Fragile Lives

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Fragile Lives Page 12

by Jane A. Adams


  ‘Outside? It’s night.’

  ‘I’ll be there, Tim and Rina will be there. It will be an adventure.’

  ‘We got stuck in the cave.’

  Andrew looked at his brother in surprise. ‘You remember that?’

  Simeon nodded. Held up his thumb and forefinger with a small gap between. ‘A little bit. Just a little bit. I remember shouting.’

  Andrew smiled. ‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘That’s very good.’ He wanted to press Simeon for more, urge this precious fragment of the old Simeon out into the open but he knew better than to try. Recovered memories were so precious but also so easily corrupted. Any hint, any additional detail Andrew might inadvertently toss his way would be incorporated into Simeon’s thoughts about it and might actually block the re-emerging images. He had to be patient, to allow the natural process to bring it to the fore.

  ‘Get your coat,’ he said, ‘and your scarf. It will be cold.’

  A little further along the coast Ursula and George sat in the conservatory, all lights out, watching the darkened ocean. They had looked for lights each night since encountering Simeon and tonight, there they were.

  Excited, Ursula led the way into the silent garden. George, wishing they had their coats, closed the door silently behind them. Ursula had a little wind-up torch, another gift from the aunt. The fact that it was bright pink didn’t detract from its practicality, though George was glad that Ursula was holding it and not him. The flamingo pink might look fine on long-legged birds but was garish enough to be poisonous for almost fourteen-year-old boys.

  ‘Watch the steps,’ she said.

  The lawn beyond was wet and chilly and the air was cold. Close together, they trod softly across the grass and through the gate at the end of the garden that led on to the cliff path. For a moment George thought the lights had gone, then he caught sight again as the little boat rose on the swell close beneath the cliff.

  ‘It is going to the cave,’ he said. ‘I’m certain of it.’ He leaned out as far as he dare, Ursula grabbing his sweatshirt, suddenly afraid that he might fall. ‘I can’t see it now, the headland’s in the way.’

  ‘Let’s go in, it’s freezing.’

  George nodded. He’d begun to shiver but he felt elated. They had seen Simeon’s light. ‘Now, what do we do?’

  ‘Tell your friend Rina, I suppose,’ Ursula said. ‘Though I expect Simeon will have been watching too.’

  Rina already knew. She and Tim had arrived at the DeBarr Hotel on Marlborough Head just after Simeon and Andrew and gone from there up on to the cliff path.

  ‘What if someone comes up the steps?’ Tim asked. He could well recall the day he and Rina had made the trek down the side of the cliff on to the tiny beach, Rina in search of clues as to who might have been landing on that tiny strip of beach late at night. Mac had seen the lights on that occasion and wondered about them. Now, it seemed, that was not just a one-off. He was glad the tide was high and the beach and little cave inaccessible at this time of night. It had been bad enough making their way down the treacherous and almost non-existent path in daylight. Tim knew he wouldn’t have had the nerve for it at night. ‘What do we do if someone comes up?’ he asked again.

  ‘If anyone comes up then we all head back towards the hotel and pretend to be going for a drink,’ Rina said. ‘We’ll hear them in plenty of time. You remember what a steep climb it was?’

  Tim nodded, recalling only too well. Even Rina had been breathless by the time they’d reached the top.

  They stood in silence, waiting, catching the faint sound of the outboard motor carried on the strengthening wind. Then: ‘Look,’ Andrew said. ‘The lights again, but headed away this time, back to the larger boat.’

  ‘We’d better tell Mac,’ Tim said. ‘Question is, were they dropping off or picking up?’

  They waited a little longer but it was cold on the cliff top and Simeon was bored now he’d done what he’d set out to do. Andrew took him home. Tim and Rina followed a few minutes later, collecting their car from the hotel car park. Making their way back down the narrow road Tim noticed a car following. He mentioned it to Rina.

  ‘I saw the same car just after we left Randall’s place. I’m certain of it. It followed us most of the way back to Frantham, but I didn’t think much of it at the time.’

  ‘Can you see the registration number?’

  Tim squinted into the rear view. ‘Just about.’ He relayed it to Rina who wrote it down. ‘Another thing to pass on to Mac.’

  ‘We’ll be doing him out of a job. I’m not sure I like this, Rina.’

  He dropped her at the front of Peverill Lodge and went round the back to park the car. Rina stood in her little sitting room, watching the street. The car they had noticed drove past, then it turned at the crossroads, deserted this time of night, and drove back to the end of the road, returning the way it had come. Tim joined her at the window.

  ‘I think they want us to see them.’

  ‘So, who sent them? Randall? James Duggan? Travis Haines? Friend or foe, Tim?’

  ‘You know, Rina my dear,’ Tim told her, ‘I’m not so sure there’s a great deal of difference. I don’t know that either Randall or Duggan really know which they are. They might just about be classed as friendly so long as we’re playing their game, but I don’t think we should be under any illusions should we cease to be useful.’

  Rina snorted. ‘Tim, love, I don’t see that we’ve done much to be of use anyway, so far.’

  ‘Oh, I think we have,’ Tim objected. ‘You, me, Mac, we’ve shoved our little heads above the parapet and no doubt will continue to do so. We’ve been attracting attention to ourselves ever since we first made friends with young George and let his dad fall off that cliff and I’ve no doubt all of this is connected one way or another. Duggan has already proved what a nuisance he can be and he’s not been scared off yet. Randall is obsessed and, if you ask me, the man’s mentally unbalanced but his involvement is pretty understandable too. But if I were the bad men, and I mean the bad men out there and not the ones we have round to dinner, then I’d be wondering what the hell the likes of us were doing getting involved and if there’s anything we know they should be worrying about. And there’s Mac too, our own pet policeman. I’d be wondering just what he’s up to.’

  ‘And how curious about us do you reckon the bad guys we wouldn’t invite to dinner are likely to get?’

  ‘Oh, I think Duggan and Randall are hoping they’re going to get very curious. We don’t fit the usual pattern so we’re going to be worth having a closer look at and, while we’re running the risk of getting our little heads blown off, stirring up worries the way Duggan and Randall and all the predictable guys are doing—’

  ‘The sharks we had for dinner are waiting for us to be served up as dessert,’ Rina said.

  Fourteen

  Rina had left three messages for Mac and by late evening he was on her doorstep.

  ‘Busy day?’

  ‘Very, here there and everywhere. Thanks for telling me about the boathouse, by the way. I move in a week on Saturday. It looks perfect.’

  ‘Good,’ Rina approved. She gave him a speculative look. ‘I hear you had help inspecting it?’

  Mac laughed. ‘Her name is Miriam Hastings,’ he said, ‘and she’s a forensic scientist and yes, I do like her and yes, if it gets anything like serious I’ll bring her round for your approval. Now, what do you have to tell me?’

  For the next hour they drank coffee and Tim and Rina filled him in on the events of the past days.

  ‘I went to the library,’ Rina told him, ‘found out what I could about the twins’ parents. It’s handy being able to Google folk.’

  ‘And you found out what? Not that I approve. I don’t think you should have gone anywhere near this Randall.’

  ‘I Googled him too,’ Rina said. ‘And, may I say, he turns up in some very unexpected places. He was a diamond dealer in the seventies, played the futures markets right through the eight
ies, bought property like it was going out of fashion all through the nineties, but his career portfolio for the past five years or so is what you might call vague. Plenty of legitimate stuff, donations to charities, membership of various boards and so on.’

  ‘And the illegitimate stuff? Rina, you’re letting me down. Seriously though, this is a man with resources and probably very few scruples. You’ve done what you can and I really think you ought to back away. Now.’

  ‘That’s what you think, is it? Well, I’ll be sure to take that under advisement. Tim got the hotel job, by the way. The manager called at teatime.’

  ‘Now you’re just trying to distract me.’

  ‘Succeeding?’

  ‘No, but congratulations, Tim. Well deserved. And the twins. Should we believe Randall?’

  Rina nodded slowly. ‘I think we should,’ she said. ‘Which is why I wanted to talk to you so urgently and why I couldn’t think of a message I could leave and not give the game away. I believe Randall about one thing and that’s that the parents may be punished if the police get involved. None of us want to be responsible for those little girls getting hurt.’ She saw Mac flinch and pitied him, but knew there was no easy way of saying any of this. ‘If the abductors get the money then they will return the children. At least, that’s been the way of things so far.’

  ‘What amazes me,’ Mac said, ‘is that none of the victims have spilled the beans. They must have been terrified, how can they just put something like that behind them and not talk about it?’

  ‘Terrified people don’t talk,’ Rina asserted. ‘You scare someone enough, threaten them that the consequences of their actions will bring disaster on some other loved member of the family, they’ll stay silent. Look at all the children abused within their family who will go through hell rather than give their abuser away.’

  Mac nodded, reluctantly allowing her the point.

  ‘The parents are in the antiques business, specializing in near and Middle Eastern antiquities. The twins, Deborah and Sarah, they go to a small private school called Preston Park and the family seem to live a quiet life. No major social commitments, no committees, in fact I couldn’t find out much more, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Nice to know the Internet isn’t all powerful,’ Mac said but he was frowning, his face creased with worry.

  ‘They aren’t going to die, Mac,’ Rina said softly. ‘There won’t be more deaths on your watch.’

  He shook his head. ‘You can’t know that. No one can.’

  ‘Mac, start thinking like that and when the time comes to act, you’ll be so paralysed with fear of getting it wrong you’ll be no use to anyone.’

  Tim stared at her, appalled. Mac tensed and then relaxed, nodded. ‘No. You’re right, I know it. Rina, give me everything you have and I’ll set wheels in motion and I promise we’ll be discreet and I’ll get someone out to take a look at your car, Tim.’ He stood, took the sheaf of paperwork from Rina. He was on his mobile setting up a meeting with DI Kendal almost before he left the house. Kendal, he figured, would have the resources to deal with this, to figure out what the next move would be.

  ‘There goes a man on a mission,’ Tim said wryly, watching through Rina’s window.

  Rina nodded. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘we have to think what more the pair of us can do.’

  Fifteen

  On the first morning, the twins had woken up in a strange place. They had found themselves in a big double bed in a large room with striped wallpaper. There was a tiny en suite with toilet and wash basin and what remained of a shower cubicle. It looked like someone had started to strip everything out and then stopped halfway. The tiles were off the walls and the floorboards bare.

  In the bedroom the carpet was torn and floorboards were exposed on one side of the bed. A stain was still visible underneath the bed itself and on the floor as though something had seeped through.

  ‘I think it might be blood,’ Deborah had said, her eyes wide. Her sister, curled up in the exact centre of the quilt, had said nothing.

  They knew almost at once what had happened to them. They’d been kidnapped in the night and a sore spot on Deborah’s arm matched a bruise and blooded pinprick on Sarah’s which explained why they had slept through the entire experience.

  Their mother was a fan of crime dramas on the television and they made sense of their situation by referencing the programmes they had seen.

  ‘They drugged us,’ Deborah said. ‘I dreamed there was a man in our room. A big man with a mask thingy over his head and face. He told me to be quiet or he’d hurt our mum.’

  Sarah nodded again, half remembering the same event though in truth neither girl had heard or seen or felt a single thing.

  ‘Do you think the man is still here?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘I don’t know, I don’t hear anything now, not even that woman.’

  As one, they turned and looked towards the door. The only other piece of furniture, aside from the bed, was an old television, standing on rocky, spindly legs. The woman had come in some time after they’d first woken up. Just after the crying and the screaming and the crying for help that had been their first response had finally subsided and they’d begun to think they were alone.

  She’d brought a tray with bowls of cereal and milk and two bananas and showed them how to work the television by opening the little panel at the side of the screen and pressing buttons. ‘The remote doesn’t work,’ she’d said.

  She’d not told them anything else or answered their questions or acted like there was anything unusual going on. She hadn’t been nasty or nice or anything, but just indifferent, leaving the food, locking the door, walking away.

  After a while they had eaten the breakfast, though Sarah had been scared it might be drugged again.

  Deborah, with typical Deborah-style logic had said that if that were so then why had she told them how to work the telly? If they were asleep they wouldn’t need to know.

  So they had huddled together on the bed and pulled the quilt around them, watched daytime television and worried about their mum and dad. They had cried because they were frightened and then cried some more because their mum and dad would be scared and finally they had fallen asleep in the early afternoon because you can only cry for so long before it wears you out.

  Deborah woke first. The sound of the door closing had roused her. She realized that when she heard the lock being turned. It was getting dark outside and a lamp had been placed on the floor beside the television, plugged into the same socket. The first tray had been taken and another left. Deborah shook her sister and together they inspected the contents of the tray. Sandwiches and crisps – the ready salted ridgy ones that were Deborah’s particular favourite. More fruit – apples and tiny oranges this time. And those little pots of jelly Sarah really liked. Deborah inspected the sandwich fillings. Tuna for her and ham salad for Sarah.

  ‘Someone knows what we like,’ she whispered. ‘They know what we like to eat.’

  ‘You think they’ve been watching us? Dad’s been saying.’

  ‘Dad’s always telling us not to talk to strangers and all that stuff,’ Deborah objected.

  ‘Yes, but a lot more lately. He’s been parking the car in the garage instead of on the drive and I’ve seen him, he checks it all over before he gets in and he and Mum have been arguing more.’

  ‘They always argue’

  ‘But more.’

  Deborah nodded, knowing her sister was right. ‘Do you think he knew something might be going to happen?’

  ‘We didn’t talk to strangers,’ Sarah said.

  Deborah nodded solemnly. That was true, they’d always been very careful to do as they were told, but it hadn’t made any difference, had it. The strangers had come to get them anyway. And now they’d been there for a whole week – when were they going to be rescued?

  George and Ursula arrived back at Hill House just after four. They stayed long enough to dump their bags and collect Ursula’s torch and then went out through
the gate at the end of the garden and on to the cliff path.

  It was a bleak, windy night that threatened rain and was already more than twilight dark. It was about three quarters of a mile to the place near the DeBarr Hotel where the steep cliff path led down to the little beach and the cave. George wasn’t really sure why it was so important to go there now, after all, the tide was in and would not turn until late that evening. They could go down so far but could not get on to the beach.

  Ursula was there because she wouldn’t let him go alone and besides, she had said, it was her torch.

  Such logic George found irrefutable.

  ‘Paul seemed a bit weird today,’ Ursula commented. The wind was so strong she had to lean in close to George’s ear to make herself heard. ‘I mean weirder than usual.’

  ‘He’s falling to bits,’ George said. ‘And no one’s seeing it.’

  ‘You are. I am.’

  ‘And what do we know, we’re just kids. If the teachers don’t want to see it and his mam and dad don’t want to see it there’s not much we can do except be there.’

  ‘Can’t really do that though, can we? Not outside of school time.’

  George shook his head, noticing that Ursula seemed to have taken on joint responsibility for his friend but not really minding. He was at a loss as to how to help and having someone he could at least talk to was comforting. She was right though, nothing either of them could do outside of school time. Before … before Mrs Freer and George’s mum dying and all of that, he had gone round to Paul’s house most evenings, been regularly fed and watered and included in their family and after his mum had killed herself he’d stayed with them for almost three weeks. Since he’d gone there’d not been even one invitation to go round and spend time with them. He felt a bit hurt about that, not that Paul hadn’t issued the invitation; Paul was in no fit state to even consider it, but George had hoped that his mum would call, maybe even ask him to go over for the weekend. After all, that sort of thing was allowed, encouraged even.

 

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