Sally Spencer: Blackstone and the Wolf of Wall Street

‘We’ll pay whatever they ask,’ Harold said.

George shook his head, pityingly. ‘And if they ask for a billion dollars? Do we agree to pay them that?’

‘Of course we don’t. We don’t have anything like a billion dollars. I doubt if anyone in the world is that rich, but-’

‘So we must discuss the price we can afford to pay.’

‘Whatever we have, we’ll give to them.’

‘You’d sell all the stock?’

‘Yes.’

‘And all the real estate?’

‘If necessary.’

‘In other words, you’re prepared to bankrupt us?’

‘If that’s what it takes.’

George shook his head again. ‘Father wouldn’t thank you for doing that,’ he said. ‘He’d rather be dead than poor — and you know it.’

‘It’s highly unlikely that the kidnappers will demand a bigger ransom than they think you can lay your hands on easily, sir,’ Blackstone said. ‘The longer they hold your father, the more risk they’re running, which is why they’ll want the whole business over with as quickly as possible.’

‘What are the chances they’ve already killed him?’ George asked Blackstone. Then he turned to his brother again, and said, ‘I have to ask, Harry.’

‘It’s unlikely they’ll kill him before they get their hands on the money,’ Blackstone told him.

‘And once we’ve paid them?’

They’ve already killed two men, so there’s no reason on earth why they should let their victim live, Blackstone thought.

‘It’s impossible to guess what they’ll do,’ he said aloud. ‘That’s why our best hope is to find him before the ransom is paid — and why I want you to delay paying it for as long as possible.’

‘I thought you said they’ll want it paid quickly,’ Harold said.

‘They will,’ Blackstone agreed. ‘But if the amount they’re demanding is large enough, they’ll probably already have accepted that they’ll have to wait two or three days.’

The phone on the desk rang. Both Harold and George grabbed for it, but George got there first.

‘Yes, it is,’ he said. ‘No, I. . Now look here, my man, that’s a lot of money. . Yes, of course we can raise it — we’re not paupers, and you must already know that, or you’d never have kidnapped my father — but we can’t raise it in less than four days. . Why not? Because we don’t have that amount of cash around the house, you bloody idiot!’

It might have been better if Harold had reached the phone first, Blackstone thought. Then again, it might not have been.

‘Say you can raise it in three days,’ he mouthed at the older brother.

‘All right, we’ll try and get it together in three days,’ George said into the phone.

Harold had been writing something on a piece of paper, and now he slid it across to his brother. Looking at it upside down, Blackstone read, ‘SAY YOU WANT TO SPEAK TO HIM.’

‘I demand to speak to my father,’ George said. ‘Why? Why do you think, you imbecile? Because I need to be convinced he’s still alive.’

There was a pause, then George continued, ‘Listen, you bastard, if you don’t bring him to the phone, I’m hanging up.’

Another pause.

‘No, you won’t kill him — because if you do that, you’ll never get your hands on the money.’

A third pause.

‘Yes, I understand,’ George said. ‘I give you my word that I won’t ask where he is, or anything about you — but I will speak to him.’

George covered the mouthpiece with his hand. ‘He says they’re bringing him to the phone. He must be in another room.’

‘Keep him talking as long as you can,’ Blackstone said. ‘And try to remember everything he says.’

George removed his hand from the mouthpiece. ‘How are you, Father?’ he asked. ‘How are they treating you?. . You don’t sound like yourself. Are you sure you are my father?. . Then tell me this — what was the name of the dog I had when I was a boy?. . Yes, that’s right.’

He covered the mouthpiece again. ‘They’ve taken him away again. I. . I couldn’t stop them.’

‘You’re doing well,’ Blackstone told him.

And, after a shaky start, so he was.

‘Yes,’ George said, when the kidnapper came back on the line. ‘Yes. . I’ll get one of my people to deliver. . Why not?. . All right, in that case, I suppose it had better be me who. .’ A sudden look of horror came to his face. ‘You want what ?’ he spluttered.

Blackstone noticed that, despite the cool of the room, beads of sweat had begun to form on George’s forehead.

‘I can’t have that,’ George said, and now he was starting to sound worried. ‘I will simply not allow it. . Listen to me, please . .’

What the hell was the kidnapper saying, Blackstone wondered. What could he have said that would turn George so quickly from the bumptious gentleman addressing an underling into a desperate supplicant?

‘You have to understand,’ George pleaded. ‘He’s not strong. . the strain will be far too much for him. .’

So that was what the kidnappers wanted, Blackstone thought. Well, he supposed he should have expected it.

‘But, but. .’ George protested. ‘I. . all right, I agree. I have to agree, don’t I?’

He hung up the earpiece. His face had lost colour, and there was a slight tremble in his hand, but it was clear he was doing his very best to pull himself together again.

‘That went better than it might have done,’ he said, in a voice which was unnaturally even. ‘They want half a million dollars, but if we can get Father back safely, the stocks will go up by at least that much. And they’ve given us three days to raise the money — which is more than I’d have allowed if I’d been in their shoes.’

‘You’re sure that really was your father you spoke to?’ Blackstone asked.

‘Oh yes, it was him, all right. I asked him the name of my dog.’

‘I heard that, but if the kidnappers had done their research. .’

‘He didn’t call her Topsie, which was what everyone else knew her as — he used the name he’d christened her.’

‘Which was what?’

‘Shithead,’ George replied. He shrugged. ‘My father doesn’t like animals much. He only let me have a dog because our late mother insisted on it.’ He took a deep breath. ‘They’ll ring again in two days’ time, to say where they want the money delivering to and. . and I’m sorry, Harry.’

‘Sorry?’ Harold repeated.

‘I said I’d get someone from the company to hand over the money, and when he wouldn’t agree to that, I said I’d do it myself. But he wouldn’t agree to that, either. He said. . he said it had to be you.’

The two detectives had asked for — and been given — a room from which to conduct their enquiries. That this room was in the family’s part of the house, rather than a cubby hole somewhere in the bowels of the servants’ quarters, was, Blackstone suspected, more Harold’s doing than George’s.

It was, all things considered, a very pleasant room, for though it was minimally furnished — containing no more than two armchairs and a coffee table — it was light and airy, and afforded them an excellent view of the boat dock at the back of the house.

Looking down on that boat dock, Blackstone tried to picture the kidnappers hustling their victim to a waiting boat, under the cover of darkness.

What state would Big Bill have been in, if that was what had happened, he wondered.

Would he have walked there under his own steam — reluctantly, yet more than conscious that there was a gun pressed into his back, and that the man holding it had already ordered the murder of his bodyguards?