CHAPTER 22
The night air is cooling quickly now, like somebody blowing on her hairline. The car is slow-creeping, some sort of electric kind, as quiet as a cat.
It is a few hundred yards away, then one hundred, then fifty. The windows are blacked-out, no number plates. Simone walks on jelly legs around to the boot of the car and demonstrably gets out the sports bag.
The car swings into the lay-by and stops, its engine still running.
A handful of seconds tick by, scattering like stray sand from an hourglass. Simone tilts her head, assessing the car and waiting quietly, obediently. She’s come too far to make a mistake now.
And then. A click in the night, and slowly a form emerges from the driver’s-side door.
And here he is: her daughter’s kidnapper.
Simone can make no guess as to his age. He’s all in black – slim but strong-looking, athletic rather than bulky – and has on a balaclava, leaving only his eyes and a small slit for his mouth. In his left hand is a gun, held confidently down at his side like a one-armed bandit. Her own is back in her shorts, uncomfortable and comforting all at once.
He walks several feet towards her and suddenly they are almost at touching distance. His eyes are blue, like hers, like Lucy’s, and their gazes lock, for just a beat saying nothing.
‘Bag,’ he says. His accent is American.
The gun becomes hot against her skin.
Evidently, her hesitation is not acceptable, because the kidnapper gestures, frustrated, with the gun, and says again, ‘Bag!’
She hurriedly swings it over to him. He takes it wordlessly.
And that’s when she sees it. The zip is open. It must be faulty, opening for the second time like that. She closed it. She definitely did. She stares at it and she sees she’s right: the teeth aren’t meeting. The zip is broken.
He opens it with one hand, roughly, without noticing; this is routine to him. ‘Stay there!’ he shouts at her, gesturing with the gun, even though she wasn’t moving.
He throws the bag on to the roof of his car and begins to pull out and stack the blocks deftly, quickly, the way somebody would count poker chips or banknotes. He peels off one of the stickers, parts the brown paper. Simone is unable to look away, fascinated. Underneath is cling film, and he reaches into the pocket of his dark trousers and takes out a penknife, making a slit. He pushes a finger in. It comes out with the tip bright white in the night. He rubs it between finger and thumb, looking closely. He seems to be satisfied, then touches it to his gums, throws his head back, and says, ‘Oh,’ in some kind of pleasure.
Simone desperately wants to run away, to leave this horrible spectacle, but she can’t.
Quality checked, he begins to count. After several seconds, he turns to Simone, and his eyes look different. ‘Not enough here,’ he says simply.
‘What?’
‘It was six kilograms. Not five. You were told to collect it all.’
Simone goes hot. She meets his eyes, panicked. ‘I’vebrought everything that was there,’ she tells him. ‘I picked up the bag and brought it here.’
‘Instructions were six. This is five.’
‘There were only five there,’ she says, and as she tells him this, she realizes with a crushing sensation what has happened. The bag zip. Something must have fallen when she was running from the sirens, or in the coach. Or anywhere.
‘Where’s the extra kilogram?’ he says, advancing towards her. An infinitesimal movement of his hand, and now his finger is on the trigger, maybe consciously, maybe not. ‘Where the fuck’s the extra kilo?’ he screams, coming right up to her, putting one sinewy, strong hand on her left shoulder.
‘I don’t know! I brought everything,’ she cries.
‘I don’t do deals with people who take a kilo for themselves.’
‘No.No. I think it fell from the bag – I’m so sorry, I can –’
‘No drugs, no exchange,’ he says simply, his head cocked.
‘I can pay the difference,’ she says, though she has no idea if this is true.
‘No deal for people who fucking steal from me!’ he shouts, still so close to her that she can smell his breath: stale, a tang of alcohol underneath it. ‘Don’t you think this is a supply chain? That I have somebody I have to account to for the loss?’
