And at that exact moment, it rang.
Kate stared at it, frozen. Paul picked it up and was about to answer it when Miranda shrieked, "No! Kate has to answer."
Kate took the phone and pressed the green b.u.t.ton. She whispered, "h.e.l.lo?"
"h.e.l.lo Kate. Want to say h.e.l.lo to your son?"
Amelia was right he was a monster. But in the real world, monsters didn"t have fangs and horns and scales. Some of them, the kind Kate encountered in her work every day, were invisible to the eye. And some monsters were invisible because they seemed so ordinary. Everyday people, with ordinary faces and voices and flesh and blood. The thing that made them different was inside them, in their hearts and their f.u.c.ked-up minds.
When Sampson spoke, Kate had the sensation of being stroked by cold fingers. She could hear the darkness inside him. All this time she"d been so terrified of Vernon getting Jack, and now someone far, far worse had him. At least Vernon wouldn"t ever put his son"s life in danger but that was exactly what she herself had done. Oh G.o.d. She couldn"t believe this was happening to her.
She couldn"t speak for a few moments.
"I"m going to call the police."
"No, Kate. Do that and I"ll kill him."
"No! Please don"t hurt him. If you do anything to him..." She trailed off. What was the point of making threats? "Let me speak to him."
"Mummy?" Jack"s small voice penetrated her head, and she didn"t realise she was crying until she felt the warm tears drop from her chin. Paul stood beside her, rocking from foot to foot, his face dark, pained by his inability to make everything right.
"Jack," she said, "Jack, sweetheart, it"s me, Mummy. Are you all right?"
"The man said you were coming to find me."
"I am, darling. I"ll be there as soon as I can. Where are you?"
"I don"t know. I don"t like it."
"Oh, Jack, I"m so sorry. I promise..."
"Save it." Sampson was back on the line.
"You b.a.s.t.a.r.d! Why the h.e.l.l are you doing this? I don"t know what you want from me." Except that you want me dead, she thought.
"Haven"t you worked it out yet? It"s all in your head." He paused and Kate could hear somebody else in the background, a man"s voice. She strained to make out what he was saying. What Sampson had said confirmed her fears: that they were after her because of what she had found out back in 1990. But they didn"t know she had been to see a hypnotherapist, and they didn"t know she couldn"t remember everything. She realised, though, that she was a loose end that needed to be cut away.
For a horrible moment she thought the line had gone dead and that the thread between her and Jack had been broken. "h.e.l.lo? h.e.l.lo?"
"If you want your son back, you and Wilson have to come to us now. Don"t tell the police or the kid will die. Don"t try to be clever. Just get here if you want to see him alive again."
"But where are you?"
"I can"t tell you that."
"Then how the h.e.l.l am I supposed to come to you?" she shouted into the phone.
He didn"t reply instantly and her heart bungee-jumped into her stomach.
"Go to the village of Mayfield in East Suss.e.x. Be there by one a.m. Then wait for more instructions."
"By one a.m? How long does it take to get there?"
But he had hung up.
Paul immediately tried to throw his arms around her but she shrugged him off.
"We haven"t got time, we"ve got to get to Mayfield, it"s a village in East Suss.e.x, by one o"clock in the morning, oh G.o.d, Jack; they"re going to hurt him, oh G.o.d..."
Paul grabbed her. "Kate, calm down. Shhh. Come on."
The tears burst and she pressed her face against his shoulder and let it all out. Jack, oh, Jack, and it was all her fault, if she hadn"t come to England, if she hadn"t been so stupid and selfish, and then leaving him here with Miranda while she swanned off so she could s.h.a.g her new man. The guilt hit her so hard it nearly knocked her off her feet.
Paul waited for her to stop crying, holding her close and kissing her hair, shushing her and whispering that it would be okay. But she struggled free again.
"We have to get going. We have to get to Jack. And to George."
Miranda was still sitting in the corner, ashen-faced, cuddling Amelia. "I"m so sorry," she whispered, "I think, if that man has Jack, then George must be with Vernon. He said he was going to trade them...." She tailed off, at the expression on Kate"s face.
Kate could see the hope and relief flickering across her sister"s features and, although it was irrational, she felt even more angry with Miranda.
"We have to go, Paul," she said curtly.
"Okay, but first..."
"We have to go, now!"
"Kate, listen. We need to work out where we"re going. Okay? What was the village called again? Mayfield?"
She nodded mutely.
"I"ve never heard of it." He turned to Miranda. "Do you have GPS in your car?"
"No, sorry."
"Let me get online, then. I"ll print off directions. It"ll be quicker than looking through a road atlas."
"The PC"s downstairs. It"s already switched on."
Paul left the room and ran down the stairs two at a time, locating the PC and connecting to the AA website, where he quickly found directions to Mayfield. The site provided full road-by-road instructions on how to get from A to B. He printed them off the printer was agonisingly slow then ran back upstairs to where Kate was pacing the room, her face in her hands.
"Okay," he said. "I"ve got directions. It"s just under a hundred and thirty miles, and if we follow this route it should take two hours fifty five minutes, unless there"s bad traffic."
"What time is it now?"
Paul checked his watch. "Nine forty-five."
"Oh s.h.i.t. We"ll never make it."
"Yes, we will. We"ve got three and a quarter hours, and the roads should be quiet now."
"But what if we get held up? There might be roadworks somewhere. Or an accident. Oh...Jack."
Paul took her chin and made her look directly at him. "We will make it Kate. I promise you. Let"s leave now."
There was a heavy rap on the front door: Paul turned to Miranda. "Will that be your husband?"
Miranda"s eyes were wide with fear. "No. He"s got a key. And he"ll be in the pub till closing time. He always is when he"s with her."
Paul didn"t have the time or the inclination to ask who she was. He quickly scanned the room and saw a cricket bat propped in the corner. He crept back down the stairs and pulled open the front door, swinging the cricket bat, ready to strike if necessary.
A man with a beard stood in front of him; a shaken, p.i.s.sed-off man. A small boy pushed past Paul"s legs and ran into the house.
"Is my wife here?" said Vernon.
CHAPTER 38.
"Kate."
"Vernon."
He opened his mouth to speak but Kate pushed past him, still gripping the mobile phone like it was her only connection to Jack. A few days ago this would have been her worst fear: coming face to face with Vernon, the confrontation she had dreaded since she fled America. But now her ex-husband"s presence was little more than an irritation, an inconvenience.
"So..." Vernon began, following her as she went into the kitchen and ran water into a gla.s.s. They could hear the sound of relieved sobs coming from upstairs, as George was reunited with his mother and sister.
She turned. "I don"t have time for any of your s.h.i.t, Vernon. We have to get going now."
"Because, if what George tells me is true, you let our son fall into the hands of some psychopath."
"Actually, I think it was you who allowed the psychopath to get him."
"If you hadn"t brought our son to England in the first place, he"d still be safe in Boston, where he belongs."
"He belongs with me."
"Yeah, well, great job, keeping him so close. Didn"t you dump him here with your sister so you could spend some sack time with lover boy here?" He jerked his thumb at Paul, who had entered the room.
"At least I didn"t have a lover while we were still together."
"Oh yeah? I"m supposed to believe that?"
"It"s true. And I left Jack with Miranda because I thought he"d be safe here."
"Hah! Safe? I"ll tell you..."
Paul stepped in between them. "Please, both of you, stop it."
Vernon"s face was turning purple. "Don"t you tell me what to do. You have no right. I can talk to my wife anyway I like."
"Ex-wife," Kate interjected.
"We"re not divorced yet."
"Please," Paul said, raising his voice. "Stop. We have to get going. If we"re going to make it to Mayfield by one, we should leave now."
Kate turned angrily on Vernon. "See, you"re holding us up. Come on, Paul." She headed out of the room, Paul behind her.
Vernon followed. "I"m coming too."
Kate put her hands on her hips. "What? No way."
"He"s my son too. I want to help."
"You"ll only hinder."
"Kate, I"m coming."
"If you think I want to share a car with you, then you"ve got..."
"I think we should let him come," Paul said. "He might be able to help."
"At last," said Vernon, "somebody who talks sense."
Kate couldn"t believe her ears. But they had already wasted far too much time arguing.
"Okay, whatever. Let"s go. We"ll take our car. Paul, you drive, Vernon, you"re in the back."
The men did as they were told, though Vernon paused to get Jack"s case out of his car and transfer it to the Peugeot. Kate laid the mobile phone on the dashboard and fastened her seatbelt, flicking on the light so she could consult the directions that Paul had printed off the computer. The words skidded about on the page; she pinched the bridge of her nose and told herself to focus. This usually worked, in the lab when she"d been working all night, always on the verge of a breakthrough, or fighting a deadline, and she"d stare at her papers and the numbers and characters would dance and sway. But now, nothing would calm her: her heart was moving too fast, her brain felt like it was dividing, splintering into pieces, thoughts like flies buzzing around a light bulb.
She handed the instructions to Vernon on the back seat. "You"ll have to read them," she said.
"I don"t have my reading gla.s.ses."
"For pity"s sake..."
"It"s okay," said Paul, trying not to sound to exasperated. "I can remember most of it."
He had already pulled away from the house. Just as they departed, Miranda"s husband, Pete, arrived, a little tipsy after a night of drinking and flirting, unaware of the scene that would face him indoors, his children shaken and upset, his wife traumatised, accusatory and furious, screaming about monsters and skinny young b.i.t.c.hes.
They were soon on the A44, heading south towards Oxford. The road was reasonably quiet, which was the first bit of good news of the evening. Kate was still terrified that they might get held up by an accident. She believed Sampson when he gave her a deadline. Not just because she couldn"t afford to risk it, but because he was too cold, too robotic, to be bluffing or to be malleable in any way. Trying to persuade him would be like trying to negotiate with a computer.
Vernon leaned over between the front seats. "Does somebody intend to tell me what in h.e.l.l is going on? Who is this guy who"s taken our son? And why haven"t we phoned the police?"