Santa Baby (36 page)

‘Found her outside, looking for lover boy.’ He pulled a length of rope from his jacket pocket and bound Tiffany’s hands together in front of her.

Tiffany was sure his voice sounded familiar, he had an accent – maybe from Manchester? Where had she heard it before?

‘Please can we bring him inside? She winced as he knotted the rope tightly.

‘Shut up, unless you want me to gag you as well.’

‘I could think of a way of shutting her up,’ one of the men said, and laughed. ‘She’s almost as fit as Angel. I’ve always wanted to have her. Her sister could be the next best thing.’

Fear gripped Tiffany as she realised how completely powerless she was.

But the man who had grabbed her told the other one to shut up. Then tied a scarf over her eyes.

‘She stays with me. Bring him in from outside as well. Lock him in the living room.’

It was a nightmare that she couldn’t get out of. Tiffany tried to stay calm, tried to block out the panic that was threatening to take over. So long as she was with this man, she would be OK. He was a burglar; he wasn’t interested in her. And Sean would be OK, if he could just hold on.
Be strong
, she found herself praying, for herself and for Sean.

The man marched her through the house and upstairs to what she guessed was Angel’s bedroom. He made her sit on the floor while he rifled through Angel’s dressing table. Tiffany remembered Cal was always nagging Angel to put her jewellery in the safe and her reply that she would. But she never got round to it. By the sound of it the burglar was finding plenty of it. Tiffany tried fiddling with the knots but it was hopeless, they had been tied too tightly.

‘Get up!’ He grabbed her. ‘Ground floor for laptops – hopefully with some saucy snaps of the celebrity couple with a high resale value, TVs, music systems and cameras.’ He said it sarcastically, like a lift operator in a department store. ‘You can stay put with lover boy.’

He thrust her into the living room without taking off her blindfold.

‘Sean? Where are you?’

‘Tiffany, thank God. Are you OK?’

‘I can’t see and my hands are tied.’

‘I’m on the sofa.’

His voice sounded so weak. Tiffany edged forward cautiously, trying to remember where the furniture was in the room. She winced as she bumped into the glass coffee table and bruised her hip. And then she reached the sofa.

‘I’m here,’ Sean managed to say. ‘Sit down and I’ll take off the blindfold.’

He struggled to undo the knot.

‘Oh my God!’ she exclaimed as soon as it was off. The room was dark but she could see blood was still flowing from the wound on Sean’s head. He struggled to sit up.

‘No, stay still. Tell me what I can do?’

‘Let me untie your hands first.’ But his own were shaking and Tiffany was terrified that he would lose more blood if he exerted himself. And then he seemed to lose consciousness.

‘Stay with me, Sean,’ she pleaded. ‘You’re going to be OK. The burglars will be gone soon and then I’ll call an ambulance …’

His eyes flickered open. ‘Tiffany, I have to tell you—’

‘Don’t speak, please. You’re going to be OK, I promise.’

He closed his eyes again, as if unable even to sustain the effort of keeping them open.

Tiffany lost all track of time as she talked to him about Maya, and how his daughter must be looking forward to Christmas and to seeing him. And then about her own feelings for him, and finally found herself blurting out, ‘Sean, be OK,
please
. I love you.’

No response. She was so focused on him that she hadn’t realised the door had opened.

‘What a lovely couple you make,’ said the man with the Manchester accent, ‘but I’m afraid we’ve got to break you up. One of my men had the good idea of taking you with us, Tiffany, and seeing how much your sister thinks you’re worth; it being Christmas, she’ll probably be feeling extra-generous.’

‘Please, we’ve got to get an ambulance for Sean!’ Tiffany exclaimed.

‘Oh, we’ll do that later,’ the man said breezily. ‘Now
come
with me, or I’ll let Buzz get his hands on you. Not his real name, of course. I’m not that stupid.’

He took Tiffany’s arm, and even though she knew it was pointless she still tried to shake him off. He squeezed so tightly she gasped in pain.

‘Leave her alone!’ Sean struggled to sit up and the man roughly shoved him back down.

Events became a sickening blur as the man retied her blindfold then dragged her out of the house and into the freezing night air. She heard a van’s door being opened then she was shoved inside. When the door was slammed shut behind her and she heard the engine start, she curled up in a ball and gave in to the tears.

Tiffany did not let herself cry for long. Think, focus, be strong, she told herself, as a kind of mantra. Sitting at the front of the van, the men turned the radio up high so she couldn’t hear their voices. Cheery Christmas numbers were blaring out. ‘Last Christmas I Gave You My Heart’ … ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You.’
It’s true Sean, all I want for Christmas is you
… Oh, God, would he be all right? Only concern for him stopped Tiffany from despairing entirely about her own situation.

The van pulled up. It sounded as if it was being driven into a garage. Focus – how long had they been driving for? Tiffany went through the songs that she’d heard. It must be at least half an hour, so they were likely to be about thirty miles away. Manchester man pulled her out of the van. ‘No calling out, no funny business, or you get the gag.’

She nodded. He led her up several flights of stairs. Focus – what could she smell? Air freshener and fried food.

He opened a door and pushed her in.

‘My hands are really hurting,’ she said plaintively. ‘Please could you untie them?’

‘OK, but don’t try anything or I’ll let Buzz come up and see you. And he’s no gentleman, as you’ve heard.’

He undid the knots and for a moment Tiffany couldn’t feel her hands, then it was agony as the blood flowed into them once more.

‘I’ll be back.’ Manchester man had put on a ridiculous Schwarzenegger accent. God, that was an annoying habit. He seemed to have an accent for every occasion. It was sparking off a memory – she had heard someone do just this, but where?

Tiffany fumbled to pull off the blindfold and saw that she was in a tiny attic room with a single bed. She rushed over to the window and tried to open it. It was locked. She peered out. The house opposite was dark, and below her was a concrete yard where the bins were kept. She reckoned she was probably three storeys up. Hopeless to think about breaking the window and climbing out, she was more likely to break her neck. There was a tiny en suite with a shower and a loo, individually wrapped soap and miniature shampoo. She must be in some kind of B & B. Maybe she should try screaming for help. But somehow she doubted help would come, and she shuddered as she thought of a visit from Buzz.

She looked at herself in the mirror – her face was tear-stained and streaked with mascara.
And it’s supposed to be waterproof, I’m not getting that again
, she tried to cheer herself up. She checked her watch. It was after midnight.

She jumped as the door opened.

‘Here’s Johnny!’ Now Manchester man was imitating Jack Nicholson in
The Shining
. He sat on the bed, an incongruous sight in the cosy bedroom in his black ski mask and entirely black outfit. ‘We need to send big sis a picture, tug at her heart strings.’ He held up his camera phone. ‘Say cheese.’

He took a series of pictures, then added, ‘And now let’s hear a plea from you.’

Tiffany shook her head; she wasn’t going to do everything she was told to.

‘Do it and I’ll call that ambulance you want. If you won’t, then …’ He shrugged.’

Tiffany took a deep breath. ‘Angel, I’m sorry I don’t know where I am or who I’m with. They burgled the house and attacked Sean. It doesn’t matter about me, but please call an ambulance for him.’ She bit her lip. ‘I’m worried he’s not going to make it.’ She had vowed to be strong but couldn’t stop the tears from falling now.

Manchester man lowered the phone.

‘Like the tears, nice touch.’ He got up. ‘I’m off to send this and then I’ll bring you some tea. No hard feelings. When someone has as much as Angel and Cal, it’s only fair to have a bit of a redistribution.’

As the door shut, Tiffany realised who Manchester man was. It was Colin, one of the security guards. No wonder he’d been able to get into the house! She’d always thought he was OK. How wrong could you be?

She pulled a thin duvet with a design of white daisies on it around her. She didn’t know if it made her situation better or worse that he was involved. She checked her watch again, desperate to keep track of time. Forty minutes later the door was unlocked and Colin brought in a tray with a bowl of tomato soup, plate of bread and butter and a cup of tea.

‘You’ve gone more upmarket since you found out Angel was your sis, I expect, but this is all we have on offer. No sushi, no caviar, no foie gras.’

If this was a film, and she was Lara Croft, Tiffany imagined that she would have hurled the soup in his face and legged it out of the room and to freedom. But
three
storeys up, she didn’t rate her chances of getting very far.

‘I haven’t heard from Angel yet, I expect she’s digesting the news.’ Colin paused in the doorway. ‘I’ll keep you posted.’

‘Did you call an ambulance for Sean?’

‘He’s a tough one, he’ll be OK.’

‘He was losing so much blood … please call.’

‘OK, OK, being as how it’s nearly Christmas, I already did.’

Tiffany had expected she would feel like pushing the tray away and not touching anything those bastards had made her. Instead her survival instinct kicked in and she ravenously crammed the bread into her mouth, wishing there was more, and drank the soup. Then she stood up and went and listened by the door. She couldn’t hear anything. She tried the lock. Nothing doing there. She returned to her position on the bed, pulling the duvet round her to keep warm. She must have been at the house for over two hours. Would Angel have got the message by now? And what would she do about it? At least she could call an ambulance for Sean. Tiffany still wasn’t convinced that Colin had. Every time she thought of Sean, panic threatened to overtake her.

Be OK, be OK
, she pleaded.
All I want for Christmas is you
.

ANGEL OPENED HER
eyes and looked round the hotel room. She’d been deeply asleep but something had woken her. Her gaze fell on the phone on the bedside table; the red light was flashing. Sleepily she reached for it and saw she had a voice-mail message and a text.

She opened the text message first and was confronted with a picture of a terrified-looking Tiffany in a room Angel didn’t recognise. An icy trickle of terror inched down her spine as she accessed her voice-mail and heard Tiffany’s anguished tones.

‘Oh my God! Cal, wake up!’ She shook her husband’s shoulder.

‘Is everything OK? Is it the baby?’ he asked, quickly surfacing from sleep.

Angel instinctively laid her hand over her baby bump. ‘No, no, it’s Tiffany … I think she’s been kidnapped and Sean’s been injured. What do we do?’

Typically, even faced with such a crisis, Cal remained calm. He listened to the message himself and then checked Angel’s text and saw that there was a further message from the kidnappers, demanding half a million pounds and warning them not to go to the police.

‘If we knew Sean was OK, then I would think about doing just that, but we don’t know how seriously he’s been hurt. We have to call the police. They’ll know how to handle this. Agreed?’

Angel nodded, too consumed with panic and fear for her sister to be able to think straight. And there was guilt too. She had been responsible for getting Tiffany and Sean together at the house … if anything happened to them now it would be her fault. She thought of the plan she had hatched with Jez, pretending to be flying to Edinburgh when instead she, Cal and Honey had checked in to the Mandarin Oriental in London and spent the time taking Honey ice-skating, going to see Father Christmas at Harrods, doing some last-minute shopping and having spa treatments. She could still smell the essential oils on her skin … But now, instead of relaxing her, the smell of geranium and lavender was a reminder that while she was being pampered, Tiffany was being kidnapped.

Within the hour Angel, Cal and Honey had checked out of the hotel and were driving back to Sussex to meet the police. Sean had been taken to hospital with a head injury, but his condition was not thought to be serious. Honey had fallen back to sleep and was tucked up under a duvet, and Cal had suggested that Angel try and sleep as well, but she was far too anxious. She sat in the passenger seat biting her nails, a habit she was supposed to have ditched years ago. What was happening to Tiffany now? Was she OK? Was she hurt? The thought of anyone harming her sister was unbearable.

‘It’s not your fault this has happened,’ Cal said quietly.

‘It is! I shouldn’t have got them in this situation.’

‘I promise you it’s not.’ He reached for her hand and
squeezed
it tightly. ‘Tiffany and Sean are both strong characters.’

Angel could only hope that Cal was right.

Before going home they dropped Honey off at Angel’s parents. Cal wanted Angel to stay with them too but there was no way she was going to do that. She called Jez and asked him and Rufus to travel down, knowing that she needed her friends around her. They had expected that Sean would still be in the hospital so it was a shock to find that he had discharged himself and was back at the house, along with a whole team of police officers taking forensic evidence.

‘What are you doing here, Sean?’ Angel exclaimed, walking over to him and taking in the stitches at the side of his head and the livid bruise on his forehead. He was sitting at the table, hunched over his laptop.

Angel glanced at the screen and saw that he was looking at footage from the CCTV cameras in the house. He had paused the film at the moment a masked man was tying Tiffany’s hands together. Angel flinched at the image of her sister looking so vulnerable and afraid.