by Oliver Tidy
I hadn’t cried since I was a boy, but in my frustration and extreme anxiety I don’t find it shameful to admit I came close to it then.
The novelists of hard-boiled detective fiction would have the reader believe that staring death in the face would only move their heroes to a smart remark, a fearless resignation that if their time was up then so be it, but they’d go out smoking and talking tough. That’s such bullshit; such a distortion of reality. Understanding that a premature and probably unpleasant end is nigh will cripple an honest man with his panic and spirit-sapping dread. It is a bowel-churning horror to contemplate. And that’s the truth. To my mind, I’ve been there.
Nothing happened for a long time. My feet went numb, which might have been a blessing. I lost the feeling in my hands. Incredibly, I eventually shivered myself with fear and cold into a form of sleep. Or it could have been unconsciousness brought on by hypothermia.
***
26
My next notable recollection was of that door creaking open again. A dog barking. Footsteps. A voice. A country voice. A male country voice roughed-up with age. He was talking. Maybe to himself. Maybe to the dog. Lots of barking.
They approached me and I shrank away from their presence. My hood was pulled off and in the dim interior, lit only by the grey of early morning that washed in through the open door behind him, I was facing an old man with the worn, grubby and improvised clothing of an old-school farm labourer.
From behind his weather-beaten exterior and beneath the peak of his grimy flat cap, he wore the consternation of expression of someone who thought he’d seen everything only to be surprised by life once more. The collie continued to bark. The man spoke gruffly to the dog and it was subdued.
We appraised each other a long moment before he said, ‘What the bloody hell’s going on here?’ He sounded more confused than anything else.
Although I felt I had a good idea of the answer, I had to ask. ‘Are you part of my abduction?’
‘Abduction? What the hell you talking about?’
‘Can you get me free?’
He thought about that for a second and then withdrew an old and battered pen knife from his pocket and cut my ties.
‘Well?’
I was massaging my wrists and rotating my ankles, trying to get the circulation returning. The sensation was proving excruciatingly painful.
‘Last night I was kidnapped.’
‘A prank?’
‘No. Definitely not a prank.’
He looked me over and saw that I was probably telling the truth.
‘Where is this place?’
‘Appledore. Where were you brung from?’
‘Dymchurch.’
‘Why?’ He had a suspicious glint in his eye now, as though he was wondering whether he should have left me bound until after he’d asked his questions and received answers that satisfied him.
‘No idea. Mistaken identity. Have you got a mobile phone?’
‘No.’
‘A car then?’
‘I rides a bicycle.’
I stepped on to the dirty floor and understood I wasn’t going to get far on foot. Not with my feet the way they were. I sat down.
‘Is there a house or a phone near here?’
‘No.’
‘Would you have a cigarette?’
‘No. Filthy habit.’
‘Why are you here?’
‘That’s my business.’ It was said defensively and made me think that maybe he shouldn’t have been.
‘I need the police.’
‘That’s about the first thing you’ve said I like the sound of. Village is about ten minutes away.’
‘By bike?’
‘Didn’t I just say so?’ He looked me over again. ‘You stayin’ here, then?’
‘Do I have a choice?’
‘There’s the door. Save me some trouble.’
He wasn’t proving particularly sympathetic.
‘I don’t want to stay here. They might come back. Can I take your bike?’
‘No. What if your friends was to come back and find me here instead a you?’
‘They don’t have a fight with you.’
‘Thought you said you didn’t know who it was?’
‘We need to hurry.’
‘It’s my bike. I’ll go.’
‘Phone Folkestone police and ask for Detective Constable Cash.’
‘Ashford police is our police.’
‘All right. I don’t care, really. Please, just hurry up.’
He wasn’t understanding the urgency of my situation. He looked me up and down one last time before turning his back on me and walking away. He wasn’t afraid of me. I was just an inconvenience for him, a fly in the ointment of his day, and he would have been happiest if I had offered to just crawl away on my hands and knees. I hobbled to the doorway to see him get on his old rusting mount and start pedalling off down the track with the dog at his wheels.
I looked at where I’d been dumped. It was an agricultural building of some age, surrounded by fields. I had to wonder why my abductors had brought me here. Farmland spread out in every direction, with trees and sheep. I couldn’t see a single other property, residential or otherwise.
I was frozen to the bone. I felt my head where I’d been struck. There was a small lump and a trail of dried crusty blood that ran down my hair and the side of my face. Other than that, the wrists and ankles, the damage to my feet from my run and the hypothermia, I didn’t appear to have sustained further injury. My side was bloody stiff and sore.
Now I had been given a chance to get away it seemed foolish to sit and wait there for the old man who might, or might not, go for the police. There didn’t seem to be much urgency about him, or compassion. It wouldn’t surprise me if he was intending to cycle home and return the next day in the hope I’d left of my own accord. There was also the inevitability of the return of my abductors and I really didn’t want to be stuck there like a rat in a barrel when the white van crawled down the road. That would be very stupid.
I watched the old man pedal unhurriedly up the country lane, the collie running along beside him, until he disappeared around a bend. I waited another minute and then decided not to wait any more. I shuffled into the building.
It was a big old Kentish barn made of local ragstone under a slate roof. The walls were solid looking and streaked with greens and browns where the water had got in and run down over years. The floor was compacted dirt. It was clearly not used for much other than storage of rusting farm contraptions and implements, farming surplus – old boxes, stacks of punnets and piles of old empty plastic fertilizer bags – a few bales of hay and a small hill of roof tiles. The only items that seemed at odds with the picture of derelict farming history were several huge reels of small bore plastic tubing. They looked like the pipe that was used for water supply. The rolls were piled high against every wall. There must have been miles of it. None of it was any use to me.
I used an empty fertilizer bag for a top layer – biting holes in the plastic so I could further enlarge them for my arms and head. I fashioned some bloody useless footwear too. But I was wasting time and with every second that passed my anxiety level increased a notch.
I heard a vehicle approaching at speed and I felt my heart might actually stop. Its engine strained in a low gear as it accelerated in my direction. A wave of panic sloshed through my system. I swore and wanted to rake my face with my fingernails for not having got out of there while I had the chance. I looked for a back door, something I might be able to exit from unseen, but there was none. A couple of window openings in the far wall were securely boarded up.
I moved to peek through the crack in the door jamb. I watched as the car drove past the end of the little track that led to my hiding place. It was no one. It was my wake-up call. I got out of there as fast as my damaged unshod feet would carry me.
As I limped up the track, walking on the soft strip of grass up the middle, I tried to get a sense of whic
h direction the van had brought me from. I couldn’t be sure. The old man had gone right. He had implied he’d be heading towards Appledore village. If he and the road were to be trusted Appledore was the opposite direction from Dymchurch, so it would make sense for me to follow his lead. I did and had to hope that he had, indeed, been pedalling for the village.
I hobbled along the verge – soft and spongy and wet and cold – but far preferable to the hard road. A light breeze played through the reed stalks that grew unchecked in the dyke alongside and a moorhen skittered away across the surface of the water from my approach, calling its warning.
***
27
I didn’t speak to another soul for over half an hour. Two cars passed me on the road and in the battle between my fears over who might be in either and my physical situation the latter prevailed and I tried to flag them down. Both gave me as wide a berth as the narrow lane would allow and neither driver risked eye contact with me: a scarecrow on the loose.
Eventually, I came to Appledore. I kept to the wide well kept grass verges that ran the length of the expensive side of the main street of the pretty little hamlet. It was early-morning-still and there was little evidence people were up and about.
I thought about knocking on the first door I came to and asking them to call the police, but I understood I looked bad enough that probably someone was going to do that soon anyway. As a rule, quaint little country villages populated by the commuting affluent middle classes don’t like filthy and bloodied shoeless vagrants littering their pavements and spoiling their ambience.
Up ahead I saw a small shop. It looked open. I got closer and understood it was many things to the village: newsagents, village store, Post Office. I went in and a little bell tinkled above me. Other than the man behind the counter, the place was empty. He looked up and clearly didn’t like what he saw. He appeared to brace himself for trouble. I saved him the bother.
‘Morning. Can you do me a favour? If I go and sit on the bench outside, would you call the police for me, please?’
This seemed to soften him. Or it might have been the state of me combined with my not uncultured English and my good manners.
‘What’s happened?’
‘I’ve had an accident. Look, I’m not feeling so good. Ashford police are your police right?’
He nodded.
‘It would be better if you called Folkestone police station. I know someone there. Can you do that?’
‘Who do you want me to ask for?’
I told him. I gave him my name. He wrote them both down.
‘I’ll wait outside. Thank you.’
‘Hang on. If she’s there you can talk to her.’
I waited. He found the number. He dialled. He was connected. Looking at me, he spoke to her. He held the phone out to me.’
She was the second person in five minutes to ask me what had happened.
‘Can you come and get me?’
‘I’m the police, not a taxi service.’
I held up a finger to the man and turned my back to him. I spoke quietly into the receiver. ‘This is a police matter. Last night I was abducted from my home, taken to a farm building in the middle of nowhere, tied up and left for dead. It’s to do with my relatives’ deaths.’
She was all police detective then. Where was I? Was I hurt? Had I hurt anyone? She said she’d be leaving in five minutes. I gave the phone back to the man without thanking her. He held it to his ear, but she’d already gone. I thanked him again and turned for the front door.
‘Come through to the back. I can make you a tea or something.’ I was grateful for the chance he was taking. And then with something of his little-village-store amiability he said, ‘Besides, you’ll probably frighten off half my regulars looking like that.’
He showed me through to a little kitchen at the back. There was a seat and a table. He put the kettle on and fussed with the paraphernalia of tea-making.
‘I don’t have any first aid stuff, sorry. But there’s kitchen towel and water if you want to clean yourself up a bit.’
I thanked him, but thought I wouldn’t bother. I wanted Jo to see the full extent of what had happened to me. I needed to make an impression. The shop bell tinkled and after a heartbeat’s hesitation he left me alone to fend for myself.
*
Jo walked into the back of the shop a little under an hour later. Two hot drinks and a pot noodle had warmed my insides and the little radiator I had been sitting against had slowly thawed my shell. The heat had made me sleepy.
She took me in with a professional appraisal and slowly shook her head. I wasn’t entirely sure what that meant and didn’t feel the need to ask. The shopkeeper hovered at her shoulder. It was clear she did not wish to discuss our business in front of him.
She looked at my feet, or rather my bloodied socks. ‘Can you walk?’
‘I can make it to your car, if that’s what you’re asking.’
‘Come on then.’
She thanked the man. I thanked the man. The man looked like we’d made his day. Perhaps his week – Appledore didn’t strike me as the kind of place that saw much excitement.
Jo waited until we had left the village and crossed the single-lane bridge that spanned the Royal Military Canal before she began her quiz questions.
I gave her the unabridged version of my previous night’s experience. And then I gave her a couple of quiet minutes to make something of it.
‘You didn’t actually see your abductors?’
‘No. But I don’t think it takes much working out who one of them was, do you?’
‘A voice you might recognise?’
‘Nothing.’
She nodded and drove some more.
‘Do you need medical attention?’ She said it like she really hoped I didn’t.
‘No. I can see to myself if you can take me home. What are you going to do?’
‘Take you home.’
‘About Flashman?’
‘Speak to him.’
‘That’s it?’
‘That’s all I can do. I’ll take it from there. If he breaks down into a sobbing confession I’ll arrest him for kidnap. If he doesn’t then, unless there is some forensic evidence or witnesses to show his involvement, I won’t be able to charge him with anything.’
‘You are joking?’
She ignored it. ‘You said you had the registration number for the van. What is it?’
I recited it.
‘There’s a pen and paper in there.’ She pointed at the glove box. ‘Write it down.’
A disturbing thought struck me. ‘You do believe me, don’t you?’
She risked a quick look in my direction. ‘Yes. I believe you.’
‘There’s something else.’ I told her about the diary and the entries of what looked like times and dates with the word PLUTO and what I made of it.
‘Show it to me when we get there.’
I put forward a theory of my own for her to chew on. ‘With how they reacted to my spying on them last night, what if they discovered my aunt and uncle were monitoring their activities and treated them worse, or just more immediately?’
We were bowling along the country roads between settlements and she pulled into a gap in the verge at a gateway to a field. She turned off the engine and turned to face me. She looked as serious as I’d ever seen her. She wore a mask of seriousness. ‘Go on.’
‘I’m sure you’re already ahead of me but just to humour you there is obviously something illegal going in and out of that yard and has been for some time. Honest people don’t conduct their business at two in the morning in hushed voices without lights in otherwise deserted builder’s yards.
‘Last night was the second time I’d noticed activity late at night and that van there. They were moving something in or out of that container. They understood I had been watching them then waited for me and then they kidnapped me. I don’t believe in coincidence too much, certainly not when it involves such rare levels of violen
ce. I have no doubt that if I had stayed trussed up in the barn they would have been back to finish me off after they’d got any information they wanted from me. If I’m right so far then the fact that they will engage in murder and kidnap tells me that whatever criminal activity they are involved in must reflect the lengths they have gone to to protect it.’
After a long moment studying my face, she said, ‘You have a very fertile imagination.’
‘Or I’m right.’
She made a face that I took to understand she hadn’t ruled it out.
‘Which do you think, Detective?’
‘I’m taking you home. I’ll call the DI. I think we should have a look in that container.’
She phoned the station while I stared out of the window. She spoke with Sprake and explained things. It sounded like he already knew some of it.
He must have been impressed with the information and its implications because I heard her agreeing to wait at the bookshop for him, the warrant and the team he would bring with him.
She terminated the call and looked at me. ‘Satisfied?’
‘Not yet. But it’s a start.’
We drove home.
***
28
As Jo was no stranger to the place I left her to her own devices while I showered, cleaned my cuts, dressed and generally made myself feel better.
I came out of the bathroom and limped along to my bedroom with just a towel around my waist. I didn’t expect to find her in there.
She was at the window looking down into the yard and I understood why. It was the best view of the place in the whole building. She heard me coming and turned. I don’t think she was expecting me to be half naked. I caught her looking at my body, but it was more an appraisal of my colouring and my injuries than my form.