Road Rage (26 page)

“It dehumanized them, you see. People are people because they speak and these two had become machines. They were science fiction creatures. Anyway, you don’t want the philosophy. I’ll tell you what happened next. I suppose they always carried handcuffs because they put a pair on Ryan and another pair on Kitty, who sobbed while they did it. Tattoo manhandled Roxane into the washroom and locked the door.

“That frightened me because I knew how she felt about enclosed spaces. But I thought that if I told them that, it would make things worse, not better. So I said nothing. Tattoo stayed with us while the Hermaphrodite went away and came back with hoods for the Struthers. The hoods were put on and the Struthers were taken away and that was the last I ever saw of them. It was at about half-past seven on the Wednesday evening.”

Burden interrupted the narrative once more. “You never saw them again?”

Dora shook her head, realized this movement would not be recorded, and said, “No, I never did.” She went on, “But I’ve no reason to think any harm came to them. I think they were just taken to somewhere Tattoo thought would be safer. Kitty was sobbing all the time they were being taken out of there.

“Ryan was more or less all right, just very shaken. Later on a terrific bruise came up on his stomach. He got himself up and said something about knowing better than to have tried that on. But I was extremely worried about Roxane. There was an awful silence from behind that door and I thought perhaps she’d fainted. I thought of trying to break it down. Have you ever tried to break a door down?”

They all had. All had succeeded, but it hadn’t been easy. It hadn’t been like on television where a shove and a kick will do it.

Wexford said, “Did you try?”

“Yes, because the silence didn’t go on. She started screaming and pounding on the door. It wasn’t like Kitty’s screaming, this was real phobic terror. I put my shoulder to the door and I kicked it. Maybe I’d have succeeded, but after a moment or two Rubber Face and Tattoo came in. They moved me out of the way, Rubber Face just lifted me and dumped me on my bed. Don’t look like that, Reg. I wasn’t hurt.

“They let Roxane out but not at once. It was nasty what happened. They looked at each other, those two—well, the heads in the masks turned, and I just had this feeling they knew and they, or one of them, were enjoying it. They’d discovered her fear of enclosed spaces and they were
pleased
. They stood there listening to her pounding on that door and her pleading.

“Eventually, they unlocked the door. She staggered out and fell on her bed, sobbing bitterly. It was awful, it really
was dreadful. But life in there had to go on. I hugged her and tried to comfort her.

“Then Rubber Face and Tattoo found my handbag and Kitty’s—Roxane didn’t have one, they don’t at that age—and took them with them and went away, I don’t know why, having left Ryan handcuffed. The handcuffs didn’t come off him till next morning and he was very uncomfortable and in pain.

“We just settled down the three of us to make the best of things. I picked up the food that wasn’t filthy or otherwise ruined, the pizzas were all right, and I washed the apples. I got them to sit down with me and eat as best they could and then we talked. We played a sort of game, each of us to tell a true story about a member of our families. It was dark, you see, they never brought the light bulbs back.

“Well, I started the ball rolling by telling a story and then Roxane told one about her aunt meeting Gershwin when she was a child. It was in New York. And Ryan told one about his father winning some county athletics championship. Still, you won’t want to know any of this. We all went to sleep. Even Roxane did, though she was in pain with her face. It was very swollen and black with bruises and a cut on her temple was bleeding. They were to take her away the next day, but I didn’t know that then.

“I was the only one who hadn’t been hurt in some way and that made me feel guilty. Ridiculous really, but I suppose people in my situation do feel guilt …”

DC Edward Hennessy went out to the car park just before four. His car happened to be parked alongside Chief Inspector Wexford’s. Between the two cars, on the tarmac, stood a dark brown fiber suitcase, with the initials
DMW on its side, and beside it two large full plastic carriers, one green, one yellow.

Hennessy didn’t touch any of it. He went back inside, knocked on the door of Wexford’s office, and told him. Dora Wexford was still there, taking a break from recording. She jumped up. “That has to be my case,” she said. “And it sounds like my parcels.”

She was right. The carriers contained her presents to Sheila, baby clothes, a shawl, a kimono for a nursing mother, two new novels, a flacon of perfume and one of body lotion. She identified the case as hers and watched while it was opened to reveal her undisturbed, carefully folded clothes.

On top of them was a sheet of paper, on which were printed the words of Sacred Globe’s next message: “No more delays, please. The media must be told at once. This is the first step in our negotiations. We are Sacred Globe, saving the world.”

T
he contents of the suitcase were, as far as she could tell, as Dora had packed them.

“This is like what they ask you at airports,” she joked. “ ‘Did you pack your case yourself? Has it been left unattended at any time?’ It’s yes to the first one and heaven only knows to the second.”

“I think I saw the car it came in,” Nicky Weaver told Wexford. “A white Mercedes. For some reason—God knows what guardian angel inspired me—I took down the number. It’s L570 LOO.”

“That’ll be the car they brought Dora home in. The L-something-five-seven car.”

“Cheeky bunch, aren’t they?” Burden sounded half-admiring. “Not your usual villains.”

“Let’s hope they’re too clever for their own good.”

“I don’t like it,” said Wexford, and when they looked at him inquiringly, “I don’t like their jokes and I don’t like it that our decision to lift the embargo coincides with their demand to lift it. It can’t be changed now, but it looks as if we’re complying with what they ask.”

Dora had been having a cup of tea with Karen Malahyde. She had at first seemed awestruck by the reappearance of her suitcase and parcels, almost as if it evinced supernatural powers on the part of Sacred Globe, and her husband recalled what she had said about science fiction
characters who were not quite human. He sat down opposite her and the recorder was started.

“Can we come to Thursday morning, Dora?”

“Well, I’m still on Wednesday night really. Something happened on Wednesday night. Two of them came in while we were asleep, or they thought we were asleep. Roxane and Ryan were and I pretended I was, I thought it was safer.

“I saw and heard the door open and two of them came in. I think it was Gloves and Tattoo, but I can’t be sure. They were in their usual hoods. That was when I shut my eyes, so I don’t know what they were there for, what they did, but they were wandering about in there for some minutes. Before they left they came and stood over us, checking we were asleep, I suppose. You know how you can always tell something like that, you can sense it.

“On Thursday morning,” Dora began. “Roxane’s face was dreadfully bruised and her left eye was quite closed up. I know it shouldn’t but it somehow made it worse, doing that to such a beautiful girl.

“Rubber Face and the Driver brought our breakfast. It was more white bread, dry bread, and a slice of some sort of tinned meat, the cheapest sort like Spam, and three packets of crisps. That must have been to sustain us through the day because again we got nothing else till the evening. Nothing to drink either but water from the tap.

“But they did come back for the tray. Roxane didn’t shout at them this time. She just started asking when they were going to let us go, what they wanted, how long this was going to go on. You have to understand that we didn’t know they called themselves Sacred Globe. We didn’t know they wanted the bypass stopped or their threats or anything. And Roxane desperately wanted to know. Of course neither of them answered. As I’ve said,
they never spoke. They never even seemed to hear, though it’s hard to tell a thing like that when someone’s face and head are covered up.

“In the middle of the afternoon Roxane began hammering on the door. Ryan had been very subdued after being thrown on the ground the evening before, and his stomach hurt him, but once she’d started he helped her. They banged on that door and kicked it and this went on for a good half hour.

“At last the door was opened and Rubber Face came in with Tattoo. I was very frightened, I don’t mind admitting it, because I thought they were going to beat Roxane up and maybe Ryan too. But nothing like that happened. Tattoo simply got hold of Roxane and pinned her arms behind her. She screamed and yelled but he took no notice. He handcuffed her like that with her hands behind her. Rubber Face manhandled Ryan out of the way and, when he tried to put up a bit of resistance, grabbed him and locked him in the washroom.

“They had a hood with them and they put it over Roxane’s head and took her away. They just took her away, I’ve no idea where or what happened to her. She spoke to me, she said, ‘Good-bye, Dora,’ through the hood, it was sort of muffled, but that’s what she said. I never saw her again.” Dora paused. She shrugged a little, shaking her head. “I never saw her again,” she repeated. “They may have put her with the Struthers, wherever they were, I just don’t know. All I can say is that about ten minutes afterwards for the first time I heard footsteps overhead, but that may have had no connection with where they put Roxane.”

“One set of footsteps or more than one?”

“I don’t know. More than one set, I think. Ryan was let out of the washroom after an hour. Tattoo and the
Driver came in and let him out and after that he and I were alone. We just sat there and played word games. I don’t think I’ve ever in my life so longed for something as I longed for a pad of paper and a pencil—or, come to that, Scrabble or Monopoly. After a time we just talked. He told me things I don’t think he’d ever told anyone before.

“His father had been killed in the Falklands War. They’d been married just three months, his father and mother. She was pregnant when the news came and he was born seven months later. The reason she was in the hospital was to have a cone biopsy—that’s the operation where they take off a bit of the cervix because of precancerous signs. It was the second she’d had. She was going to get married again and she wanted more children—she’s only thirty-six now—but it’s not likely she’ll have any after all that. I’m sorry, I don’t suppose you want to hear all this, it’s not relevant. It just seemed to me a heavy burden to lay on a boy of fourteen, confiding it all to him.

“Anyway, he confided in
me
, and that’s how we passed the evening. They were very late bringing our breakfast on Friday morning. I suppose they’d seen to the others first, I mean to Owen and Kitty and Roxane, wherever they were. It was Tattoo and Rubber Face. They brought us bread rolls, very stale, jam in those individual containers, and an apple each.

“Ryan and I had decided we’d ask them what had happened to Roxane, though we didn’t think we’d get an answer. We did ask and we didn’t get an answer. I think that was the longest day of my life. There was nothing to do. Ryan went completely silent, maybe he thought he’d said too much the evening before, maybe he was embarrassed. Whatever it was, he didn’t answer me when I spoke to him. He lay on his back on his bed staring at the
ceiling. For the first time I seriously began thinking we’d never be released, we’d go on like this for weeks and then we’d be killed.

“Gloves appeared at lunchtime. It was the first time we’d seen him since the Wednesday morning. I thought it was Rubber Face at first, but his build was much slighter than Rubber Face’s. Tattoo was with him. That was when I saw Gloves’s eyes. I said I only saw the eyes of one of them, didn’t I? Well, it was Gloves’s eyes.

“The holes in his hood must have been bigger than in those worn by the others. Anyway, I could see his eyes quite clearly. They were brown, a clear deep brown. He came close to me for a moment, peered at me as if he was trying to—well, verify something about me, and that’s when I saw his eyes. But it’s not much help, is it? I suppose half the population has brown eyes.

“It was that evening they let me go. I’ve told you all about that. Oh, they fed us first if that’s of any interest. Tinned spaghetti in tomato sauce, cold of course, bread, more jam. Tattoo and the Hermaphrodite brought it. I was preparing for another night in there when they came in and took me out. Ryan was left there alone. As I’ve said, I’ve no idea what happened to the others.”

Wexford got up as Barry Vine put his head around the door and asked if he could have a word.

“It’s about food, sir,” he said when they were outside. “And it’s all pretty negative. You remember the nonlactic soy milk at the Framhurst Teashop?”

“Of course I do.”

“I don’t know why, but I got it into my head that if that place was the only outlet for the stuff in the south of England … Anyway, forget it, because you can buy it everywhere. You can buy it in supermarkets. Thanks to Sunday opening, I’ve done a pretty thorough check on
that. You can buy it at the Crescent in Kingsmarkham and every one of their other branches too. Nationwide.”

“Another lead bites the dust,” said Wexford.

In the Chief Constable’s house outside Myfleet, in the Chief Constable’s living room, Wexford sat eating pistachio nuts and drinking a single malt. Donaldson had driven him there, would drive him back, and was at this moment sitting in the car eating a ham sandwich and drinking a can of Lilt. No one had
time
for proper meals anymore.

Wexford was there to talk about the release of the hostage story to the media. In the morning. Tomorrow morning. But they had agreed on how it should be done, how limited it should be and how free, the hour of release and the defensive measures they would take. And now Montague Ryder wanted to talk about Dora. He had listened to the tapes, all of them, and had heard the last one twice.