‘I’ll give you the bloody painting!’ Harry blurted. ‘I’ve said I’ll give it to you, if you’ll just promise to leave my family alone and not hurt us. And give Tom the injection he needs. Do we have a deal?’
‘Fine,’ the American said. ‘We have a deal. You give me the original picture and we’re out of here.’
Harry hesitated. ‘OK, there’s a small issue.’
‘Uh huh?’ Kilgore said.
‘It’s not here, it’s in a storage depot for safe keeping, half an hour from here.’
The American made a play of studying his watch. ‘So, Mr Kipling, forty minutes to get there, a generous fifteen minutes to retrieve the picture, then forty minutes back. That’s a little under two hours before, I’m hoping I’m estimating correctly, your boy lapses into a coma that he may not come out from. Maybe you should get going?’
‘Right away,’ Harry said, his eyes darting to the doorway.
‘I think it might be a good idea if I and one of my colleagues came with you, no disrespect, but just to keep you honest, if you know what I’m saying?’
‘I’ll take you with me to get the painting if you give my son some more sugar right now. Get the glucagon kit from the fridge, it’s on a shelf in the right-hand door.’
‘Oh, I know where it is, thank you. And it stays there until I have the original painting.’
‘At least give him some more of the doughnut.’
The American shook his head, then said, coldly, ‘Mr Kipling, you are not in any position to negotiate. Listen up very carefully. Are you listening?’
Harry hesitated, then nodded.
‘Good, here’s the deal. I’ll give the boy a mouthful of doughnut now. We go get the painting and we bring it back here. Soon as you bring it into the house and I’ve verified it, he gets his jab of glucagon. Do we understand each other?’
Harry glared at him. ‘We understand each other.’
Kilgore walked out of the room. Moments later he returned holding a sealed opaque pack and held it up for Harry to see. It was the glucagon injection kit. ‘I’ll take this with us, let’s call it insurance, hey? Just to make sure we all get back safely.’
One of the heavies stepped behind Harry, freed his hands, then patted him down and removed his mobile phone from his pocket, laying it beside Freya’s on the coffee table.
86
Tuesday, 5 November
As he turned out of Mackie Crescent, steering the Volvo with shaking hands, and glancing in the mirror at the sinister masked faces of the two men on the rear seat, Harry subtly edged the speed up over the 30 mph limit, to 40 mph then 45 mph, hoping against hope he might get stopped by a police car.
The heavy in the back’s name was Ross or Russ, he had overheard in an unguarded moment from his captor-in-chief. Harry felt like he was in a nightmare, and to add to the feeling, the sky through the windscreen ahead of him was constantly lit up with flaring and exploding fireworks.
Fireworks of anger were exploding inside Harry. And frustration at his helplessness.
‘You’d better mind your speed,’ the American rebuked sharply.
‘Yes – sorry – I... I’m a little nervous.’
‘Yeah? Well your driving’s making me nervous. Stay within the goddamn limit. You don’t mind if I smoke?’ he said, lighting a cigarette.
‘I like the smell, I only quit recently myself,’ Harry said, slowing down, trying to appease the man. His brain was in turmoil, he kept thinking about anything he could do, but fear for Tom’s life and fear for Freya kept him driving obediently to the limit, as he turned onto the A27, then stuck to a regulation 70 mph all the way towards his destination.
Twenty minutes later, as he turned off the dual carriageway and threaded through the urban streets of Worthing, the seaside town to the west of Brighton, he suddenly saw a blaze of flashing blue lights ahead – and felt a flip of hope. Maybe it was a roadblock and they’d be stopped? A drink-driver check? Please God.
But his hope faded as he saw ahead a police car either side of a small, beat-up saloon; on the pavement, two officers, with another two standing by, were searching a scruffy youth held face-on to a brick wall.
Even so, this could be his chance, he thought – his last chance. Jam on the brakes and shout for help? The police would see these two in their balaclavas behind him and then what could his captors do?
‘Don’t even think about it, Harry,’ the American said calmly, as if reading his mind. ‘I’m not exaggerating about the amount of insulin I injected into your son, it’s more than enough to kill him if he doesn’t get enough sugar. I have a message on my WhatsApp that’s ready to go. If I press that send button on my phone, my associate there will simply stop giving your son a regular bite of a doughnut, sufficient to keep his sugar readings at the minimum of two. If you want to keep your son alive, just keep driving.’
Harry kept on driving. Anger and fear roiling inside him. Thinking all the time if there was anything, anything at all he could do to lash back at this bastard. To get his family out of this nightmare. But he felt all out of options.
He negotiated two roundabouts, drove a short distance along another dual carriageway, then braked sharply, turning left past two modern-looking orange and yellow pillars signed WEST TARRING INDUSTRIAL ESTATE. He drove through into a dark labyrinth of single- and two-storey industrial units, each shining grey and yellow in the Volvo’s headlights.
They passed a tyre company, a furniture restorer, a vegan milk depot and several further premises, before Harry made a right and brought the car to a halt in front of a tall steel gate, with equally tall mesh, topped with barbed wire on either side, and a warning sign that it was electrified and monitored by CCTV. Protruding slightly was a numeric keypad. A sign read SOUTHERN CONTROL SAFETY STORAGE.
Lowering his window, Harry reached out his arm and tapped in his code. Moments later the gate slid open, and he drove through into a courtyard, where massive, corrugated-steel hangar-type buildings stood to their right and left. ‘This is it,’ he announced, switching off the engine, unclipping his seat belt and opening the door. The dome light illuminated his two unwelcome passengers.
Turning to look at them, he asked, ‘Either of you coming with me? You’d probably better take your balaclavas off if you do – there are security guards monitoring the CCTV and they might think it a bit odd.’
‘We’re staying in the car, Mr Kipling,’ Kilgore said tersely. ‘You have exactly five minutes.’ He held up his phone and pointed at the blue arrow button on WhatsApp, then held the phone up closer, so Harry could read the chilling message.
Stop feeding the boy.
Kilgore pressed a button on his watch. ‘The countdown has started, Mr Kipling. And don’t believe for one moment that if you try to call for help that I won’t send this message.’
Harry hesitated for a fleeting second. He hadn’t done this before and had never timed it. ‘I... I don’t know if I can do it in five minutes.’
‘Well, that’s just cost you several valuable seconds,’ the American said in a calm voice of steel.
Harry gave him a quick look, then sprinted towards the right-hand gates. He entered the code with trembling fingers, 428106, hoping to hell he’d memorized it correctly.
An error message displayed on the screen: Two attempts left.
Shit, shit, shit. He pulled out his wallet and checked the code he kept in there. He realized in his panic that he’d reversed two numbers. He entered it again, with his fingers trembling wildly, this time, 428016.