The windows of the house were dark. Maybe they were just dirty, or maybe curtains had been drawn inside. They couldn’t tell. Rusty garden tools, worn down by use, leaned up against the wall, and the painted woodwork was flaking everywhere. The place seemed dead, uninhabited. It wasn’t what they had expected.
“Come on,” Isabel said, and strode up to the main door. She knocked hard and fast. Then she stepped to one side and hammered her knuckles against the window of the porch. There was no response.
“Holy Mother of God. If they’re inside, they might be trying to answer,” said Rachel, suddenly breaking out of her trance. And then she snatched up a hoe with a broken shaft that lay on the cobbles at the base of the wall and swung it resolutely against the pane.
It was obvious to Isabel that being practical was an important part of Rachel’s everyday life. She flipped the hoe onto her shoulder and unlatched the window. Everything about her now showed that she was ready to put the tool to use against the kidnapper if he should turn out to be inside with her children. Ready to demonstrate to him that he would be wise to give a great deal of consideration indeed to his next move.
Isabel kept close behind her as they moved through the house. Apart from four or five gas cylinders lined up in a row in the hall and a few pieces of furniture that seemed almost strategically positioned in front of the gaps in the curtains to make the place seem as if it might be inhabited, the ground floor contained absolutely nothing at all. A layer of dust on the floors and other horizontal surfaces, but otherwise there was nothing. No newspapers, no leaflets, no plates or utensils, bed linen, or empty packaging. Not even toilet paper.
No one lived here, and no one was meant to.
They found the stairs leading to the first floor and ascended with cautious, measured steps.
Upstairs, the walls were clad with plasterboard, papered in all sorts of patterns and colors, a confusion of incompatible styles and a distinct lack of financial means. Wafer-thin partition walls divided the space into three rooms containing only one piece of furniture: a flaking green wardrobe with its door half open.
The soft light of afternoon brightened the room as Isabel drew back the curtains. She looked in the wardrobe and gasped.
He had been here. She recognized the clothes on the hangers from when he had been staying with her. The suede jacket, the gray Wranglers, and the shirts from Esprit and Morgan. Certainly not the kind of clothing one would expect to see in a place like this.
Rachel gasped, and Isabel knew why. The smell of his aftershave alone was enough to make anyone feel sick.
She took out one of the shirts and examined it quickly. “This hasn’t been washed, so now we’ve got his DNA,” she said, pointing to a hair on the collar, the wrong length and color to be her own.
“Come on, we’ll take some of this with us,” she continued. “It’s not likely, but there might be something in one of the pockets.”
They gathered a handful of items together and Isabel looked out at the barn across the yard. She hadn’t noticed the tire marks in the gravel before, but from up here they were clearly visible. Two compressed tracks in front of the barn, that looked very, very recent.
She drew the curtains.
They left the shards of glass where they were in the porch, closed the door behind them, and glanced around, finding nothing untoward in the garden, the field, or the trees. Then they turned their attention to the padlock that hung from the barn door.
Isabel gestured toward the hoe that Rachel still carried over her shoulder, and Rachel nodded. It took less than five seconds to break the lock.
Both of them gasped as they pulled open the door.
In the barn in front of them stood the van. A light-blue Peugeot Partner.
At Isabel’s side, Rachel quietly began to pray. “Oh, please don’t let my children be dead inside. Please, Mother of God. Don’t let them be dead inside, please…”
Isabel was in no doubt. The predator had flown with his prey. She grasped the handle and opened the back doors. He hadn’t even gone to the trouble of locking the van, so certain was he that he was safe here.
She put her hand on the hood. It was still warm. Very warm, in fact.
And then she went back out into the yard and stared through the trees toward the road where Rachel had been sick. Either he had gone that way, or else down to the fjord. In any case, he couldn’t be far away.
But they were too late.
Rachel began to shake. The emotional turmoil she had struggled to keep inside on their long drive, the anguish that could not be expressed in words, the pain that had changed her expression and her posture, erupted now in one single scream that sent the pigeons aloft from the roof to seek refuge among the trees with a sudden beating of wings. And when finally the sound had been exhausted, snot ran from her nose, and the corners of her mouth were white with spit. She had realized that the only straw they had to clutch at had snapped.
The kidnapper wasn’t here. Her children were gone. In spite of all her prayers.
Isabel nodded deliberately. This was terrible.
“Rachel, I’m sorry to have to say this, but I think I saw the car pass by while you were being sick,” she said hesitantly. “It was a Mercedes. A black Mercedes. There are thousands of them.”
They stood in silence for a while as the light of the sky dimmed.
What now?
“You mustn’t pay,” Isabel said finally. “You mustn’t allow him to dictate what’s going to happen next. We need to buy time.”
Rachel looked at Isabel as though she had just committed apostasy and had spat upon everything Rachel believed in and stood for. “Buy time? I don’t understand what you’re talking about, and I’m not sure I want to know.”
Rachel glanced at her watch. They were thinking the same thing.
In just a short time, Joshua would be getting on the train at Viborg with a duffel bag full of money, and that, as far as Rachel could see, was that. The ransom would be delivered and the children would be released. A million kroner was a lot of money, but they would manage. Isabel would not be allowed to throw a wrench in the works. All of Rachel’s body language made that abundantly clear.
Isabel gave a sigh. “Listen, Rachel. We’ve both met this man, and he’s the most terrifying person we’ve ever had the misfortune to encounter. Think of how he deceived us. Everything he said and did was a lie.” She reached out and took Rachel’s hands.
“Your faith and my naive infatuation were his instruments. He tricked us when we were at our most vulnerable. He manipulated our feelings, and we believed him. Do you understand? We believed him, and he lied to us, OK? You can’t deny that. Do you see what I’m getting at?”
She did, of course. She wasn’t stupid. But the last thing Rachel needed now was to break down or abandon herself to blind faith. Isabel could see that. And for that reason Rachel had to search the depths, the place of all instinct. She needed to think freely and embark upon a dreadful voyage of comprehension. And Isabel felt for her.
When Rachel opened her eyes again, it was plain that she now knew how close to the edge she stood. Her children might no longer be alive. That was where she was.
And then she breathed in deeply and gave Isabel’s hands a squeeze. She was prepared. “What do you think we should do?” she asked.
“We play along,” Isabel replied. “As soon as we see that strobe, we throw the bag from the train as instructed, only without the money. And when he retrieves it and looks inside, he’ll find items from the house here, proof that we’ve tracked him down.”
She bent down and picked up the padlock and clasp, weighing them in her hand.
“We’ll put these inside, and some of his clothes. And we’ll write a note telling him we’re on to him. That we know where he’s hiding out, we know what name he’s using, and that we’re keeping the place under observation. We’ll tell him we’re closing in on him and that it’s only a matter of time until we find him. He’ll get his money, but he needs to come up with a way for us to know for sure that we’ll get the children back. Until then, he gets nothing. We need to put the pressure on him, otherwise he’ll dictate everything.”