because of acute stress and tiredness. She had blonde hair and pale skin. Her hair was greasy and uncombed and her clothes were creased and marked. Victor made her for a strong woman, mentally and emotionally robust, used to the knocks and setbacks of life, aware and cautious but afraid of little. She looked terrified.
The strip of duct tape over her mouth kept her lips sealed and prevented her from shouting out what her eyes were screaming:
He’s not the man I married.
The duct tape that bound her wrists looked clean and shiny and had few creases. The strip across her mouth was the same, and flat, with no trace of the corners curling. So Victor knew both had been applied not long ago. The state of her clothes and hair said she had been held captive for longer, but no more than two or three days. It would show in her appearance if she had been held for more than that. Unless they had given her clothes and provided her with basic means of sanitation. But the clothes fitted exactly as they were supposed to, matching and suiting her too well to have been given to her by someone who didn’t care what she looked like. She had been captive for two or three days but had only been bound recently.
The boy next to the woman was about seven, but could have easily been a small eight-year-old or big for six. Victor wasn’t sure. He didn’t know much about children. The boy wore trainers, jeans and a T-shirt with dinosaurs embossed on the front. The boy wasn’t bound and he wasn’t gagged. Like his mother’s, the boy’s hair was a mess and his clothes were dirty. He didn’t look scared. He didn’t shout out that Victor was not his father. He just stared at Victor, intent and curious.
They had been captive for two or three days but the woman had only been recently bound. Because the circumstances of their captivity had changed. The need for security had intensified. They’d been moved from one captor to another or from one prison to another. Or both. Victor remembered Hart’s arrival at the farmhouse and the white panel van with precious cargo in the back that only he had been trusted to deliver. That precious cargo being Kooi’s wife and child, kidnapped two or three days ago and transported here to the olive mill, where they had been taken from the van and held somewhere else under the guard of the five Chechens, who had gagged and bound the woman. Because she had given them problems. Because she had tried to escape and they couldn’t hurt her. Because if she was hurt it could change the dynamic of the threat. Kooi might be too angry to comply rather than scared.
‘Is that it?’ Leeson said. ‘You’re just going to stand there? No tearful greeting? No rushing for a hug? You’re a cold man, Mr Kooi, but I didn’t think you were that cold. But just as well, because I’m afraid there isn’t time for an emotional reconciliation.’
The woman was shaking her head and mumbling behind the tape, struggling against the fifth Chechen who gripped her by the arm. Only Victor knew what she was trying to achieve. The boy stared at him, eyes quizzical and searching.
‘Let them go,’ Victor said.
Leeson said, ‘It would hardly make much sense to go through all the considerable efforts we have made to bring them here and then to release them immediately on your request, now would it?’
‘They mean nothing to me,’ Victor said.
‘Really?’ Leeson asked. ‘Lucille and Peter mean nothing to you?’
Lucille. Peter.
Muir hadn’t known about them. She hadn’t known Kooi was married. She hadn’t known he had a family. Kooi had lived alone in Amsterdam. Lucille and Peter must have lived elsewhere, outside Holland. They must have married in another country with Lucille keeping her maiden name. But it hadn’t lasted, otherwise Muir would have known about it. When the separation occurred Kooi moved back to Amsterdam, the marriage not showing up on his Dutch records.
‘That’s right,’ Victor said. ‘They mean nothing to me.’
‘They mean nothing to you, yet you pay their extortionate rent and Peter’s school fees using a Swiss bank account belonging to a shell corporation registered in Indonesia?’
Victor’s mind worked fast. Kooi had separated from his wife and walked out on his son, but supported them financially. Yet he had no contact with them – Muir would have seen the pattern of flights or