Stranger Child (31 page)

Natasha was glad that Emma had come home. She couldn’t help feeling a quick rush of pleasure that Emma had heard at least part of David’s confession, but she hadn’t finished with her father yet.

She freed herself from Emma’s arms but stayed close to her. David was still gazing only at Emma, no doubt trying to work out what she was thinking.

‘I’ve got one more question for you,
Dad
,’ Natasha said – putting as much disgust into that word as she could. ‘Why didn’t you get me back when you had the chance?’

David’s body seemed to freeze. His eyes didn’t move, his hands hung at his side. He was like a statue. The only sound was the soft ticking of the huge wall clock in the hall outside. Natasha waited, half expecting Emma to interrupt and tell her she was being ridiculous. But she didn’t.

Finally David spoke.

‘I never had a chance of getting you back. Why would you think that?’

Natasha felt her anger force its way to the surface again. He really was pathetic. ‘They played me the tape, David. You know – the one where they said you could have me back if you would do something for them? Remember? And you said, “No.”’

She would never forget the moment when Rory had played the tape to her. He had been mad because David had refused to go along with their plans. ‘He doesn’t want you,’ Rory had whispered, prowling the room, circling her body, playing the tape over and over – as if it were her fault. ‘You’ll disrupt his happy little home – so he says we can keep you.’ Then Rory had hit her on the back of her head. ‘Useless, you are. Fucking useless,’ he’d said.

‘For God’s sake, Natasha – it wasn’t
like
that.’ David was pleading with her, but she felt sick. How could he think this would ever be all right?

‘What
was
it like, then,’ she asked, ‘to be offered your child back after four years? How did it feel to say, “No thank you”?’

Emma reached for her hand again and Natasha grasped it, trying not to remember what had happened next.

‘I had no way at all of knowing that they really had you. There was no time for them to prove it.’

‘They sent you a fucking photo – what more did you want?’

And after the photo Natasha had once again become a liability. What if David had taken it to the police? Behaved like any normal father? The photo could have been shown around – she could have been spotted out on the street, or by one of the social workers who came to the house – more often than Rory liked. So she’d had to stay hidden – and Rory had thrown her in The Pit just because he could – because the plan had failed and he had nobody else to take it out on.

David was still trying to make excuses. His voice sounded weak, whining. He would have had that knocked out of him as well, if he’d been brought up like she had.

‘It could have been a child that just looked a bit like you. I didn’t know. If I’d known it was you, it would have been different.’

‘They asked you to make one phone call. That was all. One pissy little phone call when some guy who had been boasting to the world about his stash of money in your vault was about to clear it all out. Was I not worth the risk?’

She really didn’t want to listen to his lies any more. To think she had wondered, even for a short time, if everything she had been told was a lie – if Rory and Finn had faked the tape, if perhaps she could be happy here. What a choice, even if she had one. Live here, with David, or go back and take her punishment.

Natasha’s eyes stung.
What a choice
.

*

Emma’s eyes were drawn to Natasha. How terrible for the girl to hear this, to know that her own father was prepared to let her suffer – even if only for a couple of hours – to solve his own problems. She would
die
before she would do something like that to Ollie. She had no words.

David seemed more concerned about Emma’s reaction than his daughter’s.

‘It was a
mistake
, Emma.’

Explain that to your daughter
– the thought pulsed in her head.
Tell Tasha – not me
. But she knew he wouldn’t. He wanted Emma to be on his side, to support him, to understand just as she always had.

‘Why didn’t you try harder to contact these men – do whatever they wanted so you could get Tasha back? Or tell the police the whole sorry tale?’

She knew the answer, of course. He didn’t have the guts. He was more concerned about what would happen to him if he went to the police than he was about what was happening to his daughter. He would have hoped that, somehow, it would all come right without him having to do anything at all.

Memories of the hours they had spent together talking about the loss of Caroline and Natasha painted vivid pictures in her head, and she realised that David had found Caroline’s death easy to deal with. It was always part of the conversation, but it was the loss of Tasha that had troubled him the most. Was it because of grief, guilt, or could it actually have been fear? Fear that at some moment in the future – at a time he couldn’t control – it would all come back to bite him? Tasha and everything that had happened to her was the one problem that would never go away, however much he ignored it, because it was always lurking at the edge of his consciousness. And then two years ago, it really did come back – and he did nothing.

David was running his fingers through his hair again, and an action she had once found endearing suddenly irritated her beyond measure.

‘I had never been able to contact them,’ he said. ‘They always contacted me. I tried everything. I thought when things had calmed down after the accident and the police had finished crawling all over me, all over our friends, family, it would be back on and I would get Tasha back, but three weeks later the customer took his diamonds out. He had a buyer.’

‘And you did
nothing
?’ Emma could hear the disgust in her own voice.

‘What could I have done?’ David asked, looking genuinely bewildered.

‘You could have told the police.’

‘What, tell them what I’d done?’

Emma couldn’t believe the look of horror on David’s face, as if this was a totally ridiculous suggestion.

‘Yes – of course you should. And what reason could you possibly have for not telling the police when you had the chance to get Tasha back two years ago?’

‘You make it all sound so black and white, and it wasn’t. Anybody could have made up a story to say they had Tasha. And I
would
have gone to the police, but they said they would hurt you if I did, Em. You were pregnant with Ollie. I couldn’t lose a second family.’

‘So you sold out your first to protect your second, did you?’ Natasha asked, making it sound like a reasonable decision.

‘If I’d gone to the police I’d have had to explain what had happened six years ago. They would have locked me up – surely you can understand?’

Suddenly, Emma felt as if an icy blast had swept into the room and the surface of her skin tingled with cold and fear.

‘And Ollie? Is this you too, David? Have you let them take my baby to save yourself from some other stupidity?’

She heard Natasha gasp, ‘No,’ but her eyes were on David’s face. She thought she could read the answer in his horror-struck gaze – but maybe she didn’t know him at all.

The momentary silence was shattered as Natasha’s mobile rang.

*

David and Emma hurried to the kitchen at Natasha’s insistence. She thought their voices should be picked up by the bug in there, and they walked in, playing their parts, although Emma wanted nothing more than to grab David by the neck and shake him until he told her everything. She wrapped her arms around her stomach, trying to control the sick feeling lodged deep inside her. Whether David had anything to do with Ollie’s abduction or not, if he hadn’t set this ball rolling six years ago, none of this would be happening now.

She banged a few dishes around and switched the tap on, so the listeners would know they were there. She couldn’t bring herself to talk to David.

Natasha followed them into the kitchen a minute later.

‘David – they’re on the phone. They want to speak to you. On speaker.’

Natasha laid the phone down on the table and a distorted voice echoed around the room.

‘Write this down. At 2.30 a.m. you will drive to Joseph & Son. Inside the back porch you will find a duffle bag. Take that with you. Let yourself into the main building foyer the back way. You know the code. At 3.01 a.m. you will type the following number into the security keypad at Joseph & Son’s door: 1563974. This will give you access to the vault. The time
locks have been dealt with. Wedge the door open. If it closes, it will restart the timing system and you won’t be able to get out.’

David scribbled frantically. Emma made her own notes – they couldn’t afford any mistakes.

‘Open the door to the key room and take the key to box 2909. Empty the contents of the box into the sacks you’ll find in the duffle bag, and put them in your car. You have exactly 58 minutes to do this before the security system does its automatic check for breaches. You have to be out of the building with the door closed by that time. If not, the police will catch you and you’ll never see your son again. Do you understand?’

David looked up at Emma and she nodded. She could remind him of the details and they could go over them together. There was time.

‘We will call on this phone at 4.10 a.m. when you must be back in the car. We’ll tell you where you’ve got to go to make the delivery. Wear black – head to toe. There will be no lighting at all in the vault.’

Emma looked at her husband and felt a moment’s sympathy. The idea of going into that place alone, at night, below the streets of Manchester, in a building that had been there for years and held who knew what secrets was enough to make the strongest man blanch.

‘Have you understood all this?’

‘Yes,’ David answered.

‘And you, Emma?’ the voice said.

‘No. When do I get my baby back?’

‘When the job’s done. Natasha comes back to us and the baby comes back to you. We’ll let you know where you can find him once the girl’s back with us. He’ll be safe.’

Emma turned horrified eyes to Tasha. She had always said she would have to go back, but Emma had never thought it would really come to that.

The man was speaking again.

‘Are you listening, Emma?’

‘Yes,’ she answered softly, still staring at Natasha’s pale face.

‘Good – because David’s not the one doing this job. It’s you. You’re the one who’s going into the vault – if you want your son back.’

The line went dead.

51

It had been easier than Becky had imagined to locate the house where they believed Ollie was being held. The Titan team had confirmed that Finn McGuinness’s wife ran the burger van, and the supposedly respectable couple had a house in a surprisingly prosperous area of Salford, on a street of beautiful detached homes. That in itself was a relief, because a covert operation in a road where houses were crammed together with neighbours within two metres of each other was a nightmare.

Becky had been banished to her car, parked down the street beyond the outer cordon set up by the firearms team, and she tapped her fingers impatiently on the steering wheel. McGuinness was an organised crime group’s enforcer, so there was every chance of finding a gun in the house. Unfortunately, that meant Becky couldn’t just barge in and demand Ollie back. The firearms silver commander was responsible for putting the operation together and making all the decisions now, leaving Becky temporarily redundant. All she could do was wait for the all clear – the moment when she could go in and rescue Ollie.

She was too far away to check what was happening, and anyway she could barely see through the windscreen as the individual fat drops of rain joined together to create silver rivers down the glass. She couldn’t draw attention to herself by putting her windscreen wipers on, so she peered out of the side window at the black silhouettes of trees lining the narrow cul-de-sac, hiding the expensive properties that were set well back from the road.

It didn’t seem right that one of these lovely houses was Finn McGuinness’s home, and Becky thought about all the lives that had been ruined by drugs and God knows what else to pay for this lifestyle. She had seen pictures of McGuinness. He was not what she expected. He looked strangely like a bank manager – a man who would fit easily into this middle-class street. Apart from what appeared to be a perpetually worried frown, his face was fairly lacking in memorable features. His short, well-groomed grey hair was receding at the front, but there were no discernible signs of the life of crime he was purported to have led. He
wasn’t even a big man at five feet ten inches, and in each of the photos she saw he was wearing a smart overcoat and a snazzy red tie. A businessman through and through.

Even in a two-dimensional static image, though, the eyes said it all. Nothing could disguise the flat, black stare that Becky was sure – if cast upon you – would turn your legs to jelly – and not in a good way. She hoped and prayed that she wouldn’t be finding out tonight.

A light in an upstairs window was on, suggesting somebody was home, but as yet nobody had seen any movement or heard a sound. She knew the team was getting into position but it was a delicate operation with too many unknown factors for Becky’s liking.

A sudden downpour of rain washed the windscreen clean, for a moment forming a solid sheet of water that enhanced the image through the glass. Peering at the distorted view, Becky watched as a member of the team approached the house cautiously – little more than a dark shadow, keeping close to the wall.

The listening devices were being put in place. They needed to hear Ollie or Julie. If they got this wrong, Ollie might not get out alive.

*

Emma locked herself in the bathroom. She couldn’t let either Natasha or David know how she was feeling about carrying out the robbery, but the look of horror on Natasha’s face had said it all. She hadn’t been expecting this. David’s expression of relief that it wasn’t going to be him sickened her.