Dead if You Don’t

75

Sunday 13 August

11.00–12.00

Stacey came into Kipp’s den, crying. ‘I can’t bear this,’ she said. ‘I can’t bear this, I can’t bear this, I can’t bear this. Get him back, please, please get my baby back. Please get him back.’

‘I’m going to, I promise.’ He stared through the open window, feeling a warm breeze on his face. Looked at the covered barbecue beside the swimming pool. A glorious summer Sunday. Ordinarily he’d have had a swim. Perhaps played some tennis with Mungo, then a late barbecue lunch. Mungo loved his special burger recipe.

Stacey walked across and put her arms around Kipp, clinging to him like a drowning person clinging to driftwood. ‘Please. Please. Please.’

His heart felt like it was twisting, tearing at the sinews that held it in place. ‘Stace, I love him as much as you do.’

‘You don’t know how much I love him. He’s all we have in the world. I couldn’t bear it — if — if anything happened to him — I just couldn’t.’

He felt her tears on his hair, on the back of his neck. He found her fingers and squeezed them. ‘It won’t, trust me,’ he said. ‘Trust me, Stace.’

‘Trust Kipp?’ she said, disentangling herself and standing back, staring at a photograph of Mungo grinning, looking unsteady on a paddleboard. ‘Really? I should trust Kipp?’

‘Stace.’

She laughed, a hollow, mocking laugh. The laugh of a total stranger. ‘Trust Kipp! Of course! I’d trust you anytime. Why wouldn’t I trust a man who would put his business in front of his son’s life?’

‘Because I won’t,’ he said.

‘Then prove it, prove it now.’

A text came in on Stacey’s phone. She looked.

‘Oh God no.’ She handed the phone to Kipp and sobbed while he read it.

A package.

What could that mean? he wondered.

An icy gust of fear swept through him.

What did a package mean?

Mungo parcelled?

Dead?

He sat still, struggling not to throw up. Then he stood, abruptly, grabbed his phone and headed for the door.

‘Where are you going?’ she asked.

‘To the office.’

‘To the office? Now?’

‘I’m going to do it, OK? I’ll pay the ransom, I’ll move some funds around, cover my tracks. I can check the client discretionary fund from here, but I can’t make any transactions — a security thing — it can only be done from a computer in the office, where the code changes daily.’

‘Be careful.’

He looked back at her. ‘You want me to be careful or you want me to get Mungo back?’

‘Both.’

‘It’s going to be one or the other.’