Chapter 19
My heart was pounding so loudly I could barely hear anything else but I knew the car was going fast. My head was down against the seat, still inside the bag, and my feet were tied together, my hands behind my back.
Someone was in the back with me, a younger lad.
Jean Jacket and the barman were in the front – barman was driving – but I couldn’t focus on anything else as I kept slipping in and out of consciousness.
I begged River in my mind to telepathically hear my inner screaming and come and get me.
But I was in a car, speeding, to God knows where.
Jean Jacket was apparently called Matthew.
‘Matt, light us a cig, will ya?’ said the barman, Louis.
I could hear fumbling in the glovebox and within moments came the pungent smell of weed. A window buzzed down, and back up again. Cold air.
I tried to scream, but it caught in my throat, held down firmly by fear.
My arms burned where they were gripped by the boy in the back, and my mind spun, thoughts a blur.
I couldn’t stop shaking. The world outside felt so far away, and I was trapped in a nightmare.
The only thing I knew was that this was the threat River mentioned. And it had come out of the blue.
Or was River in the car with them? Had he been the threat all along? If not, where the fuck was he? Please help me. Please, River. Follow the car.
The three of them took turns to speak, sneeze, fart, belch and puff their joints – one was going on about some level he’d got to on a game he was obsessed with on his PlayStation and another was waiting for a text from his girlfriend cos he hadn’t heard from her in two hours.
None of them was American so that was all I had to go on for the time being.
From snatched morsels of their chatter, I gleaned that Louis had got the job at The Scavenger’s Daughter the week before the wake, and the other two had travelled down yesterday for the final part of their plan: to kidnap me.
What was this? Who were they? Another terrible thought took hold – what if they’d been the ones who’d taken Maddox and they were taking me somewhere to torture me for information – or worse still, torture him? If I saw anyone doing anything bad to my rabbit I’d …
I’d fucking kill them.
Shit shit shit. I was completely powerless, and my fear threatened to suffocate me, but in that moment, thinking about Madd, my anger clawed its way through my stupor.
And boy, did I need it. I needed it to swing through me like a wrecking ball, through the thick fog of my fear.
I needed it to take over. But I couldn’t think in a straight line.
The smell of weed grew stronger and my head banged like my brain was a rubber ball on a string bouncing against a brick wall.
‘We fucking did it! I told you, sweet as!’ said Louis (I think).
‘Keep your fucking eyes on the road, you dickhead. Fuck! This is so fucked up!’ laughed Matthew (I think).
‘What’s first then: ransom or—’
‘—no, we get her back and get her holed up. Let ’em stew for a bit.’
Did that mean Maddox? Rabbit stew? Oh God oh God oh God.
‘Then what?’
‘Ransom.’
‘What if they don’t pay?’ said the guy in the back next to me. Didn’t know his name yet. The Little One, I named him.
‘They’ll have to.’
‘But she ain’t got anyone now – her mother’s dead.’
‘Her real mother ain’t, is she? She’ll have to sort something out.’
‘Is that all we want? Money?’
‘You know it is. That and the other …’
Both lads in the front laughed. I knew that laugh. I didn’t like that laugh. My body involuntarily kicked out at The Little One, but he held on to me, grabbing my legs and arms in a vain attempt to hold me down.
‘I can’t hold her!’ he cried out. ‘I can’t hold her, seriously, she’s going to put a window out!’
‘Ant, what the hell are you doing – her feet were tied!’
‘She’s kicked them open! I can’t hold her!’
‘FUCK’S SAKE!’
The car came to a screeching halt as I struggled and before I knew it, the back door flung open and a pair of hands tugged my feet and pulled me out of the back seat and threw me down on what felt like grass.
‘YOU KEEP STRUGGLING LIKE THAT I’LL LEAVE YOU RIGHT HERE, IN A DITCH OFF THE A358, ALL RIGHT? NOW BE A GOOD GIRL AND KEEP QUIET AND WE’LL ALL GET ALONG, ALL RIGHT?’
No other cars were passing. Quiet road. Country lane maybe. Shit. Away from main roads it was even less likely River or the police could find me. Louis threw me bodily back into the car, but this time I could sit up. He made sure my ankles were tied tightly and my hands secure in front.
‘Where am I?’ I asked. The engine started up again.
‘Can I take the bag off her now?’ asked The Little One.
‘No,’ Louis huffed, accelerating at what felt like ninety miles per hour.
‘But it’s dark and we’ve got our hoods up; she won’t recognise us.’
‘She’s heard you talking about fucking Final Fantasy 18 and him talking about his missus. Keep that bag on her and do as you’re told.’
The rest of the journey passed with little further conversation.
Texts were going off left, right, centre, and the two in the front took turns to change the music – gangsta rap to old skool punk and back again at full volume – and there came a point when I couldn’t hear anything else.
We drove for hours with the darkness giving up no more answers.
The car’s engine hummed steadily, a constant, unnerving noise that made the silence heavier.
My body ached all over but it was the fear that twisted in my gut that hurt the most; the fear of not knowing what was going to happen next.
At some point, I passed out, because when I came to I felt this rush of freezing air and I was pulled out of the car and led penguin-style into an echoey room – a garage, seemingly, adjoining an ordinary house.
The garage was cold and had a concrete floor and with a deafening SLAM I heard the up and over door crash down, shutting us all inside.
I was sat down on what felt like a plastic garden chair and my feet were untied ‘for comfort’ just as my hands were retied one at a time to the armrests, and through the bag I could just about see a black machete-type knife poised on my face by the one called Louis.
A strip light flicked on above and it was only then that the bag came off my head.
I could see them all clearly now. Behind him stood Matthew in his worn jean jacket, arms crossed, radiating menace.
And what seemed to be the youngest of the three, with a squint, hovered near the doorway into what appeared to be the main house.
For some reason, I wanted to laugh. Maybe it was wearing off, whatever they’d put in that Diet Coke, or the fact the pain in my bandaged hand had disappeared, but something had shifted. The fear was gone. Like a dam had broken, and in its place was flooding a surge of raw, unfiltered rage.
Louis bent down so his face was level with mine. He smiled.
‘Hello, you. Right little pea from the same pod, aren’t you?’
The second I saw that smile, I swung my right leg with all my might and kicked the knife clean out of his hand.
‘Get that fucking thing away from me!’ The knife clattered across the concrete floor and disappeared underneath a silver Fiesta.
Matthew laughed at Louis, who shook out his hand in pain and didn’t return the merriment. ‘Like mother, like fucking daughter, is it? We might have trouble here.’
I looked at all three of them in turn. ‘Is this the “threat” then? Bloody hell, there isn’t a pube between you.
’ My heart thudded. Where the hell this voice was coming from, I didn’t know – all I could think was they were going to bring out Maddox at any second.
And I would be ready for them. I’d stab them one by one if they hurt my boy.
Louis crouched down again to look at me closely. ‘We don’t just make threats, you know – we follow through.’ Matt handed him the knife again and he caressed the top of my thigh with the tip.
But that’s the thing about threats – once you know what motive lies behind them, they lose their power. And as soon as I saw the little one’s face it all clicked. I knew who he was. And I knew what this was about.
‘Now you just stay right here and make no noises and we’ll treat you kindly. You want a drink? Something to eat?’
I didn’t answer.
‘See, I’m being nice, Ivy – I could just as easily be nasty. I’ll ask you again – do you want a drink or something to eat?’
I shook my head.
‘Okay. So you wait here while we go in there …’ He nodded towards the house, ‘and we’ll be back soon. No noises, remember. Or Mr Nasty comes out.’
The three of them disappeared inside the house and I stayed tied to the garden chair, wrists aching with the restriction of the plastic cable ties.
The youngest one with the squint brought me out a glass of orange juice and a ham and cucumber sandwich.
He held the glass to my mouth for me to drink, but I didn’t.
I looked up at him. ‘They didn’t drug it, I swear. The sandwich isn’t drugged either.’
‘I’m a vegetarian,’ I said.
He squinted, venturing inside the bread and removing the slices of ham, flinging them to the floor where a small white cat appeared and gobbled them up greedily. He set the plate down on the crate he’d upended as a makeshift table and checked my bandage was on tight enough.
‘Does that need changing?’
‘No.’
‘How did you do it?’
‘Smashed a glass.’
‘Do you need the toilet?’ he asked, setting the OJ glass down.
I shook my head. And then he left.
The more time that passed, the more I got the impression they didn’t know what to do with me.
They each kept coming in, looking at me, making threats about noise and behaving, but apart from forcing me into the toilet under pain of knife that if I did anything other than piss or shit they’d gut me when I came out, there wasn’t a sign of a forward plan.