Kidnap

by Philip McCutchan

  Mr Blundy smiled a little, inwardly. Abbot Blundy wouldn’t suit him now, he was too much a man of the world, and having been inside so often he’d be ruled out in any case, probably. But it was a nice thought. When he settled down in that big house he was soon going to buy, he’d do his best to be sort of saintly short of being actually sort of holy … he would be nice to people and he would help the needy. He could even perhaps become a county figure, noted for his open-handed generosity, a friendly squire, much loved by all. And after that?

  Might even become a beak. That would be a real laugh: Squire Blundy, JP! As a JP he’d be on friendly terms with such blokes as the chief constable. A little inside knowledge might be only too welcome, in case total retirement began to pall after a bit.

  Then, all of a sudden, his heart hit bottom with a thump. He’d remembered something.

  “Ag …”

  “What?”

  “That Mrs Whale.”

  “What about her, eh?”

  “Knows about Aunt Ethel.”

  “Couldn’t help but know, seeing as she took the phone call.”

  “Yes, I know. But she knows that’s where we’re going. If the Bill goes poking —”

  “They won’t, so keep your hair on, Ernest Blundy. The Bill don’t know we had anything to do with any kidnap. They won’t poke around Bass Street, got better things to do, they have.”

  “You sure, Ag?”

  “’Course I’m sure.”

  Mr Blundy’s fear subsided. Anonymity was all. No leads, you were okay, you got away with it.

  They drove on, turning left a little way short of Leyburn to follow a sign for Wensley.

  *

  Bang, bang.

  Mr Blundy’s head almost hit the roof. “What was that?”

  “Boot.”

  Mr Blundy slowed. “Little bugger’s come round,” he said as there was another bang from behind.

  “What you going to do?”

  “See to him, that’s what.”

  “What d’you mean, see to him?” Ag swivelled towards him. “Can’t let him out, can you, and you’d better not hit him, could do some damage after that dose of whatsit —”

  “I wasn’t going to bloody hit him —”

  “Take my advice and leave him be.”

  “But if he goes on thumping —”

  Ag clicked her tongue. “It won’t matter. Don’t you see, it’s all we can do?”

  “Going to sound bloody funny, bang bang all the way through the villages and that.”

  There was another bang. It worried Mr Blundy dreadfully, did that sound, made him nervous. Ag said, “Car this age, you get bangs and thumps. And it’s not all that far to Auntie’s now. Go on, Ern. Forget it and speed up. Faster the better now.”

  He didn’t like it; he dithered.

  “Oh, get on do.” She added, “Before he pees again.”

  Mr Blundy put on more speed. They banged their way through West Witton. Nobody seemed to notice; not many people around anyway, Mr Blundy was relieved to note. It was getting dark now and the Yorkshire backwoodsmen and women were not night birds, not like Paddington, it wasn’t, not up here. Quite different really in what Mr Blundy had read on a sign was the Yorkshire Dales National Park. The locals probably wouldn’t turn out at night even for a strip show, very likely.

  Bang.

  “Energetic little so-and-so,” Mr Blundy said angrily. “Why can’t he tire, for Christ’s sake?”

  “Do stop that blaspheming.”

  Mr Blundy said nothing. He was back to wondering about God, now far behind on the M1 as last seen. He’d not materialised since then, thank — well, yes. As the Granada left West Witton behind and moved on for Aysgarth, Mr Blundy reflected on better-authenticated manifestations. Burning bushes and such. It had been so real, so positive — that was the terrifying part. Mr Blundy hadn’t much actual Bible-learning, not really, just his dad’s precepts buttressed by a smattering forced into him via a curate who’d descended weekly on his primary school, which had a church foundation or something, but he had a notion that in the past God had manifested only to the righteous, to the chosen, to the workers of His will. Mr Blundy didn’t rank himself among that lot. Which meant God must have made a bloomer this time. Thus the awful fear, since God just didn’t make bloomers. God may have had a shift of target, so to speak, and was now showing Himself to the wicked instead, possibly with pugnacious intent.

  Spoilt things, did that. Ruined the happy feeling.

  “Where’s the turn?” Mr Blundy asked.

  “Not far. Other side of Aysgarth. Sign for Windersett.”

  “Know that much, don’t I?”

  “Why ask, then?” Ag gave a shiver. “It’s lonely out here.”

  “Gets lonelier.”

  “I don’t know how poor Auntie stands it, I don’t. Look out, there’s a sheep.”

  There was: before it bustled to the side of the road its eyes were like twin diamonds in the headlight beams, accusing, baleful pinpoints. Invisible but imaginable to either side rose the fells, lonely hillsides of the Pennines; now and again the headlights lit upon isolated houses, farms, cottages, and upon a rushing river — the Ure, it was — cascading over rocks large and small; and upon dry-stone walls separating the coarse, harsh ground of the fields. Outside the car the wind howled — a high wind that bent the trees and swirled dried cowpats and sheep droppings about the car. Soon there was a dash of rain, just as at last they raised the signpost for Windersett. In no time the dash became a downpour, wind-driven so that Mr Blundy’s wipers almost failed to cope. It was like being in a bucket.

  “That boot!” Mr Blundy said in a high voice. “Kid’ll drown like as not.”

  As though in corroboration, the banging started again. This time Mr Blundy let it go: he was having to concentrate much too hard on his driving. Already the vicious downpour was turning the side road to Windersett — not much more than a track really — to something that felt like a mudbath. There was a horrible wheel swish. When the road began to climb Mr Blundy had the sensation of attempting to drive up a waterfall. A river of rain rushed past the car. Mr Blundy, in first gear, hoped for the best. Beside him Ag was clinging on tight, like a mountain goat, hammy hands clasped around her seat. The car faltered, ground to a stop and slid back a little way, aquaplaning it felt like. Mr Blundy invoked Christ without being ticked off for it. He did some desperate work with clutch and accelerator and they crept forward again with a good deal of shudder and more banging from the boot. Mr Blundy’s eyes were staring and his tongue was protruding through his teeth. He fought the old Granada’s battle as though it were his own flesh and blood hauling up the climb, and he had bitten quite deep into his tongue when his headlights brought up the roof of Auntie’s cottage behind the field wall on a bend of that dreadful road.

  *

  Talk about olde worlde: it was really rather nice in a way. Ag’s Aunt Ethel lived totally in the past. No telly, no radio, only Calor gas to cook on. No electricity. Quaint old oil lamps — paraffin in blue Bristol glass, worth a fortune as like as not. It was a homely smell, was that paraffin lighting, even though it created an eerie atmosphere up there in Auntie’s lonely bedroom in what felt like the roof of the world, a stone’s throw from the great Pennine peaks. Yellow light flickered around the old lady and her high iron bedstead with brass knobs, making shadows that moved. The dim light bore witness to Aunt Ethel’s methodical habits in the black carbon stain on the ceiling immediately above: the lamp always went on the wickerwork table by the right of the great bed — the great bed, according to Ag, in which not only Aunt Ethel but also her dad, her grandad and great-grandad had been born and, finally, except as yet for Aunt Ethel herself, died.

  “It’s nice ter see you, Aggie dear,” the old lady said for the hundredth time. She hadn’t yet spoken of supper.

  “Nice to be here, Auntie.” Ag caught Mr Blundy’s eye, as if urging him to work a change of subject. Already, of course, they had enquired about A
untie’s health and had had a full report on the gas-ter-rectumy and its effects upon her way of life. Also on arthritis in the hip joints, poor sight and worse hearing. Ag was already hoarse with her efforts to overcome the hearing difficulty. She glared at Mr Blundy, mouthing words.

  Mr Blundy reacted. “Can we get you a bite to eat?” he shouted.

  “Eh, lad?”

  “Can we get you —”

  “Ah’m not able to hear you, lad. Not able to hear you. Have to talk louder, you will.” The pursed-up mouth, a pot-hole in a mass of crevices, wobbled into a chewing motion. “It’s me ears.”

  “Yes. CAN WE GET YOU A BITE TO EAT?”

  “Eh?”

  “Stone the bloody crows.”

  “Eh, lad?”

  Ag hissed, “Watch it. Deaf folks often hear when they aren’t meant to.” She leaned forward and shouted: “We was thinking about supper, Auntie.”

  “Eh?”

  “SUPPER.”

  “Eh, lass?”

  “Oh, leave it,” Ag snapped and turned to Mr Blundy. “We’re here, that’s all that matters for now. We’ll manage. Come on.” She shouted towards the bed, “Be up again soon, Auntie.”

  “Eh?”

  “Oh, shut up do.”

  “Doesn’t she want some supper?” Mr Blundy asked.

  “Don’t complicate things.”

  “Oh, all right.” They made for the door but were halted. “How long you thinking of staying?” Aunt Ethel asked. Mr Blundy, after a glance at Ag, went back to the bedside. He bent. “Long as you want us,” he shouted. “Long time no see, like —”

  “Eh, lad?”

  “Never mind, Auntie. We’ll make up for it now. Do you proud, we will.”

  “Did you say a long time, lad?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Ah. Got a nice long holiday, have you, lad?”

  “Well, not exactly —”

  “Eh?”

  “NOT EXACTLY.”

  “Oh. Sorry to hear that, lad.”

  Mr Blundy blew out a long breath and caught Ag’s eye.

  She said, “Auntie thinks you said you’d got the sack. She wouldn’t be far wrong. Anyway, leave it and come away, do.”

  Mr Blundy obeyed, feeling put out about the sack. They went down the narrow, steep stairs, enclosed stairs that twisted down and terminated at the door into the kitchen.

  “Daft old trout,” Mr Blundy muttered. “Sack, my foot.”

  “Oh, shut up do, I’m hungry if you aren’t.” Ag marched ahead into the kitchen. “She’ll probably have a ham shoved away in the larder.”

  She paused. In the kitchen sat Master Barnwell, looking fit enough, tied with the rope to a hard upright chair, thawing and drying out in front of the Calor gas cooker, the oven of which was lit with the door standing open. There had been no fire in the living-room grate and a frozen asset was of no use to anyone. Master Barnwell had, from now on, to be pampered. Currently he was gagged in a makeshift way with a handkerchief and a wedge of Sorbo that Mr Blundy had pulled off a pad which he normally used for demisting the Granada’s windscreen. And, since he always washed out the pad afterwards in detergent, Master Barnwell was frothing a little.

  “What do we do with him now?” Ag asked.

  “Got to eat.”

  “That’s what I meant.”

  “Oh. Take the gag off, Ag?”

  “Yell the place down, he will.”

  “So what? The old besom’ll only think it’s the wind.” The wind was bad enough as it was: the whole cottage shook and rattled and there was a constant whine in the trees without. “No one else around to hear, is there?” Mr Blundy moved towards the bound boy. “Hear what I said, did you, son? This place is dead lonely, dead remote like, miles and miles from anywhere, and it won’t do you no good to yell. Waste of breath, that’s all. Just the same, like, the wife and me, we don’t like noise. So don’t yell, all right? Yell and you get duffed up. Behave and you’ll live off the fat o’ the land. Understand, do you?”

  The head nodded briefly.

  “We don’t want to hurt you, son. I mean that. Too valuable.” Mr Blundy reached out and unfastened the knot of the handkerchief, letting it go and pulling the Sorbo out of the boy’s mouth. “There. Now just remember all I said, son.”

  Master Barnwell took several deep breaths and then spat.

  “Dirty little bugger.”

  “Not as dirty as you, whoever you are.” The lips were trembling now, but with anger and bad temper, Mr Blundy fancied, rather than fear. “You’re villains, aren’t you?”

  “Don’t be rude.”

  “I was speaking in a police sense. To the police, you’ll be villains.”

  “Now look —”

  “My father didn’t send you. My father doesn’t know anything about you, does he?”

  “Hope not,” Mr Blundy said.

  “You’ve kidnapped me, haven’t you?”

  Mr Blundy smiled placatingly. “What if we have? Your old man’s rolling in it, like a pig in mud. You’ll soon be back home, you’ll see. Just look on the bright side, son. You’re here and you’re staying till your dad pays up. Look on it as a sort of adventure, like, eh?”

  Master Barnwell studied him. “You won’t get away with it, you know. You can’t. Kidnappers always come to a sticky end. The police’ll be looking everywhere.”

  Mr Blundy sniggered. “Not here, they won’t.”

  “Where are we, then?”

  “Never you mind about that.”

  “You’re not going to tell me?”

  “’Course not. We’re not daft, son.”

  Harold Barnwell said no more, but there was a curious sort of glint in his eyes that rather worried Mr Blundy, though he couldn’t quite put a finger on the reason. The kid couldn’t possibly know where he was — they were safe enough on that score, surely? Mr Blundy shook his head and thought about the Loop as Ag marched around getting supper. Mr Blundy had yet to telephone the Loop to confirm their safe arrival at Auntie’s and maybe get some news as to what the Bill was up to, if anything. Until Mr Blundy had made contact, the Loop would naturally not be advancing his part in the programme.

  “Going to phone, Ag.”

  “Know where it is, don’t you?”

  “Yes.” Mr Blundy went out into the hostile night, becoming drenched in seconds. Plunging through mud towards the village, Mr Blundy found the phone box on its corner. Unoccupied, thank God, no one would want to be out on a night like this. The Loop answered right away and very circumspectly.

  “Yes?”

  “Me.”

  “Ar.”

  “Got here.”

  “Right.” Click. No news from the Smoke, it seemed. No mucking about on the part of the Bill. Already the trail would be going cold. So far, so good.

  Mr Blundy went back for supper.

  He thought about the Loop. Now that the Loop knew that Harold Barnwell was safely stowed away amidst mud, sheep, cows and Auntie, and that nothing had gone wrong en route, he would be all set to start putting the squeeze on the kid’s dad. This important part of the work-out had not been revealed to Mr Blundy in any detail, but the Loop’s part would obviously be dangerous, because Mr Barnwell might report any cash demands to the Bill, and the Bill might set a trap, into which the Loop might walk if he wasn’t dead careful. The Loop had said, rather casually, that he would be dead careful and Mr Blundy could rely upon that. He had, he’d said, ways and means — besides which, as he had repeated once again, Barnwell Senior doted on the kid and could easily part with the cash, no problem there. And if the threats were phrased right he would, in the Loop’s view, be highly unlikely in fact to say anything to the Bill about kidnap notes. The poor Bill, all unknowing of the truth, would go on combing the woods at Brands and parts adjacent and dragging ponds and whatever, harassing all known nutters in Kent and probably East Sussex. While they were thus engaged, the Loop would collect. The split would be made with Mr Blundy and Master Barnwell would be t
aken down the M1 again and set free somewhere in outer London with no knowledge whatsoever of where he’d spent the period of detention.

  Nothing could possibly go wrong.

  Cast iron, it was.

  *

  Back at Auntie’s, Ag said, “Come and get it, then. I’ll feed the boy.” Suddenly she froze. “What’s that?”

  A creak on the stairs. “Auntie,” Mr Blundy said, going white. “Hide the kid, quick.” He leapt towards Harold, shoving a hand over his mouth just in time to stifle a yell. “Where’ll we put —”

  “Leave him. I’ll head off Auntie.” Ag was already moving for the door of the boxed-in staircase; Mr Blundy watched her vanish, heard her remonstrating voice.

  “Now what d’you want to go and get up for, Auntie, gas-ter-rectumy an’ all, it’s daft is that —”

  “Eh?”

  “GO BACK TO BED.”

  “Me sooper, lass. Me sooper. Not that I want mooch —”

  “I’LL BRING IT OOP. UP.”

  “Eh?”

  “Oh God. Just do as you’re told, Auntie, like a good old lady, we’re here now and we’ll do for you —”

  “Eh?”

  “DO FOR YOU. Will and all if this goes on, shouldn’t wonder. HAVE A GOOD REST WHILE YOU CAN.”

  “Eh?”

  There was a hissing sound from Ag but no further speech. The next sounds were of physical activity: Auntie was being returned to bed more or less forcibly. Then a door banged shut; this was followed by muted sounds from Ag, after which she came down looking red and sweaty. “That’s all right,” she said, breathing hard. “She’ll stay put. Now where were we?”

  “Supper.”

  “Oh yes, supper. Auntie’s on liquid nourishment.”

  “Can’t keep going on that.”

  “She knows her own stomach best —”

  “Hasn’t got one, Ag. Taken out. Gas-ter-rectumy, like you said.”

  “Well, I haven’t the time to go into that, not now.”