Dead Man's Gift 01 - Yesterday (3 page)

‘The when’s easy enough. At eleven a.m. tomorrow. I’ll give you the details of the “how” when you need them, and not before.’

‘I’m attending a House of Commons select committee hearing at eleven,’ said Tim, as if this somehow made everything else irrelevant.

‘We know,’ said the voice coolly.

And that was when Tim realized who the ‘we’ the voice kept referring to were. It took all his self-control not to throw down the phone and run and hide somewhere – anywhere – because now he realized who he was up against, and the complete hopelessness of his situation. ‘You want me to do it there?’ he asked incredulously.

‘As soon as we have confirmation of your death,’ said the voice, ignoring his question, ‘your son will be released in a quiet, safe place not far from where you live, and you, Mrs Horton, will be informed where to find him. In the meantime, you need to keep an eye on your husband, make sure he doesn’t do anything that puts your son’s life at risk. Do you understand?’

‘Yes,’ said Diane, and Tim detected something in her voice, even though she was trying to hide it. Hope.

‘Good. From now on you’re both to stay where you are, in the dining room, with your phones in front of you on the table. You will sleep in this room. You will not leave it at any point –’

‘What if we want to go to the toilet?’ demanded Tim, his voice unusually shrill. ‘For Christ’s sake, don’t make us do it in here!’

‘You can go to the toilet, but if either of you leave the room more than once in any four-hour period, your son will suffer.’

‘Okay. I understand.’

‘If anyone phones you, you will act normally. You will give no hint of the pressure you’re under. You will make no phone calls of your own. If you break either of those two rules, and put our operation in jeopardy, your son will die. And he will die painfully. Just like the nanny.’ He paused to let his words sink in. ‘And remember this. We’re watching you. Always.’

The line went dead, and Tim put down the receiver. He didn’t sit down.

‘What are you going to do, Tim?’ Diane asked.

You
. The choice of word was deliberate. What are
you
going to do? Tim knew then that he was on his own. However much his wife loved him – and he wasn’t at all sure how much that was these days – her priority was always going to be Max, and if Tim had to die to secure his release, then she wasn’t going to do anything to stop that. He was suddenly intensely jealous of her. She just had to sit tight for twenty-four hours. He wasn’t even going to be alive then. He wanted to scream. To smash up the whole room to pieces. To scream at his fucking wife until he was blue in the face… …

No. That wasn’t what he wanted. What he wanted was to live. To see his son grow up; , to enjoy the world; , to be happy. He looked at his watch. 5.30 p.m. If all went according to the kidnappers’ plans, he had less than eighteen hours left on earth. The thought tore him to shreds.

‘Tim? What are you going to do?’

The mirror on the opposite wall showed perfectly the defeat that was written all over his face. ‘I don’t know,’ he said.

‘You’ve got to do what it takes to free Max. You will, won’t you?’ She paused. ‘We can’t let him die.’

Tim sighed, the sound filling the room. ‘I won’t let our son down, okay?’

Diane ran a hand roughly over her face. ‘I can’t believe this is happening.’

‘Neither can I. But it is.’

The room fell silent. The only sound was the ticking of the antique railway station clock on the wall.

Ticking away the seconds until his death sentence was carried out.

And then an idea struck Tim. A possible way out. Slim at best. But surely better than walking, lemming-like, to his death?

He shook his head wearily. ‘I need to go to the toilet.’ He looked round the room, wondering where they’d hidden the camera. ‘I said I need to go to the toilet, okay?’ he said more loudly, so anyone watching remotely could hear him.

‘You’re not going to call the police, are you?’ said Diane, frowning at him.

‘Of course I’m not. I just need to go, that’s all.’

There was something in Diane’s expression that made it clear she didn’t trust him entirely, and he wondered if whoever was watching could see it as well. He wanted to yell at her to stop looking at him like that, but resisted the urge. In the end, she was an innocent party too, and it was essential that he kept calm and used his time to work on the plan already formulating in his head.

He left the room without another word and walked through the hallway to the downstairs toilet, the silence ringing harshly in his ears. Even before he stepped inside, locking the door behind him, he had doubts about what he was going to do. It was all well and good trying to save his own life, but if he messed up, his son would die, and he’d have to live with that for the rest of his life. He tried to think what it would be like without Max. He’d never wanted children. It had been Diane who’d pushed for them, shortly after her thirty-third birthday, when her biological clock began ticking in earnest. He’d always feared that a child would get between them, and his fears had been confirmed when Max had finally been born three years later after two miscarriages. Emotionally exhausted by the whole process, he and Diane had grown further and further apart, and now they were little more than strangers living under the same roof. But even after all that, Tim loved his son more than life itself. He couldn’t let him die. He wouldn’t.

He looked round, wondering if they’d planted a camera in here. If they had, then he was taking a huge risk with Max’s life. But he was fairly certain they hadn’t. They might have been well organized, but he very much doubted if they’d put a camera in every room – still less that they were being constantly monitored.

Lifting the toilet lid, he pulled down his trousers and sat down. At the same time, he slipped his spare mobile out of his trouser pocket and bent over so it was hidden from view, just in case he was being watched. Taking a deep breath, he scrolled through the contacts folder, praying he’d stored the one he was looking for, feeling a twinge of excitement when he saw that he had.

It was a long shot. Jesus, it was a long shot, but it was potentially the only way he could save his own life. He wrote a very quick text, pressed Send and stood up, replacing the mobile as casually as possible as he flushed the toilet, praying he hadn’t just sentenced his son to death.

Everyone except his old man called him Scope. They always had. He liked the name. Thought it suited him, being simple and to the point. Once upon a time, he’d been a career soldier with a wife and daughter. Now he was a drifter, doing odd jobs here and there, and his wife and daughter were dead. For the last eight months he’d been renting a cottage on the western edge of the New Forest, working as a painter and decorator. Life had been quiet, and if he was honest with himself, pretty dull.

And now it looked like all that was about to change. He put down the axe he’d been using to chop wood and stared at the phone, reading the text for a second, then third, time. It was from his former brother-in-law, Tim Horton, and it read like something out of a thriller.

Am in terrible trouble. Max kidnapped. Being blackmailed. No police. Please come to house. Park fifty metres away out of sight then text me on 07627 533901. Don’t come in. They have cameras. They are watching. This is no joke. Please help!!

Tim was a high-flying, public-school-educated politician who’d married Scope’s wife Michelle’s sister, Diane, and the two men had never seen eye to eye. Scope had always felt – with plenty of justification – that Tim had looked down on him, even though he’d always tried to hide it behind his smooth, easy patter. But the facts spoke for themselves. Since Michelle’s funeral, close to five years ago now, Scope had only seen Diane and Max once and hadn’t clapped eyes on Tim at all.

But now it seemed seemed they were in serious trouble, although it was odd that someone would target the Hortons for a kidnapping. They had money, but not huge amounts, and there were plenty of people out there richer. Scope knew, though, that the text wasn’t going to be a practical joke. Tim wasn’t that kind of guy, and anyone who’d pinched his phone wouldn’t know his relationship to Scope anyway. This was genuine.

Even so, he didn’t owe Tim anything. Right now he owed nothing to anyone. He didn’t have to get involved.

But he was always going to. He remembered Max as a very young child. He’d been driving past the village where the Hortons lived once a long time back, and had stopped by to visit on the off chance they were in. He’d always liked Diane. She was something of a social climber, but her heart was in the right place and she could be fun when the mood took her. She’d been there with Max when he’d turned up, and he’d stopped for a coffee and played with the boy. Max had been a sweet-looking kid – barely two years old then – with a very loud laugh.

Scope liked kids. He hated to think of them suffering, and Max Horton was still his nephew.

Replacing the phone in his pocket, he headed back towards the house, knowing he had a long drive ahead and not much time to do it in.

The silence in the room was so intense Tim Horton felt as if he could almost touch it. Diane had been crying silently for what seemed like a long while, but she’d stopped now. Neither of them had left the room since Tim had returned from the toilet close to three hours back, and they’d hardly spoken. As far as he was concerned, there was very little to say. Tim had been thinking about dying. He’d never really appreciated how lucky he’d been in life: a beautiful family, plenty of money, and a career that held what he’d always assumed was real power. Now he stood to lose all of it, and there was nothing he – Tim Horton, handsome, confident government minister – could do about it. He was totally reliant on someone else – a man he didn’t even like, and who probably liked him even less – to save his life, and if he failed, then tomorrow would be the last day that he ever saw. It was an utterly terrifying prospect, one he still found almost impossible to comprehend, and he told himself that if he somehow got through this, he’d change his life, devote more time to others, including his beloved son, and try to repair the relationship with Diane.

On the table his phone vibrated. He’d received a text. Leaning over as nonchalantly as possible, he checked the screen.

It was Scope, saying that he was parked down the road close to the pub.

‘Who is it?’ asked Diane, watching him with something akin to suspicion in her eyes, as if she didn’t trust him to go through with this.

‘Jenny,’ he said, trying to keep his expression as neutral as possible. ‘She wants to know if I need to see her before the pre-hearing meeting tomorrow.’ He texted ‘Out in ten’ and replaced the phone on the table, conscious that he could be getting a call at any moment from the kidnapper, demanding that he show the text to the camera, which would effectively destroy everything.

He sat back in the chair, praying he hadn’t overplayed his hand.

Diane was still staring at him.

‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘I know this must be so hard for you, I really do …’

‘Do you? Do you have any idea what it’s like to know you’re going to die in the next 24 hours and there’s nothing – absolutely fucking nothing – that you can do about it?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I do. Because if anything happens to Max – if he dies – then that’s it for me. I’ll die too, because there is no way on earth I want to live without him.’

Tim sighed. ‘I know, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to raise my voice. I know we’re both under pressure.’

‘Please don’t do anything stupid, Tim. Like involve the police or anything.’

‘Of course I won’t,’ he lied. ‘Max is my son too. I want him to live just as much as you do. Even if it costs me… …’ His words trailed off. He couldn’t bring himself to finish them aloud.

Diane leaned across the table and squeezed his hand. Her touch felt warm and their eyes met. ‘I love you,’ she said, fighting to keep her voice steady. ‘I know I haven’t said that for a long time, but, you know, whatever happens, it’s true.’

‘I love you too.’ But he wondered how she’d feel if she knew he was betraying her.

The room fell silent again and Tim waited, counting down the minutes, still clutching his wife’s hand, wondering what kind of inhuman bastard could sit watching this scene remotely and not feel some kind of pity for the people involved.

After what felt like a long enough interval, he stood up. ‘I need the toilet again. I feel sick.’

Diane looked at him suspiciously once more, and Tim wondered what the hell she thought she was playing at, doing the kidnapper’s job for him.

‘Wouldn’t you feel sick if you knew you were going to die?’ he demanded, before stalking out of the room.

The moment he was inside the toilet, he opened the window into the back garden and squeezed himself through it, toppling hands first onto the patio. As he got to his feet and started across the garden, keeping as close to the fence as possible, he knew he was taking a huge risk, but gambled that, though the kidnappers almost certainly had sensors on the doors, they wouldn’t have put them on the toilet window. Of course, he could have been wrong, but there was nothing he could do about that now. He climbed over the back fence and jogged down the road in the direction of the pub, feeling a strange sense of liberation.

Scope sat in darkness in the car, wondering what the hell he was getting himself involved in. He was concerned at the risk he was taking, but intrigued too. He missed the danger of his old, long-ago life in the army, and the possibility of some kind of action – in whatever form it took – was a welcome prospect after months of painting walls and brooding.

He’d kept his eye out driving past the Horton house in case there’d been anyone else hanging about watching the place, but hadn’t seen anything out of the ordinary, so had parked under a tree next to an imposing Edwardian property further down the road. Wedged behind the driver’s seat was his overnight bag. As well as clothes, it contained among other things a prosthetic make-up kit, lock picks, a knife and a number of miniature tracking devices – tools of a past trade that until tonight he didn’t think anyone else knew about. Now he wasn’t so sure.