Peter Helton - Rainstone Fall

‘She never mentioned it. Somewhere in Bristol.’

Annis looked thoughtful. ‘Unless. .’

‘Unless what?’ Tim propped himself up on one elbow and pulled a pained face as his back reacted.

Annis took her time answering. ‘I don’t know. Unless she no longer believed that her son was alive. Perhaps she gave up.’

‘Give up, how?’ I asked.

‘How would I know? As she said, none of us have children of our own, so perhaps she did feel that something had happened, something changed.’

‘And chucked herself in the river.’

‘It’s possible,’ she admitted.

There was another possibility that began nagging at the back of my mind but seemed too remote to give it much house room. All three of us looked thoughtfully at the little Rodin. At the museum it could inspire hushed voices and admiration on its spotlit plinth, here it looked prosaic standing next to a potted yucca on my floor. Context was everything and as ornaments went I preferred the yucca.

The morning drifted on and slipped into afternoon while I ghosted about the house and studio, carrying both cordless phone and mobile, waiting for the call, listening out for the crunch of police cars braking hard in the yard. I was getting increasingly worried about Jill not being in touch.

Tim had been right about the newsworthiness of the stolen Rodin: it got top billing on the lunchtime news. Hearing my rooftop antics being described as a ‘daring raid’ and Annis and myself as a ‘well-organized gang’ would have been almost funny if the bulletin hadn’t started with the words ‘A nationwide police hunt is today under way’.

I tried to distract myself by clearing up in the studio. The painting on my easel had been only half finished when the storm and Haarbottle’s call had interrupted. Looking at it now I could barely make out my own intentions, even less feel the emotions that had driven the image across the canvas. It would never be finished now. Too much had happened since then.

The Stanley knife is the painter’s best editing tool; four slashes quickly empty a stretcher of canvas and make sure of rigorous quality control in his oeuvre. But I was under no illusion that I could start a new canvas before this mess was resolved. The pointed blade slid seductively from the grip of the knife. The phone rang and effected a stay of execution. I slid the blade back in, dropped the knife into the tool box and pressed the talk button on the phone with a heavy heart.

‘Well, congrats, shithead, told you you could do it.’ The grating voice held a sour edge of feigned amusement. ‘And now listen very carefully to what I have to say. The handover will happen tonight. You will be by yourself. There will be nobody with you, there will be no police and none of your mates. And you know why you’ll do exactly as I tell you? Because now I’ve got the brat’s mother. That’s right, shithead, mother and son reunited, only not the way you expected. And you don’t want anything to happen to her , because how could you live with yourself? You still listening, shithead, or did you faint?’

I sat down heavily on my painting stool. This was exactly what I had feared but hadn’t allowed myself to say out loud. But the question that weighed heavier on me was this: why would the kidnapper go to the trouble of snatching Jill if he already had the boy? Why would he need another victim, unless. . ‘I’m listening.’

‘You’d better. Because now I’m ready for you. Here’s what you do, very simple. One: you’ll secure the Penny Black inside a padded envelope, reinforced with cardboard. Then you’ll tape it safely to the statue. Two: you’ll wrap the lot in several bin bags and secure them with tape so they don’t flap about. Three: you load it on the back of your Land Rover and drive out of your yard at eight o’clock precisely , with your mobile phone charged up and switched on, ready to receive instructions. Four: you talk to no one. You’ll be by yourself and you’ll bring no weapons and no wires. Oh yes, and just so I’ll know you’ll have no weapons or microphones, you’ll be wearing nothing but a pair of boxer shorts. Just to make sure there are no hidden surprises. Do anything differently and the woman dies.’

I drew breath to answer but he had already hung up.

Jill . We should never have left her alone all these days. What happened to the sister. .? This might still come out right of course but there remained one question that seemed to make this unlikely: why would the kidnapper bother to take Jill, when he already had the boy? Unless the boy was dead.

Five minutes to eight.

I felt chilly even though I was still only standing in the hall of my own house. Annis pulled me hard against her. ‘You make sure you come back to me, okay, Honeypot? No heroics, just do as you’re told for once and bring them back. Promise?’

‘I love you, Annis.’

‘I know, Chris.’

This time, apparently, it counted. It also saved me from having to make promises I might not be able to keep.

In the yard, parked as close as possible to the front door, the Landy had been ‘warming up’. I got in and mentally went over everything again. There wasn’t much to check. The stamp in its envelope and the Rodin were on the back, wrapped in black plastic and covered with a bit of old carpet. I myself was wrapped in a scratchy grey blanket, the only one I could find, making me already feel like the survivor of some kind of disaster. Despite the kidnapper’s warning I was wearing basketball shoes. If he objected he could always make me take them off. I had my mobile, as instructed. I had also purloined Tim’s far flashier mobile, and his Bluetooth headset, without bothering to tell him, because I had made no decisions yet about what to do when I got there and was literally going to play this by ear. I put my mobile on the dash, stuck the Bluetooth set on my right ear and let my hair fall over it. I set Tim’s mobile next to me on the seat.

Eight o’clock.

I waved to Annis in the doorway, silhouetted against the warm light of the house, put the engine in gear and rumbled out of the yard.

The heater in a 1960s Land Rover was a well-known joke and Annis’s decrepit example was no exception. Only most people who complained about how bad their Landy’s heater was didn’t usually drive it half-naked through a late-October night.

My mobile chimed its hateful little tune. I answered it. ‘I’m on the move, so where am I going?’

‘Patience. You’re on your lonesome, like I told you?’

‘I am.’

‘And you are unarmed and in your shorts?’

‘Unarmed, freezing cold and half-naked, apart from a pair of basketball shoes.’

‘Who said you could wear those?’

‘You want me to slip on the brake and drive your Rodin into a ditch?’

He grunted reluctant agreement. ‘Where are you?’

‘Top of my drive.’

‘Turn left and keep going until you get to the London Road. Keep the line open. If you disconnect your mobile even for one second then the deal is off and the woman will feel the consequences.’

I turned and drove slowly along the unlit, narrow road through the valley. The worn blades of the windscreen wipers squeaked as they ineffectually scraped at the renewed offering of rain falling out of the blackness. I was once more on the move, on my own, with the spoils from a robbery. My memories of the hold-up on Charlcombe Lane were still vivid in my mind. What was to stop the kidnapper from taking the plunder off me by force when I got to my dark destination, and go on indefinitely with his demands? Now that he had abducted a second victim he could afford to kill one of them simply to demonstrate the seriousness of his threat, if he hadn’t already done so.