Dick Francis - The Danger

He watched without comment. When I'd finished he threw the straw on the ground, screwed the top of the bottle and replaced it in the bag. Then he gave me another long, considering, concentrated stare, and abruptly went away.

I sat down regrettably weakly on the loamy ground.

God dammit, I thought. God dammit to hell.

It is in myself, I thought, as in every victim; the hopeless feeling of indignity, the sickening guilt of having bees snatched.

A prisoner, naked, alone, afraid, dependent on one's enemy for food… all the classic ingredients of victim-breakdown syndrome. The training manual come to life. Knowing so well what it was like from other people's accounts didn't sufficiently shield one from the shock of the reality.

In the future I would understand what I was told not just in the head but with every remembered pulse.

If there were a future.

Rain came again, at first in big heavy individual drops, splashing with sharp taps on the dead leaves, and then quite soon in a downpour. I stood up and let the rain act as a shower, soaking my hair, running down my body, cold and oddly pleasant.

I drank some of it again, getting quite good at swallowing without choking. How really extraordinary I must look, I thought, standing there in the clearing getting wet.

My long-ago Scottish ancestors had gone naked into battle, whooping and roaring down the heather hillsides with sword and shield alone and frightening the souls out of the enemy. If those distant clansmen, Highland-born in long-gone centuries, could choose to fight as nature made them, then so should I settle for the same sternness of spirit in this day.

I wondered if the Highlanders had been fortified before they set off by distillations of barley. It would give one more courage, I thought, than chicken soup.

It went on raining for hours, heavily and without pause. Only when it again began to get dark did it ease off, and by then the ground round the tree was so wet that sitting on it was near to a mud bath. Still, having stood all day, I sat. If it rained the next day, I thought wryly, the mud would wash off.

The night was again long and cold, but not to the point of hypothermia. My skin dried when the rain stopped. Eventually, against all the odds, I again went to sleep.

I spent the damp dawn and an hour or two after it feeling grindingly hungry and drearily wondering whether Giuseppe-Peter would ever come back: but he did. He came as before, stepping quietly, confidently, through the laurel screen, wearing the same jacket, carrying the same bag.

I stood up at his approach. He made no comment; merely noted it. There was a fuzz of moisture on his sleek hair, a matter of a hundred per cent humidity rather than actual drizzle, and he walked carefully, picking his way between puddles.

It was Tuesday, I thought.

He had brought another bottle of soup, warm this time, reddish-brown, tasting vaguely of beef. I drank it more slowly than on the day before, moderately trusting this time that he wouldn't snatch it away. He waited until I'd finished, threw away the straw, screwed the cap on the bottle, as before.

'You are outside,' he said unexpectedly, 'while I make a place inside. One more day. Or two.'

After a stunned moment I said, 'Clothes…'

He shook his head. 'No.' Then, glancing at the clouds, he said, 'Rain is clean.'

I almost nodded, an infinitesimal movement, which he saw.

'In England,' he said, 'you defeated me. Here, I defeat you.'

I said nothing.

'I have been told it was you, in England. You who found the boy.' He shrugged suddenly, frustratedly, and I guessed he still didn't know how we'd done it. 'To take people back from kidnap, it is your job. I did not know it was a job, except for the police.'

'Yes,' I said neutrally.

'You will never defeat me again,' he said seriously.

He put a hand into the bag and brought out a much-creased, much-travelled copy of the picture of himself, which, as he unfolded it, I saw to be one of the original printing, from way back in Bologna.

'It was you, who drew this,' he said. 'Because of this, I had to leave Italy. I went to England. In England, again this picture. Everywhere. Because of this I came to America. This picture is here now, is it not?'

I didn't answer.

'You hunted me. I caught you. That is the difference.'

He was immensely pleased with what he was saying.

'Soon, I will look different. I will change. When I have the ransom I will disappear. And this time you will not send the police to arrest my men. This time I will stop you.'

I didn't ask how. There was no point.

'You are like me,' he said.

'No.'

'Yes… but between us, I will win.'

There could always be a moment, I supposed, in which enemies came to acknowledge an unwilling respect for each other, even though the enmity between them remained unchanged and deep. There was such a moment then: on his side at least.

'You are strong,' he said, 'like me.'

There seemed to be no possible answer.

'It is good to defeat a strong man.'

It was the sort of buzz I would have been glad not to give him.

'For me,' I said, 'are you asking a ransom?'

He looked at me levelly and said, 'No.'

'Why not?' I asked; and thought, why ask, you don't want to know the answer.

'For Freemantle,' he said merely, 'I will get five million pounds.'

'The Jockey Club won't pay five million pounds,' I said.

'They will.'

'Morgan Freemantle isn't much loved,' I said. 'The members of the Jockey Club will resent every penny screwed out of them. They will hold off, they'll argue, they'll take weeks deciding whether each member should contribute an equal amount, or whether the rich should give more. They will keep you waiting… and every day you have to wait, you risk the American police finding you. The Americans are brilliant at finding kidnappers… I expect you know.'

'If you want food you will not talk like this.'

I fell silent.

After a pause he said, 'I expect they will not pay exactly five million. But there are many members. About one hundred. They can pay thirty thousands pounds each, of that I am sure.

That is three million pounds. Tomorrow you will make another tape. You will tell them that is the final reduction. For that, I let Freemantle go. If they will not pay, I will kill him, and you also, and bury you here in this ground.' He pointed briefly to the earth under our feet. Tomorrow you will say this on the tape.'

'Yes,' I said.

'And believe me,' he said soberly, I do not intend to spend all my life in prison. If I am in danger of it, I will kill, to prevent it.'

I did believe him. I could see the truth of it in his face.

After a moment I said, 'You have courage. You will wait. The Jockey Club will pay when the amount is not too much. When they can pay what their conscience… their guilt… tells them they must. When they can shrug and grit their teeth, and complain… but pay… that's what the amount will be. A total of about one quarter of one million pounds, maximum, I would expect.'

'More,' he said positively, shaking his head.

'If you should kill Freemantle, the Jockey Club would regret it, but in their hearts many members wouldn't grieve. If you demand too much, they will refuse, and you may end with nothing… just the risk of prison… for murder.' I spoke without emphasis, without persuasion: simply as if reciting moderately unexciting facts.

'It was you,' he said bitterly. 'You made me wait six weeks for the ransom for Alessia Cenci. If I did not wait, did not reduce the ransom… I would have nothing. A dead girl is no use… I understand now what you do.' He paused. 'This time, I defeat you.'

I didn't answer. I knew I had him firmly hooked again into the kidnapper's basic dilemma: whether to settle for what he could get, or risk holding out for what he wanted. I was guessing that the Jockey Club would grumble but finally pay half a million pounds, which meant five thousand pounds per member, if it was right about their numbers. At Liberty Market we would, I thought, have advised agreeing to that sort of sum; five per cent of the original demand. The expenses of this kidnap would be high: trying too hard to beat the profit down to zero would be dangerous to the victim.