Instead, he rose and nodded to her, expressionless. “I’d better go and check that our guests are still sitting uncomfortably. If you’ll excuse me?” he said with excruciating politeness. “Thank you for the tea, Mrs. Foxcroft.”
He walked out and, a few moments later, I heard the front door slam behind him.
My mother, as if only just realizing what she’d done, showed her distress in the flutter of a hand to her throat, the tremulous mouth and doe eyes.
I rose, too, unmoved by the tricks I’d seen her use too many times before. At least it was a sign she was almost back to normal.
“Pack some things,” I said, abrupt. “If we can’t bring my father to you, we’ll have to take you to him, and try to get to the bottom of this. Make sure you’ve got your passport.”
I gathered Sean’s and my empty crockery and took them to the sink to rinse out. When I was done, I turned back to find my mother had risen but not approached, as if she wasn’t sure of her reception if she got closer.
“Charlotte, I’m sorry,” she said, sounding convincingly wretched. “I didn’t mean—”
“No, you probably didn’t,” I said tiredly. “But just bear this in mind, Mother, before you’re so quick to condemn Sean. If he wasn’t the way he is—if we both weren’t, come to that—you’d still be stuck here listening to Don’s plans for a funfilled evening by the fire.”
“Okay, people, we’re faced with a bit of a dilemma,” I said cheerfully. “What do we do with you two?”
I glanced from a subdued Don to his sullen companion and smiled. They were both lying on their sides on the cold painted floor of the garage, well away from my father’s dark green Jaguar XK8 and the dust cover that hid my laid-up Fire-Blade, tucked away behind it.
Sean had bound them efficiently, so their wrists and ankles were bent back behind them and taped together. I’d been tied like that during Resistance to Interrogation exercises during Selection and I knew it was bloody uncomfortable for anything longer than a few minutes at a time. I reckoned they’d probably been like that now for more than an hour.
Sean had also added a nasty refinement. Several bands of the reinforced tape went from their feet and looped up round their necks, so if they relaxed they ran the risk of asphyxiating themselves. Blondie seemed to be coping with this better than Don, who had clearly chosen muscle bulk over flexibility and was starting to suffer for it.
He hadn’t been looking too good to start with. I don’t know what methods Sean had employed in his attempts to get information out of the pair of them, but Don’s skin had now taken on the color and texture of a melted candle.
Sean had also used Steri-Strips to put Blondie’s nose back together, and had affixed a dressing to the wound in her leg using more duct tape around her thigh, but I daresay he hadn’t been particularly gentle with any of it.
“You’re obviously aware that we can’t let you loose,” I said. “Just as you know we’re not going to turn you over to the police. So, what choices do we have?”
I crouched and made eye contact with Blondie. Of the two of them, she seemed to be the leader and I knew that if she folded Don would follow.
“From here, we’re about forty-five minutes from a place called Saddleworth Moor,” I said, still conversational. “Out in the Pennine hills. It’s very … isolated.” I let my voice harden. “During the 1960s, a couple called Ian Brady and Myra Hindley abducted a number of young children, raped and murdered them, then buried the bodies out on the moor. Some of those bodies,” I continued placidly, “have never been found.”
Sean’s timing was perfect. He walked in at that moment, having just raided my mother’s toolshed. In his right hand he held a garden spade. He let the steel blade drop to the concrete floor with a ringing clatter that made both of our prisoners flinch. His face wore a cold, featureless mask that offered no hint of mercy.
“We’re all set,” he said, leaning on the handle of the spade. “And we don’t have much time.”
I turned back, to see Blondie’s fearful gaze jump from Sean to me. Don closed his eyes briefly, as though he might have been praying.
“The alternative,” I said to them, “is that we take you up to a friend of mine, who will keep you incommunicado for a while—as long as it takes—and then release you unharmed. For that, we need some level of cooperation. It’s up to you.” I made a show of checking my watch. “You’ve got, oh, around three minutes to make up your minds.”
I rose, nodding curtly to Sean, and we walked out. I noted that he made sure to grate the spade on the ground with each stride, just to drive the point home.
We halted just outside the garage door, leaving it open slightly so we could keep a surreptitious eye on them.
“What exactly did you do to Don?” I asked quietly.
I shook my head as though he’d spoken out loud. “No, on second thoughts, don’t answer that. Will they cooperate?”
He shrugged. “I would, given that kind of a choice—and so chillingly delivered.” He tilted his head and regarded me with studious eyes, an almost mocking smile on his lips. “You play the psycho very well, Charlie.”
“Thank you—I think,” I said. “I learned from a master.”
At that moment, my mother came out of the front door and hurried across the gravel towards us. She saw the spade in Sean’s hands and her face blenched white.
“Oh, you
“No, we haven’t,” I said, moving forwards to meet her and registering the way Sean casually shifted to block her view into the garage. “We’ve given them some options, that’s all, and they’re talking them over.”
“Oh,” she repeated, more blankly this time. “Well, er, I’m just packing some things, but I’m not sure what to take. How cold is it in New York at the moment? And how long am I likely to be away? I have a lot of responsibilities that can’t just be dropped at the last minute, you know,” she added in a peevish tone that lasted until she asked, suddenly more forlorn, “And … what do I tell people?”
“Tell them your husband’s been taken ill,” I said, starting to run out of patience. “He’s a doctor, for heaven’s sake. Hospitals are full of sick people. Tell them he caught something. Or tell them he got knocked down by a bus crossing the road and broke his ankle.”
“But that’s simply not true.”
She gave me a hurt look and scurried back into the house without reply. I turned and found Sean watching me, expressionless.
“What?” I said, but he only shook his head and pushed the garage door open again.
As they heard our footsteps approaching, both Blondie and Don squirmed round to try and see us coming, as though that would somehow make a difference.
“Okay,” Sean said to them, his voice even and pleasant, but that of a stone-cold killer nevertheless. “Decision time. What’s it to be?”
They chose internment over interment. Of course they did. We folded the Shogun’s rear seats flat and slid them in like coffins into a hearse, on a sheet of folded heavy-duty plastic from the greenhouse. They lay flat on their backs, side by side. We secured their hands and feet with more duct tape so they posed no risk to us, and covered them with a picnic blanket my mother insisted on providing. She thought comfort—we thought concealment.
I made a phone call and got the promise of help I needed. Then Sean and I drove them north. About an hour and a half up the M6 motorway, over the high-level bridge at Thelwall, and into Lancashire. Back to my old stamping ground.
Aware of our audience, we didn’t talk much on the drive up. At one point Blondie’s muffled voice demanded
