‘Sunday will be fine. I’ll pick you up from the station.’
My phone beeped and showed that I had another incoming call, but there was no indication of who was trying to reach me.
‘I’ve got a call waiting,’ I said. ‘I’ll speak to you in the morning.’
‘Okay,’ Georgina replied. ‘Night, night.’
She hung up and, with a degree of trepidation, I touched the ‘Accept’ button on my phone’s screen.
‘I told you it was easy to take your daughter,’ said the squeaky voice.
Chapter 27
‘Where is she?’ I demanded.
‘Safe and well,’ replied Squeaky Voice.
‘Where is she?’ I repeated.
‘I’m giving you one last chance,’ he said, ignoring my question. ‘You will do as I tell you.’
‘No, I will not,’ I said adamantly. ‘You will release Amanda immediately, or I will go to the police and tell them all about these calls and give them your texts. I am sure they will be able to use them to trace you. They just do a triangulation from the mobile phone masts to your handset, and there you are.’
I wasn’t sure if that was true, but it sounded good — at least to me.
‘How much do you value your daughter’s life?’ asked the voice.
‘How much do you value your freedom?’ I asked him in reply. ‘The maximum sentence for kidnapping is life imprisonment. You’d probably get a whole life term if you also kill your hostage.’
I was still guessing, but he wasn’t to know.
‘You would die in prison. And kidnappers never get an easy time inside. You’d have to continually watch out in the showers, the cold showers, or you might get your balls slashed off. Or they’d keep you in solitary, year after year after every bloody year, for the rest of your rotten life. You’d go barking mad. Are you ready for all that?’
There was a slight pause.
‘You will not get another chance,’ he said.
‘Nor will you,’ I said straight back at him. ‘Release her right now or I’ll call the police and tell them everything.’
Well, almost everything.
‘She’s already released,’ said Squeaky Voice.
Did I detect a touch of contrition? Or was I imagining it?
‘So where is she?’ I asked.
He didn’t answer. He just hung up.
I ruefully smiled at myself in the mirror above the fireplace. I thought that had gone rather well. But had I really removed that particular monkey from my back, or would he still come back for more?
Now I had to make sure that Amanda had indeed been released and that she was unharmed.
As if on cue, my phone rang again, and Amanda appeared on the screen. I grabbed it, but it wasn’t her calling me.
‘She’s back,’ Darren said.
Thank God, I thought.
‘Let me speak to her,’ I said.
‘She doesn’t want to speak to you.’
‘I don’t care. Give her the bloody phone.’
There was a slight pause.
‘Dad?’ said Amanda, coming on the line.
‘Darling, are you all right?’ I asked in my most compassionate tone.
‘I’m fine,’ she said.
‘Where have you been?’ I asked.
‘I was on my way to the shop when someone came up behind me and put a sack over my head and shoulders. I was bundled into the back of a van. Then I’ve been driven around for ages.’
‘How did you get away?’
‘The van stopped and the back door was opened. I was told to get out, and then just left on the side of the road. The van drove away.’
‘Where were you dropped?’
‘In Didcot. Not far away. I walked back here.’
‘Did you see the man?’ I asked. ‘Or the van?’
‘I had the sack over me all the time. I was told not to remove it or he would hit me. I was so scared.’
‘It’s all right, darling. You’re safe now.’
Or moderately so, considering she was still with Darren.
‘Do you still have the sack?’ I asked.
‘No. After I heard the van drive off. I took it off. I left it there.’
‘What sort of sack was it?’
‘It was just a sack.’
‘But was it made of plastic, like a rubbish sack? Or was it hessian?’
‘Dad, I don’t know. Okay?’
But there were so many other questions I also wanted to ask her.
‘Can I come over and see you?’ I asked. ‘I could bring you home.’
But what will I do with Toni? I thought.
I looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. It was quarter past eleven. I knew that the last train from Didcot to Paddington wasn’t until after midnight. Toni would have to catch that and take a taxi back to her hotel.
‘No, Dad,’ Amanda said firmly. ‘I’m fine here. I want to go to bed now.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Quite sure.’
‘Then call me in the morning,’ I said.
‘Okay,’ she said, but I wasn’t that confident that she would.
We disconnected and I went back to the kitchen.
‘Amanda is back,’ I said.
Toni looked up at me sharply. ‘Back where?’
‘At her boyfriend’s flat.’
‘For a moment, I thought you meant she was here.’
‘No, but she was abducted. Someone put a sack over her head and shoulders and then bundled her into a van. Whoever it was drove her around for four hours, then let her go.’
‘Is she all right?’ Toni asked.
‘Seems to be. Obviously a bit shaken. And she said she was scared.’
‘But why?’
‘Why what?’
‘Why kidnap someone and then not ask for a ransom? It doesn’t make sense.’
She was right, there.
None of this made any sense.
Toni and I spent the night together in the double bed in the guest room, but somewhat embarrassingly, my enthusiasm for more sex had evaporated. Even if my mind had been willing, my body wasn’t.
Maybe it was because I had so much else going on in my head.
Having intercourse with Toni in the sitting room of this house, and also lying to my wife about having fallen asleep in front of the television, suddenly made me feel incredibly guilty.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
‘That’s all right,’ Toni said. ‘We’ll have another try in the morning.’
She seemed to go straight to sleep while I lay awake in the dark for ages, trying to sort other things out.
Had I finally rid myself of Squeaky Voice?
I liked to think so, but I wasn’t so sure.
Maybe he would try a different tactic.
So far, he hadn’t actually harmed anybody — not physically anyway — apart from a single injection into Amanda’s neck. I had called his bluff about killing her, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t now threaten to hurt her, maybe cut her face or throw something corrosive over her, or over Georgina, or even over James or me.
How ruthless was he? And would he react badly to my determination not to do as he asked?
Was it now time for me to try harder to find out who he was?
But how?
I had to start by talking to Amanda, to find out if there was some clue she had found out, even if she didn’t realise it, and use it to build a trap.
Toni tried her best to get me interested in more sex on Friday morning, waking me by cuddling up to my back, and allowing her hands to wander down between my legs.
It was successful to a degree, insofar that my body was now willing, but my mind was seemingly elsewhere, and I don’t think she found the experience hugely satisfying. Neither did I.
With a slight sigh, she climbed out of bed, and I heard her in the shower.
I also stood up and went downstairs to my office in my dressing gown.