You fucking Paki.
Yeah, sure, they said that, but only to keep him scared.
We’re going to cut your head off and show it on the web.
But what they meant was: unless your uncle pays the ransom.
Hassan had seen enough movies to know what this meant; the opportunities the police would have to follow the money; the helicopter surveillance. The low-key tracking, followed by a burst of action: shouting and flashing lights. And then the cellar door would open, and a torch-beam light the way down the stairs …
He thought: No. Give up. That’s not going to happen.
And then thought: But what’s the harm in thinking it? How else should he pass the time while waiting for the axe to fall?
And even as these thoughts fought like butterflies in his crowded head, something thumped on the ceiling above him, and voices cried out in anger or surprise—was that violence he heard? He thought it was violence. A brief outburst ending with another thump, while in his head new pictures painted themselves—
A SWAT team had come crashing in
Armed police had stormed the house
His uncle, the soldier, had tracked him down
Any of the above …
And Hassan allowed himself to hope.
Traffic was light, mostly taxis and night-buses. London was a twenty-four-hour city, but only if you counted the things nobody wanted to do, like find a way home in the middle of the night, or head out for a cleaning job in the pitch-dark cold of the morning. Watching through the window, River was trying to get his head round what Lamb had told them before they’d piled into separate cars: that there were three kidnappers. That one was a friendly, but it was anybody’s guess which, or how he’d react.
‘Are they armed?’
‘I’m guessing they’ve got an edged weapon of some sort. They’d look bloody stupid trying to take the kid’s head off with a gherkin.’
‘So why us?’ River asked. ‘Why not a SWAT team? Why not the achievers?’
Lamb didn’t answer.
Through the passenger window River saw a figure curled in a shop doorway under a pyramid of cardboard, but it was gone already; not even a memory. River refocused on his own reflection. His hair was shaggy, and a day’s worth of beard graced his chin. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been to a barber’s. He supposed they’d have shaved Sid’s head first thing. Her head must seem tiny without her hair. She’d look like a Hollywood alien.
His reflection dissolved, and came back when he blinked.
It was all part of the same thing. Hobden, Moody, Hassan Ahmed, Sid being shot—it was all part of somebody else’s game, whose pieces seemed to have fallen into place for Lamb. It had been Lady Di he’d gone out to meet. He hadn’t said so, but who else could it have been? River himself hadn’t laid eyes on Diana Taverner since spending two days tailing her, all those months ago. But Lamb, slow horse or not, had middle-of-the-night parleys with her …
They passed a stationer’s, its familiar logo lit in blue and white, and a connection he’d fumbled for earlier was made.
‘It’s money, isn’t it?’ he said.
‘What is?’
‘In that envelope. The one Moody took from your office. It’s money. It’s your flight fund.’
Lamb raised an eyebrow. ‘Flight fund? Haven’t heard that in a while.’
‘But that’s what it is.’
Lamb said, ‘Oh, right. Your grandfather. That’s where you got it from.’
He nodded to himself, as if that were a problem solved.
And he was right, of course; that’s where River had heard it. Every joe needs a flight fund, the O.B. had said. Couple of grand, couple of hundred, however much it takes. In the straight world, they’d call it fuck-you money. Dammit, I shouldn’t have said that. Don’t tell your grandmother.
River could still remember the thrill that had gone through a twelve-year-old boy, hearing that. Not because of the f-word, but because his grandfather could say Don’t tell your grandmother, and trust him not to do so. It gave them a secret. It made them joes together.
A flight fund was what you needed when you lived on the edge, and might slip off any moment. Something to feather your fall. To give you the means to walk away.
‘Yes,’ Lamb said, surprising River. ‘It’s a flight fund.’
‘Right.’
‘Not a fortune, if you’re thinking your ship’s come in.’
‘I wasn’t.’
‘Fifteen hundred, a passport, and a key to a box.’
‘Switzerland?’
‘Fuck you Switzerland. A bank in a two-donkey French town, four hours’ drive from Paris.’
‘Four hours,’ River repeated.
‘Why am I telling you this?’
‘So you’ll have an excuse to kill me?’
‘That’s probably it.’
Lamb didn’t look any different, was still a soft fat rude bastard, still dressed like he’d been thrown through a charity shop window, but Jesus, River thought—Lamb was a joe. He kept a flight fund pinned behind his noticeboard, which he plastered with money-off coupons and out-of-date special offer ads nobody ever saw beyond. Mis-direction. It was what a joe did, or so the O.B. had always told River: There’s always someone watching. Make sure they’re not seeing what they think they are.
Crossing the Thames, River saw a world of tall glass buildings. They were mostly in darkness, towers of unilluminated windows casting back pinpricks of light they’d found on the streets below or the skies above, but here and there a pane would be starkly lit, and through some there were figures visible, crouched over desks or just standing in rooms, their attention owned by the unknowable. There was always something going on. And it wasn’t always possible, from the outside, to understand what it was.
Of course, hope is what gets you in the end.
Worse than the noise had been the silence that followed.
Hassan was holding his breath, as if he were hiding, rather than being hidden. It half-occurred to him that if these bastards knew how English he was, how wary of drawing attention to himself, they’d forget the colour of his skin and embrace him as one of their own … But no, these bastards, they’d never forget his skin. Hassan Ahmed hoped that the SWAT team, the armed police, his uncle the soldier, showed these bastards no mercy, now they’d tracked them down.
Larry, Moe and Curly.
Curly, Larry and Moe.
Hassan didn’t give a toss who they were either, all right?
But it wasn’t his uncle who burst into the cellar a minute later.
‘You.’
They meant him.
‘On your fucking feet.’
But Hassan couldn’t get up. Gravity had sealed him to the chair. So they had to help him—grab him. Drag him. Rough-handle him on to shaky legs and pull him through the door and up the stairs. Hassan wasn’t sure how much noise he made during this. Perhaps he was praying. Because you always found your gods again. For however long he’d been in that cellar, he’d been begging Allah for release; making all the bargains always made in this situation. Perhaps if Hassan had believed in Him, He wouldn’t have abandoned Hassan to the fate of dying for being one of His believers. But Hassan wasn’t allowed much time to meditate upon this. Mostly he was being manhandled up a narrow flight of stairs, at the top of which waited whatever was going to happen to him next.