Where There's A Will

Chapter Forty-Five

Alice had no way of measuring the passage of time, but she thought it was Thursday evening – it was actually Thursday night, midnight had come and gone – and she couldn't sleep. She wanted to, because her brain told her it was the best way to make the time until she was released pass, but no matter how she tried to get comfortable and clear her mind, sleep evaded her.

She simply could not rid herself of the feeling that the moment she closed her eyes, some new, and unpleasant, thing would happen to her. She couldn't even bring herself to turn off the light, which might have helped her to sleep – in her mind the light held back not only the shadows, but also her kidnappers, whom she was sure were lurking in the shadows, waiting to catch her unawares.

Huddled against the wall, she suffered through the first bout of insomnia she had ever had to deal with.

Alice was not the only one suffering with an inability to sleep. Lewis, in a bedroom down the passage from the one in which the schoolgirl was being held prisoner, was also awake. The bedroom in which he resided that night was furnished and comfortable, unlike Alice's barren cell, but that comfort made no difference in helping Lewis quiet his troubled mind and surrender to the sweet oblivion of sleep.

No matter how much he tried, he couldn't put from his mind the phone call he had overheard; it troubled him to such an extent that he was surprised Crash hadn't picked up on it before he went to bed. Fortunately, his partner wasn't very perceptive, and was more interested in the DVD he had put on than in why Lewis was so quiet.

He cursed himself for letting the battery on his phone die; if it weren't for that, he could have called the police, and Alice would be safe, safer than she was now at any rate, and so would he, even if that was because he was in a police cell. He had considered asking to borrow Crash's phone, but decided it was too risky; he couldn't even borrow the charger for Crash's phone so he could make the call later, because he knew that Crash, like him, hadn't brought it.

Since he couldn't call the police, he had to come up with some other way of saving Alice, and he knew he didn't have long in which to do so. He hadn't heard all of the phone call that Crash had made earlier, but he had heard enough to know that neither he nor Alice would live long past the collection of the ransom.

A morbid corner of his mind wondered how he was supposed to die, while a cowardly part thought he should forget about saving Alice and focus on saving himself – he was sure he could manage to creep downstairs and out the kitchen door without waking Crash, from there he could take the van from the barn and disappear.

As much as he wanted to just disappear, he knew he couldn't. He wasn't a brave man, he never had been, but neither did he think of himself as a coward; he couldn't leave Alice Keating to whatever was going to happen to her, not when he was in a position to help her.

After running the problem around his brain for an interminable period of time, the length of which he wasn't sure, he decided that his best chance of saving Alice was to wait until Crash left the following evening to collect the ransom from Alice's father. When Crash did that, he would be able to get Alice away without much in the way of risk to either of them. There was always a chance that Crash would go out at some point in the morning, if he did, Lewis could save Alice then, rather than waiting until the evening, but even if he didn't, he had less than a day to wait – as endless as that day was likely to feel, he was sure he could tolerate it.

The farmhouse where Alice was being held was not the only place witnessing a lack of sleep. Sleep was just as hard to come by for those under the roof of the Keating house. Mrs Wembley and Mr Chambers, both of whom had been with the family since before Alice was born, tossed and turned in their beds, worrying about Alice's safety.

Maria Keating also tossed and turned, unable to sleep, despite the medication the doctor had prescribed her; she felt as though she was caught in a nightmare, a nightmare she had always feared, but which she had never thought would come true.

Next to his wife in their luxurious, king-sized bed, Owen Keating lay as still as a statue. He could tell that Maria was awake, and that she continued to be troubled by the thoughts that had occupied her mind since he told her what had happened to Alice. As much as he wanted to roll over, take her in his arms, and comfort her, he realised it would do no good; it was irrational, he knew, but she blamed him for Alice's kidnapping.

The worst of it was that he agreed with her; despite knowing, intellectually, that his money made his family a target, he had not taken any serious steps towards ensuring they were protected. He had relied on Brian Jacobs, and his training with the Royal Marines, to keep his family safe, training which had proven unequal to the task when it came down to it.

Foremost in his thinking was not how he could fix the mistakes he had made, though, rather it was his daughter's kidnappers, and what they had in mind for the ransom drop. Not knowing what he would have to do to get his daughter back worried him as much as anything else. What films he had seen that involved kidnappings – not many he realised – featured ransom drops that were either convoluted to the point of absurdity, or which were spoiled by police interference; he hoped the ransom drop for his daughter would proceed more smoothly than any he had seen, and he would get Alice back without complications.

Downstairs in the library, Stone was another person finding sleep hard to come by. As tired as he was, he had too much on his mind to sleep; like Owen Keating in the master bedroom, he wondered what the kidnappers had planned for the ransom drop. It was clear to him that at least one of the people who had taken Alice was of above average intelligence, and that meant they were likely to come up with something to make following or tracking them difficult. Inspector Evans had tried to convince him that no matter what the kidnappers did, he and his assistant would be able to track the money and guide the following officers to wherever those holding Alice were hiding, but he remained doubtful.

Until they heard from the kidnappers, they could do nothing except make the most generic of plans based on the two biggest possibilities: the first was that the ransom drop would take place somewhere in the open where the kidnappers would have a wide field of visibility, while the second was that the kidnappers would want the exchange to take place somewhere crowded, so they could slip away amongst the civilians. Both had advantages and disadvantages, for police and kidnappers alike.

While his partner slept, seemingly having no difficulty in getting comfortable in the reading chair he had settled into, and Evans and his partner went over their programs and equipment in readiness for what they would have to do tomorrow, Stone attempted to get comfortable. Even the copy of Oliver Twist he had borrowed from Owen Keating's well-appointed library, which was one of his all-time favourite books, couldn't help him to relax.

In contrast to those who were finding sleep difficult to come by, Jerry Logan was fast asleep. Years of prison beds meant he had no problem drifting off, despite the lack of comfort provided by the thin mattress and hard wooden shelf on which it rested.