of the baby girl, her skin so soft and warm, her gaze so trusting and serene; it was heartbreaking.

  But not heartbreaking enough to stay his hand. He raised the blade, transfixed by the guileless blue eyes staring up at him. And then he brought it down sharply, slicing through the swaddling and her fragile ribs into her tiny heart without remorse or regret.

  He was quick and, he hoped, merciful, but the link between the sisters was quicker.

  Before he coul
d extract the blade from one tiny heart and plunge it into another, her twin sister jerked with pain and began to scream.

  The next time Ren woke he was no longer on the rusty old barge tossing around on the Irish Sea. As the wisps of his unsettling dream faded, he looked about and discovered he was lying on a rank, straw-filled mattress in what seemed — and smelled — like some sort of rude shepherd’s cottage. There were no windows. The only light came from cracks in the split-log walls.

  For a few moments, he struggled to recall how he got here. The last thing he remembered was sitting with Brógán in the galley of the barge, eating a perfectly ordinary ham sandwich. It was about ten in the morning, and Ren was freshly showered and dressed in borrowed jeans and a sweatshirt, none the wiser about what his captors wanted. Niamh’s voice had come over the PA again, announcing they were almost there. Brógán’s grin broadened. He was excited. Full of anticipation.

  ‘Where exactly is “there”?’ Ren asked.

  Brógán was hard-pressed to contain himself. ‘You’ll see. Finish your lunch.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You’ll have to come up on deck. Then you’ll see.’

  Ren swallowed the last of his sandwich, drained the lukewarm can of Pepsi Brógán had given him, and then followed the young man onto the deck to join Niamh. But almost as soon as he appeared, she hit him with that deadly blue powder again.

  That was the last thing Ren remembered.

  He pushed himself up on his elbows to look around. There was no sign of Brógán or Niamh and — through the pounding headache that was a Brionglóid Gorm hangover — he discovered that under the smelly woollen blanket, he wasn’t wearing any clothes.

  He didn’t want to think about why.

  The door opened and Brógán walked in. Still smiling like a fool, the young man was no longer dressed in jeans and T-shirt. Now he was wearing a tan hooded robe made of a rough woven fibre.

  ‘Where’re my clothes?’ Ren demanded, horrified at how panicked he sounded. ‘Who took them?’