“WHERE IS SHE?” I demanded.
“Safe and well,” replied Squeaky Voice.
“Where is she?” I repeated.
“I’m giving you one last chance,” he said, ignoring my question. “You will do as I tell you.”
“No, I will not,” I said adamantly. “You will release Amanda immediately, or I will go to the police and tell them all about these calls and give them your texts. I am sure they will be able to use them to trace you. They just do a triangulation from the mobile phone masts to your handset, and there you are.”
I wasn’t sure if that was true, but it sounded good—at least to me.
“How much do you value your daughter’s life?” asked the voice.
“How much do you value your freedom?” I asked him in reply. “The maximum sentence for kidnapping is life imprisonment. You’d probably get a whole life term if you also kill your hostage.”
I was still guessing, but he wasn’t to know.
“You would die in prison. And kidnappers never get an easy time inside. You’d have to continually watch out in the showers, the cold showers, or you might get your balls slashed off. Or they’d keep you in solitary, year after year after every bloody year, for the rest of your rotten life. You’d go barking mad. Are you ready for all that?”
There was a slight pause.
“You will not get another chance,” he said.
“Nor will you,” I said straight back at him. “Release her right now or I’ll call the police and tell them everything.”
Well, almost everything.
“She’s already released,” said Squeaky Voice.
Did I detect a touch of contrition? Or was I imagining it?
“So where is she?” I asked.
He didn’t answer. He just hung up.
I ruefully smiled at myself in the mirror above the fireplace. I thought that had gone rather well. But had I really removed that particular monkey from my back, or would he still come back for more?
Now I had to make sure that Amanda had indeed been released and that she was unharmed.
As if on cue, my phone rang again, and Amanda appeared on the screen. I grabbed it, but it wasn’t her calling me.
“She’s back,” Darren said.
Thank God, I thought.
“Let me speak to her,” I said.
“She doesn’t want to speak to you.”
“I don’t care. Give her the bloody phone.”
There was a slight pause.
“Dad?” said Amanda, coming on the line.
“Darling, are you all right?” I asked in my most compassionate tone.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“Where have you been?” I asked.
“I was on my way to the shop when someone came up behind me and put a sack over my head and shoulders. I was bundled into the back of a van. Then I’ve been driven around for ages.”
“How did you get away?”
“The van stopped and the back door was opened. I was told to get out, and then just left on the side of the road. The van drove away.”
“Where were you dropped?”
“In Didcot. Not far away. I walked back here.”
“Did you see the man?” I asked. “Or the van?”
“I had the sack over me all the time. I was told not to remove it or he would hit me. I was so scared.”
“It’s all right, darling. You’re safe now.”
Or moderately so, considering she was still with Darren.
“Do you still have the sack?” I asked.
“No. After I heard the van drive off. I took it off. I left it there.”
“What sort of sack was it?”
“It was just a sack.”
“But was it made of plastic, like a rubbish sack? Or was it hessian?”
“Dad, I don’t know. Okay?”
But there were so many other questions I also wanted to ask her.
“Can I come over and see you?” I asked. “I could bring you home.”
But what will I do with Toni? I thought.
I looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. It was quarter past eleven. I knew that the last train from Didcot to Paddington wasn’t until after midnight. Toni would have to catch that and take a taxi back to her hotel.
“No, Dad,” Amanda said firmly. “I’m fine here. I want to go to bed now.”
“Are you sure?”
“Quite sure.”
“Then call me in the morning,” I said.
“Okay,” she said, but I wasn’t that confident that she would.
We disconnected and I went back to the kitchen.
“Amanda is back,” I said.
Toni looked up at me sharply. “Back where?”
“At her boyfriend’s flat.”
“For a moment, I thought you meant she was here.”
“No, but she was abducted. Someone put a sack over her head and shoulders and then bundled her into a van. Whoever it was drove her around for four hours, then let her go.”
“Is she all right?” Toni asked.
“Seems to be. Obviously a bit shaken. And she said she was scared.”
“But why?
“Why what?”
“Why kidnap someone and then not ask for a ransom? It doesn’t make sense.”
She was right, there.
None of this made any sense.
Toni and I spent the night together in the double bed in the guest room, but somewhat embarrassingly, my enthusiasm for more sex had evaporated. Even if my mind had been willing, my body wasn’t.
Maybe it was because I had so much else going on in my head.
Having intercourse with Toni in the sitting room of this house, and also lying to my wife about having fallen asleep in front of the television, suddenly made me feel incredibly guilty.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“That’s all right,” Toni said. “We’ll have another try in the morning.”
She seemed to go straight to sleep while I lay awake in the dark for ages, trying to sort other things out.
Had I finally rid myself of Squeaky Voice?
I liked to think so, but I wasn’t so sure.
Maybe he would try a different tactic.
So far, he hadn’t actually harmed anybody—not physically anyway—apart from a single injection into Amanda’s neck. I had called his bluff about killing her, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t now threaten to hurt her, maybe cut her face or throw something corrosive over her, or over Georgina, or even over James or me.
How ruthless was he? And would he react badly to my determination not to do as he asked?
Was it now time for me to try harder to find out who he was?
But how?
I had to start by talking to Amanda, to find out if there was some clue she had found out, even if she didn’t realise it, and use it to build a trap.
Toni tried her best to get me interested in more sex on Friday morning, waking me by cuddling up to my back, and allowing her hands to wander down between my legs.
It was successful to a degree, insofar that my body was now willing, but my mind was seemingly elsewhere, and I don’t think she found the experience hugely satisfying. Neither did I.
With a slight sigh, she climbed out of bed, and I heard her in the shower.
I also stood up and went downstairs to my office in my dressing gown.
My first call of the day was to DS Royle’s number.
She answered almost immediately.
“My daughter is safe,” I said. “She returned home to her boyfriend’s flat late last night.”
“Good,” said the detective. “Did she say where she’d been?”
“Someone put a sack over her head and bundled her into a van. She was driven around for several hours and then left at the side of the road in Didcot.”
“Did she see the person who did this?”
“It seems not. She had the sack over her head all the time until after the van had driven away.”
“Was she harmed? Or abused?”
“No, other than she said she was very frightened.”
“Did you pay a ransom?” the DS asked.
“No,” I said. “I never received a demand for one.”
“How strange.”
“What are you going to do now?” I asked. “Will you interview her?”
“I may send my detective constable to see her in due course.”
That sounded very much like a “no” to me.
“Surely an abduction of a young woman in broad daylight demands the attention of at least a detective sergeant.”
“That’s if an abduction did take place.”
“Are you calling my daughter a liar?”
“I just think it’s odd that no ransom was demanded and she was released totally untouched.”
What the detective didn’t know was that a ransom had been demanded. Maybe not a monetary one, but a ransom, nevertheless.
I wondered if I should tell her about it, but there would then be too many difficult questions to answer, not least why I hadn’t mentioned it to her before.
If I had finally managed to rid myself of Squeaky Voice, it would surely not be a good time, or a good idea, to unnecessarily open myself to allegations of race fixing.
After the police detective, I called my list of trainers, the first of whom was Malcolm Galbraith, the jump trainer who’d been at the party, and who lived in the village over the hill. The one Victrix horse in his yard, Casillero, had been declared to run that afternoon in the Summer Plate Trial Handicap Steeplechase at Market Rasen in Lincolnshire, about a hundred and sixty miles north.
“Morning, Malcolm,” I said. “All good for today?”
“Fine,” he said. “Cassy went up yesterday. She’s not a very good traveller, so I’ve given her overnight to recover. She’ll be fine by this afternoon.”
“Are you going?” I asked.
“No. My travelling head lad will do the necessary. He went up in the horsebox with her. I’m off to Ascot for the day.”
“So am I. I might see you there. I’ll watch Cassy’s race in the Owners and Trainers’ Bar. What time is it?”
“Five to four. I’ll meet you there to watch it with you.”
We disconnected and I quickly rang the rest of the trainers on my list.
At about half past eight, as I was finishing the last of my calls, Toni came into the office, wearing her yellow dress and holding her hat.
“I’ve decided not to go to the races today after all,” she said. “It seems a shame to come all this way and not see something else of England other than the Ascot racetrack. I was too tired Monday, and this is my last day, so I’m going to go see some of the sights instead. Can you put me on a train to London?”
“Of course,” I said. “But it’s a shame when you’ve already paid for your badge.”
“The Farquhars bought it for me.”
That was all right, then.
“How about tonight?” I asked.
“I’m going to have an early night,” she said. “My flight to Cincinnati departs at half past eight in the morning, so I need to be at Heathrow soon after six. I have a car booked for five-thirty. Sorry.”
To be honest, I was relieved.
I felt this adventure had run its course, and I think she did too.
I dropped her at Didcot station at a quarter to ten.
She reached up and kissed me goodbye.
“It’s been great,” she said. “Thank you.”
“Thank you too,” I replied.
“If you’re ever in Lexington, give me a call. We could do it again—just for old times’ sake.”
I watched her walk away from me, and she turned once to wave before disappearing into the station entrance.
I sighed. It had indeed been great. A reawakening.
In fact, I wondered if my life could ever be the same again.
I climbed back into the Jaguar, feeling slightly forlorn that she had gone.
“Come on,” I said to myself. “Pull yourself together.”
I started the car and drove out of the station forecourt without so much as a backward glance, putting that chapter literally and symbolically behind me.
Next I went to the post office on the Broadway, to send James’s passport to his current flat address, paying extra for Special Delivery by one PM on a Saturday.
When I’d sat at my desk earlier, packing the passport into an envelope, I’d enclosed with it the Bristol University Gambling Society leaflet, but only after I’d written across it in bold black marker pen: Don’t get involved with this. There’s no such thing as a guaranteed return on your stake.
As I was already in Didcot, I decided to drive to the Raj Tandoori.
I parked on the road opposite and called Amanda.
“I told you never to call this number,” she said, answering at the second ring.
“But I need to talk to you,” I said.
“Is Grandpa all right?” she asked.
“He’s fine,” I said.
“So why are you calling?”
“I need to talk to you about last night.”
“What about it?” she asked. “I told you what happened.”
“Have you remembered anything else, something that might help catch the person who did this to you?”
“No.”
“How about the sack? Where did you leave it?”
“On the road?”
“Which road?”
“Dad, I don’t know. I was panicking. I ran until I found something I recognised. Then I came home.”
She was getting quite agitated.
“It’s all right, darling,” I said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. But if you do remember anything else, please call me.”
“There is one thing,” she said. “Either the sack or the van smelled of dogs.”
“Dogs?”
“Yes, you know, that musty smell you get from wet dogs.”
Or maybe from wet hessian, I thought.
“Where are you now?” I asked her.
“At work. I’m on earlies at the supermarket this week. It’s my break time.”
So I was wasting my time being here outside Darren’s flat.
“What time do you finish?”
“Four.”
I’d be at Ascot watching Casillero’s race from Market Rasen in the Owners and Trainers’ Bar. There was no way I could be here to collect her.
“I have to be at Ascot today at four o’clock. So can Darren come and collect you from work, to take you back to his flat?”
“Stop being silly, Dad.”
“I’m not being silly. I’m worried about you.”
“Don’t be. I’m fine.”
“Please be careful,” I said. “Don’t go out on your own at night, and keep away from dark alleys.”
“I promise I’ll be careful,” she replied in a sort of “please don’t treat me like a little girl” tone. “I have to go now as I’m due back at work.”
She hung up.
Who did I know who owned dogs?