as the Evoque accelerated away from her. Then the man in the passenger seat leant over and told Harry to give him his phone and get down on the floor and keep his eyes shut, so Harry supposed that they didn’t want him to see where they were going, or maybe they were afraid that he would try to signal out of the car window for help. At least they didn’t put a hood over his head or blindfold him – and if they had intended to abduct him they would probably have come prepared with something like that, wouldn’t they? So surely that meant this was just a carjacking gone wrong? After all, the Evoque was a high-end car, it wouldn’t be a total surprise if someone wanted to steal it. And, Harry reasoned further (he was doing a lot of reasoning, it was keeping him just this side of sane), after they’d gone a few miles they would let him and Candace out and everyone would go on their way. A happy ending for all concerned.
Candace herself was silent, and when, against orders, Harry squinted through his eyelids he could see that she had fallen asleep, thank goodness. She looked overheated, her hair clinging damply to her forehead. A few stray sequins still glinted on her cheeks. Reassured, he tried very hard to obey and keep his eyes tightly shut, which was surprisingly difficult, as all his instincts were to do the opposite. He crept his hand up blindly and felt for his sister’s own warm and sticky one.
He might not be looking, but he couldn’t help hearing as the men conversed in gruff, dissatisfied voices. It appeared that he was wrong. Not a carjacking but a genuine kidnapping, with Candace as the target. His father had money and he liked people to know it, so perhaps it made more sense to hold his daughter to ransom rather than simply stealing his car. (‘My car,’ he could hear Crystal’s voice in his head correcting him.) Harry, on the other hand, also Tommy’s child, didn’t seem to count. (‘The lad,’ the men called him – they didn’t even seem to know his name.) He was just ‘collateral damage’. Did that mean he was disposable? Would they stop soon and order him out of the car and then make him stand on the edge of a ditch and shoot him? (He had recently seen a documentary about the SS. ‘Leave history behind where it belongs,’ Crystal had said when she saw what he was watching.)
They came to a stop after about half an hour and one of the men said, ‘You can open your eyes now. Get the kid out for us.’ Harry’s legs wobbled a bit when he climbed out of the car, but no one made a move to shoot him. He unstrapped Candace, who protested in her sleep but still didn’t wake up. He couldn’t imagine what she would make of this new situation, although she had a fairly phlegmatic personality. (‘That sounds like a disease, Harry,’ Crystal said.)
It was the first time Harry had had a chance to get a proper look at the men. He had expected a rough-looking pair of dopey criminals, and he realized he had probably watched 101 Dalmatians with Candace too many times as these men looked tough and professional, almost in a Special Forces way, like the ex-soldiers in Who Dares Wins – although Harry couldn’t begin to imagine why the SAS would want to kidnap Candace.
They were in a field. Surrounded by fields. He couldn’t see the sea, but there was the kind of empty horizon that indicated it might be somewhere close by. The field had been used as a caravan park at some point – there were a couple of dilapidated caravans with rusty weeds and thistles growing up around their wheels, and one that was off its wheels altogether. A newer, smarter one, a static, was parked over in a corner near the gate.
‘Don’t even think about running,’ one of the men snapped at him, and the other one, the one who had Harry’s phone, fished it out from his pocket and took a photo of him and Candace, although – again – he was only really interested in Candace. ‘Hold her a bit higher. Maybe you could pinch her awake.’ Harry held her higher and pretended to pinch her. ‘It’s no good. She’s out like a light,’ he said. ‘An earthquake wouldn’t wake her once