Obviously they wanted him on the chair, facing Ferrant. He managed to shoulder Syd off and sit on it.
“Now then,” he said. “What’s the drill?”
“We’ll take it ve-ry nice and slow,” said Ferrant and Ricky thought he’d been wanting to get the phrase off his chest, appropriate or not, as the situation developed. He repeated it: “Ni-ce and slow.”
“If you want me to write you’ll have to untruss me, won’t you?” Ricky pointed out.
“I’m giving the orders in this scene, mate, do you mind?” said Ferrant. He nodded again to Syd, who moved behind Ricky but did not release him.
Ricky had pins and needles in his forearms. It was difficult to move them. His upper arms, still pinioned, had gone numb. Ferrant raised the gun slightly.
“And we won’t try any funny business, will we?” he said. “We’ll listen carefully and do what we’re told like a good boy. Right?”
He waited for an answer and getting none began to lay down the law.
He said Ricky was to write a message in his own words and if he tried anything on he’d have to start again. He was to say that he was being held hostage and the price of his release was absolute inactivity on the part of the police until Ferrant and Syd had gone.
“Say,” Ferrant ordered, “that if they start anything you’ll be fixed. For keeps.”
That was to be the message.
How many strata of thought are there at any given moment in a human brain? In Ricky’s there was a kind of lethargy, a profound unbelief in the situation, a sense of nonreality, as if, in an approaching moment, he would find himself elsewhere and unmolested. With this there was a rising dry terror and an awareness of the necessity to think clearly about the immediate threat. And, overall, a desolate longing for his father.
“Suppose I won’t write it,” he said. “What about that?”
“Something not very nice about that. Something we don’t want to do.”
“If you mean you’ll shoot me you must be out of your mind. Where would that get you?” Ricky asked, forcing himself (and it cost him an enormous effort) to take hold of what he supposed must be reality. “Don’t be silly,” he said. “What do you want? To do a bolt because you’re up to your eyebrows in trouble? The hostage ploy’s exploded, you ought to know that. They’ll call your bluff. You’re not going to shoot me.”
Syd Jones mumbled, “You ought to know we mean business. What about yesterday? What about—”
“Shut up,” said Ferrant.
“All right,” said Ricky. “Yesterday. What about it? A footling attempt to do me in and a dead failure at that.”
To his own surprise he suddenly lost his temper with Syd. “You’ve been a bloody fool all along,” he shouted. “You thought I was on to whatever your game is with drugs, didn’t you? It wouldn’t have entered my head if you hadn’t made such an ass of yourself. You thought I sent you to see my parents because my father’s a cop. I sent you out of bloody kindness. You thought I was spying on you and tailed you over to Saint Pierre. You were dead wrong all along the line and did yourself a lot of harm. Now, God save the mark, you’re trying to play at kidnappers. You fool, Syd. If you shot me, here, it’d be the end of you. What do you think my father’d do about that one? He’d hunt you both down with the police of two nations to help him. You don’t mean business. Ferrant’s making a monkey of you and you’re too bloody dumb or too bloody doped to see it. Call yourself a painter. You’re a dirty little drug-runner’s sidekick and a failure at that.”
Syd hit him across the mouth. His upper lip banged against his teeth. Tears ran down his face. He lashed out with his foot. Syd fell backwards and sat on the floor. Ricky saw through his tears that Syd had the jackknife in his hand.
Ferrant, in command of a stream of whispered indecencies, rose and was frightening. He came around the table and winded Ricky with a savage jab under the ribs. Ricky doubled up in his chair and through the pain felt them lash his ankles together. Ferrant took his shoulders and jerked him upright. He began to hit him methodically with hard, openhanded slaps on his bruised face. “This is the worst thing that has ever happened to me,” Ricky thought.
Now Ferrant had the knife. He forced Ricky’s head back by the hair and held the point to his throat.
“Now,” whispered Ferrant, “who’s talking about who means business? Another squeal out of you, squire, and you’ll be gagged. And listen. Any more naughty stuff and you’ll end up with a slit windpipe at the bottom of the earth bog behind this shack. Your father won’t find you down there in a hurry and when he does he won’t fancy what he sees. Filth,” said Ferrant, using the French equivalent. He shook Ricky by the hair of his head and slapped his face again.
Ricky wondered afterward if this treatment had for a moment or two actually served to clear rather than fuddle his wits and even to extend his field of observation. Whether this was so or not, it was a fact that he now became aware beyond the circle of light cast by the single lamp, of suitcases that were vaguely familiar. Now he recognized them, ultrasmart pieces of luggage (“Très snob — presque cad” — who had said that?) suspended from Ferrant’s gloved hands as he walked down the street to the jetty in the early hours of the morning.
He saw, blearily, the familiar paint box lying open on the table with a litter of tubes and an open carton beside it. He even saw that one tube had been opened at the bottom and was gaping.
“They’re cleaning up,” he thought. And then: “They’re cooking up a getaway with the stuff. Tonight. They saw me watching the Pad, and they saw me up by the pine grove, and they hauled me in. Now they don’t know what to do with me. They’re improvising.”
Ferrant thrust his face at him. “That’s for a start,” he said. “How about it? You’ll write this message? Yes?”
Ricky tried to speak but found that his tongue was out of order and his upper lip bled on the inside and wouldn’t move. He made ungainly noises. Syd said: “Christ, you’ve croaked him.”
Ricky made an enormous effort. “Won’t work,” he hoped he’d said. Ferrant listened with exaggerated attention.
“What’s that? Won’t work? Oh, it’ll work, don’t worry,” he said. “Know how? You’re going down to the pier with us, see? And if your papa and his bloody fuzz start anything, you’ll croak.” He touched Ricky’s throat with the point of the knife. “See? Feel that? Now, get to it. Tell him.”
They released his right arm and strapped the left to the chair. Ferrant pushed the drawing paper toward him and tried to shove the pencil into his tingling hand. “Go on,” he said. “Go on. Take it! Take it.”
Ricky flexed his fingers and clenched and unclenched his hand. He felt horribly sick. Ferrant’s voice receded into the distance and was replaced by a thrumming sound. Something hard pressed against his forehead. It was the table. “But I haven’t passed out,” he thought. “Not quite.”
Syd Jones was saying: “No, Gil, don’t. Hell, Gil, not now. Not yet. Look, Gil, why don’t we gag him and tie him up and leave him? Why don’t we finish packing the stuff and stay quiet till it’s time and just leave him?”
“Do I have to go over it again? Look. So he doesn’t turn up. So his old man’s asking for him. Marie reckons he’s suspicious. They’ll be watching, don’t you worry. All right. So we leave him here and we walk straight into it. But if we’ve got him between us and look like we mean business, they won’t do a bloody thing. They can’t. We’ll take him in the dinghy as far as the boat and tip him overboard. By the time they’ve fished him out, we’re beyond the heads and on our way.”