‘My boss doesn’t negotiate, and he doesn’t like rejection. I’m afraid we’ve gone way beyond that, Mr Kipling.’

  Kilgore walked back over to Tom and again checked his blood-sugar level on Freya’s phone. He showed it to Harry.

  It was now reading 4, the background had changed to yellow, the wording read, GLUCOSE LEVEL GOING LOW. The arrow was still pointing downwards.

  Harry realized what he was saying. He’d been here less than five minutes. If the American was telling the truth, in just twenty-five minutes Tom’s level had dropped from 10 to 5. At that rate—

  Before Harry could reply, the American showed the reading to Freya, who gurgled a sound of desperation.

  Then Kilgore laid the phone down on the coffee table and opened his arms expansively. ‘There is of course a very simple solution to this problem. All you need to do is hand me the original Fragonard Summer and we’ll be done and out of here. Could I be any clearer?’

  Harry glanced at Freya again, who was nodding vigorously. Yes, yes, yes, do it! her eyes were saying.

  He then looked at Tom. His beautiful son who was already clearly not himself. Distant. Beads of perspiration on his forehead. He seemed to be shimmying with tiny tremors every few moments. He had to do something, fast. To hell with the painting, it had cost him just twenty quid. Its value in a sale could change their lives but that did not matter any longer and it wasn’t going to happen – nothing mattered but his family. They’d been fine before they’d ever bought the damned painting, happy enough. To hell with it. ‘You can have the damned painting,’ he said.

  Ignoring him, the American picked up a caramel doughnut and held it out to Tom, but not quite close enough for him to take a bite from it. As if taunting him. Tom was looking increasingly pallid. ‘Wouldn’t you like to eat this right now, boy?’ he asked, his voice all warm and friendly.

  Harry hated this man; if his hands were free he would tear his face off. Instead all he could do was watch, a helpless onlooker.

  Tom, turning pale and shaking profusely now, nodded pleadingly.

  ‘Let’s check those sugars again, shall we?’ Kilgore asked, all patronizing now and putting the doughnut back down. He picked up the phone again, worked the app, held it to Tom’s arm, then showed the display to Freya and Harry.

  3. The wording on the yellow band continued to read, GLUCOSE LEVEL GOING LOW. The arrow was still pointing down.

  He squatted, then leaned across the coffee table until his masked face was just inches from Tom’s. Tom, clammy with perspiration now and starting to look disoriented, barely reacted. Then Kilgore picked up the same doughnut and held it out to him once more. ‘I think you’d better have a bite, you said earlier you like caramel, would you like a bite?’

  Tom was looking at him, bewildered, as if struggling to focus. His neck muscles seemed to be barely supporting his head. After a moment he gave a lolling nod.

  Kilgore pushed the doughnut closer to Tom’s mouth and he craned forward, chomping off a big piece which he chewed fiercely and desperately. As he did so, Kilgore put the rest of it back in the tray, once more out of the teenager’s reach, and turned to Harry. ‘That bite will buy him a few extra minutes, Mr Kipling. But you saw how fast his sugar level’s dropping.’

  ‘How much insulin have you bloody given him?’

  ‘Sufficient,’ he replied.

  ‘Sufficient? What the hell does that mean?’

  ‘Sufficient to get what I need from you, if you want to save his life.’

  Harry heard a gurgle from Freya.

  ‘And sufficient to kill him if I don’t.’

  ‘I’ve told you, you can have the damned painting – what kind of sick game are you playing with our son’s life?’ Harry yelled.

  ‘I’m not playing any game, Mr Kipling. I’m telling it to you plain and simple. Your wife has told me you keep an emergency glucagon injector kit in your fridge. That will restore your son’s sugar levels, so long as you don’t leave it too late.’

  There was another terrified gurgle from Freya. Harry gave her a desperate look. She was pleading to him with her eyes.

  The American took a further reading of the patch on Tom’s arm with Freya’s phone. Another warble. He held it up to Freya and then to Harry.

  2.5.

  Tom, still chewing, had perspiration gouting down his face and his eyes seemed to be losing focus.

  Harry knew that a prolonged glucose level below 2 would damage the central nervous system irreparably if allowed to continue for too long, and any sustained level below 1 would likely be fatal in a short time.

  ‘I’ll give you the bloody painting!’ Harry blurted. ‘I’ve said I’ll give it to you, if you’ll just promise to leave my family alone and not hurt us. And give Tom the injection he needs. Do we have a deal?’

  ‘Fine,’ the American said. ‘We have a deal. You give me the original picture and we’re out of here.’

  Harry hesitated. ‘OK, there’s a small issue.’

  ‘Uh huh?’ Kilgore said.

  ‘It’s not here, it’s in a storage depot for safe keeping, half an hour from here.’

  The American made a play of studying his watch. ‘So, Mr Kipling, forty minutes to get there, a generous fifteen minutes to retrieve the picture, then forty minutes back. That’s a little under two hours before, I’m hoping I’m estimating correctly, your boy lapses into a coma that he may not come out from. Maybe you should get going?’

  ‘Right away,’ Harry said, his eyes darting to the doorway.

  ‘I think it might be a good idea if I and one of my colleagues came with you, no disrespect, but just to keep you honest, if you know what I’m saying?’

  ‘I’ll take you with me to get the painting if you give my son some more sugar right now. Get the glucagon kit from the fridge, it’s on a shelf in the right-hand door.’

  ‘Oh, I know where it is, thank you. And it stays there until I have the original painting.’

  ‘At least give him some more of the doughnut.’

  The American shook his head, then said, coldly, ‘Mr Kipling, you are not in any position to negotiate. Listen up very carefully. Are you listening?’

  Harry hesitated, then nodded.

  ‘Good, here’s the deal. I’ll give the boy a mouthful of doughnut now. We go get the painting and we bring it back here. Soon as you bring it into the house and I’ve verified it, he gets his jab of glucagon. Do we understand each other?’

  Harry glared at him. ‘We understand each other.’

  Kilgore walked out of the room. Moments later he returned holding a sealed opaque pack and held it up for Harry to see. It was the glucagon injection kit. ‘I’ll take this with us, let’s call it insurance, hey? Just to make sure we all get back safely.’

  One of the heavies stepped behind Harry, freed his hands, then patted him down and removed his mobile phone from his pocket, laying it beside Freya’s on the coffee table.

  86

  Tuesday, 5 November

  As he turned out of Mackie Crescent, steering the Volvo with shaking hands, and glancing in the mirror at the sinister masked faces of the two men on the rear seat, Harry subtly edged the speed up over the 30 mph limit, to 40 mph then 45 mph, hoping against hope he might get stopped by a police car.

  The heavy in the back’s name was Ross or Russ, he had overheard in an unguarded moment from his captor-in-chief. Harry felt like he was in a nightmare, and to add to the feeling, the sky through the windscreen ahead of him was constantly lit up with flaring and exploding fireworks.

  Fireworks of anger were exploding inside Harry. And frustration at his helplessness.

  ‘You’d better mind your speed,’ the American rebuked sharply.

  ‘Yes – sorry – I-I’m a little nervous.’

  ‘Yeah? Well your driving’s making me nervous. Stay within the goddamn limit. You don’t mind if I smoke?’ he said, lighting a cigarette.

  ‘I like the smell, I only quit recently myself,’ Harry said, slowing down, trying to appease the man. His brain was in turmoil, he kept thinking about anything he could do, but fear for Tom’s life and fear for Freya kept him driving obediently to the limit, as he turned onto the A27, then stuck to a regulation 70 mph all the way towards his destination.

  Twenty minutes later, as he turned off the dual carriageway and threaded through the urban streets of Worthing, the seaside town to the west of Brighton, he suddenly saw a blaze of flashing blue lights ahead – and felt a flip of hope. Maybe it was a roadblock and they’d be stopped? A drink-driver check? Please God.

  But his hope faded as he saw ahead a police car either side of a small, beat-up saloon; on the pavement, two officers, with another two standing by, were searching a scruffy youth held face-on to a brick wall.

  Even so, this could be his chance, he thought – his last chance. Jam on the brakes and shout for help? The police would see these two in their balaclavas behind him and then what could his captors do?

  ‘Don’t even think about it, Harry,’ the American said calmly, as if reading his mind. ‘I’m not exaggerating about the amount of insulin I injected into your son, it’s more than enough to kill him if he doesn’t get enough sugar. I have a message on my WhatsApp that’s ready to go. If I press that send button on my phone, my associate there will simply stop giving your son a regular bite of a doughnut, sufficient to keep his sugar readings at the minimum of two. If you want to keep your son alive, just keep driving.’

  Harry kept on driving. Anger and fear roiling inside him. Thinking all the time if there was anything, anything at all he could do to lash back at this bastard. To get his family out of this nightmare. But he felt all out of options.

  He negotiated two roundabouts, drove a short distance along another dual carriageway, then braked sharply, turning left past two modern-looking orange and yellow pillars signed WEST TARRING INDUSTRIAL ESTATE. He drove through into a dark labyrinth of single- and two-storey industrial units, each shining grey and yellow in the Volvo’s headlights.

  They passed a tyre company, a furniture restorer, a vegan milk depot and several further premises, before Harry made a right and brought the car to a halt in front of a tall steel gate, with equally tall mesh, topped with barbed wire on either side, and a warning sign that it was electrified and monitored by CCTV. Protruding slightly was a numeric keypad. A sign read SOUTHERN CONTROL SAFETY STORAGE.

  Lowering his window, Harry reached out his arm and tapped in his code. Moments later the gate slid open, and he drove through into a courtyard, where massive, corrugated-steel hangar-type buildings stood to their right and left. ‘This is it,’ he announced, switching off the engine, unclipping his seat belt and opening the door. The dome light illuminated his two unwelcome passengers.

  Turning to look at them, he asked, ‘Either of you coming with me? You’d probably better take your balaclavas off if you do – there are security guards monitoring the CCTV and they might think it a bit odd.’

  ‘We’re staying in the car, Mr Kipling,’ Kilgore said tersely. ‘You have exactly five minutes.’ He held up his phone and pointed at the blue arrow button on WhatsApp, then held the phone up closer, so Harry could read the chilling message.

  Stop feeding the boy.

  Kilgore pressed a button on his watch. ‘The countdown has started, Mr Kipling. And don’t believe for one moment that if you try to call for help that I won’t send this message.’

  Harry hesitated for a fleeting second. He hadn’t done this before and had never timed it. ‘I-I don’t know if I can do it in five minutes.’

  ‘Well, that’s just cost you several valuable seconds,’ the American said in a calm voice of steel.

  Harry gave him a quick look, then sprinted towards the right-hand gates. He entered the code with trembling fingers, 428106, hoping to hell he’d memorized it correctly.

  An error message displayed on the screen: Two attempts left.

  Shit, shit, shit. He pulled out his wallet and checked the code he kept in there. He realized in his panic that he’d reversed two numbers. He entered it again, with his fingers trembling wildly, this time, 428016.

  The error message again. One attempt left.

  What the fuck?

  He checked the code again. Then entered it again, checking each digit in turn. Please God . . .

  To his immense relief it clicked open. He pushed it, walked through and it swung closed behind him with a loud clang. Then he ran again, along the row of lock-up units, with roll-up door after roll-up door, until he reached number 257, a small unit, measuring just eight foot by six foot.

  There was a combination padlock on the door and, glancing at his watch, he saw he now had under four minutes. His brain seized up and he could not think clearly. What the hell was the combination? For several precious seconds it eluded him. Somewhere close by a flash of light followed by a series of explosions in the air ripped the silence.

  He was panic-stricken. He’d deliberately set up this code with a memorable number but his mind was blank. What had he used? Then he remembered, Freya’s birthday. Seconds later, to his immense relief it unlocked.

  Leaning down, he tugged the handle of the door and hauled it up. Then he tapped the torch app on his phone and shone it at the interior. There were just a few items in here, large objects they had bought on a whim at car boot sales in recent years but had no room for in their current house – their dream was one day to buy a larger place in the countryside. Among the items was a red and green Victorian clothes mangle, a tailor’s headless mannequin, an oak wine barrel and a vintage grocer’s bicycle with a basket. In the far corner stood a small rectangular package, the Fragonard painting, bound first in protective bubble wrap, with an outer layer of carboard taped around it.

  God, so much of their future lay with this painting. Was there anything he could do? Anything at all? He tried to think clearly. The American’s threat re. Tom. Really? Was it a bluff?

  It wasn’t a bluff.

  No amount of money was worth risking his life, and God knows what these monsters would do if he tried anything. Nothing was worth the risk.

  He picked the painting up, and it felt almost lighter than air. Hurrying out of the unit, he pulled the door down, securing it with the code, then ran back. After negotiating the outer gate, he raced to his car. As he opened the boot, the American said, ‘Nice work, Mr Kipling, you still have forty-five seconds to spare.’

  ‘Good,’ he panted. ‘Phone your mate back at my house and tell him to give Tom the meds.’

  ‘I’m real sorry, Mr Kipling. That’s not going to happen until we get back to your house and I have the original Fragonard in my hands. I need to check that package properly. So my advice is we should get going. The clock’s ticking.’

  Harry laid the picture flat and slammed the boot shut. He flashed back, momentarily, to that late September day when they’d taken this picture to the Antiques Roadshow, and security guards had escorted them back to this vehicle. When he and Freya had been so full of excitement, of hope and of almost disbelief. The kind of feeling, he thought, a lottery winner must experience when checking the numbers and realizing they were a match.

  And now these bastards were taking all that from him. And he couldn’t do a damned thing about it.

  Or could he?

  As he drove back towards Brighton, in silence, he was still trying to think of something he could do. The occasional wild thought snaked into his mind. And every street light they passed lit up the menace of the two masked faces behind him in his mirror.

  He glanced at the car clock: 8.42. They’d be home in ten minutes.

  Still he kept thinking.

  And still he came up with nothing. Nothing but anger at himself for being so helpless.

  87

  Tuesday, 5 November

  It was approaching 9 p.m. when Harry drove the Volvo onto the driveway of his house. The American took possession of the painting and the three of them walked up to the front door.

  ‘You have what you want,’ Harry said. ‘Will you now leave us alone and let me give our son his meds?’ He held out his hand for the injector kit.

  Kilgore replied, ‘First we open the package. I don’t want to be taken for a fool, Mr Kipling.’

  As they entered the house, Harry heard the sound of a football game. He rushed through to the lounge and to his relief he saw that Tom was still conscious, but still looking woozy. There was only a faint expression of recognition in his face. Freya seemed OK, but he could see the terror in her eyes. Their guard was holding the TV remote and watching the game.

  ‘Can you get me a knife?’ Kilgore, still holding the package, asked Harry. Then, irked, he turned to the heavy with the remote. ‘Turn that goddamn thing off.’

  ‘Boss, it’s a big game—’

  ‘Goddamn turn it off!’

  He turned it off.

  Harry gave Freya a nervous, reassuring smile, hurried to the kitchen and returned with a small serrated knife which he handed to the American. Then he watched as the man cut away the tape securing the cardboard, followed by the bubble wrap. There was no excitement in his actions, no sense of a child tearing open Christmas wrapping; just something coldly forensic about him.

  Lifting the framed painting clear, Kilgore held it up to the light and examined it carefully, then turned it over and studied the canvas back. Finally, he turned to Harry. ‘This is the painting you bought at a car boot sale, is that right?’

  ‘It is,’ he replied. ‘Well, just to be clear, it wasn’t this painting that I actually thought I was buying. I bought a painting with a hideous old lady’s face on it, because I liked the frame, not the painting itself. We later discovered this one was underneath. As you can see, it’s the same original frame as you must have seen on the Antiques Roadshow.’

  Kilgore handed the painting to the heavy who’d accompanied them on the journey, picked up Freya’s phone from the coffee table, tapped in the code, then tapped the app and held it to the disc on Tom’s arm. Then he showed the readout to Freya and Harry.

  2. The arrow was still pointing down.