15

The 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.

“She’s done very well, Reg, superlatively well. She’s an observant woman. But yet …”

I do not like “but yet,” reflected Wexford, quoting someone or other. Cleopatra, he thought. He said quickly, “I know. There’s a lot there and at the same time there isn’t much.” But could you have done as well? Could I? In a misogynistic way, normally quite foreign to him, he thought how most women he knew would have collapsed under Dora’s ordeal, caved in, been stricken dumb. “They were clever, sir,” he said. “Clever and cocky. They must have been to take the risk of letting her go.”

“Yes. Odd that, wasn’t it? We still think it was because they found out who she was?”

Wexford nodded, but dubiously. The MacAllan bottle was raised along with the Chief Constable’s eyebrows and he was tempted but he said no. He could have gone on drinking all evening, but what was the point? He had to keep sensible tonight and be alert tomorrow.

“You know what I’m thinking, Reg?”

“I think so, sir.”

“Hypnosis. Would she consent?”

It was a method, newly fashionable, of extracting information and observations that lay buried, that would probably remain buried, unless unearthed by means other than the subject’s own volition and intent. Wexford hadn’t much experience of it. He knew or he had heard that it often worked. He felt a sudden violent revulsion against putting Dora through it. Why should she have to suffer this—this assault? This taking away of her free will, this indignity.

“I don’t know if she’ll consent,” he said. Surprisingly, he had no idea what her reaction would be. Horror or interest, recoil or even attraction? “I must tell you”—this was very hard to say, to express, to a man of so much higher rank and power, but he wouldn’t sleep if he didn’t say it—“I must tell you, sir, that I’m not prepared to persuade her.”

Montague Ryder laughed, but pleasantly. “Suppose I ask her?” he said. “Suppose I ask her tonight and then, if she agrees, we’ll get hold of the psychologist to hypnotize her tomorrow? Would you mind that?”

“No, I wouldn’t mind,” said Wexford.