by Agatha Frost
“Is a holiday a holiday if it’s permanent?”
“Minnie’s life seems to be one long holiday.” He kissed her on the top of the head. “And if not forever, a holiday home then? There’s not much left on the cottage’s mortgage, and I still have a good chunk of the book money left. Enough for a deposit.”
Julia pulled away and turned to face him. “Are you being serious?”
He shrugged. “Why not?”
Julia couldn’t think of a reason why not. She glanced at the valley again, and even in the dark, it was the most relaxing place she had ever been. She loved the comforts of home, but she now understood the appeal of being a fish out of water, especially somewhere so beautiful. Before they could talk about it further, there was a knock at the door.
“That’ll be the starters,” Barker said. “Lisa said she’d serve us dinner up here tonight.”
He opened the door, and it was Lisa, but she didn’t have any food with her. She did have a worried look on her face, and one thumbnail crammed in her mouth.
“Everything okay?” Julia asked, joining Barker by the door.
“Yes,” she replied. “Actually, no. I’m not sure.”
“What’s happened?” Barker asked.
“Nothing’s happened, as such.” She glanced up and down the corridor before exhaling. “Have you seen Dot and Percy?”
“Not since breakfast,” Julia replied. “Surely they should be back by now?”
Lisa shook her head.
Julia squeezed past Lisa. She walked down to the corridor to the room she knew her gran and Percy were staying in. She knocked and knocked, but nobody answered. No light poured through the small gap under the door.
“Barker?” Julia stared at her husband, unsure of what to say.
“Let’s not panic,” he said, fanning his hands. “They probably got caught up somewhere. You know what your gran is like. Maybe she found herself a nice café somewhere, and she’s getting plugged into the local gossip channels and having a good chat with the locals?”
Julia checked her watch. “It’s half past eight at night. They should be back.”
“I think you should come downstairs,” Lisa said, already walking to the lift at the end of the hallway. “My mother is going out of her mind. She sent me up to here to fetch you.”
They took the lift down to the ground floor and found Minnie pacing back and forth in the softly lit sunroom with the pool and valley serving as her backdrop. Two couples were eating dinner, the only noise the scraping of cutlery on plates and barely audible Spanish guitar music playing from some concealed speakers somewhere. Aside from them, the hotel was empty.
“They haven’t seen her,” Lisa explained before Minnie could ask, “and they’re still not in their rooms.”
“Oh, sweet Julia!” Minnie cried, hand on her forehead as she continued to pace, her kaftan blowing dramatically around her. “I told them. I said there’d be trouble! If they’d only stayed in the hotel, this never would have happened.”
“We don’t know if anything’s happened,” Barker said, his voice carrying all the calm authority left from his detective inspector days. “Has anyone looked for them? It’s only a small town. They can’t have gone far.”
“And vanish like they did?” Minnie shook her head, eyes trained on her feet at she paced. “No, thank you.”
“Mum . . .”
“Don’t!” Minnie stopped pacing to extend a finger at her daughter. “Don’t you say it. Don’t you tell me I’m paranoid. I’m not crazy, Lisa. I can see what’s going on around here. The troubles. It’s not the same, and you know it. Everything has changed.”
“When you say ‘the troubles’, what do you mean?” Julia asked, guiding her great-aunt to a wicker chair out of view of the curious diners. “You mentioned it this morning, too.”
“Oh, you know.” She waved her hand vaguely.
“I really don’t.”
“Things aren’t the same,” she repeated, hands clutching fistfuls of her grey hair. “Everything has changed.”
Julia glanced at Barker, but he looked as confused as she felt. Despite Minnie’s rebuttal of paranoia, she was doing an excellent job of coming across as paranoid. Lisa handed her mother a glass of sangria. Minnie took a big gulp before relaxing into the chair. Knowing she wouldn’t get much out of Minnie in this state, Julia decided to change tactics. She nodded for Lisa to follow her out onto the terrace.
“Could you perhaps clarify a little?” Julia whispered, looking back at Minnie as she fanned at herself with a magazine. “How have things changed?”
“She never used to be like this,” Lisa explained, desperation in her voice. “Things haven’t been the same since Bill died three years ago.”
“Bill?”
“Her fourth husband,” she said, glancing at her mother. “The only one that stuck. They opened this hotel together twenty years ago. I only came out to help her get settled into a new routine after the funeral, but how can I leave her when she’s like this? She’s pushed everyone out. The chef, the cleaners? All fired. I know she says she’s not paranoid, but I think she’s been having a slow-wave breakdown ever since the day of Bill’s funeral.”
“And the town?” Julia pushed. “The trouble? Is there any truth in it?”
“Maybe.” Lisa shifted her head from side to side, although Julia could sense some reluctance. “Quite a few of the old hotels and cafés have packed up and left, but it’s not like new people haven’t taken them over. I think that since Bill’s death, she’s just terrified of change. I don’t know what to do with her. I’ve been trying to get her to sell up for months, but she won’t entertain the idea.”
Julia couldn’t focus on a solution to the problems Lisa was having with her mother. Family or not, she didn’t know them well enough yet. She did, however, know her gran and Percy, and she was no closer to accounting for their whereabouts.
“I’m going to go out and look for them,” Barker said when he joined them on the terrace. “Like I said, it’s not a big town. They have to be somewhere.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“No.” He rested a hand on Julia’s shoulder. “Not in your—”
“Condition?” She shrugged his hand away. “Barker, my grandmother and her husband are missing. I’m going out to look for them whether you like it or not.” She turned to Lisa. “You know this town better than we do. Would you say it was safe?”
“I don’t . . .” Her voice trailed off as her eyes drifted back into the hotel.
Julia spun around, hoping to see her gran and Percy so they could laugh about how silly they’d all been. It was only Rodger, the posh neighbour she had met that morning.
“I’ll get rid of him,” Lisa said, almost to herself. “Most nights, he comes around to drink wine with my mother, and they listen to music and dance the night away. Tonight’s not the night.”
Rodger crossed the dining room with confident steps, his earlier beige linen suit swapped out for a darker brown one. He had a bottle of red wine cradled in his arm and an envelope in his hand.
“My dearest Minnie!” he exclaimed when he found her half-collapsed in the sunroom clutching her sangria. “Whatever has happened?”
“It’s my turn, Rodger!” she cried, trying to stand but barely able to steady herself from the nerves. “I can feel it. It’s my turn.”
“Calm yourself,” he said, easing her back into the chair. “No good will come of getting yourself worked into a state.” He motioned for Lisa to fetch him some glasses for the wine. “Now, let’s sit down and talk about what’s troubling you.”
Minnie gulped down more sangria and settled into the wicker chair while Lisa hurried in with two wine glasses.
“This was on the doormat,” Rodger said, handing the envelope to Lisa. “It’s addressed simply to ‘La Casa’, so I thought I’d best bring it in. Looks to have been hand-delivered.”
Lisa took the letter to the reception area, leaving Julia and Barker lingering i
n the doorway between the sunroom and terrace.
“If we’re going,” Barker said, checking his watch, “we should leave now.”
Julia nodded, and they set off towards the front door. She still wore the blue tie-dyed dress and two-piece swimming costume from earlier. She thought about going up to the room to change or grab a jacket to fend off the slightly chillier night air, but the knot in her stomach stopped her.
Something wasn’t right.
“Oh, God!” Lisa cried, a hand over her mouth, the letter clenched in the other. “No, no, no, no.”
“What is it?” Barker asked, stepping back from the front door he’d just opened.
Lisa didn’t say anything. She put the note on the reception desk and turned it to face them before picking up the phone. She spoke quickly and quietly in what sounded like perfect Spanish. Julia’s Spanish skills were basic at best, but even she could figure out what ‘policía’ meant.
Julia snatched up the letter. The top half was written in Spanish, with what appeared to be an English translation of the same text below it.
La Casa,
We have taken two of your guests. If you do not wish any harm to come to them, you will pay a ransom of one hundred thousand euros. You will pay this in cash in an unmarked duffle bag.
When you are ready to pay, advertise a tractor for sale in the window of the post office in Savega Plaza and await further instructions.
We do not wish to commit murder. We only want the money. Follow our instructions, and your guests will be released within twenty-four hours of delivery.
Co-operate, and no harm will come to your guests. You have exactly one week. Any delay will be taken as a failure to pay.
See picture on the reverse for confirmation of authenticity.
Julia turned the paper over, and the image confirmed her worst nightmares. With black sacks over their heads, Dot and Percy were sat side by side on an old sofa, wearing the outfits they’d left in that morning. Their hands were bound with rope, but they were holding hands the best they could.
“We’ll find them,” Barker said. “I promise we’ll find them.”
His hands tightened on Julia’s shoulders. She let the note slip from her hands, and everything went black.
6
DOT
T he van drove over what felt like another rock, jerking Dot to the side. With her hands still bound in her lap, she could do little to steady herself, although the seatbelt stopped her from slipping into the footwell. At least they had taken the sack off her head.
“Are you still okay, dear?” she asked Percy, who was staring through the blacked-out windows like he could see something she couldn’t.
“Quite alright.” He offered a meek smile. “Yourself, my love?”
“Fine.”
“I think we’re going up into the mountains.”
“I think you’re right.” Dot sighed, scratching at the itchy rope around her wrists. “They could have done these a little looser, don’t you think?”
“That they could.”
Dot decided not to continue the conversation. For obvious reasons, Percy seemed reluctant to have an in-depth discussion on the matter. The front of the van was blocked off by cardboard taped over the back of the front headrests. She guessed the man with the aviators and the shopkeeper were the ones driving them wherever they were going. At least one of them was wearing a strong aftershave that had been tickling Dot’s throat since they set off from the market, although she’d been resisting the urge to cough.
As much as she wanted to cough, scream, shout, and kick the backs of the chairs in front of her, she remained stoic –more for Percy’s sake than anything. He’d shut down as soon as the sacks had gone over their heads. He was too gentle a man for such hardship. They’d only been close while they’d posed for a photograph, and he’d been shaking like a poor little leaf.
It wasn’t that Dot wasn’t scared. She was more terrified than she’d ever been in her life, but she couldn’t let those emotions take control. She knew better than anyone how razor-sharp and cold her tongue could be, especially when she was on the back foot. The last thing they needed was for her icy words to add to the problem.
No, she needed to remain calm and collected.
With no indication of light or dark beyond the blacked-out windows, Dot had no way to know what time it was, but it felt late. They’d been kept in the back office of the shop, guarded by two men with guns, for the entire length of the football game on the television, and then another, and another.
She yawned, wondering if she’d get to sleep anytime soon or even wake to see another sunrise. If not, at least she got to see the sunrise over the valley that morning. Small mercies, she thought, and she smiled at the memory. Like most people did, she’d hoped her final moments of life would be in bed at home, but at least this way she might go out in style in a beautiful part of the world. That would have to do.
After at least an hour of driving upwards, the terrain finally levelled out. The winding became more erratic and the roads bumpier. When Dot thought her old bones couldn’t take another jolt from the rocks in the road, they ground to a halt, and she heard the handbrake yank up. The two men spoke in hushed tones before jumping out.
Doors on either side of the van slid open. Percy jolted awake. Dot hadn’t even realised he’d fallen asleep. She’d wanted to, but she’d forced herself to stay awake if only to avoid the confusion that usually accompanied napping in unfamiliar places.
“Out,” the shopkeeper instructed after unclipping Dot’s seatbelt. “Now.”
She shuffled to the edge and jumped out, glad to move her legs at last. From the thinness of the air, they had to be high up, but as the only light came from the headlights of the van, she could see nothing else. Everything was as dark as nature intended it, making her wonder how anyone had survived before the invention of streetlamps.
“If this is the end, Percy,” Dot called out, having no idea where he was, “I want you to know I’m glad I met you.”
“Likewise, my Dorothy,” he called back from the other side of the van. “Likewise.”
The bearded shopkeeper grabbed Dot by the wrists and pulled her away from the van. His grip was firm, but he didn’t yank hard enough to hurt her, so she followed without argument. Were they about to be forced to their knees with guns placed to the back of their heads for defying the men’s pick-pocketing plan? Extreme, she thought, but perhaps this was how criminals did things this far south.
Instead, the man dragged her to a small, white, single-storey villa nestled in a clearing of tall trees. It looked like most of the buildings she’d seen since landing in the country, except this one had bars on the windows.
After unlocking the door, he pushed Dot inside. Before she could worry about what was going to happen to Percy, the man in the aviator sunglasses pushed him inside to join her. The man flicked on some lights, cut off their ropes, and shut the door, locking them in with what sounded like multiple padlocks and a deadbolt.
Dot looked around, rubbing at her tender wrists. They were in a pleasantly decorated, open-plan villa. It was small but still large enough to house a family. There was a kitchen area along one wall, a dining table with four mismatched chairs, and two sofas. The floors were tiled – some cracked, most not. The walls were painted cream, and there were even framed pictures hanging on the walls. An old television sat on a wheeled stand in the corner, and porcelain flamenco dancer ornaments sashayed across the top of it.
“What do you suppose is happening?” Percy asked, glued to her side.
“Perhaps we’ve been upgraded?” She licked her thumb and wiped a dark smudge off his cheek. “I don’t know, dear, but we’re alive.”
“For now.”
“For now.” She nodded. “But at our age, that’s all we have, isn’t it? Getting through the winters in one piece is a challenge in itself.”
“I suppose it is.” He took a small step away from her and looked around the room. “I wonder
why we’re here.”
“Maybe we’re going to be trafficked?” She turned the TV on, glad to see that it worked. “Remember that documentary we watched? They might be getting ready to sell us on the black market and shipping us off to the highest bidder.”
“Weren’t those all young women?”
“What are you trying to say?” She shot him a sharp look over her shoulder as she fiddled with the dials on the old set. “But perhaps you’re right. I’m sure time will tell.”
To Dot’s dismay, all of the channels were Spanish, and without a remote control, there was no way to put subtitles on. She’d hoped to come across the BBC somewhere in the mix, but it cycled back to the beginning again with no luck. She turned up the volume to hear some voices but quickly turned it down again when the locks began opening. Re-joining Percy in the middle of the room, she clutched his hand.
“Be brave,” she whispered to him.
“You too, dear.”
The door opened. The man in the aviators walked in, carrying a tray with plates of cold meats, cheeses, olives, bread, and even butter. He also had a large plastic bag dangling from one arm, which he let slide down to the floor by the door once he’d closed it behind himself. He placed the tray on the dining room table before striding over to yank the curtains shut over the sink.
“Water,” he said, showing them the bottles in the fridge. “Do not drink from the tap. It is only clean for washing.” He pushed open one of the doors to show them a bathroom, and another to show a bedroom. “I will come in the morning with your breakfast.”
“Thank you,” Dot found herself saying. “If you don’t mind me asking, why are we here?”
The man pulled off his sunglasses, and to Dot’s surprise, he was much younger than she’d initially thought. Not much older than Jessie, she guessed, and he had lovely hazel eyes with thick lashes. Bonny, or handsome even, but nowhere near as menacing as he’d looked when stalking them through the plaza and the markets.