I returned to my room with her case, and got ready for bed. The phone rang. I looked at my watch. Eleven o’clock. I picked it up. ‘Hallo?’
‘Mr Nicholas Elliot?’
The voice was harsh, the accent so strong I could barely distinguish my own name. My heart-rate quickened.
‘Yes?’
‘I have your friend. You give me one million dollars. I let her go.’
My mind raced. I knew I wasn’t the person to carry out this negotiation. I needed to get them on to Luís and Nelson.
‘I am not her friend. I just work with her,’ I said.
‘If you not give me one million dollars, she dies!’ the voice said. The accent was so pronounced and the words so melodramatic that it hardly seemed real. But it was.
‘No, wait! You telephone her father. This is his number,’ and I read it down the phone. ‘He will talk to you.’
‘OK,’ said the voice, and the phone clicked.
I hung up and raced to dial Luís’s number before the voice. He answered, tense. I told him what to expect. I said I would be right round.
It took me fifteen minutes to jump in a taxi and get there. Luís and Nelson were deep in conversation, with Cordelia listening.
‘They want a million dollars,’ said Luís. ‘They want it dropped off on Wednesday morning at two a.m. They say if I don’t pay, they’ll kill her. I told them to call back in the morning.’
It was Monday night. Wednesday morning was just over twenty-four hours away.
I could see that there was some tension between Nelson and Luís. ‘What’s the problem?’ I asked.
Luís glanced at Nelson. ‘A million dollars is nothing for Isabel’s life. I want to pay it.’
‘And I feel we should ask for proof of life. Something to show that they’ve got her, and that she’s alive,’ the little man said. ‘And then we should negotiate the price down from there. They will expect it.’
‘But we know she was alive when they took her. I don’t want to anger them. Believe me, I can afford a million dollars.’
For the first time, Luís was showing signs of strain. Nelson paused to defuse the situation, and then spoke calmly. ‘We don’t know they’ve got her. It might be a hoax.’
‘How can it be a hoax? No one knows she has been kidnapped, do they? Just us and the police.’
‘What is this proof-of-life business?’ I asked Nelson. ‘Do you want a photo of her with a newspaper?’
‘No, that can be faked. The best thing is to ask them a question that only Isabel will know the answer to. If they call back with the correct response, then we know they have her and she is alive.’
Both Luís and Nelson were looking at me. They wanted my advice. I wasn’t going to duck the responsibility.
‘Why don’t you do what Nelson suggests? If they have Isabel, it can’t hurt, can it?’
Luís sighed, and rubbed his temples. ‘OK’ He nodded.
I slept in the guest room at Luís’s apartment that night. Or, rather, I didn’t sleep, but I lay down under some covers and let my brain tumble.
The kidnappers called at nine the next morning. Luís told them he couldn’t raise the cash that day, he would need more time. He also asked them to tell him the name of Isabel’s favourite teddy bear when she was a girl. I could hear the abusive threats down the phone at this.
Luís was white when he put the receiver down. ‘They said that if we don’t drop off the money at two o’clock tomorrow morning, Isabel will die. They won’t wait another day.’
I began to think that I had given him the wrong advice.
Only Nelson was unconcerned. ‘If they have her, we will hear back from them soon,’ he assured us.
‘But what about the two o’clock deadline?’
‘Ignore it. They can’t be serious.’
But we didn’t hear back from them all day.
I stayed the night again. Luís seemed to want me there with him when the deadline passed, and I was happy to oblige. We were both up and awake at two o’clock. Of course the phone didn’t ring. We exchanged grim glances as the kidnappers’ deadline ticked away.
The waiting was beginning to take its toll. Both Luís and I were suffering from lack of sleep, although by now I was so exhausted that at last I could begin to doze for short periods. Luís just walked around, looking gaunt. And it was only day three. Cordelia had gone home the day before, but insisted that we call her with any news. By Wednesday night we had still heard nothing. Nelson had returned to his own home that afternoon, with instructions to be contacted if anything happened.
Supper was an omelette and salad. Luís didn’t eat much of his. During the last few days he had managed to keep his outward composure, apart from the show of tension with Nelson just after the kidnappers had given their first demand. Then, suddenly, as the two of us sat in silence round the dinner table, his lip quivered, and he put his head in his hands. He began to sob.
I watched in silence. Tentatively I stretched out a hand and touched his sleeve.
‘She’s dead,’ he said.
‘No, she isn’t. Maybe they’ll call later.’
‘Why should they? It was a simple question. All they had to do was ask her and call me back. They said if I didn’t pay them by two last night she’d die. And she’s dead.’
‘Perhaps it’s a hoax. Maybe they aren’t the real kidnappers.’
‘How can that be? We’ve been through that. Nobody else knows.’
We had been through that. Then a thought struck me.
‘Why did they call me at the hotel?’
‘They followed you from there,’ Luís said. ‘They knew you were staying there.’
‘Yes, but they could have got your number from Isabel. Why didn’t they?’
Luís was silent for a moment. He brightened. And then his face clouded over. ‘Unless she’s dead. Then she couldn’t tell them.’
‘Luís, there’s no reason for them to kill her!’ My brain, which had been turning somersaults for the last three days, suddenly settled. ‘I know! It was the taxi driver. He saw the kidnap and drove off. He must have told some friends about it, and tried his luck at a ransom demand.’
Luís listened.
‘I’ll call Nelson and see what he thinks.’
But before I could reach the phone, it rang. I froze. Luís grabbed it.
I picked up the second earphone Nelson had attached. It was a different voice. Younger, calmer. Luís spoke for about two minutes. I couldn’t understand what was said, but Luís smiled as he put the phone down.
‘Well?’
‘It was another man. He said his name was Zico. He says he has Isabel. He wants a ransom. I asked the teddy bear question, and he didn’t seem concerned. He said he would call back with the answer.’
I felt a surge of relief. So the first voice had been a hoax. I much preferred Zico’s voice. He sounded calmer, more rational.
‘Zico? Isn’t that the name of a soccer player?’
‘Yes,’ Luís smiled grimly. ‘He was brilliant. He used to play for Flamengo. My club.’
‘How much does he want?’
Luís frowned. ‘Fifty million dollars.’
‘Fifty million! Christ! Have you got that much?’
‘Technically my stake in Horizonte may be worth that much, but there’s no way I could get at it without selling the bank, which would be difficult. No, impossible.’
‘Still, it’s a start,’ I said.
Luís smiled. ‘Yes. It’s a start.’
19
The next couple of days were a relief. Zico called back within half an hour with the correct answer to Luís’s question — Lulu. He made threats about how Isabel would die if fifty million dollars wasn’t paid by the end of the week, but Luís didn’t believe him and neither did I. We were just glad that the process had begun which would lead eventually to Isabel’s release.