Next he had tried to focus on Adaje. What was she doing right now?
He pictured her normal day. Still sharing the family home with him during the last year of university. Just the two of them for more than ten years. She would thunder down the stairs, grab a piece of buttery toast, kiss his cheek and run. And then pause at the front door to shout back, ‘Love ya, Dad.’
The thought of those three sweet words, called to him every single morning, ripped at his heart. Those words used to pull him through the darkest days.
In the evenings, she would return. Some nights he would cook; some nights she would cook, and sometimes they would do it together, attempting to recreate her mother’s jerk chicken and green beans followed by ginger spice bulla cake. They were never successful but the effort kept the memory of his wife alive for them both.
What was Adaje doing now? What was she thinking? Was she frightened? Was she in danger? Yes, she was now a young woman but she would for ever be his little girl.
If only he could answer these questions. If he could know for sure his daughter was safe. The other questions in his mind were secondary to his daughter’s safety.
Suddenly Jacob heard a metal key in the door. A bright light shone in his face. He instinctively raised his bound hands to cover his eyes.
Fingers grabbed at his upper arms. Voices, the smell of alcohol, the sensation of warm skin grabbing at his cold flesh, bewildered him.
‘Stand it up,’ said one voice.
‘Yeah, let’s have a look,’ said a second.
He felt himself being hauled to his feet. Fabric was placed over his eyes and tied at the back of his head.
‘Let me go,’ he cried. The words croaked from his dry throat.
He flailed his arms like a dervish but he was being held firm.
‘Behave yourself, mud boy,’ said the first voice.
Jacob ignored him and continued to try to pull himself free. He kicked out in front of him with his bare feet and met with something hard.
‘Get your fucking hands off…’
‘Hey, pack it in,’ said a second voice, kicking him in the back of his knee.
His injured knee. He cried out in pain as his left leg buckled.
‘What do you want?’ he asked, trying to twist and turn out of the hands that gripped him.
‘Calm down, fella. This will all go better for you if you don’t struggle.’
‘My clothes?’ he asked. ‘Where are my clothes?’
‘You won’t be needing them right now,’ said the second voice.
A third voice sounded from behind him.
‘Here’s the bottle.’
‘Time for a little drink. You’re sounding a bit dry. Open your mouth.’
Jacob did as he was told. The plastic landed on his bottom lip and cold water filled his mouth. He swallowed greedily as the liquid quenched the arid thirst in his throat.
And then he bucked forward, causing the bottle to crash to the ground.
‘What the fuck?…’
The distraction enabled him to pull his right arm free. He immediately reached for the hand clamped at his left elbow. This might be his only chance to escape.
He squeezed hard on the fleshy fingers and managed to prize them free before hands landed all over his body.
‘Not so fast, fella,’ said voice number one.
Suddenly he felt a hard slap on his bare behind. ‘Just look at that fucking arse,’ said the second voice.
Jacob heard laughter, the voices seeming to surround him.
‘Best not let the boss hear you say that,’ said another. ‘He ain’t here for that kind of entertainment.’
‘Yeah, but…’
He was nobody’s entertainment, Jacob thought as he tried again to pull free. The panic was driving down into his chest, taking away his breath. He had no idea what they were planning on doing with or to him. He had to try and get away.
‘Calm down, eh? We ain’t like that,’ said one before sniggering.
‘Got some fight, hasn’t he?’
‘Yeah, he’s a good one. Should be a good night once we…’
‘Shh… the boss is coming,’ said the third voice.
From the words around him he suspected this was some random attack. He had been abducted by chance. Chosen for something. And as terrified as he was, he was also relieved. If these men didn’t know who he was, Adaje was safe.
Suddenly his limbs began to dissolve as a feeling of weakness overcame him.
He felt his legs begin to buckle beneath him as a numbness stole over his flesh like thousands of crawling insects.
The water, he realised, too late. They had put something in the water to drug him.
The hands that were grabbing him pushed him against the wall, and Jacob began to slide against it.
A vent grate in the wall grazed his back on the way down. He barely felt it as his eyes began to close.
‘Is this him, boss? Is this the right one?’ asked one of the voices.
Jacob felt his chin loll forward onto his chest as a new voice replied: ‘Oh yes. He’s the one.’
THIRTY
Stacey could feel the tension as her colleagues walked through the door. She looked from one to the other to work out who it was attached to.
Dawson appeared to have too much colour in his cheeks, and Bryant’s jaw was hard and set.
‘Everything okay?’ she asked, automatically.
‘Just peachy,’ Dawson grumbled. ‘Gary Flint, the neighbour from hell, is downstairs, just waiting to tell us how much he hates anyone that’s not British born and cotton white.’
‘Let it go, Kev,’ Bryant advised.
Dawson battered his computer keys and seemed surprised when he failed to log in.
‘Yeah, well you were hardly hero of the fucking hour,’ Dawson muttered.
‘Speak up, Kev,’ Bryant replied. ‘If you’ve got something to say…’
Stacey sat back in her chair and frowned. Most cases prompted a touch of antagonism between the two of them but, right now, the air was thick with resentment.
Dawson sat forward, rising to Bryant’s challenge. ‘You said fuck all to him, not a bloody dickie bird. How the hell could you be so calm around such a poisonous, vile?…’
‘Kev, did you really think that was a mind we were ever going to change?’ he answered, patiently.
‘Yeah but…’
‘Listen, I hate everyone who thinks it’s okay to drink and drive. I hate everyone who thinks it’s okay to have sexual feelings towards children. I hate every man who ever thought it was okay to rape a woman. The list goes on, and I hate them all but I can’t pin every one of them up a fucking wall, can I?’
Stacey’s eyes widened at the curse from her colleague. Bryant’s voice had risen steadily throughout his explanation. There was something unnerving about seeing him losing his cool. His unruffled manner normally held them all together.
What the hell was going on between these two? Stacey wondered. And where was the boss to sort it out? She could normally defuse the tension between them with one sentence.
‘Who’s interviewing him?’ Stacey asked, trying to refocus their attention on the case and away from each other.
‘Me,’ said Dawson.