Alex Barclay - Darkhouse

New York City

Edgy hands slid across the narrow belt, securing it in place on the tiny eight-year-old waist. Donald Riggs pointed to the small box attached.

‘This is like a pager, honey, so the police can find you,’ came his lazy drawl.

‘Because you’re going home now. If your mommy is a good girl. Is your mommy a good girl, Hayley?’

Hayley’s mouth moved, but she couldn’t speak. She bit down on her lip and looked up at him, beaming innocence. She gave three short nods. He smiled and slowly stroked her dark hair.

The fourth day without her daughter was the final day Elise Gray would have to endure a pain she could barely express. She breathed deeply through anger and rage, guilty that it was caused more by her husband than the stranger who took away her child. Gordon Gray’s company had just gone public, making him a very wealthy man and an instant target for kidnap and ransom. The family was insured — but that was all about the money, and she didn’t care about the money. Her family was her life and Hayley, her shining light.

Now here she was, parked outside her own apartment at the wheel of her husband’s BMW, waiting for this creep to call her on the cell phone he left with the ransom note. Yet it was Gordon who dominated her thoughts. The insurance company had told the couple to vary their routine but, good God, what would Gordon know about varying his routine? This was a man who brewed coffee, made toast, then lined up an apple, a banana and a peach yoghurt — in that order — every morning for breakfast. Every morning. You stupid man , thought Elise. You stupid man and your stupid, stupid, rituals. No wonder someone was waiting outside the apartment for you. Of course you were going to show up, because you show up every day at the same time bringing Hayley home from school. No detours, no stops for candy, just right on time, every time.

She banged her head on the steering wheel as the cell phone on the seat beside her lit up. As she fumbled to answer it, she realised it was playing Sesame Street . He’d actually set the tone to Sesame Street, the sick bastard.

‘Drive, bitch,’ each word slow and deliberate.

‘Where am I going?’ she asked.

‘To get your daughter back, if you’ve been behavin’ yourself.’ He hung up.

Elise started the engine, put her foot on the gas and swung gently into the traffic. Her heart was thumping. The wire chafed her back. By calling the police in that first hour, she had set in motion a whole new ending to this ordeal. She just wasn’t sure if it was the right ending.

Detective Joe Lucchesi sat in the driver’s seat, watching everything, his head barely moving. His dark hair was cut tight, with short slashes of grey at the sides. He questioned again whether Elise Gray was strong enough to wear a wire. He didn’t know where the kidnapper would lead her or how she would react if she had to get any closer to him than the other end of a phone. He had barely raised his hand to his face when Danny Markey — his close friend of twenty-five years and partner for five — started talking. ‘See, you got the kinda jaw a man can stroke. If I did that, I’d look like an idiot.’

Joe stared at him. Danny was missing a jawline. His small head blended without contour into his skinny neck. Everything about him was pale — his skin, his freckles, his blue eyes. He squinted at Joe.

‘What?’ he said.

Joe’s gaze shifted back to Elise Gray’s car. It started to move. Danny gripped the dashboard. Joe knew it was because he expected him to pull right out. Danny had a theory; one of his ‘black and whites’, as he called them. ‘There are people in life who check for toilet paper before taking a crap. And there’s the ones who shit straightaway and find themselves fucked.’ Joe was often singled out. ‘You’re a checker, Lucchesi. I’m a shitter,’ he would say. So they waited.

‘You know Old Nic is getting out next month,’ said Danny. Victor Nicotero was a lifer, a traffic cop one month shy of retiring. ‘You goin’ to the party?’

Joe shook his head, then sucked in a sharp breath against the pain that pulsed at his temples. He could see Danny hanging for an answer. He didn’t give him one. He reached into the driver’s door and pulled out a bottle of Advil and a blister pack of decongestants. He popped two of each, swallowing them with a mouthful from a blue energy drink hot from the sun.

‘Oh, I forgot,’ said Danny, ‘your in-laws are in from Paris that night, right?’ He laughed. ‘A six-hour dinner with people you can’t understand.’ He laughed again.

Joe pulled out after Elise Gray. Three cars behind him, a navy blue Crown Vic with FBI Agents Maller and Holmes followed his lead.

Elise Gray drove aimlessly, searching the sidewalks for Hayley as though she would show up on a corner and jump in. The tinny ringtone broke the silence. She grabbed the phone to her ear.

‘Where are you now, Mommy?’ His calm voice chilled her.

‘2nd Avenue at 63rd Street.’

‘Head south and make a left onto the bridge at 59th Street.’

‘Left onto the bridge at 59th Street.’ Click.

The three cars made their way across the bridge to Northern Boulevard East, everyone’s fate in the hands of Donald Riggs. He made his final call.

‘Take a left onto Francis Lewis Boulevard, then left onto 29th Avenue. I’ll be seein’ you. On your own. At the corner of 157th and 29th.’

Elise repeated what he said. Joe and Danny looked at each other.

‘Bowne Park,’ said Joe.

He dialled the head of the task force, Lieutenant Crane then handed the phone to Danny and nodded for him to talk.

‘Looks like the drop-off’s Bowne Park. Can you call in some of the guys from the 109?’ Danny put the phone on the dash.

Donald Riggs drove smoothly, his eyes moving across the road, the streets, the people. His left hand moved over the rough tangle of scars on his cheek, faded now into skin that was a pale stain on his tanned face. He checked himself in the rear-view mirror, opening his dark eyes wide. He raised a hand to run his fingers through his hair, until he remembered the gel and hairspray that held it rigid and marked by the tracks of a wide-toothed comb. At the back, it stopped dead at his collar, the right side folding over the left. He had a special lady to impress. He had splashed on aftershave from a dark blue bottle and gargled cinnamon mouthwash.

He turned around to check on the girl, lying on the floor in the back of the car and covered by a stinking blanket.

It was four-thirty p.m. and five detectives were sitting in the twentieth Precinct office of Lieutenant Terry Crane as Old Nic shuffled by, patting down his silver hair. Maybe they’re talking about my retirement present , he thought, narrowing his grey eyes, leaning towards the muffled voices. If it’s a carriage clock, I’ll kill them . A watch he could cope with. Even better, his boy Lucchesi had picked up on his hints and spread the word — Old Nic was planning to write his memoirs and what he needed for that was something he’d never had before: a classy pen, something silver, something he could take out with his good notebook and tell a story with. He put a bony shoulder to the door and his cap slipped on his narrow head. He heard Crane briefing the detectives.

‘We’ve just found out the perp is heading for Bowne Park in Queens. We still don’t have an ID. We got nothing from canvassing the neighbourhood, we got nothing from the scene — the guy jumped out, picked up the girl and drove off at speed, leaving nothing behind. We don’t even know what he was driving. This is just from the father who heard the screech from the lobby. We also got nothing from the package the perp dropped back the following day, just a few common fibres from the tape, nothing workable, no prints.’