I rather wished she wouldn’t talk about killing hostages.
But she was right.
Why would anyone go to all the bother of kidnapping Amanda, only to then let her go again?
The answer, of course, was to intimidate me into fixing races.
So what would be the value in killing her this time?
None at all.
If whoever was responsible wanted me to fix another race, then killing my only daughter would not be the sensible thing to do. Taking her for a second time must be just further intimidation to make me comply with his demands.
Either he must let her go again or keep her alive as his hostage while demanding that I fix more races. He would surely work out that to kill her would be totally counterproductive to his cause, not only because then I certainly wouldn’t agree to any of his future demands, but also because it would bring the full force of the police down on his head.
But would he work it out in time? Before he carried through with his threat?
‘Are you going to call your wife now?’ Toni asked. ‘To tell her?’
‘No,’ I said decisively. ‘I’m not. Not tonight. It would send her into a blind panic, and there is nothing she could do anyway, not from Harrogate.’
‘Harrogate?’
‘Where her parents live. It’s in Yorkshire.’
She looked blank.
‘About two hundred miles north.’
‘So she’s not about to turn up here tonight?’
‘Very unlikely,’ I said. ‘But Amanda might.’
‘Do you really think so?’
Did I?
Keeping a hostage safe, well, and unfound for days on end was not an easy task, especially if the kidnapper was intent on keeping his identity a secret from his victim. The necessary interactions between the two, to provide food, water, and sanitation, were fraught with difficulty and danger.
From a kidnapper’s point of view, the ideal scenario was to receive a large ransom payment quickly, preferably before any such interactions were needed. But in this case, the ransom would likely be a demand for me to fix a horse race, and that would require considerable time to set up, maybe as long as five or six days, if I had to enter a horse for a specific contest for the fix.
In the meantime, I would demand proof that Amanda was still alive — perhaps a WhatsApp video of her holding up the front page of that day’s Times newspaper — something that would likely place the kidnapper in even greater danger of her discovering his identity.
The obvious scenario, at least to me, was that Squeaky Voice would do what he had done before — release her and give me another opportunity to acquiesce to his demands, and threaten that the next time I didn’t ... it would be body bag time.
He would probably say that there would be no third chance. Except that the same arguments would still apply. If I didn’t do what he wanted, would he actually kill Amanda, simply out of revenge? Or would he give up on me and find someone more compliant to terrorise?
So was it time for me to tell him to get stuffed and finally call his bluff?
That’s if it was a bluff.
Could I afford to take that risk?
There was nothing more I could do now anyway, short of driving aimlessly around South Oxfordshire searching for Amanda. I had called the police to tell them she was missing, but I had no means of making contact with Squeaky Voice.
I simply had to wait for him to call me.
Toni found some spaghetti in a kitchen cupboard, plus some pasta sauce in the fridge, and set about making us a late supper while I went upstairs to put the things back into James’s desk.
I put his middle drawer on the bed and put back into it all the stuff I had tipped out of it. Next I did the bottom drawer.
I put everything back just as I’d found it. I briefly flicked through the notebooks, but they were just full of equations and calculations, and a few lists, presumably something to do with his university maths course.
‘It’s ready,’ Toni called from downstairs.
‘Coming,’ I shouted back.
I went down and we both sat at the kitchen table, eating spaghetti and drinking the rest of the red wine.
‘So what now?’ Toni asked as she laid down her fork.
‘We wait. There’s nothing else we can do. I’ve told the police, but they said they won’t do anything until the morning at the earliest. If she has been kidnapped, I expect that there will be some sort of ransom demand.’
‘Why aren’t your cops taking it more seriously?’ she asked. ‘Back home, this would be a big deal.’
‘I suspect it’s because she was taken before and released unharmed. And they also seem to think that she might have gone missing on purpose.’
‘Did they also think that last time?’
‘I fear they did,’ I said. ‘But I don’t know why. She was injected with ketamine and went missing from her own birthday party, when all her friends were here. She turned up three hours later, nine miles away, in a highly agitated state, and she couldn’t have walked that far in the high heels she was wearing. She could hardly stand up in them.’
‘So how come the cops thought she disappeared on purpose?’
‘Because she wasn’t raped, and there was no ransom demand.’
At least, I hadn’t told them of one.
‘But even so,’ Toni said, clearly quite angry on my behalf, ‘they should get a search party out now, looking for her.’
‘They don’t have the manpower to search for everyone. I was told by a policeman that a person goes missing in this country every ninety seconds.’
‘And he’s getting pretty fed up with it,’ she said, laughing at her own joke.
I smiled, just. It might have been funny under different circumstances.
‘Sorry,’ Toni said.
My phone rang loudly into the silence.
I looked down at it lying on the table. Georgina was the name on the screen.
I picked up the phone and walked out of the kitchen into the sitting room, leaving Toni alone at the kitchen table. I closed the doors so she couldn’t hear my conversation.
‘Hello,’ I said, answering.
‘I’ve been waiting for you to call me,’ Georgina said with a hint of irritation. ‘I’m going to bed now.’
‘Sorry. I fell asleep in front of the television. It was such a hot day at Ascot today. I’m totally exhausted.’
‘How are things at home?’ she asked.
What could I say? ‘Fine, except your daughter has been kidnapped again, and I’ve just been screwing an American blonde on the rug in the sitting room?’
‘All good,’ I said. ‘How’s your father?’
‘Remarkable, considering what he was like when I arrived. The new carers started today, and amazingly, he seemed to like them. He was even flirting with the girl.’
‘When are you coming home?’ I asked.
‘Are you missing me?’
‘Of course.’
‘I think I should be here for the carers tomorrow, and maybe on Saturday as well. Mum seems a little better and slightly more positive, but it’s hard for her, and I hate them being so far away. We’ve discussed about Dad going into a home, but Mum’s not very happy. I think it’s mostly because she doesn’t want to be left alone in this house. She says she’ll look after him for as long as she can. And the carers coming in every day will make a big difference.’
‘You stay there for as long as you need to,’ I said.
‘I’ll look up the trains for Sunday,’ Georgina said. ‘I’ll have to come home soon because I’m running out of my medication.’