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  He strained his ears, could hear Annie’s high-pitched voice chipping into a distant conversation, but he couldn’t make out what she was saying. “Annie? What’s going on?”

  It seemed an age before she answered. Frustration itched away at him. When she returned to the call there was a definite edge to her voice. “Sir, you need to get back here urgently. Looks like there’s been a ransom demand.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  I balled up the bread wrapper, chucked it into the corner. It caught the edge of an empty bottle, causing it to wobble slightly, sending a hollow rattle reverberating around the pit.

  Earlier, my dozing had been disturbed by a strange scratching sound. At first I thought I was dreaming, until I opened my eyes to a myriad of shiny eyes glistening in the half-darkness. The rat had come back. And he’d brought friends.

  I’d jumped up, screamed, bared my teeth like a vampire until they scurried away. But they would be back. They knew there was food down here, they’d smelt it. I couldn’t afford to sleep now. I needed to stay alert.

  Two tired-looking apples poked out of the edge of the blanket, one with a few chunks missing. It was all I had left from the delivery. I placed my hands behind my neck, stretched my elbows back. The concoction of anxiety, boredom and loneliness down here was suffocating. I needed something to concentrate my mind, keep me awake. Happy memories.

  Tom. It was raining the day I first saw him. He stood out in the wet, water dripping off the edge of his chin, beaming as he held open the main entrance door of the college for me. I remember being struck by how his whole face lit up as he smiled. His eyes lingered for just long enough to make my stomach flutter. ‘Welcome to Stratford College,’ he’d said with a wink. He made a show of taking me around campus and I played along (even though I’d arrived a couple of weeks earlier and already familiarised myself with it) while he introduced me to his friends.

  Almost instantly, I became a part of his friendship group. I thought hard. It was strange, our first meeting was so vivid in my mind yet I couldn’t recall the moment our friendship turned into something more. It just seemed to deepen over the following days and weeks. Until one day he kissed me.

  The recollection made me smile. We were sitting on the sofa in my apartment listening to Ed Sheeran. I was teasing him, poking his ribs. We chuckled, rubbed shoulders. He smelled so good. I don’t even remember how it happened. Suddenly his lips were on mine. Wet and inviting. He felt so deliciously warm and welcoming that there was not an ounce of awkwardness. Not even afterwards. Everything with Tom was like that. He seemed to glide effortlessly through life.

  From that moment on, I felt like a warm arm had been placed around me. He didn’t seem to notice the longing looks from other girls far prettier than me, and I couldn’t fail to be flattered by his interest in finding out all those intricate details about me that you only discover through intimacy. While I forced myself to concentrate on my studies and pored over my laptop, he breezed through his homework and read music magazines beside me. I could still see him making silly faces in my dressing table mirror while I dried my hair.

  I took a deep breath, rested my head back on the stone as the memories warmed my insides. I didn’t come over here to start a relationship. It had been the last thing on my mind. But during the days and weeks that followed that first kiss, the bond that pulled us together consumed me. Tom was the first man to reach into my heart and he’d laid an anchor deep. Which made it all the more difficult when things started to go wrong.

  Tears pricked my eyes. I’d never forget how ghostly white his face turned when I told him I was pregnant. We still wanted to be close to each other, the pull was magnetic, but we were faced with something neither of us had expected.

  I reached a hand down to my stomach as a tear escaped and rolled down the side of my nose. We’d argued that night. That’s why I left the pub. Alone. Goosebumps stood erect on my arms. Alone in the dark. Stupid. I never did that, I was always surrounded by friends, we looked after each other. But that night I was in a temper. I strode out of the pub. Waited for no one.

  I was angry. My feet pounded the pavement with each step.

  Tom doesn’t understand how different things are back home. My parents expect a great deal of me. I need to excel at my studies, build a firm platform for my eventual career. Right now, it’s important to show them that I’m working hard, diligently, being the dutiful daughter. Otherwise they will remove the funding and whip me back home where I will not only be expected to continue my studies, but also mix with all the right people so that I gain a respected position in a progressive company.

  Memories of my father hosting endless dinner parties, keeping everybody happy, greasing the right palms to enable his business to stabilise and grow, dogged my childhood. Looking back a part of me understood his motivations. How could I blame him for wanting a better life for his family? But I loathed the falseness of such liaisons, the shallowness. Smiling at people I didn’t particularly like, being asked to sing for strangers when I was little, putting on my best table manners.

  I tried to explain to Tom that I needed to deal with this, with them, in my own way. Right now they would see him as a barrier, rather than an addition. And that was without the baby.

  But I couldn’t expect Tom to understand. After all, he was raised in a country where the press freely express their opinions on the state and openly criticise their governors instead of huddling around a neighbour’s table and covertly talking in whispers.

  I forced my mind back to the other evening, to focus. Monday. I was walking down Rother Street. An image danced into my mind. A black car. It stopped. Young lads. I couldn’t catch what they said through their excited smiles. They whistled and drove off, but I was scared. Scared enough to turn back. I reached the pub on the corner, hesitated. But I wasn’t going to give Tom the satisfaction. I marched towards the corner, back towards the college.

  My thoughts turned misty. As much as I tried to pull and pick I couldn’t recall what happened next. It was like somebody had placed a veil over my brain. I’d turned the corner from the pub. I was in Greenhill Street. I knew that much. I remembered a force pulling me back, a cloth that smelt sickly sweet.

  The pub. If only I’d gone back inside. If only I hadn’t been so headstrong, I’d be back in my apartment right now, Liu watching the television, Lang laid across the sofa reading. Tom beside me.

  Instead I was here. In a concrete box with only the rats for company.

  I didn’t want to cry. Crying only made everything worse – I became thirsty and my head pounded. But I couldn’t seem to hold back the tears that dripped from my chin and spotted the blanket beneath.

  All alone. All those years of wanting, waiting, planning how I would get to England and this was what happened.

  I thought back to my first trip here when I was eleven years old, the trip that sowed the seed that would flourish in my mind. We came over for three weeks in the summer of 2005, stayed at Northampton University, took English classes in the morning and travelled out to Cambridge, Bath, Stratford and London. I loved the way people dressed, spoke, the beauty of the landscape and architecture. I remembered watching a crowd of people marching through the streets in London calling out and carrying banners. I stopped and gawped at them, asked our guide what it meant. ‘It’s an organised protest about animal rights,’ she’d said. Instantly, I was scared. ‘Won’t the police come?’ ‘Not unless there is any trouble’, she’d replied. I stood for what felt like ages, fascinated by their open display of beliefs, until our guide tugged at my arm and pulled me away.

  When I was fourteen I met Karen Hardwick, the English teacher with the blonde hair and eyes that sparkled when she talked of her home on the coast in Dorset. She encouraged me to read Dickens, Austen, the Bronte sisters. My father studied English too and we practised together at home. He was so proud when I came top of the class in our English exam.

  The memories dried my tears and installed a sense of steeliness
inside me. Why should I be punished for wanting a different life?

  As my thoughts cascaded, a rage of anger grew and flourished in my bones. How dare somebody take such liberties with my life, with the lives of my loved ones?

  I looked up at the grill. I couldn’t break out, I’d tried already. My only hope was to wait until my captor returned and find a way of distracting him.

  I sat forward, glanced around. Dead leaves and crisp packets in one corner covered my makeshift toilet. The opposite corner contained the empty bottles. They were too soft. I needed something hard. Something that would hurt him. I searched urgently until I remembered my heels. I was wearing them on Monday evening. Where were my stilettos?

  I moved around the pit, tossing everything aside. But even as I did so, I already knew the answer. He’d taken those too. My only weapon. I was left with nothing.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Thoughts raced through Jackman’s head as he sat in his office and prepared for the emergency team briefing. A copy of the ransom request, an email in Mandarin, sat before him. He read through the translation:

  DO NOT CONTACT THE POLICE OR THE PRESS, IN CHINA OR BRITAIN, IF YOU WANT TO SEE YOUR DAUGHTER ALIVE AGAIN.

  We have Li Min. She is safe and unharmed at the moment.

  If you want to see her, follow these instructions.

  We require £25,000 in used bank notes. The notes should be tied together and taken to The Grove Industrial Estate, Birmingham. Enter the lay-by on Brambleside Way and leave the cash in the bin in an orange supermarket carrier bag at precisely 12.30am on 21st May. Li Min will then be released.

  At present, Min has food and water and is in good health. If you do not pay we won’t kill her. We will fail to meet her basic needs and she will die a slow death of starvation in captivity.

  The words were dramatic enough, yet the email felt lifeless; the Times New Roman font business-like and impersonal. Whoever wrote this chose their words carefully, ensuring that all the information they wished to impart was included, and no more.

  There was no sign-off. It wasn’t until Jackman scrolled down that the message was brought alive by a photo of Min. She was in what looked like the back of a vehicle. The internal paintwork was white. A couple of tartan blankets were strewn in the corner. Her eyes were closed, her body laid prostrate. She could have been dead, although there was something about the image that breathed life.

  Jackman thought back to previous kidnapping cases he’d worked. The emphasis was always placed on building up a relationship with the abductors, not only to open the possibility for negotiation but also to establish the state of the victim. In the Larkin case, he’d actually got to speak to the victim to prove she was still alive. Here, all they had was a rather tenuous-looking photograph.

  Jackman rubbed the bridge of his nose. No open lines of communication meant no chance for negotiation. No opportunity to obtain any potential indication as to the location of Min.

  He switched back to the email. This single message sent to Mr Li at 11.30am GMT yesterday had elevated the case to a new level. Min’s parents claimed they had followed the instructions, paid the demand. Yet, Min had not been in contact.

  Jackman thought hard. Min’s father owned his own factory. When Russell had spoken to Mr Li yesterday, he’d claimed that his staff had been loyal to him for many years. No incidents that he was aware of recently, nobody had suddenly left and the majority of his dealings were with European customers whom he had dealt with for many years. But if Mr Li was involved in something illegal, money laundering for instance, it wouldn’t show up within his accounts. And they still hadn’t received a list of his main competitors. Jackman made a note to get his team to chase this urgently.

  A knock at his door broke his train of thought. Davies’ face appeared, “We’re ready for you now, sir.”

  The sweltering heat immediately consumed him as he crossed the threshold into the incident room. Bodies cluttered the tiny space, thickening the air; some seated, others perched on the edge of desks, a few standing at the back, clogging any possible draught from the open windows. He moved across to the side of the whiteboard to join Janus who had hotfooted across from Leamington to join the assemblage.

  DC Russell stood at the front and cleared her throat. The red hair that was usually smoothed back neatly looked ruffled. He could see a couple of amber blotches on her neckline. “Right.” She paused briefly as the room silenced. “Mr and Mrs Li received an email at precisely 11.30am our time, yesterday morning.” She clicked a button on the keyboard and an enlarged copy of the ransom email flashed on the screen in front of them.

  The atmosphere of the room grew tense as everyone scanned the message. Jackman could hear the rattle of the venetian blinds tapping the window sill in the gentle breeze that did nothing to alleviate the stifling room.

  Davies pulled a face when she read the final line. “Why didn’t they come to us?” she asked.

  “They claim they were scared,” Russell answered. “Thought it would be easier if they complied with the wishes and paid the cash. Anything to get their daughter back.”

  “That’s exactly what we would have advised them to do, but at least we could have monitored it,” Davies said. “What about their local police in China?”

  Russell shook her head.

  Jackman scanned the message on the screen once again. Seeing it there, enlarged, seemed to ramp up the gravity of the situation even more. One word jumped out at him: we. Not I, we.

  “Li Min,” Davies repeated out loud.

  Russell seemed to guess her thoughts. “It’s the Chinese way of writing it. They put the surname first, although many of the students that come over switch to the English habit of writing the surname last to make it easier. It was the same with the Embassy report. The interpreter says the Mandarin is clean, well-versed.”

  “So we are looking at a Chinese national, or somebody fluent in Mandarin?” Davies said.

  Russell nodded.

  “Talk us through what you know,” Jackman said.

  Russell turned to face the room. “Well, as most of you are aware, I’ve been in contact with the parents since Min disappeared. Yesterday, they gave me every indication they didn’t know where she was and hadn’t heard from anybody regarding her disappearance.” She paused and glanced down at her notes. “This morning I tried to call, text and email several times, but couldn’t reach them. Finally I took a desperate call from Mr Li at home, just after 10.30am our time, when he explained about the email and sent me a copy. They paid the ransom but Min hasn’t been in contact. They’re convinced she wasn’t released, as arranged, and are now at their wits’ end.”

  Russell swallowed. “I knew something wasn’t right,” she said. “Their reaction. They weren’t the typical grieving parents. Their words were exact, serious, almost calculated.”

  “You could put that down to cultural differences and interpretation,” Davies said.

  “How did he arrange to make payment?” Jackman asked.

  “He claims to have been introduced to a contact, a man in a restaurant, a friend of a friend, who gave them the telephone number of a contact in the UK who would help them, arrange the drop and then collect their daughter.”

  “What contact?”

  Russell shook her head. “He doesn’t know who they are.”

  “What about the friend that introduced them?”

  “Again. He won’t say who it is. He said that he promised not to disclose any of the details. He wouldn’t be pressed.”

  “What sort of contact did they arrange?”

  Russell pursed her lips. “Mr Li was given a mobile phone number. That’s all. No name.”

  A heavy weight filled the room. “This is all we need,” Janus said.

  A phone rang in the background. Jackman cast it an annoyed glance, then turned back to Russell, “Go on.”

  “He received a text message at 12.00am our time yesterday to say that the drop location had been changed. They were direct
ed into the industrial estate at Applewood Way instead of Brambleside and told to leave the bag in a cardboard recycling bin down the side of a building that housed a company called Atom Conveyors.”

  Jackman rubbed his forehead and allowed himself a wry smile. Changing the drop location at the last minute showed organisation. Whoever arranged this was not leaving anything to chance.

  “They hung around for a bit and watched, and said it was collected by a motorcyclist with a tinted visor,” Russell continued. “There’s a photograph that they texted him.”

  Russell leant forward and tapped a button on her laptop. An image of the back of a motorbike filled the screen. The rider was wearing black leathers and a dark crash helmet, the number plate was concealed. On the back of the helmet was the number forty-six, clearly marked in yellow. A deep score line ran through the middle of the six, as if it had been scratched.

  Jackman ran his hand down his face. “Looks like an off-road bike to me. Trawl the nearby units for additional footage and check with local dealers to see if you can trace the make. See if the number forty-six on the helmet means anything too. What do we know about the person who arranged the payment?” he said.

  Russell shook her head and sighed. “Again, very little. Mr Li spoke to a man with a British accent initially to explain what was required. They agreed to lend him the money against his business. Somebody would be in touch when payment was due. Then all he received were text messages from mobile phones to tell him the drop had been made. Every time a different number.”

  Jackman sighed. “Get all the numbers off him and see if you can trace any of them. And get me a meeting with both parents will you, over Skype? I want them to realise the gravity of the situation. There’s no room for secrets here.”

  The sound of a phone receiver being slammed down immediately hushed the room. Keane jumped up from his position at the far corner, “That was the techie team at headquarters. They’ve been looking at the server address for the email. It was sent from a hotmail address, so no luck there, but through the server they were able to trace the IP location to an internet cafe on Hagley Road in Birmingham.”