‘Have you and Janet been speaking French?’
‘Yes. We were at one of her friends’ birthday party yesterday so we had to. Jonathan too. Not Charlie, though. He only speaks dog. How’s Auntie Adrienne?’ he asked suddenly. ‘Has she come home yet?’
‘I’m on my way to collect her now,’ I told him, thinking on my feet. ‘She had to go away with someone, someone Frank knew. He turned up out of the blue.’
‘And she went away and left Charlie and me? He must be important.’
That’s the closest I’d ever heard Tom come to criticising an adult, but I let it pass. The little guy was entitled. ‘What are you doing?’ I asked him.
‘We’re having lunch. Then Ethel says we can have an hour on the PlayStation, and after that we’re going to swim with Mum.’ Tom calls both Susie and me ‘Mum’; I’ve never worked out how he manages it, but when he uses the word, he never leaves anyone in doubt about which one of us he’s talking about. ‘Did you find Frank?’
‘Yes, but he’s gone away again.’
‘What’s he like?’
I had to think about that. I wanted to reply, ‘More complex than you could ever imagine. A sheep in wolf’s clothing. A lovely little guy that I’ve let get to me in spite of myself.’ But he wouldn’t have understood any of that so all I said was ‘He’s nice.’
That was okay by Tom. I told him to be a good boy, and to be sure to let wee Jonathan win every so often on the PlayStation, then let him rejoin his lunch.
The church bell struck one thirty. Time, precious time, was moving on, I realised, and I had things to do. First I had to dress properly for my task, and that did not mean a long flowery day-dress. I went back upstairs, had a very quick shower, then dug out a pair of jeans I had discarded for the summer. I put them on, with a thick black belt, and added a checked cotton shirt and a light, sleeveless jacket. Too much in the heat, I knew, but I needed the pockets. Finally, I put on a pair of thick-soled sandals with heavy toe protectors. My right foot was still painful when I moved the wrong way, but if the need arose to kick someone where it hurt the most, they would do the job.
When I was ready I went down to the garage with the taser, reopened the safe and took out the half-dozen replacement cartridges I’d included with my order, then spent ten minutes practising reloading the weapon. The on-line sales pitch had claimed it could be done in four seconds, but the best I could manage was six. I hoped that would be enough, for I knew Sebastian and Willie would be reunited, and that I’d have to be ready to drop them both.
I was almost ready to go. I took a bottle of water from the stock in the garage fridge, and a couple of isotonics, just in case Adrienne needed rehydrating once she was free. She’d looked well cared for in those videos, but I couldn’t be sure. Almost as an afterthought I ran upstairs and fetched Frank’s rucksack. I’m not certain now, but I reckon my reasoning at the time was that, if he was still alive, and if I could spring both him and his mother, he might want to disappear before the police arrived. Since Interpol had disowned him over the Sevilla affair, there might be a danger of him being caught up in any aftermath.
‘Have I everything I might need?’ I asked myself. Not quite. The taser would knock them down, but for how long? I took Frank’s knife from his bag and cut four lengths from an old blue towrope that hangs on the garage wall, a relic from our former, less reliable vehicle.
I heard two o’clock ring, or maybe even two minutes past, if I’d missed it the first time, since the sound was muffled by the bulk of the great stone house above me. I slid the taser into its holster, safety off, clipped it on to the front left of my belt, so I could reach it quickly, opened the garage door, set the alarm and backed out. I didn’t even wait to be sure that the door had closed behind me, but put the Jeep straight into drive.
Not much was in my favour at the start of the journey. The first hazard was a fat, half-naked middle-aged slob, plodding along in the centre of the track, heading the same way as I was, and refusing obdurately to budge. Eventually I lost patience and blasted him with the horn. He stopped, turned round, glared at me, then stepped sideways when he saw the look in my eyes. As I passed he took a half-hearted kick at the Jeep, a stupid thing to do when you’re barefoot, especially if you connect. I took some satisfaction, as I drove on, from the sight of him in the rear-view mirror, hopping on his left foot, and clutching the toes of the other.
It didn’t get much better when I rejoined the main road: the day was so hot that families were deciding to abandon the beach before they and their kids melted. The car parks were emptying and the traffic was queued back a quarter of a kilometre from the L’Escala-Figueras junction. There was nothing for me to do but grimace and bear it.
Normally, on a clear road, it takes me five minutes, tops, to drive from my house to Bellcaire, the village beyond L’Escala. That afternoon it took thirty-five, and I had made a dent in my water supply by the time I reached the crossroads. I did as the priest had said, and took a left, then drove slowly, looking out for the sign. It was hand painted, but clearly visible. I turned in, left again, stopped alongside it and drew breath.
A dirt track lay before me leading upwards, up a hillside, not directly towards the summit that we Brits all call Tit Hill but to a lower crest alongside it. I had taken Tom up to Castell del Montgri a few months before, on a fine day during the school’s winter holiday, but we had climbed by the path that starts from Torroella. I recalled the view from the old citadel walls, and realised that the building I had seen below, on the edge of a clearing, must have been the abandoned retreat of Santa Caterina. From what I could recall of the terrain, I knew I would be wise to stop short of the place and approach on foot.
Was I nervous? Too damn right I was; I could feel my heart thumping in my chest at a rate well above the normal seventy beats per minute. But also I felt the holstered taser against my side. That, and the sure knowledge that I wouldn’t even think once about pulling the trigger of the lightweight but super-efficient weapon, gave me comfort. I slid the Jeep into drive once more, engaged four-wheel mode, and moved forward.
At first, the track ran parallel to the road alongside, but then it veered off and curved, rising more steeply. I climbed, steadily, up the bumpy road. I had probably driven for a kilometre, when I saw, through a gap in the trees, the spire of the retreat. I hit the brake. There were trees on either side of the road. This was no plantation: they had taken root naturally, and were thickly packed in places, but a short distance ahead, I spotted a small circular area, possibly cut as a passing place. I drove past it, then reversed in, ready for a quick getaway.
I did a spot-check. The cartridges were in the pockets of my jacket. Ropes? I picked them up, stuffed them into Frank’s rucksack, together with the drinks I’d brought for Adrienne, slung it over my left shoulder and stepped out of the Jeep, leaving the key in the lock and closing the door quietly behind me.
The sun was blazing above me as I stepped out on to the track, and its force hit me like a blast from a giant hair-dryer. The road was steeper than I’d realised while I was driving. I pushed myself as hard uphill as my injured toe would let me. Soon I felt my breath quicken, and my shirt wet against my skin. I could see Santa Caterina more clearly, and something else, a pathway off the track, through the woods, that led up behind it. I headed for it.
And Sebastian Loman stepped out from behind a tree, about twenty feet before me. He wore a grey linen suit and white shirt, tie-less, with a little maple-leaf pin in the left lapel; there was a smile on his face. ‘You took your time, Primavera,’ he said.
He was unarmed. I could not believe it, but he had no gun, in his hand or anywhere else that I could see. But I had. I stepped towards him, closing the distance between us, and reaching for the taser. He was still smiling, but I didn’t have time to consider that. I cleared my pacifier of its holster, and sighted it on his chest.
That was when I felt the pressure on the small of my back, against my spine, of something hard and circula
r. I didn’t need to be told what it was.
‘Best drop that,’ Willie Venable murmured in my ear.
I didn’t have much choice, did I? I sighed and let my insurance slip from my fingers. As it fell, Frank’s rucksack was yanked from my shoulder.
‘And raise your hands.’ I did that too.
Still smiling, Sebastian stepped forward and reached down to pick up the discarded taser. As he did so, I thought about kicking him in the nuts, but decided that if I did I might not be alive for long enough even to hear him moan. He stood up, admiring the weapon. ‘I’ve never seen one of these. Impressive.’ He removed the holster from my belt, his hand brushing the inside of my pocket in the process, and bumping against my spare cartridges. He took them too, and my mobile, then turned and headed up the way through the woods, beckoning me to follow. Willie jabbed me with his gun, to give force to the command. I walked between them, silently, until we reached the old retreat, and its main entrance. As we reached it, I looked across the clearing, and saw, parked on the other side, a big green vehicle, a Land Rover, perhaps.
The doors of the building were secured. As Sebastian produced a key from his jacket, unlocked the padlock that held them and swung them open, Willie stepped alongside me, and I saw him for the first time since Sevilla. He didn’t look as kind and considerate any more.
Light flooded into a big room, a million dust motes swirling in its rays. Through them I saw my aunt, and my cousin, their arms and legs tied as they sat in high-backed wooden chairs. They were gagged. A hand, Willie’s, I think, shoved me inside.
‘So, we have it,’ Sebastian announced, as he closed the entrance, plunging us into gloom, ‘the family reunion.’
‘Yes,’ I snapped, ‘you have it. Now show some decency and let my aunt go.’
‘Honey,’ Willie drawled, ‘this ain’t about decency, this is about money, and you know how it has to play out.’
I looked around the room, and saw that it was lit only by slivers of light coming from four windows, two above the doors and the others in the walls on either side. All of them had been boarded up.
‘This is how it will happen.’ Sebastian had become formal. ‘One by one. The McGowan family first, I think.’ He stepped behind Adrienne’s chair, untied her and helped her to her feet. It was the first time I’d ever seen her looking her age, but still her eyes blazed above her gag as she glared at him. ‘If you’d come with us, Mother,’ said Loman.
Willie handed the gun to his partner, then manhandled me across to the empty chair, and shoved me down on to it. He ripped off my jacket and tried to use it as a gag, but it was too big, and so he took my shirt instead. That served the purpose; it felt clammy as he jammed it across my mouth, parting my teeth and hurting me as he tightened it. I heard a sound from beside me, and realised that it was Frank, trying to say something that escaped only as a snarl. Willie ignored him as he tied me tightly to the chair with the cloth bindings he had taken from my aunt.
Sebastian nodded towards the door. Willie opened it, stuck his head outside to check for intruders, then signalled the all-clear with an upraised thumb. As they took her out, Adrienne looked back at Frank; I could see real fear in her eyes, until the door closed again, we were in the virtual darkness and they were gone.
I shifted my chair round so that I could see more of my cousin. His left cheek and the side of his nose were red and swollen, and he was slumped in his chair. I wondered if they’d given him a going-over once they’d got him secure. I tried to work the gag out of my mouth, but Willie had done too good a job. I looked at the chairs, and wondered if we could move them together and untie each other but, again, our bonds had been very efficiently fastened.
Frank’s gag was their only slip-up. As I watched, I saw him work away at it, until finally, although he hadn’t rid himself of it entirely, he had moved it enough to be able to speak, after a fashion.
‘You shouldn’t have come,’ he mumbled. ‘Prim, I’m so sorry it’s come to this. My mess, but it’s caught you too.’ He was looking me in the eye. ‘Shouldn’t say sorry, though, should I?’ I’ll swear he was trying to smile.
And then the pair came back.
‘Time’s up, Frank,’ said Willie, dispassionately.
He didn’t bother to untie him; he simply cut him loose, with Frank’s own wee knife, I noticed, taken from his rucksack, and hauled him towards the doorway.
I lost it then: I went crazy, filled with fury. I’m sure that if I’d been loose and they’d been unarmed I’d have destroyed the pair of them, but I was tied up tight and all I could do was shuffle my chair towards them, screaming obscenities through my gag, as they took my little cousin out of my sight for the last time.
I made one final lurch towards Sebastian, as he stood facing me, framed in the doorway. And that’s when the bastard shot me with my own taser.
Thirty-one
I tell you now, those damn weapons do exactly what it says on the tin, as the wood-preservative ads insist. I saw those probes coming at me, and when they hit, and the fifty thousand volts followed, I was completely helpless. I was pitched backwards, overturning the chair, my limbs convulsing and twitching within their restraints. I was barely aware of it, though: along with loss of physical control there was a feeling of total confusion. As we say in Scotland, I was completely wandered. I had no idea where I was, or what I was supposed to be doing there. If I had been asked what my name was, and I’d been able to speak, I’d have replied, ‘Uh?’
I have no idea how long I was out of it, but gradually my bewilderment began to dissipate; I returned, slowly, to my senses, and felt the paralysis wearing off too. Of course, that didn’t mean I could move: I was still tethered to that very solid chair, on my back and, as all of it came back to me, acutely aware that at any moment I could expect a return visit from Sebastian and Willie. If there really is a Shit Creek, I was well and truly up it. Yet as I turned my head to look around I caught a glimpse of something that might just be a paddle.
Frank’s clever little Swiss Army knife lay only a few feet away, where Willie had discarded it after cutting him loose, and the razor-sharp blade was open. If I could get to it . . .
I thought about rolling over, but realised that even if I could manage it once, I’d never have the leverage to do it a second time, as I’d need to if I was going to reach it. So, rather than try that, I began to shuffle sideways, using my hips to generate the movement, and my palms to help. My hands weren’t tied together behind my back; instead, my arms were lashed to the sides of the chair, giving me a little flexibility.
It took me more time than I believed I had to get to it, but I managed to pull myself the few feet that I needed. I felt sideways, blindly, for the knife, until my fingertips touched its plastic casing, and I was able to grip it, and manoeuvre it in my hand until I reckoned I knew where the blade was in relation to everything else. Something told me that I might only have one shot at what I was going to attempt. The same prescience told me that there was a fair chance I’d slice my wrist open in the process and maybe bleed to death. I closed my eyes and thrust the blade upwards . . . straight into my binding, cutting through it far enough for me to rip my arm free.
The rest took seconds, that was all, and then I was out of the chair and on unsteady legs, unfastening the gag that had once been a serviceable shirt. My eyes had grown accustomed to the light, or lack of it. I could see two small red dots on my belly where the darts had hit. My arms were filthy from the dust on the floor, and my jeans felt damp. I hoped it was only sweat, and that I hadn’t wet myself under the grip of the non-lethal but, by Jesus, bloody powerful current. I sniffed, and was reassured.
As I stood there, I heard a noise and saw movement in the handle of one of the double doors, the one on my right. I went cold inside, knowing what I had to do. There was no time for subtlety. Sebastian or Willie, whoever would draw the short straw and come first into that room, was getting the blade in the throat, and then, broken toe or not, the other one was gettin
g the benefit of everything I’d ever learned in those tae kwon do classes, until he wasn’t moving, or breathing either, if I could manage that. I took a couple of steps to my left and waited as the handle turned fully, and as the door creaked open.
‘Primavera?’ The voice was anxious, but it was strong.
I only realised that I had been holding my breath when it escaped from me in a great gasp of relief. ‘Gerard,’ I yelled, and then my sense of danger kicked back in. ‘Be careful. They’re out there.’ I reached out to pull him inside, but he held my wrist.
‘There’s nobody out here,’ he said gently, drawing me into the daylight. He had changed out of his priest suit into a grey shirt and camouflage shorts, the sort of gear he often wears when he’s not ministering. He stood there, built like a good-sized brick outhouse, and I felt safe. I felt even safer when I looked around. The Land Rover was gone.
‘I followed you as soon as the service was over,’ he told me. ‘It took longer than I thought, as some more worshippers came in from the beach.’ He smiled. ‘That can happen when it’s really hot. I’ve come to regard it as one of God’s mysterious ways. Now tell me, what’s happened, and where are your aunt and your cousin?’
Suddenly my legs felt weak again. A couple of metres away, I saw the remnants of a small stone wall. I tottered across and sat on it. ‘They’re gone,’ I told him. ‘Sebastian and Willie, the men who were holding them, took them away, one by one, to be killed. I thought I was going to be next; they tied me to a chair and shot me with a stun gun. When you opened the door, Father Gerard, I thought you were them. If you’d stepped inside . . .’ I was still holding the knife. I smiled at him weakly. ‘Going to give me absolution?’ I asked, and then I burst into tears.
He sat beside me and held me until I’d cried myself out. ‘There’s nothing to absolve, little sister,’ he whispered. ‘You have no sin in your heart.’ He stood, and I did also; I looked down at my sweaty, begrimed body and felt embarrassed by my state of undress. I walked back to the retreat and looked inside. My shirt was useless, but my jacket was still there, on the floor. I put it on and fastened it. Not pretty, but it did the job.
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