‘So what. We don’t need her alive anymore,’ snarled Sidney.
Mike felled him with a weighty cuff around the right ear. ‘Say something like that again and I’ll take the girl and go straight to the cops. Now shut up and let me think. We can’t call in a doctor. Where’s the nearest chemist?’
‘Geelong. I’ll find one,’ offered Ann. ‘I can be back in an hour.’
‘Go,’ agreed Mike.
Candida heard the car start. She had learned two interesting things. One was that Mike did not really have his heart in this kidnapping and the other was that they were half an hour from Geelong. Candida’s mind was clear — she was used to asthma attacks. She was in pain but she could still hear. The other two obviously thought she could not.
‘Why did you choose this place, Sid?’asked Mike.
‘It’s nice and quiet. No one comes to Queenscliff in the winter. It’s near Geelong for the pick-up, and once we have the dough all we need to do is continue along the road to Adelaide.’
Candida wheezed loudly and both men looked at her. She grimaced with pain and turned away from them.
‘I wish Ann would get a move on. The poor little thing will be turning up her toes and then bang goes our chance of five thousand quid. And it’s murder, too. We’ll swing for it.’
‘You take your chances in this game,’ sneered Sid. Mike made a move towards him, then froze. Sid produced a pistol.
‘I didn’t know you had a gun,’ muttered Mike. ‘I thought we said no guns. They only get used. Put it away. I’m not going to hurt you. So what’s the plan for the pick-up?’
‘I’ll take the car and pick up the money. If we decide to loose the kid we just set her down in the main street. She can find plenty of help. We take off to Adelaide, then you give your share to your wife, and I take a boat. There’s still three warrants out for me in Victoria, and the cops would love to get their claws into me.’
‘Yair, I know. I never thought I’d have sunk so low as to work with a child-molester.’
‘You shouldn’t have married a moll who gets you into debt then. And who is dumb enough to borrow from Red Jack. He’ll break her arms and legs if she don’t get him the money.’
‘I know,’ said Mike gloomily. ‘But she likes pretty things — clothes and shoes — and I can’t afford to buy ’em for her.’
‘And you’re afraid that she’ll go off with someone who can if you don’t come up with the mazuma?’
Mike made the same angry, arrested movement. Candida coughed.
‘Here, you sit up, little girl,’ said Mike, shifting her clumsily to lean against his arm. ‘Would you like a drink?’
Candida shook her head. She did not have enough breath to drink. She tugged at the tight strings of the nightgown. Mike loosened them and fetched an old pillowcase to wipe her face. Candida hooked one arm around his neck and laid her hot cheek against the spider tattoo. Mike held her very carefully, as though she might break. He could feel the massive effort which each breath cost the child, and the strain and trembling in all her muscles.
‘Sid, go and get us a blanket,’ he ordered, disregarding the gun in Sid’s hand. Such was the power of Mike’s personality that Sid obeyed. Mike unlatched Candida long enough to wrap her closely and then resumed his place. She cried after him like a puppy if he moved. He had not known that children were like this; intense in their loves and hates, and very brave. Mike admired courage. He sat like that for a long time.
At last there was the sound of the car, and Ann slammed back into the house. She put a bottle of foul, red medicine on the table and rummaged for a glass in the unfamiliar kitchen.
‘I had to wake the chemist up,’ she said. ‘And he charged me three-and-six for the stuff. I hope it works. Here, girlie, drink this.’
She shoved the glass at Candida and the child turned her face to one side. Mike pushed Ann away.
‘Let me do it. Here you are, Candida. Here is the medicine, and soon you will have Mummy and Daddy and Bear and the lollies. .’
Candida drank the mixture. She was sure that they had given her double the usual dose. It tasted just as disgusting as usual. She leaned back on Mike as though he was a chair, and began to control her breathing. The adrenalin and ephedrine in the elixir had their effect. She paled to the whiteness of marble, and her lips and fingernails took on a bluish tinge. Mike thought that she looked like a tombstone angel. The wheeze faded and she accepted a drink of hot milk grudgingly prepared by Ann.
At last she could speak again. She snuggled against the big man and looked up at him accusingly.
‘You didn’t plan this very well, did you?’
CHAPTER EIGHT
Charles Perrault
It was time for Phryne to call in the debts that were owed her after the affair of the Cocaine Blues. Thus she found herself in an office the size of a cupboard sitting opposite Detective-inspector Robinson. He looked quite pleased to see her—‘Call me Jack, Miss Fisher, everyone does’—and offered her a cup of tea. Phryne had tasted police-station tea before, but accepted it anyway.
‘Well, Miss Fisher, what have you been up to? My colleague, Benton, has been quite terse about you.’
‘Oh, has he? Is the man stupid, or just very, very stubborn?’
‘I wouldn’t call him stupid. He’s a good detective. He just has theories, that’s all. And when he has a theory nothing will turn him off it. They even call him “Theory” around here. He’s not a bad chap, though we don’t see eye to eye about a lot of things, one of them being you. I told him to take you seriously or risk public embarrassment, but he wouldn’t listen. If you want a really biased opinion of old Theory, ask WPC Jones. He told her he didn’t approve of women in the police force when she went to get her Gallantry Medal from the chief commissioner.’
‘Gallantry Medal? I must congratulate her. What for?’
‘She was acting as bait for a rapist. We didn’t know that he had a knife — dirty, great cane-cutter. He got Jones down and was about to cut her throat when she rolled out from under him, stepped on his wrist and threw the weapon away; then she dropped on his chest, handcuffed his hands and feet together, and told him what she thought of him. Poor bloke. He was begging us to take him to a nice safe cell by the time the patrol caught up. A lovely job, and he was lucky that she is a restrained lady, or she might have cut his balls off, which was what she was threatening to do. Jones has not liked Theory Benton since. You can’t blame her. He’s an irritating man. Still, if you come up with overwhelming evidence I’m sure that you’ll give him a chance to make a manly confession, before you drop him into the soup.’
‘Of course, but I don’t think it will do the slightest good.’
Phryne sipped her tea, and placed the cup back on the desk. She produced the kidnap note in a larger envelope.
‘Is this what you want me to do?’ asked the detective-inspector resignedly. ‘I didn’t really think you had come just to see me and to drink police-station tea.’
‘Good, because I haven’t. When we were mutually involved in that cocaine affair, you were telling me that you could sometimes get fingerprints off paper. Could you have a go with this? And tell me whether they are on record?’
‘I expect that I could. What’s the paper?’
‘A ransom note. Another thing. A big black car, probably a Bentley, and I have most of the licence number. Can you tell me who owns it?’
‘How much of the number?’
‘The first two digits and the two letters.’
‘Yes, I can do that. But will I?’
‘If I ask you very nicely and throw in a solution to the McNaughton murder?’
‘We already have a solution to the McNaughton murder.’
‘The real solution — and a gang of kidnappers,’ offered Phryne. Robinson leaned forward.
‘Kidnapping is dangerous to investigate and usually ends in the victim getting killed. If you allow that to happen my name will be mud and I will personally prosecute you for interfering with the course of a police inquiry. You know that, eh?’
