Hostage by Clare Mackintosh

TWENTY-FIVE

MIDNIGHT | ADAM

My eyelids resist as I peel them open. I go to rub the grit from them, but my arms are numb and won’t comply. My head pounds, and my mouth is dry, and there’s a revolting taste in my throat, as though last night was ten pints and a kebab instead of… I shake my head, trying to clear it. What did happen last night?

Is it morning even? Darkness drapes around me, thick as a blanket, so that I’m not sure if my eyes are open or closed. There’s music playing—a top ten hit from some manufactured band. I’m not in bed—it’s cold and hard beneath me. Where am I?

Slowly, memories filter through the fog in my brain. The debt collector. Becca. Sophia.

“Sophia!” It comes out in a whisper, scratched and inaudible. Water. I need water. Am I still in the kitchen? I was there when I fell, wasn’t I? My body aches all over, as if everything’s broken, everything’s bruised.

A sudden image assaults me: the syringe full of insulin, caressing my daughter’s skin. Did Becca inject her? Twenty-three, she said, not seventeen, so not an A-level student. Not a student at all perhaps. Who the hell is she?

I picture Sophia screaming as the needle bit, her body convulsing in shock as the insulin seeped into her system.

“Sophia!” The sound bounces back at me.

Where am I? I’m lying awkwardly on my side, the floor so cold, it feels damp, and I struggle into a seated position, blinking in the darkness. Something tugs at my wrists, preventing me from standing.

I’m tied up.

No, not tied—handcuffed. My arms are behind me, pinning me to a wall. I move my fingers over the metal of the cuff’s rotating arms, feel the sharpness of the ratchet holding them in place, tight enough that my wrists are sore and my hands have gone numb. Rigid plastic separates my hands. These are police cuffs, or something close to them.

There’s an object between me and the wall, something cold and hard that digs into my lower back. A metal bar, or a narrow pipe, with enough space behind for the cuffs to pass. My fingers follow the metal to the ground and then back up, ten inches or so to where it disappears into the wall. I pull at it, but it doesn’t give. The music stops, and an advert plays. It’s the radio—some commercial station with energetic presenters and the same forty tracks on a loop.

There are stone slabs on the floor, pieces of dirt or sand rough on my fingertips. I kick one leg out into the blackness in front of me, twisting my body and sweeping my leg to the side until it hits the wall I’m cuffed to, then do the same with the other leg, trying to get my bearings. The room is narrow, with a low ceiling that drips moisture onto my head.

I know where I am.

I’m in the cellar beneath our house.

“Sophia!” The last syllable disappears into a sob. I yank at my arms, the cuffs banging against the metal, again and again and—

I hear her.

I curse the cheery presenters, who are discussing today’s phone-in topic—what’s the worst Christmas gift you’ve ever received?—and screw my eyes shut, focusing on the one sense I need. “Sophia?”

Or maybe it’s something you’ve given! It’s only a week till Christmas, and—don’t judge me on this, Michelle—I still haven’t bought the wife’s present.

Trust me on this one, Ramesh. Don’t get her the saucepan set.

She likes cooking, though!

See what I’m up against, insomniacs? Call in with your stories and suggestions, and stay tuned for festive tunes. See what I did there, Ramesh?

Underneath the vacuous commentary of Michelle and Ramesh, of Rise FM, I can hear breathing.

“Sophia, is that you? Sweetheart, are you there?”

“Daddy?”

Relief rushes through me. “I’m here, baby. Are you hurt?”

She doesn’t answer. I hear a scratching noise—shoes on stone—and I blink the remaining grit from my eyes, slowly letting them adjust. Looking through the darkness, not at it. Since joining CID, I’ve spent more shifts behind a desk than on the streets, but I did my time in uniform. I’ve felt my way through empty warehouses in the dead of night and chased intruders across pitch-black playing fields. The beam of a torch gives a false sense of security, creating shadows in corners and making what isn’t lit up darker still. Trust your eyes, I think.

Our cellar is around ten feet wide and twenty feet long, with steep stone steps at one end that lead down from the kitchen. When we bought the house, we had grand plans to convert it into a room, knocking out the old coal chute and digging down from the front garden to add a high-level window. The quote was exorbitant, and we abandoned the idea. The cellar is too damp to store anything, and as the temperature falls, the mice come in search of warmth and food. Instinctively, my fingers curl inward.

The worst present I ever received, Michelle, was a hand-knitted sock from my mother-in-law.

Just one, Ramesh?

She’d run out of wool.

“Daddy.” A whimper in the darkness.

The walls of the cellar are brick, buried within the foundations of the house. My eyes travel along each side, searching out a difference in the gloom, looking for black against the gray.

There!

She’s on the stairs: a child-shaped shadow crouched on the top step, where the faintest of light bleeds from the kitchen beneath the door. It flickers, like a bulb close to exhaustion. Slowly, my eyes adjust.

“Are you okay, sweetheart?”

Sophia’s legs are drawn up to her chest, her arms wrapped tightly around them and her head buried in her knees. I pull uselessly at the metal bar behind me. Whatever Becca gave me is wearing off, the brain fog slowly clearing. There’s a sharp pain around my ribs, and every time I yank my wrists forward, it takes my breath away. The only way Becca could have gotten me into the cellar is by dragging me to the steps and letting me fall, and every inch of my body feels as though that’s exactly what she did.

“I don’t like it here, Daddy.”

“Me neither. Are you hurt?”

“My tummy feels funny.”

“Did she give you anything, Sophia? Anything to eat?” I yank hard at the cuffs, angry with Becca, with myself, with the bloody pipe that won’t. Give. An. Inch. “Did she? It’s important!” Sophia buries her head again, and I bite my tongue, soften my tone. “Sweetheart, did Becca give you any medicine?”

She makes a movement, but I’m not sure if she’s nodding her head or shaking it.

“Is that no?”

“Yes.”

“No medicine?”

“No medicine.”

I breathe out. “But your tummy aches?”

“It feels funny. Like when you spin me around, or when the bath monster comes, or when I play flying with Mummy.” Her voice is thin and scared.

“Ah. Mine feels a bit like that, to be honest.” The radio phone-in segues into the weather report, which warns of more snow overnight and a drop in temperature to minus three. Damp from the stone floor seeps into my bones. I’m wearing suit trousers and a collared shirt; Sophia’s in her pajamas and dressing gown. At least she has slippers on—my socked feet are numb with cold.

I listen for sounds in the house beyond the radio, but there’s nothing. Has Becca gone, or is she still in the house?

“Sweetheart, is the door locked?”

“Yes.”

“Could you try again? Really rattle it, so I can see?” Slowly, Sophia gets to her feet, and the slice of light from beneath the door widens. She twists the doorknob, then rattles it hard. The door doesn’t give.

“It’s stuck.” She rattles the handle again.

“Bang on it. Make a fist and bang as hard as you can.”

She hits the door, over and over, so loud down here in the cellar that by rights, the whole town should hear it. Becca said that if Mina’s plane didn’t change course, she’d harm Sophia, but Sophia’s here safe with me—if you can call being locked in a cellar “safe.” Does that mean Mina followed instructions? Has Flight 79 been hijacked? Fear grips me, colder than the stone beneath me.

Has the plane crashed?

“Sophia, I want you to scream, okay? As loud as you can. I’m going to shout too, so cover your ears and scream as loud as you can. Ready? One, two, three!”

The noise is deafening. It ricochets around the cellar, Sophia’s high-pitched scream and my furious Becca! I don’t want to shout help!—don’t want to make Sophia any more scared than she already is.

“Okay, now shhh—listen.”

But all we can hear is “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.” The flickering light is the digital radio, I realize, pushed close to the other side of the door; the faint fluorescent one is from the kitchen ceiling behind it. I’m trying to fathom why Becca chose to give us the questionable comfort of a radio, when I hear the words…inaugural flight to Sydney.

Concern was first raised when air traffic control operatives were unable to contact the pilots, despite communication channels appearing to be in place. Pilots are required to inform ground control when entering and leaving foreign airspace…

“I can scream even bigger than that.” Sophia opens her mouth.

“Let me just listen to this.”

Shortly after eleven p.m. in the UK, a tweet was sent from an account belonging to the Climate Action Group, alleging that members of their group had hijacked Flight 79 in a protest against climate change.

Climate change. Mass extinction. That’s what Becca was talking about. I struggle to make sense of it. Planes are hijacked by terrorists. Terrorists are religious extremists, not environmentalists.

And yet…

“The aviation industry presents the single biggest threat to the environment,” the tweet reads, “and world leaders must take action now.”

“Come and sit on my lap, Soph.” That’s what Becca meant about Mina choosing not to fight the cause. Not radicalization—at least not from religious fanatics—but pressure to ground planes, stop people flying, bankrupt airlines.

“Flight 79 is Mummy’s plane.” Her voice wobbles.

Should I lie to her? Tell her it isn’t Mina’s, it’s got nothing to do with Becca, with the fact that we’re locked in the cellar? But Sophia’s not your average five-year-old—she reads and writes far above her age, she takes everything in, and she knows exactly where Mina is. And besides, I’ve told enough lies.

Climate Action Group has released a statement denying their involvement. They claim their Twitter account was hacked, and they are currently reviewing their security measures. More on this story as we have it.

As a music track fades up, I hear a sound in the kitchen. A chair, scraping across the floor, as though someone has stood up quickly.

“Becca!”

“Mummy’s plane is Flight 79.”

“I know, sweetheart. Becca!” I yell louder, knowing I’m scaring Sophia but not knowing what else to do. Mina’s plane’s been hijacked. This should be over.

“Mummy’s plane is a Boeing 777. It has three hundred and fifty-three passengers.”

“That’s right. Becca!”

Another noise, closer this time, and I know—I just know—that Becca is right there, on the other side of the door, her ear pressed close to the wood. I force myself to speak more calmly.

“Becca, I know you’re there. You’ve got what you wanted. Whatever Mina was supposed to do, she’s done it. The plane’s been taken over. You can let us go now.”

There’s a muffled sound, something halfway between a sniff and a cough, then Becca answers. The pitch is high and harsh, faster than the measured, calculating tone she used when she drugged me.

“It hasn’t changed course. I’m supposed to let you go when it changes course.”

“It’s been hijacked! They said on the radio… Becca, you have to let us go.”

“Shut up!”

“You’ve done what they told you to do. Now—”

“I said shut up!”

“Daddy!” Sophia cries from the steps, and I bite back the expletives Becca deserves, dropping my voice, making it as warm and safe as I can.

“Come and sit with me, sweetheart.”

“Why is Mummy’s plane on the radio?”

“It’ll be warmer on my lap.”

Sophia shrinks back. “The mouses will eat me.”

Once we decided not to convert the basement into a usable room, we forbade Sophia from going into the cellar. The steps were steep, and there was no light—it was a disaster waiting to happen. Mr. Mouse will nibble your toes if you do, I would tell her, nipping my fingers at her feet as she squealed with laughter.

“There aren’t any mice,” I say now, hoping I’m right. Becca’s turned up the radio, the music pumping manufactured happiness through the door. There’s no sound from Becca. Is she still there, listening?

Sophia steps gingerly down into the cellar. She curls herself into my lap, reassuringly heavy, and I ache to put my arms around her. I think of the hundreds of times I’ve longed for her to come to me and how often she’s gone to Mina instead. She leans her head against my chest, her mouth opening in an involuntary yawn, and I press a kiss to the top of her head.

“This,” I say, in a manner far more measured than I feel, “is a tricky situation, but Daddy’s going to sort it, okay? Daddy’s going to get us out of here.”

I just need to work out how.