Dead if You Don’t

28

Saturday 12 August

17.00–18.00

It felt like a giant, unseen hand had reached out of nowhere and pinched tight all the air around him. Kipp Brown’s vision momentarily blurred, as if he had put on someone else’s glasses.

Images cascaded through his mind. Newspaper stories of abducted children, television appeals by distraught parents, televised Crimewatch reconstructions. Detectives standing in front of microphones, flashlights strobing across their grim expressions, reading out prepared statements.

This could not be happening to him.

Could not.

How could anyone have kidnapped the boy in full view of 30,000 people?

Completely oblivious now to anything that was happening in the game, he excused himself to the clients sitting beside him, told his two colleagues to look after everyone and hurried through the box and out of the door. Shaking and clammy, trying to think clearly what to do, he closed the door behind him and stood in the deserted, carpeted corridor.

How was he going to tell Stacey? She was still hurting and, like himself, probably would always be hurting from the death of their daughter, Kayleigh, four years ago. Ever since, they had both been overprotective of Mungo.

Shit, this could not be happening to them. Please God, no.

Only a few weeks ago he’d watched a documentary about a family whose daughter had been abducted, raped and murdered. The film had shown the distraught parents identifying her body in a mortuary.

Mungo might be irritating at times but he was, at heart, a good kid. Even if he didn’t show it all the time, Kipp loved his son to bits.

As did Stacey.

He loved her to bits, too, but she’d had a wall round her, since Kayleigh died, that most of the time he was just not able to penetrate. He tried, and they’d both been in therapy, but the grief had not gone away for either of them. He had thrown himself even harder into his work — and into gambling, in part, for sure, as an escape.

Although born in New Zealand, he had moved with his parents to England when he was eight. Growing up in a modest house in a Brighton suburb, Kipp had always cycled everywhere, to meet friends, to play football and tennis. His bike — and the freedom it gave him — had been a major part of his childhood and he’d tried to encourage his children to do the same. But all that had changed four years ago, on Kayleigh’s twelfth birthday. They had bought her a hoverboard. Excitedly testing it in a park near their home, she had shot out of control into the road and under the wheels of a lorry.

Perhaps it was because he’d been affected by the death of his older sister, or perhaps it was just the growing culture of today’s kids, but Mungo didn’t actually go out that often any more, preferring to stay at home in his room, Snapchatting and Instagramming and online gaming with his friends, just occasionally meeting up with them to make videos for his YouTube channel.

Kipp worried about the way Mungo seemed at times to be almost a recluse, and his lack of interest in playing any sports, other than at school. He’d had many discussions with Stacey about this. Yes, it was good to know Mungo was home, safe, but wasn’t overprotecting him just as dangerous? Stacey disagreed. Kipp had come across statistics that more children were abducted and murdered by strangers in 1936 than in 2016 and that it was the media that spread worry among parents. He had repeatedly tried to impress these figures on Stacey, who wasn’t having any of it. So far as she was concerned ever since Kayleigh’s death, beyond the gates of their home was a sewer teeming with all kinds of predators, just waiting for their son to emerge, unescorted.

What was he going to say to her now?

Could he have brought Mungo to a more secure place in the world than this stadium?

Scenes from television dramas, documentaries and news footage all blended together in his mind. The body of a small boy found in reeds beside a river. The body of a boy lying in sand below cliffs, shielded by a crime scene tent. The body of a boy discovered by a dog in remote woods.

He went down the two flights of the staircase and out into the near-deserted South concourse.

Through tear-blurred eyes, he looked at two police officers standing a few yards from him, desperate to speak to them but wary of the grim warning in the text.

He stared back down at his phone, his hands shaking, and tapped a reply. It took several goes before he hit the right letters and symbol.

It wouldn’t send. It was blocked.

Mungo taken from here in broad daylight? How? With all these people here?

He looked up and around the deserted area. Heard the sudden, ecstatic roar of the crowd. Had someone scored? It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

Nothing but Mungo.

Who was watching him and where? He glanced up at the stadium wall. At the row of dark windows, high beneath the finely curved roof. Was it someone behind one of them who had their son?

Thoughts were spinning through his mind like a roulette wheel that, instead of numbers, had options written in each slot between the frets. What did he say to his wife? What were his choices?

Tappity-tap. Phone Stacey.

Tappity-tap. Say nothing and wait for further instructions.

Tappity-tap. Go to a steward and say his son was missing.

Tappity-tap. Ignore the text instructions and inform the police.

He glanced at his watch and did a calculation. It was over two hours since he had seen him. So, where was he? Here in the grounds, still? Or taken away?

How scared was Mungo? Were they hurting him?

Never, in all his life, had Brown kowtowed to bullies or threats. He needed to think this through, fast, take some kind of decisive action.

How?

What?

They were going to send a ransom demand for money. How much? Everyone in this city thought he was as rich as Croesus, and with good reason — he had always given that impression, as PR for his business. One evening some years ago, at the Snowman Ball, after a particularly good financial year and far too much of a particularly good red wine, he’d stood up during the auction and pledged £100,000 to Chestnut Tree House, the children’s hospice that the event was in aid of. It made headlines in the Argus newspaper, and from that moment onwards, viewed as a golden couple, he and Stacey were approached for help by an endless succession of charities, as well as people with hard-luck stories — some chancers, some genuine. And, in truth, he found many requests hard to resist.

So many good, small local charities desperately in need of funds. Too many people whose lives were blighted because they were unable to afford the cost of medical treatment or hearing aids or travel to take their dying child to America to Disneyworld. He and Stacey had set up their own foundation and had since given away many hundreds of thousands of pounds. But during the past year, with his finances in meltdown, the donations had ceased. Only temporarily, he sincerely hoped. All the money he’d put into that fund he had taken back to keep the business solvent.

And a huge chunk of that had gone to the casino’s bank on Thursday night, he thought ruefully. As it had, it seemed, every time he’d been there just recently.

He looked around and back up at the dark windows. Somewhere close by, someone was looking at him. Smiling perhaps, laughing. Savouring his distress.

Already counting the money they were planning to extort from him.

No, actually, you won’t, he thought. You’re not quite as clever as you think. No one ever is.

He hurried towards the toilets, entered a cubicle and locked the door. From his inside jacket pocket, he removed the secure encrypted phone he used for all his confidential transactions with banks and clients, and with it, took a photograph of the text message on his normal phone. Then he switched that phone off, detached the back case and, for good measure, removed the SIM card and battery, placing all the parts on the lavatory seat.

He opened the door a fraction and peeped out to make sure no one had followed him in, and quickly checked that all the other cubicles were empty. Then he dialled.

The call was answered by a female.