Captive (16 page)

‘You’re up to your neck in this, Stephen.’

I duck my head to let my hair drop around me, like a cocoon, but there isn’t enough to hide me now.

‘I’m going to let you go,’ Talon says.

‘You are?’

‘Yeah. The road is only fifteen minutes in that direction. You’ll be able to hitch a lift from there.’

‘Thank you! I can’t believe it.’ Relief floods through me: I don’t have to think about any of this any more.

‘Just do me a favour and ask your dad about the voicemail. Ask him a proper question for once, Robyn.’

For once.
Am I a stuck-up princess? Am I naive to still believe what my dad told me? I don’t want to think about the answers to those questions. The important thing now is that
I’m free. All of this is over. I’m going home.

Dad is in intensive care for three days. One of the bullets had grazed him, but the worst of his injuries was to the left shoulder joint. The entry wound was small, only
about a centimetre in diameter. There was no exit wound and the damage caused was extensive. The bullet had taken out most of his scapula and clavicle. Metallic fragments had punctured his left
lung and scattered all over the front of his chest. The doctors gave him a blood transfusion and pumped him full of intravenous penicillin. All these phrases – scapula, entry wound,
transfusion – trip off my tongue so easily now.

Two days ago they moved him to a high-dependency unit. Mum arrived sometime during the night of the day it happened
. She has been by his side almost all the time. I have barely left
the hospital, but I haven’t been in to see him. Not really. I have peered in through glass windows and peeked around curtains, lurking in the background and retreating like a shadow at noon.
I am embarrassed, afraid, angry.

Today he has asked to see me.

It is dark when I arrive, but he is still up, sitting in the day chair, his shoulder in a fresh bandage. His head is resting against the back of the chair, his eyes closed. The only light
comes from the hallway and the street lamps outside. I hesitate in the doorway. The nurses told Mum that he hasn’t been sleeping well. He ran a high temperature yesterday. I don’t want
to disturb him unnecessarily. Before I can make up my mind about whether to stay or run away again, he opens his eyes and sees me. ‘Robyn! Come in.’

I cross the room slowly, feeling awkward with him for the second time in my life. Outside, the snow has begun to melt. I am leaving wet footprints on the clean lino floor. I stop halfway
across the room, suddenly unable to go any further. ‘Were you sleeping?’ I ask. ‘I could come back . . .’

He is surrounded by more machines than the entire M15 office
–
one monitoring his breathing, one his morphine, one his heart. They match the rhythm of my own heartbeat.

He smiles. ‘I wasn’t sleeping. I was waiting for you. Come and sit down. Don’t loiter by the door.’

There is a chair opposite him and I sit down in it, playing with my sleeve. My hair falls into my eyes. Silence stretches out between us, as wide as the Grand Canyon.

‘Did you think he was aiming at me? Is that why you protected me?’

‘If a man is shooting a gun anywhere near your daughter, you don’t wait to see where it’s pointing. My first instinct will always be to protect you.’

‘You could have died.’

‘But I didn’t.’ He smiles again. ‘I can hear your brain ticking over, Bobs. We have unfinished business, you and I. I hoped I had brought you up to understand that it
is impolite to eavesdrop, but what you overheard and then Michael’s reaction . . . It frightened me and I may not have acted correctly. I should have told you the truth
immediately.’

‘Did you take money from Michael to keep quiet about something?’

‘There are some things that are more complicated than they seem. Bell-Barkov invested billions into our country at a time when we had record levels of unemployment.’

‘Did you take money from them?’

‘No. Michael gave me a loan during the election campaign, but it was as a friend. Nothing to do with Bell-Barkov whatsoever and I have paid him back in full.’

‘What were you supposed to be covering up?’

Dad sighs. ‘About two years ago, a little boy on one of Bell-Barkov’s drug-testing programmes got very sick and tragically died. It was not Michael’s fault and none of his
staff were to blame, but understandably the boys’ parents were upset, and there was a bit of fuss. Michael was in a terrible state. He left a message on my voicemail, garbled and slightly
hysterical, saying that the drug was responsible. He believed at the time that the boy had reacted badly to some aspect of it and that he was to blame. Of course he wasn’t.’

‘And someone got hold of that message?’

‘An unscrupulous journalist, yes. Or a private eye, who then passe
d it on to the papers. Now, his family are being encouraged to believe that there is more to it. The AFC have
been after Michael for some time. Death threats, arson attacks.’

‘The fire at his office last year?’

‘We believe so – and, now with this assassination attempt, it seems they have shifted focus to me. Killing a prime minister would certainly get you more news
coverage.’

I flinch at his choice of words, but force myself to go on. ‘On some papers that Michael gave you were the words “You have blood on your hands”. I thought they were talking
about animal testing but they weren’t. It was a kid.’

‘It is a tragic, terrible case of a child dying and his parents’ grief being used by a group of people wanting to cause trouble.’

‘But Michael was so angry!’

‘
W
ouldn’t you be, if you’d been accused of killing a child? But there is no excuse for how he reacted. We don’t yet know who fired the shots last
Thursday, but we believe it was the AFC. They have been targeting Michael’s company on and off over the years, for numerous incorrect assumptions: illegal drugs testing, their use of animals
in testing and so forth. We believe they called in the bomb threat at the hotel and then took a shot at me. They are angry about my friendship with Michael.’

‘But it makes no sense! Blow stuff up and kill people to protect animal and human rights?’

‘Extremism rarely makes sense. Everyone in my government is working hard to come up with a lasting solution to end this terror. But all it takes is for one terrorist to get lucky once.
The police and the defence units have to be lucky all the damn time. And sometimes the information we need isn’t easy to come by. There is no denying that drugs’ testing is a complex
and sensitive moral issue, one that there isn’t an easy solution to. But being in charge is all about making tough decisions – decisions that no one else wants to make and we will be
judged for those decisions. We are, after all, the choices we make. I have never told a soul about that voicemail from Michael. I know he frightened you the other day, but he’s frightened
too. There is a lot at stake here.’

‘Is the journalist who sent you this stuff going to publish a story?’

‘No. She doesn’t want to be connected with a terrorist organization, and after . . .’ He nods at his shoulder
.
‘I’d like to think this conversation will
remain between us, Robyn.’

‘
I won’t tell anyone. I – I don’t like Michael much right now, but I trust you, so I won’t say anything. I mean, what would I say anyway? Michael
didn’t kill that kid. He didn’t have anything to do with it. I believe you.’

D
o I? Dad’s hospital room is darker now. The street lamps have to work harder to pierce the gloom. I stand up and go over to the window. Outside I can just make out the tops of
the nearby trees. One branch is closer than all the others, its gnarled fingers reaching out to strike the pane. The clouds have lifted and the sky is bare and dark, ice-white stars dim against the
brightly coloured halo of the city lights. I stare deep into the cold dark sky until my eyes burn. Dad nearly died and he’s still in a lot of pain. I don’t want us to argue any more.
What do I know about any of this anyway? I force any last niggling doubts away and then, turning back into the warm light of the hospital room, I ask, ‘What was the boy’s name? The one
who died?’

‘
What does that matter?’

‘It just feels important. I know it wasn’t anyone’s fault that he died, but it is still sad, and it feels right to name him.’

‘
Y
es, yes, you’re probably right, my darling.’ There’s a glass of water on the table beside my dad. He gestures for it, and I pass it to him. He takes a
long slow sip before holding the glass out for me to return it. When he does so, I notice that his hand is shaking. Still he doesn’t answer. It is only after I’ve sat back down that he
says quietly and slowly as if weighing something up, ‘The child’s name was Jeremy. Jeremy Fletcher, I believe.’

It starts raining soon after I leave Talon. I promised myself that if I ever got the chance to run, I would, but to leave him there in that clearing, to not even look back, was
harder than I thought it would be. The forest floor is wet now and slippery and the sky is dark with more rain. Trees pack in tightly all around me, but I can hear the road more clearly.

Talon’s real name is Samuel Fletcher. His brother is Jez – Jeremy Fletcher. It is the boy Dad told me about in Paris. I should be glad that I know Talon’s name. It will make it
easier for the police to catch him. Instead I am sad that it was his family the AFC manipulated and used for their own ends. If they’d left him alone, Talon would never have kidnapped me.

I push into the breeze and begin to walk slowly up the road, keeping to the shallow ditch on one side. The rain doesn’t let up, socking me in the face with drops that feel the size of a
baby’s fist. It is wonderful. I’m free! Finally. In a few hours, I could be home with Mum and Addy. And Dad.

‘You’re up to your neck in this, Stephen.’

There’s the distant roar of an engine and I shake myself free of the thought. As the car turns a corner, I begin to wave my arms and yell at the driver to stop. Lights and a blaring horn
blast into me as the driver swerves and disappears into the distance. ‘Come back!’ I shout, flinging a stone after the departing vehicle. It bumps once in the road and then drops down
into the ditch. On the other side of the road, the wood stretches on and on into what might as well be eternity. It doesn’t matter. I don’t even care that I’m soaking wet and
starting to shiver. I’m outside in the rain, under the sky, and I can hear birds singing and I can see the trees.

I walk on for what must be another half hour at least. Not a single car has passed by. The initial euphoria of being free has evaporated. I’m giving into the cold. My teeth are chattering
and my brain keeps playing that conversation with Talon over and over. I’m so distracted that I almost don’t notice the shadow of the tree trunks lengthen as a car approaches with its
headlights on. I am taking no chances. I stand right in the centre of the road and swing my arms in a huge arc. The driver honks his horn, but that only makes me wave more.

‘Stop!’ I shout. ‘Please, stop!’

The car steers sharply to the right to avoid me, then pulls to a stop a little further down the road.

I run towards the vehicle, which is actually more of a van. It looks dirty in the heavy rain, but in true light, it would be white. I slow my pace, feet tripping over each other.

I know this van.

I take a step back, and then another, as the door opens. But it is already too late. A man is climbing out, and even in the rain-washed half-light, I can see that he is huge. He pulls something
long and dark out of the van’s front seat and holds it up. It’s a gun. Its shiny surface winks at me, as though it knows a secret.

Scar is standing on the road in front of me, a rifle in his hands.

‘Did they hurt you?’ Talon asks.

‘Apart from tying me to a bed again, no.’ We’ve both been bound by plastic flexes to opposite ends of the bed in my old cell. After I so helpfully flagged down the van, Scar
had easily bundled me into the back of it and then he and Feather drove me back here to the farmhouse. Talon had come outside as we’d pulled up in the driveway.

‘Lose something?’ Feather asked him as she climbed out of the van. At her command, Scar dragged me from the vehicle and dumped me on the gravel at Talon’s feet. Before Talon
could reply, Feather stalked the distance between them and smacked him in the jaw.

It is still raining heavily and streams of water pour down the windowpane. It’s windy too and a branch or something is being whipped rhythmically against the glass.

‘What will they do with us?’ I ask.

‘I don’t know.’ He slides his foot along the floor until his leg is resting against my ankle. I can feel the warmth of him through my tracksuit bottoms. ‘It’ll be
okay. We’ll be okay.’

But when the bough of the tree slams into the glass again, making it vibrate against the frame, we both jump, and I know he is afraid too.

‘What if Scar—?’

‘I won’t let him anywhere near you,’ he says fiercely. His left cheek is bright red from where Feather hit him, and she’s tiny. We really don’t stand a chance
against Scar. It means a lot that Talon is determined to fight with me, though, even after our conversation in the forest about my dad. I don’t want to bring that up again. I don’t want
to see the look of disappointment on his face.

‘Where have they been these last few days?’ I ask instead.

‘They went to see this guy who used to work as a prison guard at the place Marble is being kept. He reckons he can help them get him out. Some kind of prison break. Shit. I don’t
know. The whole thing sounds insane.’

‘But if Dad . . . if Dad isn’t negotiating with them, then . . . then there’s no reason to keep me alive. Is that why you let me go? Because you thought they were going to . .
. hurt me?’