Rosemary had let out a little whimper. ‘Dermot kidnapped? Why? Who’s kidnapped him?’
‘We think it’s the SAE. The Stop Animal Experiments lot, remember? But they haven’t said so yet. They rang us, just after Bob Larden’s secretary rang you. They let Dermot speak. We all heard his voice. He was very cheerful. He said he was being well treated.’ She didn’t mention the knife at his throat. It was bad enough that she had been made to suffer that and the other brutal disclosures herself without betraying her true devastated feelings to the men present at the time.
‘The police? Mary, have you told the police yet?’
‘Not yet. And we don’t think we should. Not unless you say so.’
‘Why not?’
‘The kidnappers said we mustn’t tell anyone. Not the police or Mark Treasure or Grenwood, Phipps. Not anyone, except you and the wives of other directors. If we do tell the police, the kidnappers say they’ll know and … and then they’ll hurt Dermot.’
‘Kill him?’ The whimper came again, only louder.
‘Certainly not.’ Her own stomach had jerked on the other woman’s words. ‘They’re not going to kill him. He’s much too valuable for their purpose.’ She gave a reassuring smile – while forcing herself to believe her own words.
‘But hurt him? Maim him? That’s what kidnappers do isn’t it? Oh God, help me!’ Rosemary took a deep breath that was half a sob. ‘Is it a ransom they want? We’ve got no money. Everyone knows we’re— ’
‘They don’t want anything from you. They want all the directors in the company to sell their shares in Closter Drug. Tomorrow. And not to try buying them back till next week.’
‘I don’t understand?’
‘Neither do we really, but that’s what they’ve said. If we obey, and don’t tell anyone why, they’ll let Dermot go.’
‘That’s all?’ Her hands were cupped around her face.
‘We’re not to tell anyone at the Stock Exchange what we’re doing. In other words, we mustn’t admit we’re being forced to sell shares. You see, if that were known, dealings in Closter shares could be stopped. The kidnappers know that.’
Rosemary seemed not to have comprehended the last point. ‘When will they let Dermot go?’
‘Quite soon.’ Mary avoided giving a direct answer. ‘As soon as they know we’ve done as they’ve ordered.’
‘But how can we trust them? And how will they know what we’ve done?’
‘They say they have informants everywhere. In the police, on the Stock Exchange, in the company, even at Grenwood, Phipps. They could be bluffing, of course. Except … Well if they’re the SAE they’re not criminals. I mean, not in the ordinary sense. Not in the sense they’re in this for personal gain. Which added to something else— ’
‘There’s no ransom?’
‘Exactly. It could mean we’re dealing with an organised group of cranks. A chain of animal nutters with committed members in all the places they say. They don’t need to be high-ups. Just ordinary employees who have to see or pass on information.’
‘Like secretaries?’
‘Exactly. Secretaries, clerks, switchboard operators— ’
‘But why are they— ’
‘They’re people simply out to make Closter directors give up their gains. The gains from last week’s flotation.’
Rosemary was nodding furiously. ‘But if it’s the SAE— ’
‘It fits. The man who spoke to us on the phone had an Irish accent. The man who Dermot hit during the demo was Irish. I heard him. It could have been the same man. The problem is, there is no SAE. Nothing that we can trace.’
‘But they broke up the meeting? There were photos?’
‘Kirsty Welling and followers broke up the meeting. They called themselves the SAE. There were no faces on the photographs. Not of the demonstrators. They were all hidden by the banners. We now believe that was on purpose. So they couldn’t be identified. They all melted into thin air after, too. Last week, when the lawyers were deciding what to do about the demo, they tried tracing the SAE and failed. They told Bob Larden on Friday the SAE didn’t exist – just like the magazine, Natural World Tomorrow.’
‘But the other animal protection groups— ’
‘Say they’ve never heard of the SAE either. And the journalist unions don’t have a Kirsty Welling in membership.’
‘So how could the SAE have kidnapped Dermot? I don’t understand?’
‘Bob thinks it’s a small group temporarily recruited from the regular animal protection groups. It’s not meant to survive. Its job is to harass Closter Drug. The demo was to spoil the flotation. The kidnap is to hurt the directors.’
‘But why did they pick Dermot?’
‘Maybe he was the easiest target for some reason.’
‘Or because he hit the Irishman?’
‘It’s possible. It could also be because they know Dermot has fewer shares than the rest of us. He’d have been more difficult to pressure for that reason if someone else had been the victim.’
The other woman nodded slowly. ‘But if they’re not criminals, they’re not going to harm him?’ There was hope in the tone and in the eyes.
‘Not if we do as they say.’ She repressed the comment that fanatics could be a lot more dangerous than common criminals.
‘So we must do as they say. Not tell the police or anyone. It’ll be all right then. They’ll let him go.’
‘That’s right, Rosemary. We’ve just got to sit it out.’ And God, let it be true, she inwardly beseeched, for the man both these women adored in their separate fashions.
Chapter Eight
‘Stuart Bodlin voted to sell. From the very first. No hesitation at all,’ said Giles Closter-Bennet, frowning into the gin and tonic he was holding.
‘That man’s too soft. His kind usually are,’ his wife answered with feeling. ‘Pour me another, will you?’ She pushed her empty tumbler across the low, glass-topped, raffia-bound table. She took an olive from the dish there.
It was 7.30. Closter-Bennet had arrived home later than usual. The two were sitting outside on the well sheltered, stone-flagged terrace of their eighteenth-century farmhouse. The place belonged to Barbara Closter-Bennet who had inherited it from her father: it was on the edge of the Thames-side village of Later Burnlow.
Closter-Bennet picked up the gin bottle from the drinks trolley beside him. His weight and the movement made the wicker chair creak a little. The King Charles spaniel lying at Barbara’s feet raised its head nervously at the sound.
The chair belonged to a set that Barbara’s father had bought at Harrods more than forty years before: she was seated in another of them. If they creaked it detracted nothing from their resilience; they were sturdily built and good for many more years’ wear. Naturally, the seats and the removable cushions had been renewed from time to time. The table had come with the chairs.
The garden furniture was indicative. There was nothing cheap or dilapidated about the Closter-Bennet home or chattels. Barbara had been brought up to invest in quality, proper maintenance, and to replace things only when the need was evident – not because something fancier had come out in plastic.
‘Mind you, Bodlin doesn’t like Hackle,’ said Closter-Bennet, by way of emphasising the unexpectedness of his earlier report. He dropped two ice cubes into the gin, then added tonic.
‘What’s that got to do with it? Of course, the police should have been told immediately. And Mark Treasure.’
‘He’s in New York.’
‘There are telephones.’ She took the glass from him. As always, the action was a little awkward because her right wrist, damaged in a riding accident, had never mended properly.
‘We couldn’t telephone. We don’t know who’s to be trusted.’
‘Oh come on! You don’t seriously believe those criminals? What they told you about having spies everywhere? Naturally they were bluffing.’
‘Mary Ricini doesn’t think so.’
‘Isn’t she Italia
n?’
His face clouded. ‘No, English.’ He considered the evident incongruity of that claim when set against the lady’s surname. ‘I think her father was from Sicily. Before he came to this country. Her mother’s from Leamington Spa.’
‘So the girl’s mind was filled with Mafia stories. They’re always kidnapping each other there.’
He took it that she meant Sicily not Leamington Spa, but you never knew with Barbara whose prejudices were numerous, and not always predictable. ‘We’ve taken no risks at all,’ he went on. ‘Not so far. The Irishman said if we told the police they’d castrate Hackle immediately. And then send us his … send us the evidence.’ He had lowered his voice at the awesomeness of the threat.
Barbara gave a wince, but only a very small one. ‘How disgusting,’ she said, quite slowly.
‘And they’ll cut off his right hand if we warn the Stock Exchange about the plan.’
This time there was no visible reaction. ‘It’s probably all pretence. To frighten you.’ She paused, her gaze straying to the secateurs in the flower basket near her chair. ‘Hackle’s right-handed, I suppose?’
‘Yes, he is,’ he answered, wondering if that particular enquiry had been seemly or essential in the circumstances. He hadn’t yet told her about the final threat.
‘And Bob Larden protested?’
‘To the SAE, or whoever they are. Yes. He asked if they realised they were behaving like total barbarians. The chap just said that now we’d know how animals felt about vivisection. It was a good point in a way.’
‘Nonsense.’
‘Yes, dear.’
‘But it’s why you’re pretty sure it’s the SAE?’ She dropped a hand to smooth the spaniel’s head.
‘The chap didn’t deny it when Bob said so. Bodlin was convinced it was them from the start. He’s very upset.’
‘Not as upset as Dermot Hackle, I imagine,’ Barbara offered drily.
‘Of course not. It’s just that despite what Bodlin says, he’s never really felt easy about the animal experiments we do. Especially the terminal ones on mammals.’
‘He has an affinity with monkeys? Quite understandable, I suppose. He looks like one. Like an undernourished baboon that’s lost some hair.’
‘He was the only one at all affected by the protest the other day.’ Closter-Bennet scratched his stomach under his trouser top. ‘It’s hard to explain. He’s become a vegetarian, for instance. Quite recently. Perhaps you’d feel the same way as him if you had to destroy a perfectly sound horse, say. Even in a good cause.’
‘But I could never find myself in such a position. If his work bothers him so much, the man should switch to something else.’
‘We couldn’t do without him.’ He knew it pleased her to be gratuitously perverse.
‘Nonsense. No one’s indispensable. Daddy always said that.’ Her eyes became thoughtful, but she wasn’t ruminating on her dead father whose pronouncements hadn’t warranted much of her attention in his lifetime. ‘What if Hackle didn’t survive? When Bob becomes Chairman, they’d have to make you Managing Director, of course.’ Her still narrowed eyes delayed immediate comment from her husband. ‘Yes, I must remember to confirm that date with Jane,’ she added.
‘About the new decorations here?’
‘To talk about them.’ Even a sound ulterior motive would not be allowed to precipitate commitment in so unresolved a matter. ‘There’s no hurry. But I ought to be in touch with Jane. It’ll be appropriate, in the circumstances. We might have them both to dinner here again, too.’
‘We don’t know that Bob’s going to be Chairman.’
‘He will be. Quite soon. Mark Treasure never intended to stay on after the flotation.’
‘In any case they wouldn’t make me Managing Director.’
‘Who else is there?’
‘Bodlin?’ he offered tentatively.
‘You can’t be serious?’
‘Hughie McFee then?’
‘Not the breadth to be a managing director.’
‘Someone from outside then?’
She made a tutting sound. ‘For God’s sake, Giles, if you don’t value your capacities, how can you expect anyone else to?’
He shrugged, then emptied his glass. ‘What we’re talking about is academic. If the managing directorship becomes vacant, it’s bound to go to Dermot. He won’t come to any harm. We’re going to protect him. Do what the SAE order.’
Barbara seemed to be occupied with other things as she answered: ‘We’ll have to see about that.’
He assumed she was referring still to the managing directorship. ‘Pretty well everyone was committed to selling their shares,’ he said, gloomily.
Her jaw stiffened. ‘I thought you said some of them were undecided?’
‘That was about whether we should go to the police.’ He shifted in his chair. ‘Well … Bob hasn’t actually committed himself on the shares. But I think he’ll decide to sell in the end.’
‘I assume you haven’t committed my shares?’ Her words were almost menacing. Then without waiting for a reply she asked: ‘You realise it’s my decision, not yours?’
He shifted in his chair, making it creak again. ‘The shares are in my name.’
‘But bought with my money, five years ago. Out of what was left of Daddy’s fortune. Your kidnappers have no right to regard those shares as belonging to a director. They belong to me. I’m not a director.’ Angrily she lit a cigarette.
‘I don’t think the SAE would understand the distinction. I think we’ll all have to sell. If we don’t they say they’ll … they’ll put down Dermot Hackle tomorrow night.’
‘Put down?’ Her hand dropped instinctively to the dog again.
‘That’s what they said. Like an animal. And that won’t be the end of it either.’
‘More shamming, of course. So what would be left for them to do if they put down Dermot Hackle, for heaven’s sake?’ She pronounced ‘put down’ in a manner that gave the possibility no credence.
‘They say after that they’d go on hurting us all in the slow way. Because we’d have rejected the fast one.’ He paused. ‘They’ll abduct the wife or the child of a director. Both, in time. That’s unless we relent and sell. And they’ll do the same if we ever admit there was a kidnapping.’
This time it wasn’t only Barbara’s jaw that stiffened. Her whole body had gone tight at the mention of the word wife. Because of her movement, the startled spaniel sat up too. With their astonished, aggrieved expressions, lifted noses, and popping dark eyes, at that moment outraged mistress and pet looked uncannily alike.
‘This telephone call you got must have gone on a rare long time,’ said Alison McFee. She stuck the long cooking fork into one of the potatoes in the saucepan on the cooker.
‘Four or five minutes, I suppose. It was pretty one-sided,’ her husband answered. He was in shirt sleeves, taking apart the defective plug on the lead to the electric kettle. There was a glass of neat whisky beside him. Like Closter-Bennet, he had arrived home later than usual. ‘I don’t think anyone was timing it.’
‘But someone could have been alerting the switchboard to try tracing the number.’ She stood back from the cooker and glanced around to where he was standing at the draining board. ‘Except, of course, you wouldn’t have dared. In case the kidnappers found out. I’d forgotten that. How terrible.’ She shook her head and used the fork to push about the lamb chops on the grill.
He had given her a similar account to the one Closter-Bennet had given to his wife – except Hughie McFee had early on explained that they had no choice but to part with their shares to save Dermot Hackle’s life. Again like Closter-Bennet, he had stressed why it was essential that the wives told no one about the kidnap either now or possibly ever.
They were in their big, square kitchen, an invariably untidy area but well equipped and practical. The McFees’ home was a substantial, red-brick, Victorian villa, with later additions, and grounds of several acres running down to the t
owpath on the outskirts of Maidenhead.
After all three children had left home, the couple had taken to spending most of their time either in the kitchen or in the adjoining conservatory – an iron-framed, stone-floored, Gothic appendage, shaped like a glass marquee, and promoted from its earlier status as a playroom. The conservatory was warm, except in the very depths of winter, and adaptable for eating, sitting, reading, napping and watching television or boats on the river. It was haphazardly but effectively furnished to cover all those activities, making for a comfortable muddle: Alison McFee was anything but house-proud. For a good deal of the year, the room was also pleasantly scented by the exotic plants that McFee nurtured along the ledges, or brought in from his greenhouse.
It was to the conservatory that Alison now drove her husband. Although the electrical repair job wasn’t completed, her cooking was.
‘When they phone again tomorrow, can you have the call traced in some way then?’ she asked, while unloading the tray of food on to the big round white-painted table in the centre of the room. Less than half the table surface had been cleared for the meal; the remainder was occupied by, amongst other things, a collection of seed catalogues, a broken clock, some travel brochures, a length of green netting in need of unravelling, an office stapler, a stack of unissued tickets for the Maidenhead Scottish Festival, and the previous day’s copy of The Times, folded to the cookery page.
He drew up a chair, a collapsible, high-backed tubular steel affair with arms and loose cushions, quite different from the wooden, upholstered one his wife was using. ‘The man told us they were using Dermot’s own portable phone. From his car,’ he said. ‘You can’t trace a call from one of those.’ He seemed to be considering the overfull table, his gaze pausing quizzically on the green netting. Then he withdrew his napkin from its holder, before adding broccoli from the nearest serving dish to the grilled meat his wife had put before him. ‘You see, there’s no way of pinpointing the location of a portable phone,’ he completed.
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