‘I can tell you one thing,’ he said, turning to Alex. ‘Whoever did nick the rose is going to be in for one hell of a surprise if it nicks them.’
Chapter Twenty-one
With a garden, there is hope.
Grace Firth
Kate had hoped – anticipated, in fact – that having signed the agreement she would have been set free by now. But there was still no sign of her abductors. They had been very careful not to show their faces in all the time she had been imprisoned.
Food and other necessities were passed through the narrowly opened, quickly closed door. This happened at staggered times, often while she slept. Mercifully, they had been considerate in providing her with books, magazines and other small treats. One evening she awoke to find a small box of Black Magic chocolates by the door. She spent most of the time reading, thinking about Alex and the house or fantasizing about what she would do when the nightmare was over.
Sometimes she tricked her mind into playing out imaginary scenarios – most cast in the future, when she would be back with Alex at The Parsonage, when this wretched nightmare would be a distant memory. She always emerged from these daydreams vowing to be more attentive, more understanding, more loving when things returned to normal. She was beginning to forget what normal was like. Or whether there really was such a state.
More and more her beloved garden played a major role in these fantasies. She pictured the roses starting to fade. By now most of the old varieties doubtlessly would have finished blooming. In their place asters, Japanese anemones, chrysanthemums and other autumnal flowers would take over. Hydrangeas, too. She remembered seeing those huge mop-headed shrubs in some of the photos Mrs Cooke had shown them. It was Kate’s plan to dry a lot of those when the blooms were almost spent.
She summoned a reproachful smile. Perhaps she should have listened to Alex when he had suggested destroying the blue rose. She recalled her apprehension and prophecies when they first found the rose, how it might adversely change their life, how it could imperil their marriage. Not even in her worst dreams had she envisioned anything like the present horror. While she tried hard not to dwell on her miserable situation, she could not avoid speculating on how it would play out.
She wondered how Asp was doing. Dear little Asp. She would forever cherish the memory of the day he came into their lives in Bath, over a year ago. It could easily have been yesterday. It was a Saturday, she remembered, and Alex had disappeared early that morning without waking her. When she got up and went down to the kitchen there was a note on the table:
Entering the kitchen, he was all smiles. ‘Here, Kate,’ he said, handing her the basket as if it were filled with new-laid eggs.
As she took it from him she thought she saw something move under the plaid cloth that concealed its contents. She gave Alex a quizzical look and slowly pulled the cloth aside.
Curled in a tight ball was a tiny puppy. As she gently caressed its velvety fur, it stretched, yawned, and started licking her finger. Then the tears started to roll slowly down her cheeks.
‘What do you think?’ Alex asked, grinning ear to ear. ‘It’s a boy, by the way.’
‘I don’t know what to say, Alex,’ she said, wiping her eyes. ‘He’s lovely. Does he have a name?’
‘Not yet.’
‘What made you–’
‘I thought a lot about what we discussed Wednesday evening, about selling the house and moving farther out. For some reason I couldn’t imagine us living in the country without a dog. I was going to wait for your birthday but I decided not to hold off. I saw the ad two days ago and decided to go for it.’ He smiled. ‘If you’re not sure about taking on a new responsibility, he comes with return privileges, by the way.’
‘Oh, no, Alex, he’s lovely. Let’s keep him.’
He took the basket from Kate, put it on the floor, and picked up the puppy, holding its wet pink nose up close to his. ‘We’ve got to think of a name for you, young feller,’ he said, gently lowering the puppy to the floor. They had watched it waddle unsteadily under the table where it proceeded to make a small puddle…
The quick creak of the door opening brought her back to the present. She turned just in time to see a small stack of magazines being placed on the floor. As quickly as it had opened, the door closed again, and she heard the bolt slide into place. She hoped that the selection was better than the last time. Most of them had been hunting, fishing and hotrod magazines.
She had thought long and hard about her abductors. Who were they? The only outsiders she could think of who knew about the rose were the American and Tanaka. Could it possibly be one of them? What did it matter, anyway?
She wondered if Alex had called the police. She knew that was very unlikely. Whoever had taken her would have found ways to dissuade Alex from doing so. She preferred not to think about it. She knew only too well that threatening bodily harm to the victim was the method most often used. It was very doubtful now that the police were going to come to her rescue. And, short of his somehow recovering Sapphire, she had come to the inescapable truth that Alex was powerless to help. He had signed the agreement, after all. In any case, he had no way of knowing where she was. Neither did she for that matter. It was impossible to imagine what must be going through his mind.
Thinking back to the blue rose, she recalled the cuttings Vicky had taken, but couldn’t quite figure out their role in the equation. Surely the people trying to get their hands on the rose knew all about horticulture and wouldn’t accept cuttings without the rose itself. She also knew enough about propagation from cuttings to know that the resulting plants ran true to form. Grown on their own roots, they would produce flowers identical to the parent. But this was no ordinary rose. It was a mutant. And who was to say that the cuttings would produce blue roses? In any case, it would be quite some time before the cuttings produced blossoms of any kind.
She had concluded by now that her only hope of escape rested with herself. And up to a couple of days ago, that eventuality had seemed remote. She now knew that these men were not amateurs. They were serious and thorough. They had rendered the farmhouse escape-proof and her room as secure as a prison cell. But two days ago she had discovered something they’d overlooked. It presented a slender chance of escape.
The muted sounds of screeching tyres and gunfire from the television downstairs filtered into the room, disturbing her train of thought. Not that she minded. The noise meant that she could safely get back to the job at hand. Her captors’ reluctance to enter her room worked in her favour. Had they chosen to examine her minuscule bathroom they would undoubtedly have noticed that two-thirds of the wood moulding had been removed from the tiny fixed window above the toilet that served no function other than to provide light. She could only conclude that they’d somehow overlooked the window in their effort to make the room secure – the curtain was, after all, similar in colour to the wallpaper. There was one small problem however – she was not quite sure whether it was big enough for her to wriggle through. It was going to be close.
With just a little more scraping, Kate would be able to pop it out.
In the beamed living room of the farmhouse, her two abductors were in shirtsleeves. Billy, the taller and younger, was stretched out on the overstuffed sofa reading a paperback. His sallow face was pockmarked, suggesting a poor diet and lax habits. Marcus – balding and dressed all in black – stood by the window, talking on a cordless phone. His speech, though American, hinted of European origins.
‘No. She’s fine,’ said Marcus. ‘Sleeps and reads around the clock.’ He looked up to the ceiling, eyeing the network of hairline cracks that spidered across the yellowing plaster like an aerial road map. ‘Of course we’re
