The Best of British Crime omnibus (38 page)

Closter-Bennet picked up the gin bottle from the drinks trolley beside him. His weight and the movement made the wicker chair creak a little. The King Charles spaniel lying at Barbara's feet raised its head nervously at the sound.

The chair belonged to a set that Barbara's father had bought at Harrods more than forty years before: she was seated in another of them. If they creaked it detracted nothing from their resilience; they were sturdily built and good for many more years' wear. Naturally, the seats and the removable cushions had been renewed from time to time. The table had come with the chairs.

The garden furniture was indicative. There was nothing cheap or dilapidated about the Closter-Bennet home or chattels. Barbara had been brought up to invest in quality, proper maintenance, and to replace things only when the need was evident – not because something fancier had come out in plastic.

‘Mind you, Bodlin doesn't like Hackle,' said Closter-Bennet, by way of emphasising the unexpectedness of his earlier report. He dropped two ice cubes into the gin, then added tonic.

‘What's that got to do with it? Of course, the police should have been told immediately. And Mark Treasure.'

‘He's in New York.'

‘There are telephones.' She took the glass from him. As always, the action was a little awkward because her right wrist, damaged in a riding accident, had never mended properly.

‘We couldn't telephone. We don't know who's to be trusted.'

‘Oh come on! You don't seriously believe those criminals? What they told you about having spies everywhere? Naturally they were bluffing.'

‘Mary Ricini doesn't think so.'

‘Isn't she Italian?'

His face clouded. ‘No, English.' He considered the evident incongruity of that claim when set against the lady's surname. ‘I think her father was from Sicily. Before he came to this country. Her mother's from Leamington Spa.'

‘So the girl's mind was filled with Mafia stories. They're always kidnapping each other there.'

He took it that she meant Sicily not Leamington Spa, but you never knew with Barbara whose prejudices were numerous, and not always predictable. ‘We've taken no risks at all,' he went on. ‘Not so far. The Irishman said if we told the police they'd castrate Hackle immediately. And then send us his … send us the evidence.' He had lowered his voice at the awesomeness of the threat.

Barbara gave a wince, but only a very small one. ‘How disgusting,' she said, quite slowly.

‘And they'll cut off his right hand if we warn the Stock Exchange about the plan.'

This time there was no visible reaction. ‘It's probably all pretence. To frighten you.' She paused, her gaze straying to the secateurs in the flower basket near her chair. ‘Hackle's right-handed, I suppose?'

‘Yes, he is,' he answered, wondering if that particular enquiry had been seemly or essential in the circumstances. He hadn't yet told her about the final threat.

‘And Bob Larden protested?'

‘To the SAE, or whoever they are. Yes. He asked if they realised they were behaving like total barbarians. The chap just said that now we'd know how animals felt about vivisection. It was a good point in a way.'

‘Nonsense.'

‘Yes, dear.'

‘But it's why you're pretty sure it's the SAE?' She dropped a hand to smooth the spaniel's head.

‘The chap didn't deny it when Bob said so. Bodlin was convinced it was them from the start. He's very upset.'

‘Not as upset as Dermot Hackle, I imagine,' Barbara offered drily.

‘Of course not. It's just that despite what Bodlin says, he's never really felt easy about the animal experiments we do. Especially the terminal ones on mammals.'

‘He has an affinity with monkeys? Quite understandable, I suppose. He looks like one. Like an undernourished baboon that's lost some hair.'

‘He was the only one at all affected by the protest the other day.' Closter-Bennet scratched his stomach under his trouser top. ‘It's hard to explain. He's become a vegetarian, for instance. Quite recently. Perhaps you'd feel the same way as him if you had to destroy a perfectly sound horse, say. Even in a good cause.'

‘But I could never find myself in such a position. If his work bothers him so much, the man should switch to something else.'

‘We couldn't do without him.' He knew it pleased her to be gratuitously perverse.

‘Nonsense. No one's indispensable. Daddy always said that.' Her eyes became thoughtful, but she wasn't ruminating on her dead father whose pronouncements hadn't warranted much of her attention in his lifetime. ‘What if Hackle didn't survive? When Bob becomes Chairman, they'd have to make you Managing Director, of course.' Her still narrowed eyes delayed immediate comment from her husband. ‘Yes, I must remember to confirm that date with Jane,' she added.

‘About the new decorations here?'

‘To talk about them.' Even a sound ulterior motive would not be allowed to precipitate commitment in so unresolved a matter. ‘There's no hurry. But I ought to be in touch with Jane. It'll be appropriate, in the circumstances. We might have them both to dinner here again, too.'

‘We don't know that Bob's going to be Chairman.'

‘He will be. Quite soon. Mark Treasure never intended to stay on after the flotation.'

‘In any case they wouldn't make me Managing Director.'

‘Who else is there?'

‘Bodlin?' he offered tentatively.

‘You can't be serious?'

‘Hughie McFee then?'

‘Not the breadth to be a managing director.'

‘Someone from outside then?'

She made a tutting sound. ‘For God's sake, Giles, if you don't value your capacities, how can you expect anyone else to?'

He shrugged, then emptied his glass. ‘What we're talking about is academic. If the managing directorship becomes vacant, it's bound to go to Dermot. He won't come to any harm. We're going to protect him. Do what the SAE order.'

Barbara seemed to be occupied with other things as she answered: ‘We'll have to see about that.'

He assumed she was referring still to the managing directorship. ‘Pretty well everyone was committed to selling their shares,' he said, gloomily.

Her jaw stiffened. ‘I thought you said some of them were undecided?'

‘That was about whether we should go to the police.' He shifted in his chair. ‘Well … Bob hasn't actually committed himself on the shares. But I think he'll decide to sell in the end.'

‘I assume you haven't committed my shares?' Her words were almost menacing. Then without waiting for a reply she asked: ‘You realise it's my decision, not yours?'

He shifted in his chair, making it creak again. ‘The shares are in my name.'

‘But bought with my money, five years ago. Out of what was left of Daddy's fortune. Your kidnappers have no right to regard those shares as belonging to a director. They belong to me. I'm not a director.' Angrily she lit a cigarette.

‘I don't think the SAE would understand the distinction. I think we'll all have to sell. If we don't they say they'll … they'll put down Dermot Hackle tomorrow night.'

‘Put down?' Her hand dropped instinctively to the dog again.

‘That's what they said. Like an animal. And that won't be the end of it either.'

‘More shamming, of course. So what would be left for them to do if they put down Dermot Hackle, for heaven's sake?' She pronounced ‘put down' in a manner that gave the possibility no credence.

‘They say after that they'd go on hurting us all in the slow way. Because we'd have rejected the fast one.' He paused. ‘They'll abduct the wife or the child of a director. Both, in time. That's unless we relent and sell. And they'll do the same if we ever admit there was a kidnapping.'

This time it wasn't only Barbara's jaw that stiffened. Her whole body had gone tight at the mention of the word wife. Because of her movement, the startled spaniel sat up too. With their astonished, aggrieved expressions, lifted noses, and popping dark eyes, at that moment outraged mistress and pet looked uncannily alike.

‘This telephone call you got must have gone on a rare long time,' said Alison McFee. She stuck the long cooking fork into one of the potatoes in the saucepan on the cooker.

‘Four or five minutes, I suppose. It was pretty one-sided,' her husband answered. He was in shirt sleeves, taking apart the defective plug on the lead to the electric kettle. There was a glass of neat whisky beside him. Like Closter-Bennet, he had arrived home later than usual. ‘I don't think anyone was timing it.'

‘But someone could have been alerting the switchboard to try tracing the number.' She stood back from the cooker and glanced around to where he was standing at the draining board. ‘Except, of course, you wouldn't have dared. In case the kidnappers found out. I'd forgotten that. How terrible.' She shook her head and used the fork to push about the lamb chops on the grill.

He had given her a similar account to the one Closter-Bennet had given to his wife – except Hughie McFee had early on explained that they had no choice but to part with their shares to save Dermot Hackle's life. Again like Closter-Bennet, he had stressed why it was essential that the wives told no one about the kidnap either now or possibly ever.

They were in their big, square kitchen, an invariably untidy area but well equipped and practical. The McFees' home was a substantial, red-brick, Victorian villa, with later additions, and grounds of several acres running down to the towpath on the outskirts of Maidenhead.

After all three children had left home, the couple had taken to spending most of their time either in the kitchen or in the adjoining conservatory – an iron-framed, stone-floored, Gothic appendage, shaped like a glass marquee, and promoted from its earlier status as a playroom. The conservatory was warm, except in the very depths of winter, and adaptable for eating, sitting, reading, napping and watching television or boats on the river. It was haphazardly but effectively furnished to cover all those activities, making for a comfortable muddle: Alison McFee was anything but house-proud. For a good deal of the year, the room was also pleasantly scented by the exotic plants that McFee nurtured along the ledges, or brought in from his greenhouse.

It was to the conservatory that Alison now drove her husband. Although the electrical repair job wasn't completed, her cooking was.

‘When they phone again tomorrow, can you have the call traced in some way then?' she asked, while unloading the tray of food on to the big round white-painted table in the centre of the room. Less than half the table surface had been cleared for the meal; the remainder was occupied by, amongst other things, a collection of seed catalogues, a broken clock, some travel brochures, a length of green netting in need of unravelling, an office stapler, a stack of unissued tickets for the Maidenhead Scottish Festival, and the previous day's copy of
The Times
, folded to the cookery page.

He drew up a chair, a collapsible, high-backed tubular steel affair with arms and loose cushions, quite different from the wooden, upholstered one his wife was using. ‘The man told us they were using Dermot's own portable phone. From his car,' he said. ‘You can't trace a call from one of those.' He seemed to be considering the overfull table, his gaze pausing quizzically on the green netting. Then he withdrew his napkin from its holder, before adding broccoli from the nearest serving dish to the grilled meat his wife had put before him. ‘You see, there's no way of pinpointing the location of a portable phone,' he completed.

‘You don't say?' She shook her head in surprise, took the serving dish from him, helped herself to vegetables, then leaned over to deposit the dish in a neutral area of the table, but one already occupied by the
Radio Times
. ‘You'd have thought it'd be a mite easier than with an ordinary phone.'

‘The system operators would like it to be. Too many portables are stolen. Thieves use them with impunity till they're reported, like the SAE are doing now, with no chance of their being tracked down. The system operators are working on a solution to that one. But it won't be in time to help Dermot Hackle.' He poured her some water as he spoke. She drank nothing else with dinner at home. He preferred to sip Scotch. As usual, he had brought his glass and the bottle to the table with him.

‘But what if you were to ring them? Is it the same? If you know Dermot's number surely— '

‘We've tried already. This afternoon,' he interrupted. ‘For another reason. We got the standard message when a subscriber is choosing not to answer. They were obviously not in the business of accepting calls. In any case, the locating problem's the same. Or nearly the same.'

‘His poor wife, Rosemary. She's such a frail creature.' Alison spooned some potatoes on to her plate from the other serving dish, recharged the spoon, considered, then put the second helping back in the dish. ‘What's happening about her? She's been told?'

‘Aye, and Mary Ricini's moved into the house. It seemed the best solution. It's hit Rosemary very hard apparently.'

‘What else would you expect, Hughie?'

‘I meant about it being the best solution. Because she might need sedation, and maybe medical counselling over the next few days. We couldn't risk her taking herself off to her own doctor. Having to explain things. She understands that. And she gets on with Mary.' He cut into his lamb chop.

‘And what about the Hackle children? Let's see, the girl must be a teenager now. The boy about nine.'

‘They're not to be told what's happening. Not unless it's absolutely unavoidable.'

‘Of course. But they must be told something.'

‘Only that their mother's unwell, and that Mary's staying because their father's been caught up with meetings in the Midlands. That should hold them till Friday, if necessary.'