‘Was that really the only choice you had?’
She inched closer to him, her forehead creased in concern for what he must have been. He was not conventionally attractive, she thought, but his candour and naivete drew her to him.
‘Where Ah come fae, choice is a girl’s name,’ he said. Humour apart, he realized he meant it, that he was no longer saying things just to amuse or impress her. He thought of all the things he’d said to women in the past, all the stale chat-up lines, the cheap endearments whose only purpose was to get your hand into someone’s knickers. Not much chance they’d go down too well here. It left him dumb, trapped between his need for her and his fear of using force.
She touched his cheek. She knew it was a dangerous thing to do, since she already guessed he wanted her. At home, perhaps, she’d have sent him away, politely but firmly denying him any part in her. But she had no home any longer, nowhere to practise politeness and firmness in. She had neither touched nor been touched by a man since Zheng Juntao’s disappearance. His cheek felt hot and rough.
He did not move. Maddie let her hand stray across his stubbled cheek, then down to his mouth. He kissed it, then reached out himself, stroking her cheek in turn with his heavy, awkward hand, and she leaned closer to him while his fingers moved to her neck, to caress her and to feel the tight, naked pulse in her artery. Her breath moved in her throat like silk.
She was wearing a long white T-shirt emblazoned on the front with the slogan: ‘Line Dancers Do It in Stetsons’. Without a word, she dropped her hands to its hem and lifted it over her head in a single motion.
At that moment, the music came to a halt, and they found one another in a silence that passed through every vein like smoke. His hand went blindly to her left breast, caressing it as a child’s hand might stroke a small animal, and she came right up to him and kissed him full on the bloodless mouth while his shaking hand drew him to her.
She pulled off his shirt, uncovering a chest and arms that seemed to have been modelled on the Sistine Chapel.
‘There wis a lad in barracks did these for fifty pee an hour. Nothin’ he couldnae draw. It wis a way of passin’ the time, likes. Ah went two or three times a week. Ah’d go tae sleep an’ let him do what he wanted. Maybe that wis a mistake.’
‘Nonsense, they’re very nice. I’ll look properly at them afterwards.’
And she kissed him hard, as though greedy for something she had been denied all her life, and he drew back once to look at her, small and naked beneath him, and laughed, as if he had no cares in the world.
They lay together afterwards on the floor, using cushions from the sofa to rest their heads on. Maddie felt an aching hole inside her, knowing that this was all a sham, that there could never be anything between Calum and herself outside these four walls. And she felt a terrible pang of guilt thinking about Zheng Juntao and how she had betrayed him.
‘Wouldn’t it be strange,’ she said, ‘if Charlene and Hamish were to come in right now.’
‘Aye. Fuckin’ marvellous. We could make oot again tae the strains of Barry Manilow. Ever done that?’
She shook her head. Her soft copper hair lay like barley-sugar on her thin shoulders.
‘Ah tried once. Gave me the droop. Ah couldnae get it up for weeks afterwards. There was a song aboot somebody called Mandy that kept goin’ through ma head.’
‘Was she nice?’
‘Who, Mandy?’
‘The girl you couldn’t get it up for?’
‘Tracey McBurney? She wis all right, Ah suppose. But for this Barry Manilow obsession.’
‘Have you slept with a lot of women?’
‘Well, burds like. Aye. More than ma fair share. Ah suppose.’
‘Have you never tried for a long-term relationship?’
He tensed, sensing the direction she was trying to steer the conversation in.
‘No’ ma style, doll.’
'I’d only ever made love to one man before you.’
‘That’s nice. Bit of a waste, though, if ye dinna mind ma sayin’ so. Body like your, likes ...'
As if to emphasize his words, he reached out and stroked her breasts. As he did so, she sensed him tighten again. His hand stopped stroking.
‘What’s wrong, Calum, you ...’
‘Shhhh.’
She realized he was listening intently.
‘What is it?’ she whispered. ‘What can you hear?’
‘Ah’m no’ sure. Could be some fuck’s oot the back.’
He reached on to the sofa, where his jeans lay in a crumpled heap, and pulled a gun from one of the pockets.
‘Calum, it’s probably only ...'
‘Keep your mooth shut, and don’t interfere. I’ll pop ma kegs on an’ ...'
In the next few seconds, three or four things happened, virtually simultaneously.
A man in black abseiled from the roof to come crashing through the picture window.
Two more threw themselves through the smaller windows on either side of the bay, rolling to the floor and straightening, weapons pointing forward.
A fourth man kicked open the door of the living room and held it open, pointing a submachine-gun round it.
‘Get on the floor! Drop your gun, and put your arms over your head! And make it quick!’ he shouted.
Calum’s reflexes were almost as fast. He wasn’t as well trained as these intruders, perhaps, and he was a bit out of practice; but he hadn’t lost his instinct. Before the others could recover from the force of their entry, he had pulled Maddie in front of him and rammed the barrel of his pistol into her mouth.
‘Don;t so much as fuckin’ move!’ he screamed. ‘If Ah go, the doll goes too. More holes than Bonnie an’ Clyde! Your boss wouldnae like that, would he? Two corpses when you came tae get one oot. No’ much point tae that, is there?’
‘Not a lot.’
The speaker walked into the room as though arriving for a dinner party. He wore a dark suit with a plain silk tie, cufflinks, not buttons, tightly laced Oxfords, and a smile that would have been disarming under other circumstances.
Farrar surveyed the scene with the detached air of an estate agent or an insurance assessor.
‘I think you’ll find that your hand will grow tired quite quickly in that position,’ he went on. ‘Far better to point at the back of her head.’
‘Ah’ll put ma gun where Ah choose. Who the fuck are you?’
Farrar stepped forward.
‘I thought you might recognize my voice, Calum. Or have you forgotten our recent conversation?’
‘It’s you that’s forgotten, Tony. Ah seem tae remember telling you tae keep the polis ootay this. If ma memory serves me properly you swore tae say nothin’ tae the boys in blue.’
‘You must be denser than I thought. Do you honestly think I’d employ Policeman Plod to carry out an operation like this? The lads with guns pointed at you, Calum, are members of an elite Hostage Rescue Unit. You, on the other hand, are a reject from the Paratroop Regiment who never learned to shoot straight and never will. Incidentally, I think the young lady might appreciate it if you allowed one of us to cover her up. She is rather naked.’
‘Better naked than dead. From where Ah’m sittin’, Ah cannae miss. In case ye cannae see, ma finger is so fuckin’ tight on this trigger, a bairn could smell it. Shoot me an’ the doll gets it too.’
Farrar inched forward a little more.
‘Maddie,’ he said, ‘just try to relax. We aren’t going to let you come to any harm.’
Maddie nodded imperceptibly. All her expression was in her eyes, wide and staring. She wasn’t sure who frightened her most, Calum or Farrar.
‘Now, Calum,’ Farrar continued, ‘I want you to listen very carefully. Your life may depend on it. The men you can see in this room are only my front team. There are two back-up teams, and I can bring others in with a single telephone call. I know what you’re thinking. You want to get clothes for both of you, then you want transport - maybe a car with a driver - a
nd a free passage out of here. Otherwise, you will threaten to shoot Maddie. The doll, as you say, will get it.
‘I can certainly supply you with all that, but what I cannot do is promise to stand aside and let you vanish into the dead of night. This thing is out in the open now, and you will be pursued, whatever happens, wherever you go.
‘If you kill Maddie, things really do get difficult. I could only give you a choice between being shot now or spending the rest of your life in jail. And I do mean the rest of your life. In solitary. You should have found out who I was before you started this whole stupid scheme.’
‘Am Ah gettin’ on your nerves or something? Or maybe it’s the sight o’ the burd wi’ no clothes on. Ah’ve got a hard-on just tae feel her bum on ma dick. Ah cannae imagine what you’ve all got.’
‘Is this true, Maddie? Has he got an erection?’
Maddie nodded. She wanted to scream, but her throat felt numb and out of her control.
‘You are a vulgar little man, Calum. A gentleman never lets himself come to attention when the lady is in distress. Which your young woman is.’
‘She’d no’ be in distress if you hadnae burst in. She was no’ in distress earlier when Ah made her come fae here tae John o’ Groats. Ah expect you heard that.’
‘It gave us a useful clue as to what was going on inside here, yes.’
‘You jokers probably think Ah’m fakin’. Ah’ve never been more serious in my puff.’
‘Your seriousness is not in question. It’s your common sense I’m not so sure about. Let me run this past you again. If you kill Maddie, all your options run out. If you take her as a hostage, you will eventually fall asleep or make a mistake. We can be incredibly patient. And we can track you down wherever you go. You won’t see a penny of your million pounds, and in a week or ten days or a month one of my men will put so many bullets into your body that your coffin, if they bother making one, will weigh a ton.
‘However, there is an alternative which I believe may appeal to you. My only concern in this is Maddie’s safety. Frankly, I couldn’t care less about you. In order to settle this matter amicably, I am willing to make you a one-time payment of fifty thousand pounds, paid in unmarked bills, and a promise of free passage. You throw away your gun, you put on your clothes, and you walk outside. There’s a car down by the road, a Grand Cherokee. That’s thrown in free.’ He paused and looked at Calum, the tattooed skin and the tangled hair. The youth was all Anthony detested. ‘Well,’ he went on, ‘what do you think?’
‘Show me the money. Show me you’re no’ just makin’ this up.’
Anthony turned and went out of the room. Half a minute passed, then he returned carrying a small attache case.
‘Here,’ he said, opening the case and tilting it towards Calum. Inside, rows of banknotes were held tightly by broad elastic straps. They seemed to glimmer in the artificial light, strangely coloured fish in a tank without glass.
Farrar went up close this time and laid the case next to Maddie’s hip.
It was hard for Calum to keep up the nonchalant front he’d adopted. He’d never seen so much money in his life before. Packed together in a little case, with the Queen’s tiaraed head repeated all the way across, fifty thousand looked like much more than his imaginary million. He did a quick switch of hands on the gun, put the barrel to the side of Maddie’s head, and used his free hand to feel one of the wads.
‘How do Ah know these arenae - what’s the word?’
‘Counterfeit? There’s not a lot I can do about that. But you know where Maddie and I live. I imagine any cheating on my part would bring some form of reprisal from you. So, the answer is, no, they are not counterfeit. You have my word on that.’
‘As in “A gentleman’s word is his bond”?’
Farrar smiled tolerantly.
‘If you like.’
‘And are you?’
I’m sorry?’
‘A gentleman.’
‘I’d certainly like to think so. It’s not for me to say so, of course.’
Calum thought for a few moments longer.
‘All right then, you’ve got a deal. Ah’ll take the money an’ the car. You can keep the burd. You’ll no’ be disappointed, she’s a great screw. Maybe all your wee friends here can have a go as well. Make it worth their while comin’ all the way oot here. But first, Ah’d like tae see your weapons on the floor.’
Farrar nodded. The HRU did as they were told, locking on their safety buttons and dropping everything they carried.
Calum hopped into his trousers, holding his pistol in one hand as he did so. It was trickier pulling his T-shirt over his head. Whatever way he did it, there was no avoiding that brief moment when his head went through the neck.
That was when they took him.
The man on the far left had his SMG up and firing in less time than it took Calum to squeeze his head through the ring of cloth. He fired several rounds, all directed at the centre of Calum’s chest. The gun had not yet fallen from Calum’s hand, nor his eyes quite stopped blinking before the other members of the unit finished the job.
Calum became a shooting-bag, an inert target of flesh and bone into which hundreds of rounds were pumped. His body erupted in bursts of red, spilling blood over Maddie until she was covered from head to foot in the stuff.
That was when she screamed. Her voice drowned out whatever echoes remained of the shooting, bringing people running from all directions. Elizabeth was there, one of the first. She staggered into the room, took one look at Maddie, and fainted clean away.
Farrar went to Maddie and tossed a blanket round her. It had been handed to him by a paramedic who’d accompanied the unit.
He put the blanket round her, and held her by the shoulders, and whispered in her ear. She was still shuddering with shock, and trying to shut out her horror and her fear. What he whispered was simple and to the point. ‘Listen, Maddie, if you don’t pull yourself together, your mother and I will have you bloody well certified and locked up somewhere from which you’ll never resurface. Think about it very hard.’
He turned to the HRU men still in the room.
‘Right, I want him taken out and dumped somewhere. Somebody get this place cleaned up. I’ll take the girl upstairs.’
‘What time are you planning to return to London, sir?’
Farrar looked surprised.
‘London? You can take Lizzie back if you like. See she understands what happened. I’ll speak to her later.’
‘Very good, sir. What about the girl?’
‘Maddie? She’s staying here for a while longer. With me.’
He tightened the blanket round her shoulders and smiled. Maddie did not smile back. She was quiet, but inside she was still screaming.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO
It was Nabila who came up with a method for locating water. Despite the heat of the sun’s rays that baked the sand above them, the wells they had found previously had always contained cool water, and she reasoned that there might be a discernible difference between the area over a well and the surrounding desert.
She was proved right almost straight away. David used the infra-red scope to scan an area ahead of them and noticed a cool patch about twenty yards further along. Up close, it revealed the tell-tale salt crust of a small well. The brackish water was no use to them, but the experiment had opened up the possibility of their finding artesian wells, and perhaps wells whose water was still supplied by mountain streams to the north of the desert rim.
In the meantime, their own water was going down more quickly than they had anticipated. Carrying the weights they now did, each grew thirsty at a faster rate than usual. Daytime temperatures were still well above all that was reasonable or bearable, even for a desert, and they were baked hour after hour against the red sand as if they were joints of meat in the centre of a large oven.
The helicopters continued their daily passes, never quite close enough to make visual contact. Once, a green-painted chopper landed half
a mile away from them.
David and Nabila watched, crouched behind the summit of a dune they had just climbed. A man got out and walked around for a while, then clambered back into the tiny craft and was whisked skywards again. They went to the spot afterwards, and found a dead gazelle and the pilot’s footprints. It was a bit like being Robinson Crusoe and finding that solitary print by the water’s edge.
Soon after that, David found his first proper well. It showed up on the scanner quite clearly, and when they scraped the sand away they found a circular stone cap bearing an inscription in Chinese characters. According to the inscription, this was well number seven in a series connecting the towns of the northern desert corridor. A hole about two inches in diameter and maybe a foot deep had been cut into the stone, and in it sat a length of broken wood, gnarled and twisted by the winds and sands of many centuries.
‘I wonder how they found them in the first place,’ said David as he pushed and pulled in an effort to dislodge the cap.
‘By some form of dowsing, I expect,’ suggested Nabila. ‘I had a patient a few years ago, a farmer who used bent sticks to track down underground water on his farm and the farms of friends. Apparently he was very good at it. He was in great demand.’
‘But out here?’ He straightened for a moment.
'They’d come in winter, probably. Once they had one well, they could afford to take their time to find the next, then another one in the opposite direction.’
David bent again and tried to get the cap moving. It made a slight grinding noise, but still refused to budge. It had been perhaps two thousand years since it was last touched.
‘Let me,’ said Nabila.
David stood aside, still wincing from his efforts. Nabila stood astride the cap, bent down, and twisted it off in a single motion. David stared at her in disbelief.
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