Acts of Kindness

by Heather Barnett

  And the perfect oval of glossy red blood that ballooned from beneath its neck like a misplaced speech bubble.

  As her knees gave way and the edges of her vision shimmered, a name popped into her head. The round body, round head and round ‘o’ of a mouth – she’d seen them before. The man on the floor was Teddy Thatcher.

  She heard herself scream. The world was turning dark but in the last moment of consciousness, she realised there was someone else in the room. In the slash of light between the door and its frame was an eye, watching her. In the same moment she saw or rather sensed something else, something familiar – and then everything went blank.

  Chapter Twelve

  ‘Bella! Bella, are you okay?’ Ben’s voice was close to her ear, his hand brushing her hair off her face, fingers on her throat checking her pulse.

  She reached up to push him away, her movements feeble. Her hand fell back to her side and the touch of the cold concrete reminded her where she was and what she’d just seen.

  ‘Not yet. Take it easy.’ Ben restrained her as she tried to get up. He spoke into a walkie-talkie, giving their location. ‘They’re bringing a stretcher.’

  ‘I don’t need a stretcher. He’s hurt, who’s looking after him?’

  ‘Who?’

  Ignoring his insistence that she lie still, Bella pushed herself up onto her elbows. Through the doorway, the pool of blood was smeared now, its perfect oval broken. There was no sign of Teddy Thatcher.

  ‘You need to find him! He was dead – or dying. He needs help.’ She pressed her palm to Ben’s chest, pushing hard. ‘It was Teddy Thatcher. The man who went missing. And I think I saw someone else in there with him but I can’t be sure.’

  Ben stood up and took an involuntary step back as if he’d been shoved, his wide eyes fixed on her face. They heard the metal steps reverberate as the paramedics approached.

  ‘Stay there, let the medics take care of you.’

  He went over to the cell door, peered around it and then stepped inside. The door closed behind him. After a few moments, he reappeared and, seeing that Bella was being tended to, hurried back upstairs.

  The paramedics, once they were sure she wasn’t suffering from any serious injuries, helped Bella to her feet. At the foot of the stairs, she turned back.

  ‘I think I left something, hang on.’ Before they could stop her, she was at the door of the cell, pushing it open. What she saw made her grab the door frame for support.

  The blood had been wiped away; no trace remained.

  Ben caught up to them as they were about to get in the ambulance, taking Bella’s arm and pulling her to one side.

  ‘One second, guys,’ he called to the medics. Lowering his voice, he said to Bella, ‘There was nothing there, no sign of anyone.’

  ‘No sign because you made sure there wouldn’t be?’ Exhaustion and emotion were making her rash. Maggie had asked her to help and all she’d done was faint at the sight of poor Teddy bleeding on the ground. And now he’d disappeared again. ‘How come you were there when I woke up, Ben? What were you doing in that building?’

  What looked like genuine confusion passed across his face. ‘What do you mean? I came looking for you. Marvin sent out search parties and as I passed by, I heard you scream.’

  ‘Why did you clear up the blood?’

  There were two beats of utter silence as they stared at each other.

  ‘I had to.’ His voice was urgent and he grabbed her hand, stepping closer towards her. ‘Bella, you have to trust me. You mustn’t tell anyone about Teddy.’

  ‘Why the hell not?’

  ‘Because wherever he is, if he’s still alive he’s in danger.’

  ‘And keeping it a secret is going to help? What the fuck, Ben!’

  ‘Yes,’ he hissed, his face inches from hers. ‘Because there are people here who want to find him and we can’t let them. You have to trust me, Bella. If you don’t, Teddy is dead.’

  If you don’t, Teddy is dead.

  Those words buzzed round and round in her brain as she leant her head against the cool surround of the aeroplane window, looking out through the layers of toughened glass to the smooth, dense rolls of cloud below. They’d been haunting her all day, ever since Ben had hissed them in her ear, flickering across the back of her mind like a faulty projection as she packed her case and boarded the overnight flight home with the rest of the team. Her actions – or to be more accurate, her lack of action – could be helping Teddy as Ben insisted. Or she could have left a man to bleed to death.

  Poor Teddy, unconscious and bleeding on the floor of a cell on a tropical island far from home. What on earth was he doing there? The last that had been seen of him was when he set out to work in his little yellow kit car in rural England a few months before. What, or who, had brought him there, and who had tried to kill him? Who had she seen through the crack in the door? The Librarian? She couldn’t even be sure if it had been a man or a woman.

  And then there was Ben. What part was he playing in all this? Why, if you knew there’d been an attempted murder, would you want to keep it a secret? Who was he keeping it a secret from?

  She wished she had someone to confide in. Oscar might have been that person, if she hadn’t been such an idiot.

  She rolled her head to the other side of the headrest in a vain attempt to get comfortable. If there was one thing that could elbow the looming anxiety and guilt about Teddy out of the way for a moment, it was the lesser anxiety and guilt about her drunken – and still, as yet unspecified – shenanigans with Oscar. He was a good friend, the person she’d most clicked with since she moved to her new job, and she didn’t want to have lost that friend through a moment’s stupidity. Should have thought about that before you kissed him, you bloody idiot.

  All around her the films on people’s screens paused and an announcement came over the PA.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, this is the captain speaking. Can I have your attention, please. I have an important announcement. I’d appreciate it if you would wake any of your fellow passengers who are sleeping.’ After a short pause, she continued. ‘We have just received word from OAK headquarters that Isadora Faye has been kidnapped. I repeat, Isadora Faye has been kidnapped. Emergency protocols will be activated on landing.’

  Uproar. All around her people were calling out questions, craning round to see what others were doing, some of them even scrambling out of their seats. Across the aisle, Lauren unbuckled her seat belt and slipped out into the gangway.

  ‘Lauren!’

  She paused with one hand on the headrest of Bella’s seat, her whole body conveying her impatience to be elsewhere.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘What’s going on? What are the emergency protocols?’

  ‘They don’t apply to us,’ Lauren said. ‘The directors will go into OAK when we land for an emergency meeting.’ She had already released her grip on the headrest and set off down the aisle, calling over her shoulder through the hubbub, ‘I don’t know anything else but I’ll let you know if I find out more.’

  Bella stayed in her seat and in time the cacophony died down to a hum. With no Wi-Fi onboard, there wasn’t much people could do other than speculate on what had happened, debate the probable next steps and resign themselves to several more hours of inactivity. In spite of everything, after the meal had been served Bella found herself dropping off to sleep. As her thoughts started to lose coherence, fragments of old newsreels – real and imaginary – tumbled and merged in her tired brain: women screaming, a halted cavalcade, sniffer dogs straining at their leads in dripping woods. And then, in high definition, just before she lost consciousness, a newspaper headline above a picture of Isadora’s face: ‘Kidnapped!’

  The sky over Bella’s head was the exact shade you would expect to find labelled ‘Sky Blue’ in a paint catalogue. The colour faded towards the horizon as if the painter had run out of steam after one coat on that section. A solitary white oval cloud drifted past like the ghost of a zeppel
in. She let her eyelids droop, exhaustion and the pleasant warmth of the sun conspiring to weigh them down. An unexpected voice in her ear pinged them back open.

  ‘I can’t believe this!’ Angela was holding out her phone which displayed the BBC news article about Isadora’s kidnapping. The sound of her approach through the communal gardens had been covered by the rushing of the river through the weir.

  Bella held up her own phone to show the same article. ‘Snap.’

  Angela sat down beside her on the bank, rolling up her jeans and dangling her feet in the water. ‘What have they told you?’

  ‘Not much yet. They made an announcement on the plane when we were flying back this morning.’

  ‘Really?’ Angela’s eyes widened as she brushed a trailing strand of wiry grey hair out of her face. ‘And what do they think happened?’

  There had been no further updates on the plane after the initial announcement. When they’d taxied in there’d been a helicopter waiting alongside the runway. Ben, Catherine and another director who’d been on the trip had been hurried across to it by a group of forbidding-looking men and women. Lauren had whispered that they were cupuli, members of Isadora’s personal guard. Bella had managed to catch Ben’s eye as he passed her and he had mouthed what she thought was, ‘Teddy’s okay,’ at her. The rest of the staff had been shepherded into their various OAK cars and told to report for work the following morning as usual. Lauren had managed to glean a bit more information which she’d shared with Bella but details were sparse.

  Bella had been surprised to see the headline pop up on the BBC website: ‘CEO of UK-based multinational kidnapped’. A publicity shot of Isadora, in her trademark Chanel suit and pearls, was followed by a couple of short paragraphs and a promise of more updates to follow. Given Acorn Consulting’s ability to keep secrets, the media coverage must have been deliberate, perhaps to help in the search for Isadora.

  ‘I don’t know any more than what’s been in the news, Angela, to be honest. She didn’t turn up for a meeting on Saturday morning and when they went to look for her, they found one of her…’ She was about to say bodyguards but stopped herself in time, reasoning that it would sound a little odd for a CEO of a consultancy to have bodyguards. ‘One of her team unconscious outside her office. When they went in, there was no sign of Isadora.’

  ‘Have they said how much they want? Or when they’ll get in touch?’

  Bella shook her head. ‘Not as far as I know.’

  ‘It makes that other business seem more sinister, doesn’t it?’ Angela gave her a meaningful look.

  ‘You mean…?’

  ‘Teddy Thatcher.’

  A memory of a pudgy hand with neatly trimmed nails splayed on a concrete floor and, inches away, a glossy pool of blood.

  ‘Yes. I suppose it does.’

  ‘Poor Maggie. This’ll bring it all back up to the surface.’

  Angela’s cat, Siberia brushed past Bella’s bare arm and she jumped. ‘Gosh, you gave me a fright!’ The cat rubbed his cheek against her hand and accepted a tickle under the chin, tilting his head to give her better access.

  Angela reached over and gave him a couple of vigorous strokes. ‘Naughty old thing.’

  Later on, they walked back to the main cluster of houses together. Something white flapped against the trunk of a tree on the drive, another on a telegraph pole. As they drew closer, they saw Maggie attaching a poster to the lamp post by the entrance gate. She heard them approaching and swung around, eyes red, cheeks mottled and damp. Angela raised a hand in greeting but Maggie was already scurrying away.

  The poster was a blown-up screenshot of the BBC article, but in place of Isadora a badly cut-out picture of Teddy Thatcher had been pasted under the headline, his mouth a little round ‘o’ and Maggie’s disembodied arm at his side.

  Bella had fielded various calls from friends and family during the evening, including Zoe who had asked if she would get a personal bodyguard and gone on to sing Whitney Houston’s ‘I Will Always Love You’ at the top of her voice until Bella hung up.

  She was on the phone to her mum, who was advising her to move back to London as it was safer there, when the doorbell went.

  ‘Hang on, Mum,’ she said, trotting downstairs in her sheepskin slippers. ‘There’s someone at the door, let me find out who it is.’

  In the doorway stood Maggie. They looked at each other, Bella still holding the phone to her ear. Maggie looked even worse than she had earlier on, a strand of damp hair stuck to one cheek and clear liquid running, unchecked, from her nose.

  Bella opened her mouth to speak, but before she could, Maggie had pushed a brown paper bag into her hands. She stood close; eyes boring into Bella’s as if trying to see her soul. And then she was gone.

  Bella ended the call with her mum, having assured her that if anything else worrying happened she would, of course, consider leaving the perils of Wiltshire behind for the safer environs of the metropolis, and took the paper bag into the living room to open it.

  Setting it down on the dining table she extricated a cellophane packet with the tips of her fingers. It contained a pair of white cotton knickers with a pale pink trim. They were folded into an oblong to display the design on the front: a picture of a strawberry and the word ‘Tuesday’.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Right from the moment she walked into the entrance hall on Monday morning, things were different. Kelly wasn’t smiling for a start. Bella hadn’t been aware that Kelly was capable of any facial expressions other than a smile before today. In their office, there was no sign of Ben and the others were serious and subdued. Even Oscar didn’t have his usual witticism to throw at her – although that could also be due to recent events.

  ‘Briefing at ten,’ Lauren said, before looking back at her screen.

  At five to ten, they all filed downstairs to the huge OAK auditorium. Bella made sure to get a seat next to Oscar, intending to nip the lingering awkwardness in the bud. All around them people were taking their places. In the row in front, she saw a woman with her arm around another colleague’s shoulders. Somewhere behind her, she could hear muffled sobs.

  A man strode onto the stage whose face seemed familiar but she couldn’t place him.

  ‘Who’s he?’ she whispered to Oscar, leaning in so he could hear.

  He started, seeming surprised at her closeness. ‘Arran Finn. Head cupule.’

  Of course, that was it. That first day when Isadora had shown her round OAK, Finn had been waiting outside the door of the library to escort them to the briefing. Bella hadn’t paid him much attention; she did now, and wondered how she’d failed to take notice of him before. He was tall: at least six foot five, perhaps taller. His closely-cropped hair allied to his tight black T-shirt and cargo trousers gave him a military air. He stood with the wide, relaxed stance of a man in control.

  When he opened his mouth to speak the room fell silent.

  ‘Our leader, Isadora Faye, was abducted from this building on Saturday morning, following an assault on members of her personal protection team. Extensive searches were initiated but to date, we have been unable to locate Miss Faye or her abductors.’

  Finn paused, staring out into the darkened auditorium. His face was being projected on the big screen behind him, his blue eyes bloodshot but unblinking.

  ‘We will find Miss Faye. I give you my personal commitment on that. Our investigations lead us to believe this was an inside job. Someone within OAK – someone within these four walls – is responsible.’ There were gasps and mutterings from around the room, people looking around them as if the culprit were about to leap up and announce themselves. ‘Our most valuable resource is you. Anything unusual you hear, anything unusual you see, report it to a cupule. With your help, we will find the perpetrators and bring Miss Faye safely home.’

  Bella was reminded of school assemblies when the headmaster would urge whoever had committed the latest piece of mischief to own up. It had never been Bella, goody-goody that
she was, but each time sweat would break out on her brow and she would feel as guilty as if she were responsible. It was the same thing going through airport security. Despite ensuring she had not so much as a stray mascara in her hand luggage, she knew her shifty eyes suggested that, at the very least, she had a couple of endangered species stuffed down her pants. She risked a glance at Oscar. He was looking as guilty as she felt. But then, the thought struck her, maybe he had something to be guilty about. Anyone in this room could be involved. Then she reminded herself that Oscar had been on Le Chêne at the time and told herself not to be so ridiculous. Plus, he was Oscar. Oscar! A less plausible master-criminal she couldn’t imagine. This was what happened when you were asked to be an organisation’s eyes and ears and to look out for unusual things. You started suspecting everyone.

  Finn hadn’t finished, it seemed.

  ‘We will be relying on you to help us, both by relaying your suspicions to us, and just as importantly, by continuing your day-to-day work here at OAK. In that way, our kindnesses will continue and when Miss Faye returns, she will find an organisation as strong and effective as it was when she was snatched away from it. Thank you.’

  And then he was gone from the light, as if he had dropped through a trapdoor. The crowded auditorium emptied out in a babble of concerned and animated voices as people discussed what they’d heard. Oscar and the others headed back towards the office but Bella let them get ahead of her and slipped down a side passage. There was something she needed to do first.

  Having regained the main atrium, she turned left down a corridor, passed a series of doors on her right and proceeded to the far end.

  ‘Open.’

  The door slid aside, she entered, and it closed behind her. She was in silence, surrounded by rows of identical books. The library. She hadn’t been back here since her first day at OAK. Few people came here, there was little reason to. Padding between the shelves she arrived at The Librarian’s desk on which stood a half-full decanter and empty glass alongside a book; but of the man himself, there was no sign. The book, predictably, was bound in fawn leather, indistinguishable from all the others in the room. She reached out a hand to examine it.