“Wait. I have no proof that you have my wife and daughter. Put them on the phone.”
“Mr Yelland, they have tape over their mouths at the moment, and it will hurt if I tear it off … and you don’t want them to get hurt, do you?”
“I’m not sending you a confidential contract without some proof.”
“I don’t have time to cut off your daughter’s ear and post it to you. You’re stalling. You’ll have checked your security at the Manor and will have seen the broken French windows. You’ll have seen your wife and daughter bundled into the two white vans.” He paused. “May I say that the red and yellow tiles don’t look right in your kitchen?”
Charles would tend to agree with him on that, but now was not the time.
“I want to see my wife and daughter.” Charles was adamant.
“It will only distress you … but if you insist, I’ll show you. They’re in the next room. I’ll open the door.” He started to walk. “Then, there will be no more discussion.”
Making sure of what was in the view, Brendan turned on the camera phone. The door was opened.
“Maria! Angelica!” Charles jumped up.
On his phone, he could see two people with grey tape across their mouths and terror in their eyes.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
On hearing Charles shout, “Maria! Angelica!” Mike read the situation very quickly.
She, too, leapt up and made a gesture to Maria and Angelica, who had just appeared in the study doorway. Mike walked quickly towards them, ushering them into the corridor. She kept a finger to her lips until they were well clear of the door.
“We’ll explain later,” she said as she hugged them both.
“What’s happening?” Maria asked.
“Later.” And with that, Mike walked back into the study, closing the door behind her.
“Nice try, whoever you are, but those two are not my wife and daughter. Goodbye,” Mike heard Charles say, before he ended the call.
He jumped up, ran to the door and walked into the hall, where Angelica ran up to him. She had her jet-black hair in a ponytail and was wearing a loose, pink shirt and baggy, white trousers.
“What’s happening, Charles? Why the mad rush to get out here? We’re both jet-lagged from the flight back from Mexico. You know I hate flying. Why can’t this wait?” Maria walked over to him, and they kissed, albeit briefly and coldly.
“I’m not sure what’s happening, but my life has been threatened,” he said.
“And we couldn’t leave you unprotected at the Manor. I think someone has already broken in there,” Mike added. She then turned to Charles. “Didn’t you get any notification of a break-in?”
“It will have come into my other phone … it’s in the bedroom,” he explained.
“Well, can I see it? Now!” Mike had stood there in disbelief. How does this man run an international company?
He went up three steps and began to walk along a corridor with Mike following.
When they were well out of earshot, she said, “I want to see this break-in, if there is one.”
“Oh, there is one,” he said while walking into his bedroom, “They’ve kidnapped Gabriela and her daughter, Camila.”
“Who are they?”
“Our Mexican cook and her daughter, who live in the gatehouse. I don’t know how to tell Maria and Angelica; they’re all close.”
Mike registered the almost complete indifference Charles had displayed once he knew his family were safe. Nobody else mattered, it seemed.
He turned on the mobile, tapped in a code and handed it to Mike.
“Charles, you do realise that the kidnappers will phone back? You aren’t in the clear yet.”
“I know, I know; I just needed time, and seeing Maria and Angelica threw me.”
“Go and reassure them, but don’t mention the kidnap. Then, speak to Wazz and get him to get a couple of his friends over here pronto. Whoever the kidnappers are, they now realise you’re all here in Spain. I’m going to look at the security footage and will ring the police.”
Charles seemed frozen to the spot.
Indicating the door with a nod, Mike said, “Before the grape harvest would be good.” Although as she had said it, she didn’t really have any idea when this might actually be.
Five minutes later, she was sitting in her room, scrolling through Charles’s phone. She had taken off her wig, only to put it straight back on again as she had felt the cool breeze from the air conditioning. She spent a few minutes downloading much of the recent activity on to her own phone and her laptop. She needed a drink, but she had no idea of time – perhaps thinking of the grape harvest had increased her thirst?
Neither Mike nor Charles could have known that their decision to use a helicopter may just have saved Maria and Angelica from being kidnapped. If they had used a car, it would have triggered the camera near the gatehouse, and this would have alerted Brendan and his colleagues. The team from one of the white vans had already been sitting in a layby a mile away. As it was, it had been only a matter of minutes later that the two vans had turned up, unaware that their targets had lifted off from the helipad in a piece of parkland half a mile away from the back of the house.
“Leonard, are you on the Underground? Turn on the camera; this I have to see.”
“No, I’m not. I’m shaking a box of popcorn.”
