Hostage by Clare Mackintosh

SEVENTEEN

10 HOURS FROM SYDNEY | MINA

When Mike and Cesca come down from the pilots’ rest area, neither look as though they’ve spent six hours in narrow bunks, high up in the nose of the plane. Cesca’s makeup is immaculate, the only giveaway a tiny pillow crease on one cheek. Carmel produces two coffees.

“Cheers.” Mike Carrivick has gray hair and blue eyes that crinkle at the sides when he smiles his thanks at me. In a moment, he and Cesca will assume control of the plane, and for the next six hours, relief pilots Ben and Louis will sleep.

Mike takes a sip of his drink and lets out an appreciative sigh. “Everything going well?”

There’s a second’s pause.

“Not for the guy in 1J,” Carmel says darkly. I leave her to brief Mike and Cesca, moving to the window, where the darkness reflects nothing but my ashen face. We’re somewhere over China, around nine p.m. UK time, and still hours before dawn in the East. Here in the cabin, the lights have been dimmed: a gentle suggestion to passengers to get some rest. I glance across to 1J where the privacy screen shields from view the blanketed figure of Roger Kirkwood.

What was he doing with a photograph of my daughter?

Ice runs through my veins, my head full of grooming gangs, child traffickers, pedophiles. I think of Kirkwood’s waxy face, his lolling tongue, and bile rises in my throat.

Was he the one who brought Sophia’s EpiPen on board too? I’d assumed whoever left it there had intended for me to find it—some sick joke, or Adam trying to make me feel guilty—but what if they have it because Sophia might need it?

Because they’re planning to take her too.

I press my forehead to the glass. Cesca and Mike are in the flight deck now, Ben and Louis briefing them on the journey so far. I need to talk to someone about this. I’ll wait till handover has finished, then I have to do something. I have to get a message to Adam, to make sure Sophia’s okay.

The glass Kirkwood was holding when he fell is still on the side in the galley. I pick it up and wipe a finger around the inside. Residue coats my skin. It isn’t sediment, as I’d first thought, but a grainy powder or a crushed-up tablet.

Medication.

Did he take it himself, or did someone slip it into his drink?

If Roger Kirkwood was murdered, the whole plane is a crime scene: every passenger a suspect.

Every crew member too, says a voice in my head.

The call bell sounds, but I don’t move. I feel eyes on me, and when I look up, Erik is staring at me. He looks pointedly at the call light.

“Can you get that?” I manage.

Kirkwood was carrying my daughter’s photograph. That’s not down to me, his death isn’t down to me, but will it look that way to someone else?

Will it look that way to the police?

Erik huffs audibly but turns to check on the cabin, and I wrap Kirkwood’s glass in a cloth and push it to the back of a locker.

When the flight-deck door opens and Ben and Louis appear, I feel a flush spread across my cheeks, and I turn away, certain I must look as if I have something to hide.

“Cesca and Mike are so nice, aren’t they?” Carmel says to the two relief pilots. “Mike was on the last test flight, you know. He persuaded Dindar to let him be on the first official one. For his CV, I suppose.” She makes drinks for Ben and Louis to take up while the two men take a walk through the cabin.

When the call bell rings again, I catch a glance between Carmel and Erik before Erik folds his arms across his chest and plants himself against the counter.

“I’ll go,” I say. He widens his eyes, as if my doing my job is a novelty, and I feel a swell of anger inside. He has no idea what it’s like, what I’m going through. First the EpiPen, now the photograph. Someone’s messing with my head. Is it any wonder my mind’s not on fetching cocktails for Alice bloody Davanti?

When I get back, there’s a queue for the bathrooms stretching into the galley. The sudden influx of people pulls my nerves taut. I need space. I need to be able to take off this mask of smiles and how can I help yous and work out what to do about Kirkwood. About Sophia’s photo.

Is it even Sophia in the picture? There was so much going on, and all the shock of losing a passenger… I saw a girl with dark plaits, but did my brain make an association that simply doesn’t exist?

She was wearing the same school uniform.

“There are more loos at the back of the plane,” I say to the queue, trying but failing to keep the curtness from my tone.

The man with the glasses and the neat beard raises his hand a fraction, like a child unsure if he needs permission to speak. “One of them’s blocked. They’ve sent us up here.”

I grimace. I wonder how much of Dindar’s research was devoted to how well the bathrooms would cope with a full load of passengers.

Ben and Louis return. They’re in no apparent hurry to go upstairs, leaning casually against the counter in the galley, chatting to the passengers in the queue. Heat rises inside me, my skull so tight, it could burst. The other journalist—Derek Trespass—comes out of the loo and hangs around, asking Ben questions about altitude, maximum load, cloud cover. I just need five minutes with everyone gone, just a few minutes to look at the photo.

It could be a different child, couldn’t it? Another five- or six-year-old with dark curls and a blue-and-white uniform?

Everywhere, there are voices—talking, laughing—and underneath it all, the incessant white noise thrum of the plane itself. I push through the throng—suddenly aware of how tired I am, how much my feet ache, my head hurts—and someone jostles against me, their drink spilling over my sleeve.

“This isn’t the bar, you know!”

Everyone stops talking. Carmel widens her eyes at me.

“Sorry. I—” I swallow hard, tears pricking at the backs of my eyes.

“We’re making the place look untidy, aren’t we?” Ben cuts into the silence with professional joviality, dissolving the tension as quickly as I created it. “Let’s clear off and let the crew do their job.”

“I’m sorry,” I say as the passengers drift from the galley. “I’m a bit—”

“You’re doing the important job.” He winks. “Give me a plane over people any day.”

“It’s just a bit busy, that’s all.”

If it isn’t Sophia, then everything’s okay, right? I brought the EpiPen on board myself without realizing. The man who died—I mean, it’s awful, but it’s got nothing to do with me, with Sophia. Not if the girl in the picture isn’t her.

Ben picks up the drink Carmel’s made for him. “We’ll take these up and get out of your way. Thanks again.”

And they disappear. I know I’ve been rude, but pressure is building in my head, and I have to see that photo again. I have to look properly this time, see the difference in features, realize how ridiculous I was to even see a resemblance to my daughter. Slowly, the queue for the bathroom thins out. A call bell rings, and Carmel goes, after the tiniest glance at me. I’ve not been pulling my weight, and it’s starting to show. Finally alone, I take the printed picture from my pocket and smooth it out.

It is not a good photograph. Not the sort you’d frame or send to the grandparents. Not even the sort of accidental snap you keep for the memories it prompts. Sophia—and there is no doubt that it is Sophia—is sitting in her classroom at school. There is a display of painted butterflies behind her, and papier-mâché planets are suspended above her head. In the background, through the classroom door, I glimpse children in the cloakroom, shrugging off coats. This photo was taken at drop-off, then.

Has it been printed from the school website? I try to remember if I signed a permission slip—what the website even looks like—but there’s a fuzziness in the foreground that would make it a poor choice for a promotional tool.

No, not fuzziness. A reflection. Someone took this through a window. I run my finger over my daughter’s image—over her face, the curls around her forehead, the plaits that tame the rest into two neat lines over her shoulders—and terror fills my veins with ice.

One red bobble, one blue.

The photograph was taken this morning.

The plane banks suddenly to the left. A water bottle slides from one end of the counter to the other, stops for a split second, then slides back again as we roll to the right. In the cabin, people hold their drinks in front of them, trying to keep the liquid level as we pitch forward. Another violent lurch sends Alice Davanti, on her way back from the bathroom, sideways. She clutches at the seat nearest to her before gripping each one in turn to get safely back to her own. I call the flight deck.

“Everything okay? It’s pretty bumpy back here.” As I’m talking, the seat belt sign pings on, and Carmel and Erik take an aisle each, checking that all the passengers are safely buckled up.

“Sorry about that,” Mike says. “Crosswind—had to turn to get back on course. It’ll be a few minutes, I’m afraid.” The water bottle that’s been sliding back and forth in the galley makes its final descent, crashing onto the floor at my feet, and I hear Cesca’s command in stereo, through the intercom and over the PA: Cabin crew, please take your seats.

We buckle up, and I stare out the window at the seemingly innocuous night sky. It’ll be another six or seven hours before we’ll catch a glimpse of Australia, yet I’m already five thousand miles from home. I miss Sophia so much, there’s a physical ache in my chest, love and guilt so intermingled, they’re impossible to separate. I shouldn’t have left her. I shouldn’t be here at all.

I squeeze my eyes closed, making silent, pointless promises. Keep everyone safe and I won’t leave her again. I won’t fly… I’m seized by the absurd thought that someone knows what happened at training school: that I survived when I should have died. That I cheated destiny.

“It is just turbulence,” Erik says from the jump seat next to me. I peel my fingers from my kneecaps. He thinks I’m scared we’re going to crash, but what I’m scared of is so much worse than crashing.

Why would Kirkwood have a picture of Sophia?

Could he be connected to her birth family? Years ago, we ran into her maternal grandmother at a soft play center, and I can still remember the visceral fear that gripped me when I saw her watching Sophia. Does the family want her back? In five years, they’ve never tried to contact us.

I can’t shake the thought that this is punishment—karma—for all the times I’ve moaned about my daughter’s behavior, for all the times I’ve clenched my fists and wailed to the ceiling, I can’t do this anymore!

I wrote a note to myself once. We’d had a perfect day playing games in the park—Adam, me, and Sophia—and we rounded it off with hot chocolate, all three of us in dressing gowns at the kitchen table. Adam put Sophia to bed, and I got out my phone and wrote a note, in among the shopping lists and the myriad reminders to find a plumber and get my coil checked.

I love my daughter, it started.

I love the way she’s memorized every fact on the information boards in the zoo. I love that she’s confident enough to tell another family that,It’s an ape, actually—monkeys have tails. I love that she wanted to give that little boy another ice cream when he dropped his. I love how funny she is, and how clever she is, and how hungry she is to learn new things. Mostly, I love that she’s ours, and we’re hers.

Three days later, as Sophia screamed that she hated me, that she wanted me to die, I locked myself in the downstairs loo and read the note over and over.

I love my daughter, I love my daughter, I love my daughter.

What kind of mother needs a reminder like that?

Me. I do. Because trying to remember that you love someone who is screaming that they hate you, who has hurled the tea you lovingly made them across the floor, is like trying to recall summer when it’s minus two outside. It’s trying to imagine ever being hungry again when you’re groaning after Sunday lunch. They are transient, slippery sensations, too quickly forgotten, remembered in the abstract way but not felt.

I love my daughter.

I don’t need that note right now. I don’t need a reminder. I don’t even need to picture my daughter’s face or summon a memory. What I feel for Sophia floods through every vein, every nerve ending until it is all-consuming. Unqualified, unending love.

And fear.

I search my memory for details from the first half of the flight, but there’s nothing that stands out, no sign that Roger Kirkwood was paying me particular attention. His wallet yielded nothing of use. A platinum World Airlines frequent flyer card, a photograph—a properly printed one this time—of what could be his wife and grown-up children, and a business card that tells me he was a sales director for a soft drinks firm.

Just as we’re released from our seats, I realize something. The photograph of his wife was carefully inserted into the notes section of Kirkwood’s wallet, the business card slotted in among the credit and loyalty cards. But the picture of Sophia wasn’t technically in his wallet, merely slipped between the folded leather. It was, I think—mentally summoning the moment I retrieved it from his jacket pocket—not carefully filed there but crumpled, as though it had been pushed in hurriedly.

Could someone have put the photograph in Kirkwood’s pocket without his knowledge? Did they kill him too? Is the person who brought Sophia’s EpiPen and photograph on board a murderer?

I head for the bar, ignoring the muttered complaints from Erik that I’m shirking my duties.

Finley puts up his hand as I pass, and I bite back my frustration. “I’m a bit busy at the moment; maybe your mum could help. Shall we wake her up? She might be hungry anyway.”

“She said not to. She hates flying, so she takes a pill that makes her sleep the whole way.”

“Lucky old mum,” I say between gritted teeth. I take the headphones, which are even more tangled than before. “Look, I’ll do these in a sec, okay?” Finley’s reluctant to let them out of his sight. “I’ll give them back to you, I promise.” He’s too well mannered to protest, and I stuff them in my pocket, no doubt making the knots even worse.

The seats in the bar are upholstered in navy velvet with emerald trim, and the hundreds of tiny lights on the ceiling make it feel like a nightclub. All that’s missing is the music. It’s only when you look out the windows that you remember you’re on a plane, nothing between you and the ground but thousands of feet of air.

“The man who died.” I try to keep the urgency out of my voice as I speak to Hassan. “Did you talk to him?”

“I served him drinks. Small talk, you know.” He glances at my hands, and I realize I’m screwing a pile of cocktail napkins into a tight ball.

“Did he say anything?”

“About what?”

I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. About my daughter. About his drink tasting odd. About someone putting a photograph in his pocket. Hassan nods toward Jamie Crawford and his wife, who are sitting in the corner. “He was talking to these two for a bit.”

I cross the small bar. “I’m sorry to interrupt,” I say. “I wondered if—”

“Yeah, sure.” The ex-footballer smiles lazily and stands up, looping an arm around my shoulders. “Caz’ll take it. Where’s your phone?”

“No, I don’t—” I take a breath. Try to calm down. “I wasn’t after a photo. I just wanted to talk to you about something.”

He shrugs, as if to say it’s my loss, and sits down.

“You said the passenger who died was knocking back the port.”

“Must have had about four in the space of half an hour.”

“Did you see anyone—” I cut myself off. If I ask whether they saw someone spike his drink, it’ll be all over the plane within minutes. We’ll be forced to land, and the police will take over and… I think of Sophia’s photo, of my prints all over the empty glass I wrapped in waste paper and hid at the back of a locker, and I start to sweat.

Caz leans forward. “What did he die of?”

He was poisoned.

I swallow. “Um. A heart attack, I believe. I wondered if you’d spoken to him at all?”

“They don’t keep themselves healthy, that’s the problem.” The footballer sighs with the smug self-awareness that comes from having a personal chef and a fitness trainer on speed dial.

“We did speak to him, though, didn’t we, Jamie?” His wife puts her hand on his knee, her fourth finger almost eclipsed by a massive diamond. “He was the one who was a bit pissed and kept wanting to buy you a drink.”

“Oh yeah! I was like, It’s a free bar, but knock yourself out.”

“Did you see him with anyone else?”

“There was a couple with a baby.” Caz screws up her face. “A bloke who said he was a journalist, I think.”

I don’t know what I was hoping for. That they saw someone drug Kirkwood? Nevertheless, I’m frustrated. I thank the Crawfords and push through the curtain to the rear cabin, scanning the seats for the doctor who responded to Erik’s call for help.

She looks up from her book as I approach, her expression a little wary. “Don’t tell me someone else is ill.”

“No, I—I just wanted to thank you again for your help.”

The doctor flushes, clearly uncomfortable with the attention. “I’m only sorry it was too late.”

The woman next to the doctor is eavesdropping unashamedly, but I press on. “Air traffic control is just taking details to pass on to the next of kin, and I wondered if you could give me some more information. What makes you think he had a heart attack, for example?”

“The history given by your colleague and the other passengers was consistent with a diagnosis of cardiac arrest.”

“It couldn’t have been anything else?”

“You asked for a doctor; you didn’t specify pathologist.” She’s smiling, and her tone is misleadingly pleasant, almost humorous, but her eyes are flinty. “Would you like me to attempt a full autopsy? Perhaps I could lay him out on your fancy bar and poke around him with a cocktail stirrer?” The woman next to her suppresses a snort. The doctor glances at her, then looks back at me, and her expression softens. “It could have been a number of things.”

“Such as?”

The doctor sighs. “Look”—she takes in my name badge—“Mina. I did what I could—which sadly wasn’t a great deal—but…” She makes a small but deliberate movement with the book in her hands, and I take the hint.

On my way to the galley, I’m stopped by a passenger at the back of business class who snaps his fingers at me, his eyes still on his screen. He’s playing a game, one of those mindless stacking puzzles that gets faster with each level.

“Coffee,” he says.

I leave a pause before saying, “Of course,” in the hope of extracting a please, but it goes unnoticed. In the galley, Erik and Carmel break off from their conversation, and as I make my passenger’s drink, I have the distinct impression I’ve interrupted something.

I return to the cabin. “Your coffee, sir.” I smile as I deliver it, then stand as if I’m waiting for a tip. He’s tall and blond, with a face full of angles, as though each part has been carved separately then slotted together. “You’re most welcome.”

The man’s jaw tightens.

“Really,” I say as I walk away. “It’s my pleasure.”

In the galley, I catch another look between Carmel and Erik. “Is there a problem?”

“It’s nothing,” Carmel says. Erik snorts, and I stare him down.

He doesn’t flinch. “Is it okay, that coffee? Did you manage to make it? Because it seems you don’t have so much practice.”

“What?” I’m too taken aback to form a proper sentence.

“Carmel and I, we have done everything. Meals, drinks, cleaning the bathrooms. You are doing nothing!”

“Erik, don’t. The passengers will hear.” Carmel looks nervously toward the cabin.

“I’m sorry.” I pinch the bridge of my nose, feeling the telltale sting of tears. “I’m just tired.”

“We are all—”

I thrust my hand in my pocket, tearing out the photograph of Sophia and holding it with shaky hands, but before I can say anything, Carmel has wrapped her arms around me and is squeezing me tight.

“Oh, bless you. You must miss her. Is she with her daddy? They’ll be having a lovely time, I bet you. She’s probably hardly noticed you’ve gone. You know what they’re like.” Over Carmel’s shoulder, I see Erik roll his eyes before leaving the galley. Carmel releases me, taking the photograph and saying, “Aww,” before folding it carefully and tucking it back in my pocket. “Lovely to keep her with you like that. Come on. Let’s get you a glass of water.” She keeps talking, as though I’m a child myself. “Is it the menopause? Mum says she’s a slave to her hormones.”

“I’m thirty-four!”

“Does that mean it is?”

“No, Carmel, it’s not the menopause.”

“Well, you just stay here. We can handle the cabin. Make yourself a nice cup of tea.”

I see my reflection in the window, its edges ragged and indistinct, and picture someone standing by Sophia’s school, a camera raised to the glass. My head is filled with white noise, but it isn’t enough to block out my thoughts.

I shouldn’t be here.

Carmel and Erik are clearing the cabin, trays piled high with glasses and dirty napkins. Carmel sweeps through, dumping her tray on the side, and I make my feet move toward it, dividing the rubbish, the dirty cutlery. Erik brings a tray, and then Carmel another, and I’m separating the linen when I see an envelope, half hidden beneath a napkin. It’s light blue, like an old-fashioned airmail letter, with a single word, written in ink.

Mina.

“What’s this?” I hold it up.

My efforts to help with the clearing have failed to placate Erik, who stares at me. “It is an envelope.”

“Perhaps it’s a tip,” Carmel says.

Erik snorts. “For doing what?”

“From who?” I say urgently.

They both shrug, Carmel looking helplessly at the pile of rubbish they’ve cleared from the cabin. It could have come from anyone.

“Maybe it’s a love letter!” Carmel says. “If it’s from the guy in 5F, I’ll be green with envy—he’s lush.”

“If it is a tip, you must share it.”

The walls of the plane curve around me as if they’re crushing me, my lungs too tight, my rib cage too small. I push past Carmel to the bathroom, locking the door and pressing my back against it as I tear open the envelope. Inside is a single sheet of paper, the same navy ink running in neat handwriting across the page.

I read the first line, and my world shatters.

The following instructions will save your daughter’s life.