Songbird (37 page)

The car was so cleverly hidden that Maddy did not even see it until she was almost opposite it. When she hesitated, the driver quickly gave the nod, and it was too late. Taken completely by surprise, Maddy was grabbed from the rear, her arms pinned tight behind her back and a piece of coarse rag rammed into her mouth. Knocked off balance, she was then shoved forward, her head pushed down to her chest and the rag so far into her mouth that she found it difficult to breathe.

And no matter how she kicked and fought, she was no match for her abductor’s brute strength.

Roughly manhandled into the back of the car, her attacker threw her to the floor and, pinning her there with his feet, he pulled her arms tight behind her back until she feared they would snap out of their sockets. The pain was excruciating. She was unable to move or make a sound, except for a gurgling, muffled noise that went unheard by her abductors.

Wheels spinning over the tarmac, the driver was away in a matter of minutes, and the entire incident was executed so swiftly that no one ever knew they had been there.

Bruised and battered, fearing for her very life, Maddy was totally disorientated. Yet she was conscious enough to realize that Drayton had tracked her down at last, and that she was at his mercy.

All she could think of was Ellen, and the baby, and though she feared for her own life, her prayers were offered for them.

She could hear the driver talking to her; in a distant kind of way she recognized his voice, but didn’t know where from. “You should have known better than to think you could do the dirty on a man like Drayton and get away with it.” His voice was soft, and refined. “You above all people should know, he
never
lets go. Especially when some silly spiteful bitch goes out of her way to shop him to the police. Well, you’ll pay now, make no mistake about it.”

There was a pause, during which he seemed to take pleasure in making her suffer. “First though, before Danny Boy tells Drayton the good news, he’ll need a few answers. I mean, he can’t report back with only half a tale, can he? Drayton wouldn’t like that. Y’see, he’s all wound up about the kid. Wants to know where it is, and who’s got it.”

He gave a velvety laugh. “It’s no use you holding out, or thinking you can lie your way out of it, because then you’ll be treated real bad, until you’ll have no option but to satisfy Drayton’s curiosity. After all, he has a right to know the kid’s whereabouts — him being the child’s father and all.”

For good measure, the man in the back stamped his foot into the back of her neck, at the same time growling a warning for her not to get too clever!

Racked with pain, unable to move or breathe easily, Maddy was almost choked when a sudden gush of blood spurted from her nose to trickle, warm and sticky across her neck. She fought to keep her senses, but the pain was too great.

The last words she heard were from the driver: “Easy, matey, we don’t want to be delivering a corpse, or the two of us will likely get the same treatment!”

Desperate to have her off his hands, the driver put his foot down and sped out of Brighill. He went at great speed through the Brickhill villages, then onto Woburn and out of Aspley Guise. Once he was through Husborne Crawley, the motorway was only minutes away. “The M1 is just ahead,” he called excitedly. “Another hour before we dump her into Danny’s custody… and I for one won’t be sorry to be rid of the bitch.”

They had traveled a good distance along the M1 when it happened. Maddy had opened her eyes; she could feel the thrust of a powerful engine driving them along, and knew that they were going dangerously fast. She told herself that either they would all be killed before they got her to this “Danny” they talked of, or she would be handed over and murdered when they were done with her. Killed on the road, or murdered by one of Drayton’s henchmen. Either way she would be a goner, and Michael would be left without his mammy.

She decided she would pretend to be unconscious, and that somehow, if the chance arose, she would make a break for it.

She glanced up. In the flickering light from the motorway lamps, she saw that her captor must have realized that she was unconscious, because he was not paying her any attention. Instead, he was yelling at the driver to, “Slow down, you damned lunatic, or you’ll kill us all!”

Having been held up behind two juggernauts and a car hogging the fast lane for several miles, the driver was losing his temper; one minute he was surging forward, and the next he was shaking his fist and shouting obscenities at every driver who got in his way.

Seeing his chance to get out from behind the juggernaut, he swerved out in front of a coach, shot past at speed and almost clipped the car in front as he tried frantically to get back in.

As a result, he was forced to slow down, and allow the coach to pull in front; and all the while there were car horns honking and people shouting through open windows at him, “Bloody fool… shouldn’t be on the road!”

The man in the back was leaning over the driver’s seat, telling him to, “Use your head, man! Run alongside, until we can get out of here!”

For the moment, because he was now jammed in, he could do no other, than to run at the same aggravatingly slow speed as the car in front. “Bugger this. We’ll never get there at this rate!” Thumping his fist on the dashboard, the driver was manic. “I’m coming off at the next slip road,” he shouted. “We’ll make time by cutting across. We’ll get back on the motorway at the next junction.”

Maddy marked the moment and she took it.

At the place where the slip road ran off, she felt the car brake violently and skew off to the left. When they got to the junction at the top, the car slowed right down, in order for the driver to check the road signs. “It’s right — go right!” the man in the back was telling him.

So, while her captor was still intent on watching the road ahead, she mustered all the strength she could. When the driver revved the engine and started forward, she sensed it was now or never; she reached up, threw open the door and scrambled out, knowing that whatever happened after that, she had nothing to lose.

As the air whooshed all around her, both men were yelling; there was the sound of screeching brakes, then she felt her body thud to the ground and catapult into the air. As though in slow motion, she hit the ground, bounced several times, and now she was rolling uncontrollably down a grassy embankment and into a muddy ditch. When she actually heard the sickening sound of her bones breaking, Maddy was convinced that by the time she stopped, she would be cut to ribbons.

Then all went black, and she knew no more.

Maddy survived, but she was badly hurt.

Afterward, she learned that she had crashed through the fencing at the side of the slip road, before rolling into the ditch below, where she remained undiscovered for hours.

While she lay there, Maddy imagined she heard the voices of her captors, and in her deepest senses, she experienced the feeling of being shaken and moved about. And yet she was told that when she was found, there was no one in sight, no one searching for her — and no reports of a young woman of her description going missing.

The farmer’s wife was an amateur photographer, who liked to photograph local wildlife at night, in their own habitat. This was what she had been doing when she came across Maddy’s seemingly lifeless body, lying crumpled in the ditch, doused in her own blood. At first she thought Maddy was beyond help. She ran back to the farm and together she and her husband managed to lift Maddy out of the ditch and on to a makeshift stretcher, before carrying her back to their home and phoning for an ambulance.

Now, after two weeks in intensive care, following several operations, she was awake to the world.

Maddy opened her eyes, to look into the concerned face of the doctor leaning over her. “Ah! Awake again? Good girl,” he said. Throwing back the bedcover, he ran his hands over her legs, stroking and tapping and asking if she could manage to move her toes. “Gently now.”

When Maddy managed to move not only her toes, but to raise her legs as well, he grinned like the Cheshire Cat. “Excellent! Wonderful!”

He explained that she had been discovered in the field near the motorway. “You’re a very fortunate woman to have been found,” he told her. “If you’d lain there for much longer, I’m certain you would not be here today. It was a very cold night, and you had lost a lot of blood. Can you remember anything about the accident? The police will want to interview you, when you’re feeling a little better.”

Maddy’s head was all over the place as she tried to remember. She recalled being in the villains’ car and making a break for it. Then after that, nothing!

Now, agitated, as she tried to move, the pain in her chest was crippling. “Where is this place?” She looked about, realizing this was a hospital, but she had no idea where.

“You’re in Bedford General Hospital,” the doctor advised her. “When they brought you in, you were in bad shape. You had many abrasions! A dislocated shoulder plus a broken ankle, two broken toes, a fractured rib and…” placing his fingers beneath her left hand, he raised it to where she could see how, in the region where her thumb had been, there was a large dressing. “I’m sorry, but every sinew and bone in your thumb was smashed beyond repair.”

Maddy let the words sink in. She looked at her hand, swollen with dark bruises and meandering cuts, and she was in no doubt.

He confirmed what she was thinking. “I’m sorry. We had no choice but to amputate the thumb.”

Maddy closed her eyes. She thought of Ellen and Michael; she relived that moment in the car when she had jumped knowing full well that she might be killed. But she had had no choice. And now, at least, she had managed to outwit Drayton yet again. And her son was safe. A bittersweet joy filled her heart.
At least her darling son was safe
!

She had lost a thumb, yes. But it was a small price to pay.

There was something else. On waking, Maddy had quickly realized that one side of her face was swathed in dressings; now, as she raised her fingers to touch them, she asked, “My face — what happened to my face?” Of all the injuries he had mentioned, the doctor had said nothing about her face, and the idea of being scarred was the most fearful.

The doctor was noncommittal. He called a nurse over, and asked her to stand by while he undid the bandages. “We had some repair work to do on the side of your neck and face, which was where you took the brunt of your injuries,” he told Maddy. “It’s time to take off the bandages, so we can see how it’s all healing.”

Her heart beating fast, Maddy sat very still while the bandages came off. It seemed to take forever. She wondered how bad it was. Had the side of her face been sheered when she careered across the concrete? Did it get damaged when she crashed through the undergrowth and into the ditch? Suddenly she could recall every heart-stopping minute — every twist and turn as she rolled faster and faster, even the dull thump as she hit the ditch and fell inside the muddy green tomb.

The last strip of dressing fell into the basin. “Mmm,” the doctor kept saying. “Mmm.”

Asking the nurse to bring a mirror, he turned his attention to Maddy, who was by now holding her breath, afraid to ask. Afraid to know the truth.

He did not mince his words. “Your left ear was almost detached by the impact,” he informed her quietly. Seeing the look on her face, he said quickly, “The ear is fine now, and your hearing should not be impaired; indeed, from our conversation so far, I’m delighted to note that it appears not to be affected at all. As for the scarring, well… all I can tell you is that we’ve done the very best we can. The scars will be angry for a while, but in time they will fade, I can promise you that.”

When the nurse returned with the hand-held mirror, the doctor took it from her and held it out to Maddy. “The first sight may alarm you, but like I say, the scars
will
fade in time.”

For a long, nervous moment, Maddy clutched the mirror to her chest, afraid to look, afraid of what she would see. Then, finally, knowing she must, she held the mirror up.

Horrified at the sight reflected there, she gave a cry, dropped the mirror and sobbed as though her heart would break.

Both nurse and doctor thought it best to let her cry it out. Then, after a moment, the nurse collected the mirror and pressed it into her hand. “Look again,” she urged Maddy. “You have to look and see what a wonderful job the surgeons have done. They sewed your ear back on, and repaired all of the other damage. And yes, there are scars, and there will
always
be faint marks. But they can be disguised, with special makeup, skillfully applied; your hair will grow back where we trimmed it away, and in time the traces of your accident will hardly be noticed.

“Please, look again,” she repeated, “and remember what I said.”

So Maddy looked again, and she remembered what the nurse had told her, but her heart dropped like a stone at the sight of her neck and face. Yes, the ear was sewn back on, and though the skin was raw, it seemed as normal as it ever did, except for the marks all around… deep, meandering, red gashes of skin that spread from the front of her ear into the side of her face and down to her neck. The front of her face was bruised and you could see the line of fine cuts that were fast healing. But the damage to the side of her face and neck was a great shock.

Maddy told herself that, considering how she might have been killed, the awful sight of her face and neck did not matter. But it did.
It did!

Silently, she cursed the man who had caused this to happen. But once more, the overriding thought was for Ellen and the baby. As long as they were safe, she kept telling herself, she could live with this disfigurement.

The man she had cursed was already celebrating the news that his instructions to do away with Maddy had finally been executed. “Are you absolutely certain?” he demanded.

Danny assured him, “The Songbird is no more!” Grinning from ear to ear, he boasted, “She won’t ever trouble you again, boss. Oh, I’ll admit things got a bit out of hand, and she got hurt bad in the process. But you said to make her squeal — to tell us where the kid is, and that’s what we tried to do. The trouble was, she weren’t anywhere near as tough as you think, because she croaked too soon.”