Forty-Nine
Sally remained rigid until the person behind her walked softly away and was surprised to find she wasn’t as frightened as she’d expect to be in such a situation. Steve had ribbed her many times on her ability to keep a clear head in stressful situations and this surely had to be the most stressful by far. But here she was, calculating her options and observing her surroundings as best she could.
Thanks to the thin-soled fashion boots she was wearing, she’d already assessed she was seated on soft flooring. Some gentle pressure with her toes had met with a small degree of give which suggested a rug or carpeting was under her feet. When the robotic voice had spoken, there had been no echo, leading her to believe she wasn’t in a warehouse or barn. She could still hear the rain falling outside although it was muted and the room temperature was ambient. From this she surmised she was very likely being held somewhere small; possibly a house or a flat.
There was also an odour in the air, but not an unpleasant or damp one, which made her think her location was one which was generally occupied. It lacked the atmosphere she’d expect to feel in somewhere derelict or empty. In fact – she sniffed again – the smell was vaguely familiar. She was busy trying to place it when there was a tapping sound and the robotic voice spoke again.
‘As long as you do as you are told, you will not be hurt. Nod if you understand.’
She dipped her head downwards gently as it was still throbbing painfully. It hurt at the back of her skull and just above her left eye. The first one being where she was walloped, no doubt, and the second, she guessed, from when she’d landed on the tarmac.
‘I’m going to take the gag off your mouth, but if you make any noise louder than a whisper, you will pay. Nod again if you understand.’
For the second time, Sally dipped her head slowly.
A few seconds later, she sensed someone standing beside her and the tape across her mouth was carefully removed. As soon as it was off, she gasped and drew in several deep breaths.
Cold metal was placed against the top of her neck again.
‘Just reminding you of the outcome if you make anything more than a whisper.’
With the voice being so close behind her and the cotton-wool sensation in her head beginning to clear, Sally realised what was going on. Her captor was communicating using the text-to-speech facility on a computer thus ensuring she didn’t hear their voice. They would only do that if they had a distinctly memorable voice or… if it was someone she knew!
When the latter thought popped into her head, she felt herself straighten up slightly in the seat.
Could it possibly be someone she’d already met? But who?
‘Are you ready to negotiate?’
‘Yes,’ she whispered quietly. Whoever it was, they were still standing behind her so they could hear her clearly.
‘When I ask, you will give me your log-on information for your bank account.’
‘Why would I do that?’
‘Because you will regret it if you don’t.’
Sally racked her brain, trying to think who on earth could possibly know the contents of her bank account. Apart from Craig, she hadn’t told another soul. And, no matter how much she stretched her imagination, she couldn’t see Craig doing this. Although, if he had mentioned it to someone else…
‘How much do you want?’
Keep talking, she told herself. That’s what they always do in those movies – keep the bad guys talking. Although what good it was going to do her was anyone’s guess!
‘I need three-hundred-thousand pounds.’
Huh?
Her head shot up and a small groan slipped from her lips with the pain.
‘I told you, nothing louder than a whisper.’
‘Sorry. My head is sore.’
Three hundred thousand? Was that all? Why would anyone go to all this trouble for such a small value? Maybe they didn’t know just how much was in her bank account although, they soon would when they logged on. She was prepared to hear her “ransom value” increase substantially when they saw her actual worth.
Suddenly, there was the sound of a door being knocked and a dog began to bark.
A bark that sounded exactly like Peggy’s.
Or rather, a bark that was Peggy’s!
In that moment, Sally knew why the scent in the air was familiar – it was the candles Jools favoured to stop her home smelling of dog.
She was in Juliet’s cottage.
The knocking sound came again.
‘Hello? Police. Is there anyone in?’
Peggy continued to bark.
A thousand thoughts ran through her head at a speed so fast, she could barely catch hold of them but one came to a standstill and held fast.
Jools must also be in danger.
It was the only reason she could think of for her friend to be doing this. Did she have a boyfriend or someone who was forcing her to do this?
She heard a noise behind her and she turned her head towards it.
‘Jools? Is that you?’ she whispered.
‘Oh, shit!’
This time, the voice belonged to her friend.
‘It’s over. Let me just get a hold of Peggy and—’
‘No! Don’t. Stay here and let her keep barking.’
‘But—’
‘Shhhh. They’ll hear you.’
Sally felt Jools come to her side and gently remove the blindfold from her eyes. She blinked a few times and then looked about her while her hands and feet were released.
She rubbed her wrists and ankles but could barely see a thing as all the curtains had been closed across the windows, including the ones on the patio doors which led into the small garden. The only light in the room was from the laptop screen which Jools had placed on the coffee table to enable her to see to undo the bindings.
Jools went to stand up but Sally placed a hand on her shoulder.
‘Wait…’
The two women sat in situ for several minutes after Peggy had stopped barking.
‘Right, go and check they’ve gone.’
Jools walked over to the window and carefully moved the thick curtain a fraction to the side. The outside security light had gone off. There was no one there.
‘They’ve gone.’
‘Good! Now you can tell me what the FUCK is going on!’
The joint intensity of both anger and relief flooding her body had Sally trembling from head to toe and the desire to slap six shades of Sunday out of Jools was so severe, she had to force herself to walk over to the kitchen and stand on the other side of the breakfast bar. Right now, she could easily commit murder herself.
‘Why, Jools? Just…why?’
‘I was desperate. I’m so sorry.’
In the bluey-silver glow from the laptop screen, Sally could just make out Jools sitting on the edge of the sofa, her face buried in her hands.
‘YOU were desperate? YOU? No boyfriend forcing you to do this?’
‘Huh? Sorry?’ Jools looked up at her in confusion.
‘You did this off your own back? No one was forcing you to do it?’
‘Erm, no. It was just me.’
Sally placed her hands on the edge of the worktop, dropping her head down between her arms, while taking in deep breaths as she tried to rein in her fury.
After a few minutes, she turned towards the fridge and took out two bottles of water. Walking over to Jools, she thrust one at her and then sat down on the seat opposite.
‘Right, lady, start talking. And don’t stop until you have told me everything.’
‘In a nutshell, I’m in serious debt and I was… am… desperate.’
‘How much and how did it happen?’ Sally spat the words across the table.
‘Just under three hundred thousand pounds.’
As she said this, Sally recalled the comment from earlier. “I need three hundred thousand…”
“I need…”
‘I’m afraid I lied to you and Nick when I came for my job interview. The gap in my CV wasn’t down to me working overseas – I was at home caring for my dying mother. I had been overseas but I’d barely been there three months when she called to tell me she’d been diagnosed with a terminal illness. Naturally, I was on the first plane back home.
‘When I returned, we went to see her doctor who told us there was nothing he could do. The treatment my mother needed, the treatment that could possibly give her some extra time, wasn’t funded on the NHS. The benefits of it weren’t conclusive and so it hadn’t been signed off. The only way we could hope to get it for her was to go private.
‘So, that’s what we did. I dragged her off to Harley Street in London where we met a very nice doctor who felt my mum would benefit from the treatment and he started her on it within a week. And it worked. It slowed down the progression of the disease and we got eighteen months more than we would otherwise have had.
‘Unfortunately, private healthcare and Harley Street doctors don’t come cheap and the bills began to mount up. At first, I was able to hold them at bay with doing locum work. The pay for that is generally better. However, as time went on, and Mum began to deteriorate, I had to stay at home with her. The job I do is not known for its sociable hours so I had to stop work and become her full-time carer. I did this for her last five months.’
Sally sipped her water and leant forward, listening closely. ‘How did you manage to keep paying the medical bills?’ she asked.
‘Credit cards. I had a load of them which I’d never cancelled. You know that way, when you get an offer to transfer balances for a lower, or zero, interest rate? I always took advantage of such offers and in doing so, acquired several cards which were then at my disposal. They had high credit limits meaning I was able to spread the fees over them and get away with paying the minimum sum each month. I wasn’t worried about the increasing balances, I knew Mum had a good life insurance policy – she’d mentioned it several years before – and I figured that would clear, if not all the debt, then certainly most of it.’
‘So, what went wrong?’
‘The policy falling through is what went wrong. Or rather, Mum missed one of the payments and the policy got cancelled.’
‘Oh no! Surely the company could have worked around one missed payment. After all, how much was it? Thirty, forty pounds?’
‘Ah, that’s where my mum came into her own. She always paid everything off in one hit. She didn’t like the idea of being in debt and never held with direct debits or standing orders. Therefore, if the yearly payment for an insurance policy was one hundred and fifty pounds, she would pay the full one hundred and fifty pounds.’
‘Oh, crap!’
‘Yeah, oh crap indeed!’
‘And is there no one else in your family who could help with the bills? You haven’t mentioned your father.’
‘He died when I was a teenager. I do have a brother but he’s an arse. Never once helped me with Mum, barely came to visit her and refuses to put anything towards the debt. He made his feelings perfectly clear after the funeral and we haven’t spoken since.’
‘Oh, Jools.’
Sally felt her sympathy placate the last remnants of her anger. What a terrible position to be in.
‘The worst of it is, I haven’t been able to mourn her loss because I’ve been so angry with her for letting the policy slip but then I feel guilty because I knew it was a result of her illness that she forgot and it wasn’t intentional. The truth is, I know she’d be utterly horrified that she’s left me in this position.’
‘I’m guessing that, with only paying off the minimum over the years, the interest has clobbered you?’
‘You guess correctly. The interest is now more than the initial debt. Even if I work ’till I’m a hundred, I’m never going to be able to pay it off.’
‘Could you declare yourself bankrupt?’
‘I could but that could have an impact on my job because good veterinary practices like their vets to be solvent so that partnerships – and cash injections – can be offered.’
‘Ah! So, you thought thumping me on the head, kidnapping me, threatening me with a gun—’
‘Err, not a gun. A glass test tube…’
‘Say again! NOT a gun?’
‘No. A glass test tube. If it’s cold enough, it can feel like a gun. And, if held the right way, the imagination sort of fills in the blanks…’
Juliet’s explanation tailed off and her head dropped down again in shame.
‘It just gets worse!’ Sally shook her head in disbelief and immediately wished she hadn’t when it began throbbing again.
‘What on earth did you hit me with?’ Her fingers touched the back of her head where a big lump was now residing although there was nothing to suggest any bleeding which was one small mercy.
‘A junior cricket bat. I kept my brother’s one from when he was a kid, for security purposes. I didn’t want to hurt you, truly, I really didn’t but when I saw all that money in your bank account—’
‘Whoa! How did you see that? WHEN did you see that?’
‘The day Flora came to tell you about the fete. We met on the stairs when I was going up to the office with the invoices? The office was empty when I walked in and I placed the folder on the desk where Craig would see it. As I put it down, it knocked the mouse which caused the blank screen to come back to life and there was the information, in plain sight. I’ll be honest, I nearly keeled over when I saw it. It was that night when the idea first came to me to try and get some of it from you. I didn’t want loads, just enough to clear the debts. That was all. I tried to ignore the thought but it continued to grow and fester until it felt like it was taking me over. I couldn’t sleep and I certainly couldn’t think straight. A small voice kept telling me it was a splash in the ocean to you. As you now know, eventually all reason flew out the window, I succumbed to the stupidity and now I’ve completely ruined everything. I’m going to end up in prison, my career is over and I have nothing left. I’ll even lose Peggy. And all because I wanted to give my mum some extra time to live. It doesn’t seem fair that by trying to do something good, I end up coming out of it all so badly.’
By this time, Jools was sobbing hard and the tears were pouring down her face. Peggy sat beside her, nudging her with her head, trying to give her some comfort.
Sally felt her own heart break for Jools. In that instant, she became aware of just how fortunate she’d been. Sure, she’d lost her husband in the most awful way but she’d had the luxury of worry-free grief. She hadn’t had the stress of trying to care for children or family while not knowing how they were going to manage now that one of the wage-earners in the home was gone. She’d had the security of knowing the roof over her head wasn’t going to be taken from her and had been able to dive right into her mourning without any financial distractions and she was only now realising that this made her one of the few lucky ones. Not every family could afford life insurance when it was a toss-up of paying the policy or a new pair of school shoes.
She was still annoyed with Jools for what she’d done to her but she was also deeply sorry that an otherwise decent, kind person had been pushed so far down the path of desperation that she’d go to such lengths to get off it.
‘Jools,’ Sally moved over to sit beside her and put her arms around her. ‘You’re not going to prison; I’m not telling the police and you’re not going to lose Peggy. We’ll sort this. It’s okay. It’s over now. I promise.’
As Jools clung onto her and cried out all the pain she’d held in for so long, Sally realised that there was something else she could do with her money. And Jools was just the person to help her.