Bumping Uglies

Chapter Twenty Seven

I stared at the envelope in my hand. 

Much like my exam results, or Schrodinger's ill-fated felines, I wondered whether the contents might not be real until I opened the envelope and read what was inside.

I must have been gazing, lost-in thought, for some time because in the end Ty stood and took the envelope from me and opened it with a rough tear.

"Well?" I asked as he extracted a sheet of folded paper and what looked like a photo.

"Three days. There's a location. I think they caught your best side," Ty replied, turning the photo around to show me, Sophie and Elira.

The image was unmistakably of me, though it was dark. I appeared to be stooping through a small black doorway and it took me long seconds to work out where it had been taken.

"That's on his boat, Charon's narrowboat, I mean. I noticed on the day that the woman was killed that the boat was fitted with cameras, but I had no idea that they were recording. Facial recognition..." I tailed off to a murmur.

"Well, they are clearly on to us. They are us offering Richard, unharmed, and a promise to let this whole thing slide in exchange for the laptops," Ty read from the note.

"Laptop, or laptops?" I pressed.

"Plural," Ty responded, passing the paper to me.

"Which means they know we have Richard's machine, as well as the one we took from Madam Poon's office," I mused.

"He talk," Elira whispered. "They make him, or he choose."

I nodded. Elira was pretty astute. Pretty and astute, actually.

"We have three days to find Richard and get into those damn computers then," Ty said.

"You don't think they will honour their promise to let us all walk away if we return them?" Sophie asked.

Ty just laughed.

"No, they will kill us all. Leaving a little hidden present at the wharf makes that crystal clear. This message being hand-delivered by a member of Her Majesty's Constabulary also suggests that the police will be looking the other way when it happens."

"The meeting?" Sophie persisted.

"It's an obvious trap," I answered her. "The only saving grace here is that the police haven't revealed where we are, yet."

"What are we going to do?" Sophie asked, sounding panicked. I knew how she felt.

"We are going to find where they are keeping your shit-heel fiancé, no offense," Ty paused.

"None taken," Sophie replied, nervously stroking the hair at the nape of her neck.

"If he's alive, then we get him and he gives us the information we need," Ty concluded. It sounded simple.

"What if he dead?" Elira chimed in.

"Then we will have to attend the rendezvous. Have you seen the film High Noon?" Ty asked, arching an inquisitive eyebrow.

*

The drive to Sam's place trod the fine line between uncomfortable and painful. The wounds on my side and across my legs were healing well but twinged just enough to make their presence felt.

The discomfort was the least of it. The interior of my car resembled a field hospital during the Crimean War. I hesitated before opening the glove compartment in case I found a diminutive Florence Nightingale had set up shop in there, tending to bearded Redcoats and lopping off limbs with a bone saw.