The Wrong Kind of Clouds

by Amanda Fleet

  ‘Oh. And I assume that Douglas cleared your schedule so you could have the time to talk me into moving back home. For the sake of the party.’ Every word was laced with sarcasm.

  ‘Actually, Douglas was more concerned about our marriage. As am I.’

  ‘Ha. That’s what he’ll say, but we both know this looks bad for the party. Did you tell him you were so concerned about our marriage that you had an affair?’

  Kate swallowed. ‘No.’

  There was a long pause on the other end of the line as Paul digested the information.

  ‘Job first. Kate second. Me last. As ever.’

  He hung up. Kate closed her eyes, feeling defeated, took another swig of her drink, and pressed redial. His phone cut straight to messages. She let out a bellow of frustration. Shaking her head, she stared at her phone and finished her drink. This all needed careful thought. Brainstorming always helped her to clear her head. She retrieved a piece of paper from her desk then rummaged around in the drawer until she found a pencil with a sharp point. Her writing was shaky but neat. Was Paul’s comment fair? Was it always work first? From the amount of time and energy spent on it, it would seem that way, but now she was facing the choice of career-but-no-Paul versus Paul-but-no-career, she realised she would choose Paul every time. What was almost unbearable was the no-Paul-and-no-career option that seemed to be looming. She drew out various alternatives, listing pros and cons against each of them, exploring the avenues as far as she could before realising her thoughts were crystallising around one particular decision.

  She sucked down a deep breath, needing to be sure that what she was about to do was the right thing. She couldn’t make the promise and then not follow through. She gathered up the papers, poured herself another drink, took the notes and the gin upstairs and ran a bath.

  As the scented water lapped her shoulders, her brain sifted options; discarding, reviewing, amending and sifting again. She knew that she should probably sleep on this decision and look at it with clear eyes in the morning, but she also knew that time was of the essence with Paul. As soon as she finished her bath, she texted him.

  ‘You first. I promise. I love you. I’m resigning.’

  ***

  Patrick stared at his surroundings, his head still muzzy and his body screaming with pain. His stomach ached and his mouth was parched and sticky. His lips were beginning to crack and sting.

  The bucket in the corner smelled. He smelled. A day of fear had seeped into his clothes and festered.

  The sound of a lock turning and bolts being drawn back made Patrick’s head snap up and his body filled with apprehension. A chink of light turned into a wedge and the man who had attacked him trotted down the stairs, a canvas bag over his shoulder. He said nothing. All Patrick could think of was that now he’d seen the man’s face clearly, he was sure to die, but he couldn’t drag his eyes away from him. He had short, light brown hair and a sturdy build. Ex-army, thought Patrick. His jeans were faded and grubby, his thick work shirt stained and his canvas boots scuffed and covered in mud. He was chewing something and Patrick became transfixed, watching his jaws and trying to ignore the pains in his stomach. Eventually, the man sniffed, fished inside the bag and put a litre bottle of water on the floor, along with a packet of sandwiches that looked as if they’d been bought from a petrol station. Neither furnished him with any clues as to where he was.

  ‘Don’t gulp the water. It’ll make you boak. Sip it.’

  Patrick nodded dumbly, wondering why the man cared if he was sick. The man sniffed again, turned and jogged lightly back up the stairs. Patrick peered vainly through the gap, trying to see what was beyond but to no avail. His heart sank as the bolts and lock were re-engaged with a bleak finality and he stared disconsolately at the door.

  Shaking himself, he leaned forward in his chair and grabbed the bottle of water. He unscrewed the top with difficulty and had to force himself to take it slowly. He took three swigs then persuaded himself to put the lid back on and pick up the sandwiches. They were at least a day out of date and a combination he would never choose for himself, but he tore the wrapper off and bit down on the first half ravenously. He wrenched back some self-control and forced himself to pause while eating the second half, terrified he’d bring it all back up if he wolfed it down too fast.

  He was sure he hadn’t seen the man before this week. It wasn’t the minion Keir Bevan had sent before. Maybe he had more than one.

  Why bring him food if he was going to kill him?

  Patrick finished the last of the sandwich and took another sip of water. He stared at the mottling wounds on his ankles, looked at the bottle for a moment and then poured a small amount of water over the cuts, praying this wasn’t a waste. His skin burned briefly making his breath hiss between his teeth before the pain abated. He put the top back on the bottle and stowed it carefully next to the chair and put the sandwich wrapper in the corner near the bucket.

  If the man wasn’t going to kill him, what was he going to do?

  Thursday Morning

  Moyenda opened up the office, his brain whirring over his day ahead. It was still early and the air was cool. Already one of the children in the project had come to the building.

  ‘Mwadzuka bwanji? How are you?’ Moyenda said, ever trying to encourage the boys to speak more English.

  ‘Ndadzuka bwino, kaya inu?’

  ‘Ndadzuka bwino, zikomo. I am well, thank you.’

  Moyenda smiled to himself as he unlocked the office, and the boy followed him and headed straight to the kitchen.

  ‘No breakfast, Charles?’

  ‘No breakfast, Uncle Moyenda. I gave it to Tuesday.’

  His little sister, Moyenda recalled.

  ‘Some fruit?’ he called through to the kitchen.

  Charles reappeared with a banana in one hand and a hunk of bread in the other, his eyebrows raised. Moyenda nodded, watching the scrap of a child as he ran back out into the grounds.

  ‘Zikomo!’ Charles called over his shoulder, his mouth full of bread.

  ‘Don’t be late for school,’ Moyenda called back.

  He sat at the desk and started the computer. While it warmed up, he checked the diary, looking to see who was doing outreach and what plans there were for the day. He was scheduled to go to one of the communities to help coordinate a health clinic just before lunch, and afterwards take the footballs and strips to the recreation ground for a training session. He had a little time yet.

  He logged in, then went to make himself some tea. By the time he returned, the computer was fully warmed up and he sat down. He had a newsletter to finish and send to various fundraisers, a task which took an hour to complete and format, leaving Moyenda wishing he had left it to Joy to do. He opened the top drawer of the desk, relieved to see that Joy had produced sheets of address labels in readiness for him. He printed several copies of the newsletter, found envelopes and stamps, and put it all together ready to post.

  His mind drifted over Summer’s email. Had she meant Samala’s accounts? He opened the spreadsheet of current accounts, expecting there to be about 180,000 kwacha—about £300—in there. He blinked. There were over 21 million kwacha in the account. How on earth…? Nausea settled in the pit of his stomach.

  He scrolled up through the figures. All the donations he had expected to see were there, with a note next to each of the sums explaining its origin. There were several other deposits though, with no explanatory notes.

  Moyenda stared at the screen. The spreadsheet was broken down into different pages—each one covering a specific project. He clicked through the other sheets, mentally checking off the project grants that he knew of. They were all there, carefully labelled. None of the figures matched with the unlabelled ones. He returned to the daily account. There they were, seven deposits, all unlabelled and all unrelated to the big projects.

  Seven.

  Seven boys were missing.

  Moyenda felt sick. He looked again at the dates of the deposits. Had Patr
ick been right after all? He had said that he thought he knew where some of the boys were and warned Moyenda to be careful and keep a close eye on the other children. That had been almost a month ago and since then, Patrick had gone missing too.

  Out of curiosity, Moyenda looked at the email account for Samala. Isaiah had sent a copy of the accounts file to Patrick at the start of last week. Moyenda read the message that accompanied it. Evidently Patrick had given up waiting for him to look at the accounts and had asked Isaiah for a copy to help him with his fundraising. Isaiah had sent it through, unlabelled large deposits included. Did that mean that Isaiah knew where the money was from?

  Moyenda closed the email and looked at the numbers for a final time. He scribbled down the size of each deposit and the dates when they had arrived in the daily account.

  He glanced around, checking he was still alone, and then logged into his Yahoo account and opened up the message from Summer. He had been over and over her words since he first got it. How could the boys be overseas unless someone took them there? And if someone took them there, it could not have been done officially because no one was talking about it. Whenever he had asked whether anyone had seen them, he had received no information, only sad looks from the other volunteers. Sad because they knew the boys had been taken abroad? He had always assumed sad because they feared they were dead, as did he. Was being taken abroad better? It depended on who had taken them and why, he thought.

  He typed quickly, composing a reply to Miss Morris. He didn’t want anyone else involved, especially if it was going to lead to them being in trouble. He hoped that she would automatically hit reply if she emailed back and any message she sent would come only to this new address, but to be absolutely certain, he told her not to use the old one. When he read back through his reply, he thought it sounded melodramatic. He contemplated changing it but decided against it. He hoped he was wrong about everything, but it would not hurt to be over-cautious, just in case. Before he could change his mind, he sent the message, navigated to a new page, cleared the browser cache and closed down. Was that enough to cover his tracks if anyone looked at the computer? He didn’t know. He opened the web browser again and clicked on history, relieved to see it come up blank. He closed the browser, wondering if there was any way to help the missing children.

  ***

  The waiting room was soul-sapping. A low table in the middle of the room was covered in glossy magazines which were several months out of date and the chairs were vinyl-clad monsters that were uncomfortable, sweat-inducing and a pale green colour that reminded Helen of pus. It smelled of alcohol gel and plastic. She glanced around, wishing that she wasn’t here on her own. No one else seemed to be. She entertained a brief fantasy of Patrick rushing in through the door, breathless and apologetic, dashing to her side and holding her hands.

  ‘Is the father going to be joining you?’

  A smiling nurse snapped her out of her reverie with a jolt. Helen swallowed.

  ‘Er, hopefully. He might get caught up in meetings though. He said not to wait.’

  She folded her hands in her lap, jiggling her foot nervously. If she was being honest with herself, she knew he wasn’t going to come. He’d made it abundantly clear how he felt about the whole situation. She waited to be ushered through, staring at the floor, avoiding eye-contact with all the happy couples around her.

  As expected, there was no last-minute dash to her side. The scan came and went and afterwards Helen sat on a bench, her shoulders hunched against a cold breeze, with a fuzzy black-and-white printout of the baby clutched in her hand and a hollow feeling inside. She picked up her phone.

  ‘Hi, Robbie.’

  ‘Hi, how did it go?’

  ‘Fine. Fine. The baby’s okay.’

  ‘Did he bother to turn up?’

  She hesitated, hoping that her answer wouldn’t precipitate another of Rob’s rages.

  ‘No. I imagine he hasn’t changed his mind about things.’ Her insides clenched.

  ‘He will. You’ll see. He will.’

  The ferocity of his reply surprised her, and she sighed heavily. ‘I wish I had your faith. How am I going to cope on my own with a baby?’

  ‘He’ll change his mind. And anyway, you’ve got me. We’ll manage.’

  Helen’s gaze spun out over Princes Street Gardens. She didn’t share her brother’s confidence.

  ‘Where are you? The line’s shocking.’

  ‘Still out west. I have to go. I’ll see you at the weekend.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Chin up! He’ll change his mind.’

  She put her phone back in her pocket and stared again at the grainy picture.

  ‘God, I hope you’re right.’

  ***

  Patrick shifted, trying to get comfortable on the floor. He hadn’t slept much again the night before—just fitful noddings-off interspersed with jerking awake in terror—and now exhaustion was adding to his pain and fear. Wherever he was, he was in the middle of nowhere; that much he could fathom. You can’t hood a man and carry him into a house in suburbia and it was too damn quiet for there to be neighbours or even a road nearby. He hadn’t heard another car since his arrival. He raised his head at the sound of the door opening. His captor jogged down the stairs, a bucket in his hands.

  ‘Why are you keeping me here?’ Patrick whispered, fearfully. ‘What do you want from me?’

  The man turned and scowled. ‘Me? I just want you to shut the fuck up.’

  He kicked at Patrick’s face, sending him sprawling across the floor, his mouth bleeding.

  Patrick scrubbed at his mouth. ‘What have I done to you? I don’t know you.’

  The man laughed without humour. ‘Me? I’m just following orders. Now shut the fuck up before I tip that bucket over you.’

  He aimed another savage kick at Patrick, knocking the wind out of him, before putting the empty bucket in the corner and picking up the full one. Patrick cowered back as he passed, but the man just snorted and headed back up the stairs.

  Following orders. Whose? Kate’s? No, surely not. Neither Kate nor her husband would have the connections or the nerve to kidnap him. He shouldn’t have threatened to tell the papers, though. It had been a rash threat, a last-ditch attempt to get Bevan off his back and be rid of her, now that it was no longer fun to be with her, but maybe Kate had taken fright and was keeping him out of the way until after the election.

  The thought cheered him mildly. If that was the case, surely once next Thursday passed, he would be freed. His spirits sank immediately. No, that wouldn’t work, because what would there be to stop him going to the press then? To have an affair revealed would be nothing in comparison to having held the lover hostage to protect your reputation until the votes were counted.

  Which brought him circling back to Bevan. If Bevan was behind this, was it to frighten him into paying up? All well and good except Patrick hadn’t got the money yet. He would already have paid it if he had. He didn’t want to think about the consequences of Bevan knowing that.

  Patrick looked at his wrists. The same mottling that surrounded his ankles was now creeping along his arms.

  ***

  Summer stepped off the train and threaded her way through the other passengers dawdling on the platform. She bought a copy of The Scotsman as she passed the newsagents, tucking it into the top of her bag, saving it to read on the journey back. Dodging taxis and meandering tourists, she headed left out of the station, along North Bridge and up towards the city chambers on the High Street.

  Inside, the building was cool with a smell of polish and old carpets. She trotted up the stairs to the area occupied by the MSA to find Grace. She tapped lightly on the partly open door and popped her head in.

  ‘Grace?’

  ‘Summer! How lovely to see you! Are you working for us again?’

  ‘No. Well, not that I know! I still haven’t managed to get hold of Patrick and I’m a bit worried about him. He left me a bit of an odd message. He seemed
concerned about some of the kids in Samala and I wondered if he’d talked to you about it. He’s doing an article about it. He wanted me to chase up some stuff with Moyenda, but he didn’t leave me enough information to know quite what he wants me to chase up! I’d ask him but he’s buggered off somewhere.’

  If Grace could see through the holes in this, she wasn’t letting on.

  ‘Patrick certainly hasn’t said anything to me about Samala. You’d probably be better off talking to Ed.’

  ‘Ed?’

  ‘One of the interns. He worked with Patrick on the last two articles on Samala.’

  ‘Where can I find him?’

  ‘Down the corridor, second on the right. It’s a big room with a few people in there usually. Ed’s got greasy brown hair which he sometimes ties back in an ill-advised ponytail and usually looks too scruffy to be allowed anywhere near front of house.’

  Summer grinned at her bluntness and went in search. Her luck was in. Ed was at his desk and no one else was around.

  ‘Ed?’

  He looked up suspiciously and clicked something closed on his computer. Summer hoped his reaction times were faster when his bosses came in as there’d been no mistaking what he was browsing. Ed crossed his legs to hide his erection, chewing gum noisily.

  ‘Hi. I’m Summer Morris. You work with a friend of mine, Patrick Forrester?’

  ‘Yeah. He’s on holiday at the mo. Can I help?’

  ‘Er, he was working on an article about Samala and he seemed concerned about some things. I wondered if you knew what.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He asked me to do the pictures for it and chase up some stuff, but he didn’t give me much to go on, so I don’t know what kind of images he wants.’

  Ed shrugged, the gum making a smacking sound in his open mouth. Summer rummaged in her bag, putting her newspaper on the table while she pulled out her notebook.

  ‘Hey. I know her!’