Simone is so scared she can’t think straight, but some wise part of her brain is still running her eyes over his features, trying to get as many identifying factors as possible. Nondescript clothes. Slim legs. Trousers that rustle slightly, some sort of waterproof fabric. Blue eyes, but that’s it. Simone should never have dealt directly with this man. He is mad. He is a criminal. He is a kidnapper. He could be a killer. What has she done?
He walks several paces away.
The windows of his car are totally opaque. She wonders now if she’s making eye contact with somebody in there whoshe can’t herself see. She peers at the window, the sensation eerie. Is she looking at another criminal? At Lucy?
‘No drugs, no deal,’ he says again, heading back to the driver’s side. And Simone’s chest is ablaze with panic.
‘But you said –’
‘No drugs, no deal.’
‘I got the bag. I took exactly what was there,’ she gabbles. ‘Surely you can – verify that with someone? Why would I take something?’
‘For yourself.’
‘I took drugs across the border to get her back!’ Simone shouts. ‘Why would I steal? I don’t want drugs. I want her.’
‘I was expecting six kilograms. My instructions are to sell on six kilograms,’ he says, his voice as hard as steel. ‘I can’t make a loss.’ And then he points the gun upwards and fires a bullet into the night with a crack so loud it is like fireworks. Simone is momentarily stunned, then ducks, hands over her head, braced, but nothing happens. And then he turns to her and smiles wolfishly, straight, pointy teeth, the noise still echoing around the desert and the mountains like thunder.
Then he speaks, as though nothing has happened: ‘Deal’s over. Time’s up.’
‘I’ll pay – I’ll pay for whatever is missing,’ she pleads desperately. ‘Street value, whatever it takes. I’ll do another run.’
‘We don’t deal with criminals,’ he says, and, somewhere, Lucy is absolutely gasping at this irony.
And that’s when it happens. As though the conceptualization of her daughter’s personality has brought her into being.
A tap. Simone’s eyes go towards it immediately, scanning urgently. Where is that …? Another tap.
It’s coming from the rear window above the boot. It is blacked-out, whatever it is unseen, but unmistakable in the quiet, tense night.
It must be Lucy. It must. She’s alive.
‘No deal,’ the man says again, turning away fully. If he heard it, he isn’t showing it. And then he motions as if he is about to get back into the driver’s seat, and the taps continue. Insistent and true. And in some dark recess of Simone’s mind, she thinks of the lobsters tapping on the undersides of lids, desperate to survive. And her daughter is very likely in that boot and this man is very likely about to drive off with her because of some fucking drugs war, and then she will be gone again, lost, and it is these thoughts that spring Simone into an action that maybe she’s been headed for this entire time.
The man has his back to her, his hand on the door handle, and for a few seconds everything seems to stutter, like the globe stops orbiting, then restarts again.
The taps become an insistent thump, the deadened noise of a fist against toughened glass, and the man goes completely still.
Then he wrenches the door open, keys in his hand, and he’s going to leave with her.
Simone is no longer merely a person, a woman. She is only a mother. She is only a single decision. The man morphs, too, his slim back merely a target.
Another tap on the boot. Her daughter. Everything is in fine detail, the star-spangled sky, the fanning headlights of his car, the desert and the kidnapper’s silhouetted form and her, a mother with a gun.
She bought the gun. She came prepared to do this.
She reaches behind her back, into her shorts. Her hand connects with the gun like fitting into a glove. The contours of the metal are more familiar than they ought to be, like this moment has been invented for her, made just for her.
The man stoops to get into the car, one hand on the roof, then notices her, and moves around to the front. She starts offtowards him. The level of detail she can see is granular, microscopic. She can hear each individual cicada. See the tyre tracks in the gravel, interlaced lattices. See those pinprick lights in the distance. The eddies and swirls of dust. The all-in-black man. Hear the tap-tap on the window in the boot.
Simone aims the gun, both hands around its base, cocks it the way Kyle showed her, then takes a breath, the slowest and fastest of her life, the breath before absolutely everything –everything– changes.
Warm trigger. Hands steady. Tap-tap-tap. A crack.
She thinks for a moment that she missed, but then his gloved hand goes to his back, as if swatting a fly, and he begins to stagger, the bullet hole invisible but devastating. And, it turns out, the ransom wasn’t cash. It wasn’t even drugs. It was a life. His. For Lucy’s.
CHAPTER 23
