Captured (8 page)

Grace swung around when she heard the door slam. Her hand knocked against a pile of dirty dishes on the edge of the counter and sent them crashing to the ground. She looked up.

His face was expressionless. Her mind raced to connect the dots..

“You look a little confused, Grace.” That neutral smile again.

“What are you doing here? Where’s Kirsty? She never said you were meeting her...”

She trailed off and the silence descended again. Grace felt like she couldn’t break it, she didn’t know why. She couldn’t look away from his dark brown eyes, which didn’t even flicker. Nor did they give her so much as a hint of what was happening. It could only have been a few seconds even though it felt like an eternity.
Is everything fine, and I’m just being crazy? Maybe Neil traced the wrong email...

Grace’s phone pinged; she’d forgotten it was in her pocket, emergency number already keyed in. “shit”. She looked at him tentatively. He just stared back.

They had met no more than a handful of times with Kirsty. She tried to read his expression; it offered nothing.

“Give me the phone,
Grace
.” His face contorted when he said her name.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she replied, stalling.

In lieu of a response, he twisted around slowly, and looked down towards the bulge in the back pocket of his shorts. Only the handle was visible, but the thick outline of the curved sheath was clearly discernible through the thin cotton.

Grace held out the phone and took a step forward. He stepped forward the rest of the distance. Grace was surprised at the lightness of his movements, given his size. With great reluctance she let him take it from her hand.

Her chest swelled with butterflies. She tried to take deep breaths to quell the panic, and bit the sides of her cheeks to stop the tears that were already beginning to prick her eyes.

He opened the message and looked at the screen for a few seconds before smirking. “It’s registered to 5 Bayham Street, NW1,” he read.

Grace’s heart sank.

“Bayham Street,” he repeated. “Looks like we have a mutual friend.” He sniggered, fumbling with the back of her phone before pulling out the SIM card. He paused, then slipped it into the pocket of his shorts. “Poor old Simon.” He looked back towards her, running his fingers though his hair casually. “Why were you looking for him?”

“Where is she, Daniel?” Grace demanded. “What have you done? And why the hell...”

He stopped her with a raised hand. “How did you find me?”

She shrugged. “What have you done with Kirsty?” she countered, trying her best to feign indifference.

His eyes widened as he exhaled in a short, loud burst. “Get in there,” he gestured to the living room with the knife, and waited for her to move. She hadn’t noticed him pull it from his pocket. She shuddered, hoping it was more to do with her observation than his proficiency with the thing. “I had a feeling you wouldn’t just give up and go back to Britain. Too tenacious for your own good. Now, how did you find me?”

Grace walked forward a couple of steps, before turning again to face him. “Fuck you. I’m not taking another step until you tell me where she is.”

“Fine. We have all the time in the world, but I recommend you just give up and tell me before this gets uncomfortable for you,” he shrugged.

She laughed. “You work for a bank, Daniel, for fuck’s sake. You’re not Bruce Willis. Go on. What have you done with her?”

“You’re right, this isn’t a movie Grace. I’m not going to stand here and give you
closure
, or whatever it is you’re after. Now walk, you stupid bitch, before I do something I won’t regret.”

Her ears rung. Grace cast her mind back, trying to find a clue in any of the conversations she’d had with Kirsty since she’d first started mentioning her new colleague. Grace had known all about their fling, but had been under the impression that it had ended amicably when Kirsty left.

“But why...”

“Move it,” Daniel yelled again and punched the wall beside him. He moved towards the kitchen and opened one of the drawers and took something out.
What do I do, do I argue with him or keep quiet?
She stared dumbfounded at the hole his fist had left in the wall, before shuffling in the direction he had pointed.

He’d been looking for a pill bottle, she now saw. He tipped several into his palm one-handed, looked thoughtful for a moment, and then put them in the pocket of his shorts. He walked backwards to the sink and filled a dirty cup with water from the sink. She tried to read his expression: he looked totally relaxed: like she had just popped over for a cup of tea. 

“Right, how’d you find me?” he slammed the cup down on the table in front of her, so that water sloshed over its grimy rim. He grabbed the pills from his pocket, and held his closed fist above her right hand, all the while holding the knife inches from her throat.

She shook her head, squeezing her lips together so tightly they turned white and began to hurt.

They were inches apart now, standing in what felt like impenetrable silence. She stared into his cold eyes, hardly daring to blink.  When she saw them light up, she would have done anything for them to return to their expressionless gaze.

“Actually,” he broke the silence in a sing-song voice, “let’s try something else first.” He put the pills back in his pocket. “Come on.” He grabbed her arm and half-dragged her to the other side of the room.

He opened the hall closet, looked for a moment, then pulled a pillowcase from the stack of spare linen inside. She heard an unfamiliar sound escape her own throat when he placed it over her head.

“Don’t move.” He pulled a sheet from the closet and cut through one of the seams with his knife. He replaced the knife and tugged the two sides apart.

“What’s that?” Grace whispered, shuddering at the tearing sounds.

He answered by moving behind her and tying her wrists together with the crooked strip of cotton.

He stood back and looked at her, appraising. He added another pillowcase to her head and reached into the closet again.

Daniel walked into the second bedroom, which he had turned into a makeshift office. He tripped on the door jamb, recovering with his right foot, but spilling gin and slimline tonic all over the carpet. It had been a long day at work. Richard Jones grated on his nerves a little more each day. He had considered it quite a coup at the time: angling himself into the sights of Simon’s girlfriend’s boss. Now, having come to know the man better, he was less self-congratulatory. A toddler could have charmed that man, he thought. It would have taken only an aptitude for flattery and the slightest appearance of wealth. 

He switched on his PC and sat back, sipping his drink as he waited. Finally it finished loading. First he clicked through to the folder where Simon’s cloned hard drive sat. He had created a series of obscure folders when he started making headway with Kirsty: he didn’t think she was the type to snoop, but didn’t see any sense in putting that to the test. It would take a most determined investigator to find it now, and no one ever came into his apartment apart from the cleaner, and Kirsty. With the others he had preferred to keep them out of his sanctuary. She was different.

Daniel had set the software to update every morning, after Simon had left for work. He only appeared to use his computer for internet browsing. He hadn’t looked at anything notable since the previous day. Football results. Pathetic. And Facebook. Daniel toggled back to his own machine and opened a browser window. The links were mostly to Kirsty’s profile. The fool was refusing to let her go.

I told him to forget about her.

He remembered the day of Kirsty’s departure. How she’d sounded breathless and excited when she answered the phone, because she thought it was
him
. He squeezed the mouse until his hand shook.

He looked back at the screen. The photo showed a smiling Kirsty, on a boat. He had seen dozens of similar pictures since she left the UK. If he was honest, they simply bored him: vacuous pictures of strangers forcing cheesy smiles for the benefit of their mindless friends back home. Idly, he clicked on the arrow to the right of the picture. The next photo flashed up. He frowned.

That can’t be right.

He spoke to her regularly and had always gotten the impression that she missed him and wanted him to join her (he couldn’t think of anything more abhorrent). Now, here she was in a restaurant with her arm draped around some big blond hulk, beaming. He clicked through the images quickly. The same man appeared in several. She had taken him for a fool. He opened Skype, hoping that she was online, but was disappointed. He felt restless now. Standing up, he walked to his bedroom and changed into jeans and a shirt. He’d never sleep tonight.

The next morning, he felt much better. He was slightly hungover when he walked into the morning meeting.

“Daniel, I wasn’t sure you were going to make it!”

He laughed. “Sorry Rich, problems on the Tube.”

“You look a bit worse for wear.” The other members of the department looked away as Richard continued.

“Yeah, it was a bit of a late one,” he smiled.

“What happened to your hand?”

Daniel looked down.
Shit
. He paused. “Oh it’s nothing. Some pikey tried it on last night. Wanted my wallet,” he held up his fist and twisted his features into what he hoped looked like a triumphant smile.

Richard looked shocked. “Sorry man, I was only jibing you earlier,” the older man stood up and walked over, slapping him on the back. “We’ve only just started. Why don’t you give us an update on the Callan account?”

Daniel smiled and sat down.

Back at his desk, Daniel unlocked his computer and flicked through his emails. He thought of something, and opened the internet browser.

“Don’t forget, you’re down for anti-money laundering training today,” Richard boomed as he walked past.

Daniel looked up and nodded. He had completely forgotten. His calendar told him the session was about to start. If someone had told him four months ago about the sheer number of training sessions one encountered in a large bank, he wouldn’t have believed them.

It had been easy to place himself in Jones’s path, and easier again to falsify his experience at Bailey Morgan: a Cambridge friend’s father was a partner there. Why anyone would want to work in this hamster wheel hell was beyond him. He stood up and locked his machine again.

The session had dragged on for three hours. After a late lunch, he finally returned to his desk. He had moved to Kirsty’s old desk after she left: Jones’s attempt to ‘bring the team closer together’. He hated the collegiate chumminess that Jones extolled, but had greeted the announcement with an enthusiastic smile, as if he lived and breathed the team.

When he finally returned to his desk, he was mentally exhausted. He opened Facebook and clicked through to Kirsty’s profile. Careful to use the screen facing away from the walkway: anyone passing his cubicle had a clear view of his left screen, but the one on the right was more private.

The bank’s IT policy expressly forbade access to webmail or social networking programs, for fear that unscrupulous employees might transmit sensitive information externally. Facebook was banned from the firm machines. He had never given this much thought at all, but remembered something Susan in the next cubicle had said about accessing the site through another site.

“Susan,” he called, over the green-fabric-upholstered partition.

Susan looked up from her keyboard and smiled.

“What was the name of that website, where you can access Facebook?” he asked, as casually as possible.

“Why, are you having a slow day? I have a load of offering documents you can review if you want,” she said seriously, before descending into a fit of girlish giggles. It was an incongruous sight: she was in her early forties and still sported a serious amount of puppy fat. ”I’m just kidding. Go to sneaky workaround dot com.”

This place is full of jokers.
Daniel laughed along enthusiastically, cutting off abruptly before the point of sycophancy.

He typed in the address quickly. Thoughts of Kirsty had started to nag him again; he felt a strong compulsion to have another look at those photos. Maybe he was being too hard on her: she was travelling alone and was entitled to make friends. It didn’t mean she was sleeping with all of them.

He ignored the updates on his home page and clicked straight through to Kirsty’s profile, in search of the photos that he had seen the day before. He smirked, imagining Simon’s reaction, before remembering how careless his own reaction had made him.

There they were. In the cold light of day, it didn’t seem as bad as it had the night before. He would have felt guilty, he thought, if it was an emotion he was capable of feeling. It was probably just a holiday snap. Did her smile look strained? Maybe she was just putting up with the guy, and that was why she hadn’t mentioned him.

He didn’t know why she was getting to him like this. He had only gone after her to teach Williams a lesson; now here he was on this childish site, analysing pictures of her. He sighed, moving his mouse to close the window.

“She’s looking great since she left, isn’t she?” Susan was standing at his left shoulder, having seemingly materialised out of nowhere. He didn’t know how long she’d been there – he hoped not long.

“Yeah,” he answered evenly. “The weather seems to suit her.”

Susan giggled conspiratorially. “And the good-looking boys.” She stopped, her expression suggesting that she wanted him to probe further.

Daniel pictured her going home at night to a pathetic little house in Kent and curling up with a mangy cat under a floral blanket. “Susan, you’re such a gossip,” he laughed rolling his eyes.
What the fuck are you talking about?
“It doesn’t look like she’s very pleased to be around this guy at all.”

Susan tutted, swatting him on the arm. “Not jealous are you love? I thought you had a bit of a crush on her alright.” She moved to his right side and had taken the mouse from his hand before he could stop her. “Look, have you seen the new photos? Someone posted them this morning. They’re all over each other in these ones. They make a gorgeous couple.” She stopped, watching him expectantly.

He studied the picture and then flipped quickly to the next, and then to the one after that. How had he missed them? Conscious of Susan’s scrutinising gaze, he closed the window. “Good for her, getting out of this place, and meeting some hunk while we’re all stuck here.”

Susan laughed, nodding and walking around the partition to her own domain. “I know. Some people have all the luck, don’t they?”

Daniel nodded in agreement and pretended to listen to her for a few moments, nodding and laughing when her pauses signalled it was appropriate. When she was distracted, he quickly put his head down and reopened the browser. He studied the pictures carefully. There were over a dozen new ones, taken in all different locations. This had clearly been going on for some time. There was no mistaking their relationship this time: they were practically fucking in the pictures he thought, remembering angrily how she had been so careful to avoid being seen in public with
him
. It was no problem for her now.

He had spoken to her three days ago and she hadn’t mentioned a word about this guy. He opened maps.com and searched for some of the places mentioned in the photo captions. They were all in Laos, but they were spread out across the entire country. There was no way she had covered that distance in three days. She was lying to him!

He had left work that evening in a state of apoplexy, and couldn’t remember the Tube journey home. It took all his power to sit still when he felt like barrelling through the thronged carriage and hurtling everyone off the train. He felt impotent: she was making a mockery of him, and there was nothing he could do. He didn’t even know where she was! Although... a glimmer of clarity was alight in the back of his mind. She had mentioned that she’d be meeting Grace soon, in Bangkok. She was flying down a few days in advance of Grace’s arrival. Had she said we? The sneaky bitch. He thought back to their conversation but couldn’t remember, although he was almost sure that she had. Parading it right in front of him.

He raced home from the Tube station and booked the first flight out to Bangkok, which left the following morning.

His sleep was disturbed that night; rage intensifying by the minute. Groggy, he had made his way to the airport, checked in and boarded the flight. He still hadn’t slept when he arrived in Bangkok. When he finally reached his hotel, he fell forward onto the bed fully clothed, and slept for eleven hours straight.

By then, his rage had dissipated. He was thinking clearly now, realising the folly of action without preparation. It was something he had lectured himself not to do, ever since that moonless night sixteen years ago. Now here he was, trying to rectify the results of his impulsiveness for the second time in three days.