That evening Malcolm treated them all to a curry in the local Indian restaurant, rather than face Glenys’s cooking again.
When they got back, they put Freddie to bed in Glenys’s old work-room, and retired early.
About two o’clock in the morning they were woken by a scream.
“Freddie!” yelled Angela at the top of her voice, and leapt out of bed.
Malcolm could hardly keep up with Angela as she flew downstairs to the work-room. They flung open the door to the work-room and switched on the light.
There they stood.
Anton Molotov had one hand over Freddie’s mouth and was using the other to try to restrain him.
Anton had planned to use the mace spray, but he hadn’t checked it before setting off, and, when he’d pulled it out, he’d found that it was still in its plastic shrink-wrap.
Anton had cursed in Russian.
That’s when Freddie had screamed. Anton had abandoned the mace canister and simply grabbed the child.
The three adults stood there frozen for a few seconds. Only Freddie kept on struggling.
Now, at this moment, something strange happened to Malcolm.
He had spent a lifetime avoiding personal danger and confrontation. He seldom got cross (except when he was reading History Now!). He’d always regarded himself as an easy-going sort of chap, but there was something about seeing his son struggling in the arms of a gangster, in the middle of the night, that tapped into a deep well of anger buried inside him. The anger came gushing up like an oil spill.
He flung himself at the stranger, without thinking what he was going to do. He found he had grabbed the man by his head, and his thumbs were going into his eyes. The man screamed, as he staggered back against a tall wardrobe. Freddie leapt free. The door of the wardrobe splintered, such was the violence of the attack. The wardrobe itself tottered back against the wall, upsetting the vast pile of objects that were stacked on top of it.
Amongst these objects was an old-fashioned Singer sewing machine. It dated from the 1920s, when things were still made out of first-class materials. The machine itself was made out of cast iron and it was screwed onto a heavy wooden base. It was a triumph of solid workmanship, and, when it fell, it struck Anton Molotov right on the back of his head.
In his surprise, Malcolm let go of him. Anton gave a sort of grunt and sank to his knees. But Malcolm’s deep well of anger had by no means run dry, and he leapt onto the man’s chest and, grabbing him round the neck, banged his head on the floor, again and again, until Angela ran forward and pulled her husband off.
They looked at the intruder.
Anton lay on the floor, not moving at all.
“Oh my God!” whispered Angela. “You’ve killed him!”
Malcolm was coming to his senses. The fury was spent, but he found he was trembling so much that he couldn’t move.
Angela knelt over the man’s body and felt him.
“He’s still breathing,” she said, in a tone of voice halfway between relief and regret.
“Rope!” whispered Malcolm, and he grabbed a length of cord from a pile that had fallen with all the other things that were stacked on top of the wardrobe.
In a few minutes, Anton was trussed up like a joint of meat from the butchers. He was just starting to come to.
Freddie was clinging to his father, too astonished to even cry.
At that moment Glenys appeared.
“What on earth’s going on?” she asked.
Chapter Thirteen
When Grigori Koslov read the note his first reaction was cold, white fury. His second reaction was panic.
Eva watched her husband read the note with interest. She had handed it to him, having already read it herself. She smiled as she saw the waves of emotion passing through him.
She thought: I can read him like a book! No! Like a barometer!
She watched the storms of panic give way to fairer weather, as a glint of resolve entered his eyes.
The note had read: ‘We have your man, Anton Molotov. We will only release him, when we hear that you have withdrawn the planning application for numbers 26 and 27 Highgrove Park.’
And there was a photo of Anton tied up and looking very unhappy.
They had Anton! Boris Zolkin had kidnapped his son! Well Anton was virtually his son, wasn’t he? At that moment, it was as if a vast floodlight had suddenly been switched on. Grigori saw the world and himself clearly for the first time, and he knew, in that moment, that Anton Molotov was the only person in the whole world that he really cared about.
His wife read all this in his face, and she turned away.
If she, Eva, had been kidnapped, Grigori would have shrugged and gone on as usual. It hurt her to the quick to know that she was not as important to her husband as that… that oaf, Anton.
“Who do they think they are dealing with?” muttered Grigori. “Has Boris taken leave of his senses?”
“Perhaps it’s not Boris?” said his wife.
“Of course it is! Who else would try to stop my plans?”
Eva knew there was no point in arguing. Grigori had marked his enemy. No force on earth could stop him. Only death itself.
Chapter Fourteen
Trevor Williams was heart-broken after he heard he’d won the lottery. Not even Cynthia could cheer him up.
“God has really got it in for me!” he kept saying angrily, stabbing at his lobster.
“But it’s wonderful that you won!” said Cynthia, laying her hand on his arm.
“One digit! I ask you!” He glowered at Cynthia’s hand. “And I’d have scooped the lot! I can’t bear it!”
“But you won £20,000,” said Cynthia. “That’s not bad.”
“One digit!” repeated Trevor. “£3 million!”
There was a silence for some moments. Then Cynthia said, “You could buy a nice car with £20,000.”
“Huh!” replied Trevor. “I could buy a lot of nice cars for £3 million.”
Cynthia gave up after that, and they ate their meal in a gloomy silence, punctuated by Trevor’s groans and occasional murmurs of “three million” under his breath.
When he asked for the bill, the waiter returned with the manager. The two of them approached the table full of smiles. The manager bowed.
“Sir and madam, your meal this evening is on the house,” he said, hardly able to contain his pleasure in giving this information.
“What?” Trevor’s eyes narrowed. There was something fishy about this.
“You are our 10,000th customer, and we wish you to celebrate the fact with us! Congratulations!”
The waiter produced a bottle of champagne.
“On the house, sir and madam, of course!” said the manager, as the waiter let the cork hit the ceiling and everybody in the restaurant applauded.
As they sipped their champagne, Trevor was furious. Cynthia tried to comfort him, but it was no use. They had become the talk of the other tables.
“I hate being used for publicity like this!” he said. “I’m going to the bathroom.”
As he got up he pulled his handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose noisily. Just to show that he accepted the free meal and the champagne under protest. As he hurried off, a scrap of paper fell out of his pocket.
Cynthia picked it up. It was torn from an exercise book and it had some words written on it in capital letters. Cynthia read ‘DROP THE OPPOSITION OR ELSE’.