In the hours that followed, Sterling spent much of the time continuing to think of ways to protect himself. Part of that was making everything he knew about the case fit together coherently. Even in his confused and fearful state there were ways to work out the blend. Smithy and his gang knew much more than him in some aspects, but he had the key information, even if he had said that he hadn’t. They couldn’t dispense with him until they were sure he had told them everything he knew, or until they had access to what he knew and could get the rest themselves. With Angela’s help, he had developed a good success record on his trail around Ypres – better than Thomas Jackson and better than these thugs. He began to see how he might give himself a chance of getting out of his prison. He could be the Sherpa guiding them to where they needed to go. Then he would be safe until they reached the end. It was better than this, he thought, as he looked around the cellar.
He asked himself what would happen when he became redundant. The best prospect was being locked in the cellar while the gang disappeared off somewhere. He had little doubt that they had murdered Jackson. Maybe they didn’t want the danger of another killing. After a while, perhaps the landlords would get a telephone call, or a farm labourer would hear Sterling banging and shouting. But if he knew too much, and he was straying into that territory, a body in the cellar of a rented-out cottage might not be discovered for weeks. Smithy was a hard and ruthless man, and so were Fred and Jason.
The gang’s interest in him had been quite recent. Supposing it was Jackson they were following originally, and not Sterling. That would explain why Jackson approached him at Au Miroir. He wasn’t just warning him. In his awkward way, maybe he was looking for help. After killing Jackson, the gang had switched focus to Sterling. The attack on the ferry: if it hadn’t been Jackson, maybe it was Smithy or one of the others. At that time, Sterling could have been a threat.
Why did they kill Jackson? It wasn’t a clinical assassination, a single bullet through his forehead. It was more opportunistic, even accidental. Smithy looked capable of rage. They had killed Jackson because somehow Sterling had become the better bet. Jackson had provoked them, or defied them, or had become worthless to them. Sterling wanted to avoid the same end. There was no element of client confidentiality in this, no notion of protecting Gloria Etchingham’s interests and the integrity of the case. All the hot air about the Etchingham family honour was exactly that. Sterling’s priority now was to save his skin. He waited on. He fretted on.
At five o’clock, the man called Simon brought a lump of cheese, some bread and some water, and left them by the door. He wouldn’t talk, but he was different from the others – not just smaller, but nervous, as he had been earlier, driving the car, and ill at ease. Before he withdrew, Sterling called over softly. ‘This isn’t legal. This is kidnapping, whichever way you look at it.’ He wouldn’t look at Sterling, either, and when the door closed again, Sterling could hear the bolts shot back with depressing finality.
Later on, he found himself comparing the two interrogations. The police one, by Broussart and Pieters, was civilised enough, though Broussart was surly and ill-tempered. Sterling did not have any qualms about his physical health or even, in the end, his liberty. It was what the questioning was about that was disconcerting – murder, and his perceived role in it.
In the countryside, Smithy was no longer concerned with Thomas Jackson, who had clearly served some sort of purpose. Smithy was interested in what Gloria Etchingham was interested in, and Jackson’s murder and Sterling’s abduction indicated how high the stakes were. There was no handbook containing the ‘do’s and don’ts’ of police interrogation procedures to hold him back, either. Sterling could face another beating or worse, and of course he was a prisoner. He would likely be another victim, too. He felt almost nostalgic for Ypres police station and the reinforced door backing on to the ramparts.
Fear, brooding and boredom: the three staples of the abduction victim. There seemed to be so much hanging about, though those upstairs might also be feeling some pressure from everything they set themselves to do. The brooding stopped when Sterling heard a commotion. It was almost seven o’clock. Something was happening, and he was going to be part of it. He expected the footsteps down and the drawing back of the bolts. He decided that he preferred the boredom to the dread that rose up in him. He wasn’t ready for the second round, and never would be. Fred and Jason knew he was reluctant. They came over to the wall opposite the door and grasped him by the arms. There was an ugly, deep scratch on Jason’s hand. The cologne Sterling had smelt on him earlier had faded. Now it was mingled with sweat. The tension in them translated into rough treatment as they frogmarched Sterling to the door. He was about to protest, but instead he relaxed and tried to harmonise his movements with them. It was important not to be provocative.
On the spiral staircase up from the cellar, his eyes came parallel with the ground floor parquet. From there, he could just see a slight figure deposited on the opposite sofa from Smithy’s, mouth taped over, hands tied and legs drawn up underneath the body. His heart gave such a start that it seemed to be trying to make an exit from his chest. It was Christina. And as Sterling stepped off the staircase and into the room, there was another shock. His interrogation chair was stationed on a square of thick plastic sheeting.
On the other sofa, Smithy was leaning forward, his elbows on his fat knees and his hands clasped under his large square chin.
‘Ah, Frank, thank you for rejoining us.’ He made everything seem as if Sterling was doing them all a favour.
‘Christina has absolutely nothing to do with this,’ Sterling said in a low, intense voice. His anger in the circumstances surprised him. ‘What the f….’
Smithy put up the palm of his hand, like a police officer stopping traffic. ‘We’ve gone a long way beyond that, Frank. Everything is too important, and we are in a hurry. You must take your share of responsibility for these unfortunate circumstances. Plan A was just to get the package you keep telling us is so insignificant – so we could check for ourselves. It wasn’t so difficult to work out what might have happened when you didn’t bring it with you. But the girl on reception’ (he nodded towards Christina) ‘refused to co-operate with us. Sadly, we had to invoke Plan B. Easier said than done, I have to say.’
As he said this, Jason gingerly touched the scratch on his hand.
Sterling looked over at Christina. She was a small-town girl, twenty-five years old. She helped her mother (and for all Sterling knew, her father) run a family hotel. She had an optician boyfriend in Kortrijk, a few railway stops away. She had a diploma in hospitality and hotel management from a college in Roeselare. She said she hadn’t been anywhere much or done anything much. She had been snatched from the street by two large (and in Sterling’s view, extremely threatening) Englishmen and taken to a cottage in the countryside for no apparent reason. She should have been terrified. Certainly, she was dishevelled. There were streaks of dried tears down her cheeks. There was the beginning of a dark bruise over her left temple. But when Sterling looked at her, really looked at her, and caught her gaze boring into him, he saw anger and defiance. She had not submitted meekly to a one-track fate. She saw forks in the road. Choices. His own defeatism shamed him. He needed to find some backbone. Now he knew where he’d get it from.
No one else seemed to notice the exchange. When he looked back to Smithy, he had sat back on the sofa, legs splayed, hands behind his head, the essence of relaxation and control.
‘Really,’ he said to the ceiling, ‘we need to know two key things. The full story. None of this, ‘That’s as far as I’ve got’ crap. And linked to that, where that package is. It’s going to mean some hurt for one of you.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Now, who’s going in the Mastermind chair? I think it had better be you, Frank.’
Fred and Jason dragged Sterling over to the chair and the plastic sheeting. He resisted more this time, in a kind of reflex action. He really did not want to be subjected to what Smithy had in mind, and now that he had seen Christina’s attitude, more steel had come into him. It made no difference. They were large and strong, and he was seated in the chair and tied up with little delay.
‘So, Frank, let’s consider the first thing. You haven’t told us the full story. It’s time to tell it now.’
‘This is really outrageous. You can’t just kidnap two innocent people and keep them prisoner. You can’t threaten us like this. Let us go before it really gets out of hand.’
Smithy didn’t even bother with the ‘spare me this’, traffic policeman hand. His eyes flicked to Fred hovering behind Sterling with the look that now he recognised instantly, and he received another hard cuff.
‘That’s assault,’ he said. ‘It’s getting worse for you.’
Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Simon slouched against the wall behind and to the left of Smithy. He shuffled and took a deep breath. His face was white. Sterling was resisting out of a foolish stubbornness and to show Christina there was something to him. But another motive had emerged. Simon wasn’t like the others. He could see the consequences of being caught. He might be a weak link, and Sterling was speaking to him.
It made no difference to Fred. Sterling received a cuff on the other side of his head, which was spinning and buzzing. Protesting that he knew nothing became Sterling’s own name, rank and serial number mantra. Fred undid the top button of his shirt and loosened his tie. Doing the hitting was warm work. Sterling avoided looking at Christina. He was responding to the rhythm of blows around his head, on his shoulders and on his forearms, grunting with each one. He still had time to think, but he was thinking things that did not help – about whether pain lessened the more you had of it, and whether torture was effective in getting the truth. On the torture front, the gang were amateurs, but they were learning quickly. After some minutes, Smithy ordered a halt.
‘Why are you doing this, Frank? It’s going to get worse. This is just the start. The sooner you tell us everything you know, everything, the sooner all this can stop.’
Sterling shook his head. People would surely notice that he and Christina were missing. There must be some alternative to this.
Smithy changed tack, all cheery again except for the soulless eyes. ‘We’re not really allowed to smoke in here – it’s part of the letting agreement – but desperate times call for desperate measures.’
He took a cigarette from a packet on the arm of the sofa and lit it up, handing it fastidiously to the man Fred. Sterling felt a wide-eyed dread. Reality was even worse than anticipation. In one smooth movement, Fred swooped in and squeezed his balls hard with one chubby hand, and with the other stubbed the cigarette on his neck. Sterling screamed long and hard like an animal in a trap and writhed helplessly in the chair, trying to stand up, trying to breathe, trying to do anything to assuage the hurt. Through the waves of pain and his watering eyes, he saw Fred smile down on his handiwork, pleased with the results. Jason watched impassively from the sidelines. Smithy nodded as if to say, ‘I expected that’. The squeamish Simon had turned away. Christina’s eyes were filled with tears as well, but Sterling could still see no fear. His body was in shock and he throbbed in his groin, in his neck and from the cuffs to his head and body.
‘You look the worse for wear, Frankie-boy’, said Smithy. ‘I think it’s time for a break. We need a bit of supper, and you and the girl could do with some confabulation. We can lay on another session like that, or you could do it an easier way. Tell us what we need to know and it all stops.’
Jason untied Sterling from the chair. Only some misplaced sense of pride stopped him collapsing into his arms. He shambled down the staircase as Simon opened the door. As Sterling shuffled into the cellar, he murmured, ‘I wonder how many years inside you’ll do. It’ll be just as bad in Belgium as England.’
Christina followed him into the cellar. The tape had been taken from her face and her hands untied. Someone had given her a small bottle of surgical spirit and a wad of cotton wool. They could reach the window now, one on the other’s shoulders. All they needed was a hacksaw or bolt cutter (of industrial strength) for the bars and glasscutters for the windows, fitted with silencers (if they existed), and for their captors to be struck deaf and blind.
Sterling sank to his usual spot. Christina crouched down with the surgical spirit and the cotton wool. He winced as she dabbed the sore on his neck, but managed a kind of pained smile, getting one in return.
‘Christina, I’m really sorry I’ve got you into this mess.’
‘Well, it’s not going to help to just get upset about it,’ she replied matter-of-factly.
He could tell she was grasping for the English words she needed. He thought about saying, ‘It’s no use crying over spilt milk’, but this was no time for an English lesson. His neck was stinging fiercely, but it seemed to be enhancing his alertness and clarity.
‘The man is right, Christina. We need to sort out what we’re going to tell him. It’s not that I mind the torture,’ he lied. ‘It’s how we can use what we know to get out of here. What did you do with the bag I threw over to you?’
‘It’s under the desk at the hotel, right where I was when you threw it to me.’
‘OK, well, I think I’m going to tell them about one of the boxes of chocolates in that bag. It’s a special one I got from the Mehrtens chocolate shop. It’ll get us a bit of time when they go and retrieve it. And if they get what they want, they’ll let us go.’
He was lying again, trying to convince himself as well as keep Christina’s spirits up. She was sharp, as well as brave. The quizzical eyebrow went up. If she’d been a teenaged girl in Sandley, she would have said ‘Yeah, right’. To try and establish some basis for hope, he asked her when she would be missed.
‘They came for me just as I’d finished my duty for the day. I’m not back on till Wednesday. Tuesday is my day off. My mother will think that I have gone over to Kortrijk.’ She searched for the appropriate words again. ‘I am twenty-five now. I don’t have rules that I must follow.’
Sterling mused and nodded. Things were not looking good. Smithy and his gang were amateurish in some ways. He and Christina hadn’t been tied up. Questioning him had been brutal and unpleasant, but not systematic or entirely effective. He had told them some things but not everything. But the stakes were high and the prize would be large. That’s what was making Smithy ruthless.
‘One of those men, the one called Simon, the smallest one, is not comfortable with what’s going on. When I was being driven here, he was nervous. The others don’t think anything’s going to happen to them. They think they can get away with all this. He’s much more sensitive to the fact that what they’re doing is seriously illegal. I’ve been reminding him. Maybe we can use him somehow.’
They talked quietly on. Sterling told Christina, in broad outline, what he had been doing in Ypres and why he was there. It seemed only fair, given what he had drawn her into. They explored what they might do and what they might say when they were next taken upstairs. They thought of ways they might escape, which became more and more outlandish: Sterling would pretend to be in pain in the corner and the men would come to examine him, giving Christina the chance to sprint up the stairs, burst through the front door and dash to freedom; as Christina slipped off her clothes to divert the thugs, Sterling would spring on them, overcome them with his fabled police crowd control skills and make for the kitchen knives.
‘There’s a problem with that last one,’ he said. ‘If you slipped off your clothes, I’d be diverted as well, so we wouldn’t get anywhere.’ They both smiled at that.
‘Perhaps we could escape on the grated carrot train,’ he said finally. ‘Drop down in a soft damp landing right into the middle of all that orange.’
‘I don’t think it comes all the way out here,’ she replied sadly, and they fell silent for a time.
When the gang had first abducted Sterling, and Jason and Fred lurked out of eyeshot behind him as Smithy began the first interrogation, expecting the pain and the blows was worse than actually receiving them. Now the sore on his neck and his painfully squeezed balls told him the real pain he could expect. Waiting for the next instalment in that cool, silent cellar would have been agonising but for Christina’s resolute presence.
It was nine o’clock when Fred and Jason returned to fetch them back upstairs. The dining chair in front of the sofa was still there and so was the sheet of plastic around it. Sterling could hear a bit of clattering in the kitchen area. Maybe Simon’s importance to the group was partly to do with his catering abilities. Sterling gulped and started trembling, hating himself all over again. The bolstering of morale in the cellar had evaporated. There was no tough-guy detective. There never had been.
‘I don’t think you’ll need to tie me to the chair,’ he said to Smithy. ‘I’ve thought about everything and there may be one or two things you need to know that I didn’t think were too important at the time.’ His self-justification seemed pathetically flimsy and weak.
Smithy looked pleased. He lolled back on the sofa. He could add psychological analysis to his list of criminal talents.
‘Go on then,’ he said, ‘sit down and tell me. I’m all ears.’
‘Well, the sketch I found at the Scottish memorial – I found the real thing at the church. It was on a pew cushion. Underneath that was the card for the chocolatier, Marc Mehrtens. The card kind of instructed me to go to that chocolate shop and, as it turned out, pick up the package. When your bloke came for me, I threw it to the girl on the way through the door.’
‘You could have saved us a lot of time, and yourself a lot of pain, if you hadn’t been so stupid,’ said Smithy.
There was that look again. Because Sterling was telling the truth and the whole truth at that point, he didn’t recognise it quickly enough. Fred did, though, responding from behind with another cuff, knocking Sterling and the chair over. He was almost too startled to feel the stinging on the side of his head. If he had been Smithy, he, too, would have been furious about having lost a few hours.
Smithy turned to Christina. ‘So, girl, we know now that the package is important, and we know that he threw it to you. Think very carefully before you answer. Only the truth will do. If we don’t get it, Frank here will suffer. Maybe you will, as well. It’s all the same to Fred. In fact, he might like a bit of a change.’
Sterling thought he saw Christina’s jaw jut out a little. It might have been nerves. More likely, it was defiance.
‘It’s under the counter in reception. Where we keep all the things that our guests lose or leave in their rooms or in the restaurant. You can just ask the person at reception for it. There’s someone around until half past eleven.’
‘Thank you. That wasn’t so very difficult,’ Smithy said to them both. His dead eyes shone. ‘I fancy a bit of an excursion into Ypres myself. It’s been a long day, one way or the other, and I’ve got a bit of cabin fever. There’s plenty of time for further … exploration if things don’t go entirely to plan. I will be very agitated if they don’t.’
He gestured to Fred and Jason, who pulled Sterling to his feet. The man Simon took Christina’s arm. She didn’t resist, but on the way back down the stairs and through the cellar door, Sterling caught a glimpse of her mouthing soft words with a fierce gaze that Simon stolidly avoided, his own head and eyes cast down. She caught on quickly. Sterling had learnt that on their evening out.
‘That buys us a bit of time, Christina,’ he said when they were alone again, the cellar now gloomy and getting darker as night closed in.
He didn’t sink down this time. He was standing, flexing his arms, legs, neck – anywhere on his body where he had received blows. The sore on his neck throbbed, and so did his balls, but he felt too prissy to examine them. He thought Christina would have been amused, but he wasn’t prepared to risk it.
She had a thoughtful look about her. ‘Yes, we’ll get a bit of time.’
‘What?’ he said. ‘What is it?’
‘Well, everything you told them is true. But what I said was true once, but not anymore. I did put the package under the counter along with the chocolates you gave me, but they’re not there now.’
‘Christ, Christina. You’ve seen what that man’s like. You’ve seen what his mate can do. When he gets to the Sultan and finds no package, he’s going to go barmy. And when that happens, he’ll be back here to bash me about, squeeze my balls and stub cigarettes out on me worse than ever. I reckon he’ll get that monster to start on you.’
Sterling was pacing up and down, shaking his head. It was hard to believe what he had heard. A heavier beating, more stubs, more squeezing. He could feel his agitation enveloping him. Christina stood in front of him, and he had to stop pacing for a second. She took both his arms in her hands and looked up into his eyes. He remembered their carefree Saturday evening out – that moment when she had taken one his arms in both of hers and twirled them around into the Grote Markt.
‘Frank. Frank,’ she said more urgently, forcing him to concentrate. You keep saying we can’t just let them do what they like. We can’t let them drag us upstairs and downstairs and hit you (and maybe me) and then do even worse when they don’t need us anymore. When that man comes back without the bag, I’ll say that someone moved it. My mother is always tidying up. She tidies the desk almost every day. She will have put it in the safe with all the other lost things. I’ll say that I have to go with them. They’ll never get in the safe without me. Yes, it gives us time. You’re always saying we need time. But it gives us other things, for sure. Chances. I was an actor at school. I can make them believe me.’
He looked down at her. Her eyes searched his face. He had thought her lively and good company on their night out. He hadn’t reckoned on plucky and enterprising. He stooped a little, wrapped his arms tightly around her slight frame and buried his face in her neck, her soft hair brushing his cheek. He began to laugh softly, and felt her body shake a little as she joined in, her back arching into him and her arms clasping him tightly in return. They had a chance of escaping from this. But, as things turned out, not in the way they planned.