Worse than Death (Anna Southwood Mysteries) (7 page)

“Hey, wait on!” Sandy had gone to the door and shouted after them. “What about the money? We get paid the usual way?”

“No.” Birkett’s voice came back sharp and startled. “I’m dealing with it myself. It’s all arranged — don’t worry.”

Sandy and Balaclava exchanged a look of surprise and something like disgust, but they wouldn’t say anything in front of me. Sandy went to the cupboards and opened them, then looked in the fridge.

“Well, it’s well-stocked,” he said cheerfully. “We won’t starve. Even fags in the cupboard there. Cards, too. Play patience?”

I shook my head.

“There’s books in the other room,” he said. “You can have a couple if you like, then we might lock you in your room for a while.”

They let me go to the bathroom again, Balaclava standing guard this time outside the half-open door, and Sandy brought a small pile of paperbacks up the stairs to a back bedroom. He saw me looking at the fly-screen on the window and shook a finger at me.

“Don’t even think of it,” he said. “We’ll be right down there, watching.” He pointed to the wide deck below. I shrugged. It was pointless anyway — I didn’t know how far we were from other people, there were no houses in sight, and there was no car. The bush looked menacing and impenetrable.

After they’d locked me in I cried for a while, mainly from frustration, then I must have slept. When I woke up it was dark and I could hear rock music thumping from downstairs. I turned on the bedside light and looked at the books. A Raymond Chandler I’d read years before,
What
Bird
Is
That
? and the two volumes of
War
and
Peace
. I’d always meant to get round to reading it — this seemed like an excellent opportunity.

Chapter 7

The next few days passed fairly well, all things considered, like an enforced stay at a rest-home more than anything. I was allowed downstairs for meals — mostly out of cans — and to sit reading on the veranda in the morning. The boys kept away from me, playing cards at the other end of the deck and not eating at the same time I did. They were taking no chances of any relationship developing other than that of kidnappers and kidnapper. It was all strictly professional, but they were polite and helpful, if not friendly, moving a portable television into my bedroom, where I was locked in after lunch and again after the evening meal. When I needed to go to the loo I banged on the door — there was almost always one of them in earshot — and they stood patiently in the passage outside the open bathroom when I had my shower.

I read a fair bit of
War
and
Peace
and watched a lot of daytime television. The news said nothing about my disappearance. Occasionally I heard the phone ringing downstairs and wondered if Birkett’s scheme was proceeding, whatever it was. I’d deliberately stopped worrying about all the things I didn’t know after the first night. It was too frightening and I didn’t have enough information to prevent my mind skittering about in terrified wild surmise. I just crossed my fingers that Lorna was safe, and that she’d do whatever they wanted her to do. I hoped someone was feeding Toby.

Then, on the third night, I began to get some glimmering of what it might be about. I was half watching a current affairs program and half reading, when suddenly Lorna came on to the screen. I’d missed the preamble and I craned forward now and turned the sound up. The interviewer was looking baffled.

“But, Ms Temples,” he said, “that’s not what Sunday’s article led us to believe.”

Lorna looked at him with dislike and said flatly, “I was wrong. The evidence did not lead in the direction I thought.”

“Well… but…” he began to bluster, then caught himself. The look he gave Lorna reminded me of Toby, about to pounce on a moth. “So, are we to understand that several months of intensive investigation have left you with no leads at all? Come now, that’s hardly believable, is it? When you agreed to be interviewed on this program I understood that you were willing to go further than your newspaper articles. In fact,” he said triumphantly to the camera, “we were distinctly under the impression that Ms Temples had vital information which she was not allowed to print in the
Sunday
National
. This was the impression we got from the last issue of her own paper.” He waved a copy of the
Rag
and the camera swung to Lorna, who was bursting with rage, but still not biting.

“Ms Temples… Lorna,” the interviewer became persuasive. “We can only conclude that you have been told by someone higher up to hold your tongue. Are we to assume that the next issue of the
Gutter
Rag
will not be going on with these revelations?” He was smirking at the headline of the paper, which he had now thrust virtually into Lorna’s face. Its front page had the words ‘HOLMES’ and ‘COVER-UP’ clearly printed in large type.

Lorna said stiffly, not looking at him, “I will be dropping the story for the time being. That is all I have to say.”

“Never mind,” he said, shaking his head at the perfidy of rival press lords, “Let’s go on with what we
do
know so far.” The screen switched to newspaper headlines, some with Lorna’s by-line. NOT ONLY DRUGS… read one of them; and WHAT ABOUT THE BIG BOYS? IS HOLMES THE PATSY? The voice-over began explaining the Holmes case, with reference to the fact that Lorna’s articles in the
National
had caused something of a furore in the rest of the press. Holmes had been moving drugs in a way that involved a major car-stealing and insurance fraud operation as well. He’d gone to prison for a hefty term, but he’d refused to implicate anyone else. I remembered that Paul Whitehouse had been involved in his defence at the beginning — he’d picked up the case in the cells for the bail application, before Holmes’s friends had realised what was happening. Then they’d got their own lawyer to him pretty quickly.

I lost track of what the program was saying about it all — my mind was racing as I tried to make the connections. Why would Birkett be concerned about the Holmes case? That was over, and even if Birkett was involved, Holmes hadn’t talked. There must be something else, whatever Lorna had intended to say on this program but was now clamming up about. She must have more evidence, implicating others. The big guys? Was Birkett one of them?

“Oh God,” I groaned aloud as I realised why Lorna had reneged on what she was going to say. They were using me as the bargaining counter. Well, perhaps they’d let me go now. She’d done her bit. I turned off the television and lay back on the bed. I worried at it until tiredness took over, and I fell into an uneasy, feverish sleep.

I woke with the fading memory of nightmares, and the impression of a half-heard car. I knocked on the door for my bathroom visit, but no one came. I banged again, harder, and waited. Still no one came. I went to the window and looked outside. I
had
heard a car. Rex’s Mercedes was half-slewed off the track, as if he’d pulled up in a hurry, and, peering sideways through the glass, I could see him on the deck talking, apparently angrily, with Sandy and Balaclava. There was a lot of arm waving from Rex, and what looked like defensive body language from the other two. “The cavalry, I presume,” I murmured. But I really urgently wanted to piss so I rapped on the window and shouted. Rex raised his hand in acknowledgement and headed inside.

“Thanks,” I said with fervour, when he opened my door, and I ran past his surprised face down the hall to the bathroom. I shut the door — no one hovered outside.

After a long, luxurious shower I went downstairs to the kitchen. Sandy and Balaclava were nowhere to be seen, but Rex was busying himself with coffee.

“Are you okay?” he said when I came in. “They didn’t muck you about?”

“No,” I said. “Just frightened the shit out of me. Where do you come in? Not that I’m not grateful,” I added hastily. “That is, if you
have
come to rescue me?”

He grinned. “You could put it like that,” he said. “Just leave it that a few people acted without proper authorisation. It’s all sorted out now. Don’t blame the boys — they thought they were doing what I wanted.”

As if on cue, Sandy and Balaclava came in, looking sheepish. They hovered near the door, watching Rex. He poured two cups of coffee and put one in front of me, then jerked his head at the kettle. Sandy moved towards it with a look of relief and made coffee for them.

There were millions of questions I wanted to ask, but I could see from the blank faces turned towards me that I wouldn’t get any answers. They were back to being strong and silent.

“Okay,” Rex said, finally. “Let’s go. Everything in order?” The boys nodded and we went out to the car.

“You’ll have to be blindfolded again,” Sandy said. “Sorry.”

The trip back was a re-run of the trip out, except that they didn’t drop me at home. They left me in Glebe and Rex gave me taxi fare.

“Best forget about it,” he said to me. “It’ll be taken care of, I promise. Just get on with finding my daughter. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said. I’d nearly forgotten all about Beth Channing. I was feeling shaky again now that it was over and I could only think of getting into my own bedroom, finding some knickers that hadn’t been hand-washed every night, and a T-shirt that didn’t smell like old socks.

*

But when I arrived at Balmain, the front door opened before I’d finished paying off the taxi-driver. Graham came hurrying down the path with Evan Kingdom close behind him. Toby rushed out between their legs then sat, suddenly, on the top step and began washing himself, pretending he didn’t care that I was home.

“Are you all right?” Graham put his arm around me and I sagged against him as Evan hovered, looking as if he wanted to hug me too. I picked Toby up and gave him a squeeze. He made his hoarse excuse for a meow and I put him down. I realised there were tears running down my face.

“Come inside,” Evan said in a fatherly way. “You need a nice cuppa first, don’t you?”

“No,” I said, sniffing inelegantly. “I need a hot bath and some clean clothes. Where’s Lorna?”

“I rang and left a message as soon as we heard,” Graham said. “She’s coming over.”

“How did you hear? No, hang on — keep it all for when I come back down.” I ran up the stairs, leaving them standing helplessly in the foyer. I made the bath as hot as was bearable and poured in nearly a whole bottle of Badedas. I’d just sunk gratefully beneath the foam when Graham knocked and came in with a glass of champagne.

“Here,” he said. “Welcome home.” He went out again and I sipped at the drink while I let the tears keep running.

Half an hour later I walked into the office in fresh jeans and a pale green shirt. I felt cool and clean and a whole lot better. Evan had gone.

“He just came round to see that you were all right,” Graham said. “He says to ring if you need him. More champagne? Or coffee?”

“It’d better be coffee,” I said, “I haven’t eaten anything yet.”

“Ha!” Graham said triumphantly and produced shortbread biscuits with a steaming long black. I got my cigarettes from my shirt pocket and lit up. Graham gave me a pained look.

“Yeah, I’ve started again,” I said absently. “Just as well, too, it kept me from going spare.” I took a mouthful of coffee and leaned back on the sofa.

“Well…”

“So…”

We both started speaking together and laughed.

“You first,” Graham said politely. So I told him everything that had happened, from the phone call to Rex’s rescue operation, and what I’d guessed might be going on.

“Birkett again,” Graham said.

“Yes.” I swallowed biscuit and went on. “I can’t understand why he let me go. I mean why he didn’t kill me. He must realise that I’ll tell you and Lorna… We’ll all
know
it was him and his mates…”

“Perhaps he doesn’t care,” Graham said thoughtfully. “If he thinks Lorna’s already got the goods on him somehow through the Holmes case, then I suppose anything you could say would be the lesser evil. I mean, he just wanted to make sure no one would
act
on what they knew…”

“I suppose so,” I said. “But he can’t expect she’ll stay quiet forever. He’s still in danger.”

“She’s handed all her files over,” Graham said. “It was part of the deal.”

I sat for a moment, still trying to make sense of it, thinking of the strange tensions between Birkett and his henchmen.

“What if Birkett didn’t realise that Robinson, or whatever his real name is, was going to get the others in on the kidnapping? What if he thought Robinson was going to do it himself, and when he saw Sandy and Balaclava were involved he got cold feet? I’m pretty sure they work for Rex — Robinson too, but he and Birkett must have something going by themselves, apart from Rex.” As I spoke it was falling into place.

“Yes,” I went on. “He knew they’d tell Rex eventually, and Rex had already warned him off where I’m concerned. So that’s why he jumped at an excuse not to kill me.” I looked at Graham. “Now tell me what happened here. Why wasn’t I reported missing?”

“Well, I must have got in just after you were bundled off,” Graham said. “Evan phoned and said he had your message, but there was a typed note on my desk saying you’d gone out. Here.” He got up and brought me a sheet of paper from his desk. It read:

G.

Gone
out
.
Be
a
few
hours
.

A
.

“I don’t know how they got in to leave it,” he said. “The door was still locked when I got here.”

“I guess those guys are pretty expert at breaking and entering,” I said. “I suppose they were watching the house.”

“Yeah. So, I wasn’t worried, but I told Evan to come in anyway. Then a bit later Lorna appeared and told me to drop everything, that you’d been kidnapped.” They’d been very efficient. They’d rung Lorna and told her I was being held hostage against her spilling what she knew. They’d told her to drop the story in the
Gutter
Rag
and not to say anything on TV. Apparently the program’s flier the night before had said she was going to be on, and that’s what had got Birkett going. Also, I thought, my drunken phone call wouldn’t have helped. But I wasn’t going to tell Graham about that. They told her to still go on the program — her denials on-camera were her pledge that she’d drop the story.

“Yes, but why?” I said. “Why drag me into it in the first place?”

“Perhaps he thought we were working with Lorna…”

I stared at him. “Of course! That’s what he
must
have thought,” I said. “He must have somehow got the impression that we were doing some snooping for her.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps he saw me having lunch with her one day or something and checked us out. But Graham, it must be something like that. That’s why the threatening phone calls and the ferry wharf. It had nothing to do with Leonie Channing or Beth.” For some reason this made me feel better. It cleared Rex finally of any of the threats to me, so I could go on working for him. I wondered if I was beginning to develop a sneaking liking for the man, but brushed that aside.