Dick Francis - Crossfire

"Did he ask if you knew where I was?" I asked.

"Ask me?" He laughed. "He demanded that I tell him. I simply said that I had no idea where you were, and also that I wouldn't have told him if I did."

"How secure are your gates?" I asked.

"Why?" He sounded slightly worried for the first time.

"I think that Jackson Warren is a very dangerous man," I said seriously. "Martin, this is not a game. He has already tried to kill me once, and I am sure he would do it again without hesitation. So keep your gates locked and watch your back."

"I will," he said, and hung up, no doubt, to go outside rapidly and make sure his gates were closed and bolted.

Was it now time, I wondered, to involve the police and be damned about the tax consequences? But what could I say to them? "Well, officer, Mr. Jackson Warren tried to kill me by hanging me up to starve to death in a disused stable when I had to stand on only one leg for days, but I escaped by unscrewing the hay-net ring, climbing over the stable walls and breaking a window in the tack room, but I've only now decided to tell you about it, a week later, after I've been sneaking around Berkshire in camouflage cream, attacking and torturing one of Mr. Warren's associates using fake insulin and a hypodermic needle, and using the information I illegally obtained from him to transfer one million American dollars from Mr. Warren's company in Gibraltar into my mother's personal bank account in Hungerford."

Somehow, I didn't think it would bring the Thames Valley Constabulary rushing to Jackson's front door to make an immediate arrest. They would be far more likely to send me to a psychiatrist, and then Jackson would know exactly where I was.

It was much safer, I thought, to lie low for a while and let things blow over.

How mistaken could I be? The answer was badly.

The first sign that things had gone dangerously wrong was a hammering on the door of Ian's flat that woke me from a deep sleep.

It was pitch-black, and I struggled to find my way to the light switch. The hammering continued unabated. I turned on the light and looked at the clock. It was one-thirty in the morning. Who could be knocking at this ungodly hour?

I grabbed my shirt and went over to the door. I was about to unlock it when I suddenly stepped back. Could it be Jackson Warren outside? Or Alex Reece? Or Peter Garraway?

"Who is it?" I shouted.

"Derek Philips," came the reply. My stepfather.

Ian appeared from his bedroom, bleary-eyed and wearing blue-striped boxer shorts.

"What the hell's going on?" he said, squinting against the brightness.

"It's my stepfather," I said to him.

"Well, open the door, then."

But I wasn't sure enough. "Are you alone?" I shouted.

"What bloody difference does that make?" Ian said, striding towards me. "Open the bloody door. Here." He pushed past and unlocked it himself.

Derek almost fell into the room as the door opened, and he was alone.

"Thank God," he said. Then he saw me. "What the bloody hell are you doing here?"

I ignored his question. "Derek, what's wrong?" I asked.

"It's your mother," he said, clearly distressed.

Oh no, I thought. She must have decided to kill herself after all.

"What about her?" I asked, dreading the answer.

"She's been kidnapped."

"What?" I said in disbelief.

"She's been kidnapped," he repeated.

It sounded so unlikely.

"Who by?" I asked.

"Two men," he said. "They came looking for you."

Derek and Ian both looked at me accusingly.

"Who were they?" Ian asked him.

"I don't know," Derek said. "They were wearing those ski masks, like balaclavas, but I don't think either of them was very young."

"Why not?"

"Something about the way they moved," Derek said.

I, meanwhile, believed I knew exactly who they were, and Derek was right, neither of them was young. Two desperate men in their sixties, trying to recover the money they thought they had successfully stolen, but which I had then stolen back. But where was Alex Reece?

"Are you sure there were just two of them?" I asked. "Not three?"

"I only saw two," Derek said. "Why? Do you know who they are?" He and Ian looked accusingly at me once more.

"What exactly did they say?" I asked, trying to ignore their stares.

"I don't really remember. It all happened so fast," he said. "They had somehow got into the house and were in our bedroom. One of them poked me with the barrels of a shotgun to wake me up." He was almost in tears, and I could understand how frightened he and my mother must have been. "They said they wanted you, but we told them we didn't know where you were. We said we thought you were in London."

So not telling my mother where I was had saved me a visit from the ski-masked duo. But at what cost to her?

"But why did they take her with them?" I asked, but I already knew the answer. They knew that I'd come to them if they had my mother. "Did they tell you where they were taking her?"

"No," Derek said. "But they did tell me that you would know where she would be."

"Have you called the police?" Ian asked.

"No police," Derek said urgently. "They told me that I mustn't call the police. Call the police and Josephine dies, that's what they said. They told me to think about it for a while and then to call you." He nodded at me. "But I didn't know where you were, and I don't even have your phone number." He was crying now. "All I could think of was asking Ian."

I would know where she would be. That's what the kidnappers had told Derek.

I would know where she would be.

And I did.

I approached Greystone Stables, not from the road and up the driveway as my enemy might have expected but from the opposite direction over the undulating farmland, and through the woods on the hill above.

In war, tactical surprise is essential, as it had been during the recapture of the Falkland Islands. The Argentine forces, far superior in number, had believed that it was impossible for the British to approach Stanley, the island capital, across the swampy, uncharted interior, and had dug in their defenses for an attack from the sea. How wrong they were. The Royal Marines and Parachute Regiment's "yomp" across the island, carrying eighty-pound Bergens over more than fifty-six miles in three days, has since become the stuff of folklore in the army. It had been one of the major factors in that victory.

In my case, I was just glad not to have an eighty-pound Bergen on my back.

I stopped a few feet short of the limit of the trees and knelt down on my left knee. I looked again at my watch with its luminous face. More than two hours had passed since Derek had arrived so distressed at the door of Ian's flat. It was now three forty-two a.m. The windless night was beautifully clear, with a wonderful canopy of twinkling stars. The moon's phase was just past first quarter, and it was sinking rapidly towards the western horizon to my left. In forty minutes or so, the moon would be down completely, and the blackness of the night would deepen for a couple of hours before the arrival of the sun, and the dawning of another day.

I liked the darkness. It was my friend.

In the last of the moonlight I studied the layout of the deserted house and stables spread out below me. I could see no lights, and no movement, but I was sure this was where the two men had meant when they'd told Derek I would know where my mother would be.

But would she actually be here, or had it been a ruse to bring me to this place on a wild-goose chase, to fall willingly into their waiting hands while my mother was actually incarcerated somewhere else?

It had taken all my limited powers of persuasion to convince Ian not to call the police immediately. Derek too had begged him not to.

"But we must call the police," Ian had said with certainty.