CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Nikolas thought he woke for a while in a boat. He could sense a swaying motion and hear the sound of slapping water, but when he tried to lift his head, he was violently sick and then passed back into the blackness he’d been in before. The next time he came around, he was sick again, but it was only feeble retching of vodka that he spat away. He slowly opened his eyes and groaned as pain stabbed through his head. He remembered getting unbelievably drunk, remembered the argument, the fight and turning to go in to make it good with Ben, and then he recalled nothing more except the terrible pain in his head. He put a hand up to feel and realised for the first time his hands were chained behind his back.
That realisation brought him round a great deal faster.
When he’d shaken off his initial panicked fury and took the time to study his surroundings, he discovered his first assumption was right, things were bad.
He was in a hunting shed. It wasn’t very big or robustly made and streaks of light slanted between the wooden slats. The floor was concrete with channels for…run-off—a discovery he decided he’d think about later. He was in the very centre of the floor (where all the drainage channels began) at the end of a thick hoist chain. The chain ran from his wrists up to a wheel mounted on the ceiling and then to a winding handle on the wall. The shed didn’t appear recently used. The drainage channels were dry. There were antlers in a large pile under a small, grimy window and butchery tools on a bench (that also had a deep blood drain). On the other side of the shed was a rack with old ice-skates, hockey sticks, and some fishing equipment.
He was chained on the end of a hoist for carcasses to lift them for splitting.
He’d woken in worse places, but not very often.
That he was naked and it was very, very cold he reckoned were the least of his worries.
He took his time thinking about all these things but couldn’t put off the moment when he had to admit the inevitable and the obvious. He was chained naked in a hunting shed to the end of a carcass hoist where the drainage channels began.
Before long, he realised being cold was not actually the least of his worries. It was very possible he’d die of cold before he had to worry more about the hoist (and the drainage).
He wasn’t fully conscious when he heard the voice. For one moment, he wondered if an angel had come for him, a thought that made him chuckle inside his head—he was too cold and sick to actually make a sound. Something was draped over him and hot liquid pressed to his lips. He drank greedily for the warmth. More weight was added to whatever was over him and then some more hot liquid offered. He tried to focus on the person, but he couldn’t see them for the shaking that had now returned. But there was one type of person Nikolas knew—torturers. He knew how best to appease them, too. “Thank you,” he whispered. Rule 1: Establish good terms with your torturer. Most of his victims had tried it. One or two had actually been successful.
He was left alone again. He huddled under the blankets and continued to shiver, his arms in agony from being pinned behind him, his wrists hurting from the chains. However, he was now fairly sure he wasn’t going to die just yet. Eventually, yes, he had no doubt, but he was being kept alive for some reason. Perhaps they were waiting for their boss-man to arrive before the fun and games began. Time, however, gave him opportunity. He closed his eyes. Closing them, he was Nikolas Mikkelsen. He reopened them as Aleksey Primakov. Aleksey Primakov didn’t lie huddled on a concrete floor defeated. Aleksey Primakov had survived gulags, starvation, rape, and torture. With supreme effort, he rose to his knees and then to his feet. Standing, the chains loosened. He shook out his arms, and the pain in his shoulders lessened. He could walk a foot or two in a circle as his height had increased the slackness in the chain. He couldn’t reach the butchery tools—yet. He would. It was only a matter of time.
The chains on his wrists were too tight for him to pull Ben’s neat trick of bringing his arms to the front. He pulled on the chain for a while to see if the wheel would come off, but all he got were sore wrists and shoulders. He was shivering again now, so he did some squat thrusts and jumped on the spot for a while. Then he got back down under the blankets. Rule 2: Those who break first are always the ones who give in to the initial shock and despair. He’d always made good use of Rule 2.
§ § §
Ben took Radulf back to the lodge with him that afternoon. Crime scene tape surrounded the ground in front of the deck and crossed the door, but he’d been given permission to go in to collect some of his things, if accompanied by one of the uniformed officers. A patrol car, its engine idling in the cold air, was parked at the front of the cabin. As soon as Radulf’s paws hit the ground, he was off. Ben had never seen him move so fast. He dodged the police car and shot straight across the well-trampled snow and down the track toward the lake. Ben glanced at the policeman; he nodded, and they both jogged after the disappearing figure. It was hard going in the snow. Radulf was scrabbling on the stony shore of the lake, sniffing. They went up to him and looked around, but other than snow and ice, they couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Then the young policeman commented, “The ice is broken.”
Ben nodded. “I fell in yesterday afternoon.”
The cop shook his head, thinking, staring at the lake. “Further out, look. Like a channel.” He walked away, talking into his radio. Ben tried to think. If Nikolas hadn’t gone voluntarily, which he still wasn’t too sure about, he’d have had to have been subdued, and it would’ve taken a very strong man to carry him any distance—but he could have been dragged. The snow would’ve made it possible, and they were only fifty meters from the cabin. The dock was icy, and it would’ve been possible to bring a boat in level with the deck and just roll a heavy body in without lifting it at all. For the first time since Nikolas had gone, Ben began to believe he’d been taken—that he’d not just walked away. He felt such a weight lift from his shoulders it seemed almost a physical absence—relieving him of the terrible depression and inertia that had slid around him, suffocating him. Nikolas had been taken. He tore past the policeman, shouting he needed to get into the cabin, now. He stuffed a bag with some clothes and things for Radulf and flew back to the car.
§ § §
Gabby was in the children’s section, reading to a group of toddlers.
She’d been the first person Ben had thought of when he’d realised he needed local maps. He was eight and he was running to his mother, but who was going to call him on it?
Amy was at the counter. She gave Ben an odd look and busied herself with stamping books. He realised, with a pang of guilt, that since Nikolas had arrived he’d not been to the library once. He’d dropped his new friends as if they meant nothing. Was this some kind of divine punishment for being so wholly consumed by Nikolas Mikkelsen that he was taken from him? That he was to lose Nikolas for worshiping him above all things?
Ben felt faint with confusion, guilt and fear.
He tried to catch Gabby’s eye. She gave him a little wave but finished the book she was reading to her avid audience.
When the last of her little flock had departed, she gave Ben a quick, embarrassed hug and held both his hands. “How are you, sweetie? It’s just so awful.” She brushed a finger over his split lip.
“You’ve heard?”
She smiled faintly. “This is a very small island, Ben. News travels fast. I’m sure they’ll catch him.”
“Catch him? Catch who?”
She placed her fingers briefly on his lip again. “The man who attacked you!”
“I wasn’t attacked! That’s—He’s—I—He’s gone missing. Look, I don’t have time for this. I’m sorry. Have you got some maps? I need the lake area—maps that show where the houses are, cabins, hunting lodges—anything.”
“He’ll be off the island now, Ben, surely?”
“Maps?”
“No, we don’t have anything like that. I’m sorry.”
He almost stamped his foot in frustration, watching as she brushed a strand of greying hair behind her ear. “Look, can you wait a bit? I think I might know where I can get some maps—a local historian.”
He grabbed her arms. “Thanks. I’ll come with you.”
She shook her head. “I’ll meet you. I’ll bring them to you. Do you know the little restaurant by the harbour?”
“Alan Lund’s? Of course, but I need them now, Gabby.”
She walked back to her desk and began to pack her handbag. “I’ll be as quick as I can. What time shall I meet you tonight?”
“As soon as you can! I’ll wait for you there.”
§ § §
Nikolas next woke to find he’d been left a plate of food. His captor had come and gone while he’d been fucking sleeping like a fucking baby. He was about to kick the plate away but thought better of it. Rule 3: Never refuse anything you’re offered, you mightn’t be offered it again. Food was fuel and power; a very wise child had told him that once. It had taken him a while to believe it and to act on that belief, putting the horror of the feeding in the gulags behind him. Now, he’d never been so grateful to have some more muscle and fat on him, chained as he was in this freezing shed.
Unfortunately, he had to kneel and eat like a dog off the plate, but he wasn’t proud. He’d once had to fuck three men at the same time to be allowed to share a piece of dog, and then they’d not given it to him when they were done with him. Eating a ham sandwich from a china plate decorated with little blue flowers chained on his knees in a butcher’s shed was a surreal experience—but surreal was okay.
When he was finished, he began on his project for escape—he wasn’t sure what this was yet, but thinking about it was good. He had some vague idea to use the blanket to form a rope he could snag one of the tools with, but this depended on being able to convince his captor to allow him to have his arms fixed to the front. And, of course, as soon as he persuaded someone to release him enough to make that exchange, he was as good as free. That meant staying awake long enough to speak with them the next time they came (Rule 1). Which was proving more difficult than he’d thought it would. Every time he lay down, he fell asleep. This, and the fact his head was hurting so much, made him think he probably had a concussion from whatever had hit him in the first place. He could feel the blood matted and sticky on the side of his head, and he couldn’t put this area to the ground without a sensation of worrying squishiness.
When he brought up the sandwich, he knew he was in trouble. Concussion in freezing conditions killed people quickly. But there wasn’t much he could do but endure. That he felt he deserved everything that was happening to him only added to his growing sense of helplessness. Rule 4—the strong survived by being righteous in their innocence—wasn’t looking good for him. It was so long since he’d been innocent of anything, his guilt tasted worse than the vomit in his throat.
§ § §
Gabby came to the restaurant as promised. She’d procured some maps, but they were geographical ones and only showed a few dwellings—and those in no detail. But they were topographically detailed of the lake. Ben took them from her and began to study them.
“Shall we have a drink?”
Ben nodded absently but didn’t look up, circling the few properties he could identify.
“Well, I’ll order some wine, shall I? Can I help? I know the area quite well, of course. Not so much the lake but certainly around the town.”
Ben looked up. “Do you have a boat?”
She turned away, waving toward the bar for the bartender to come over. “No, of course not.”
“Damn, I need to borrow one.”
“Oh. I could ask around at work, maybe? I’m sure someone will have one.” She ordered some wine—red when she couldn’t elicit any preference from Ben. She waited for him to pour then giggled and did it herself. “What can I do to help? Have you got somewhere to stay? I’ve got a spare room, and you’re―”
“No, I’m good. But thanks, Gabby, I really appreciate this. I need to go.”
“Go? But you haven’t had your wine! We haven’t ordered yet! You must eat, Ben!”
“Ordered? Food?” He couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten. He thought it might have been the stuff he threw up in the cell, but that had been almost twenty-four hours ago. He sat again heavily. “I need to eat. Fucking hell!” He’d added this last in English because it never sounded as good in Danish, but he could see from her expression she understood it quite well. He ordered some food and asked Alan if he could hurry it. Alan jokingly asked him if there was a fire, and Ben replied surprised, “Haven’t you heard?”
“Heard what?”
“A friend of mine has gone missing. I’m sorry. I assumed you’d know. I seem to have done nothing but talk about it to people since it happened last night.”
“It’s a big island, Ben. Let me know if there’s anything you need.”
“Do you have a boat?”
Alan nodded. “All Danes have boats. Where do you want me to bring it?”
Ben could have kissed him. Instead, he squeezed Gabby’s fingers. There was a glimmer of hope at last. She squeezed back and retained his hand, staring at him over the wine. Then she stood up. “Come here, sweetie, let me give you a hug.”
Ben didn’t need this. It was the last thing he could cope with. He wasn’t used to the sympathy of women as he’d lost his mother so young. Held like this, he felt totally eviscerated, raw and utterly vulnerable. He didn’t need it, but he wanted it so much. He wanted nothing more than to bury his pain in this maternal woman’s arms and let her mother him until it all went away. She even stroked his hair, just like his mother used to. Alan brought them some food and explained he’d arranged for his boat to be towed up to Ben’s cabin in the morning. There was nothing anyone could do that night. Ben tried to eat his steak, but it stuck in his throat and sickened him. Gabby was making small talk, trying to cheer him up. She repeated her offer of a bed, and he suddenly agreed, “Actually, I’ve some friends arriving tomorrow. It would be great if they could stay with you.”
She sat back, picked up her handbag and began to rummage in it. “I only have one room…”
“Well, just Kate then.”
“Kate? You never told me about Kate.” She smiled and sipped her wine. “Is she your sister? Oh, Ben, I can’t wait to meet her.”
Ben was looking again at the maps, trying to work out where his cabin was. He mumbled, “Ex-girlfriend.”
“Oh, well. Why is she coming?”
Ben grinned unpleasantly. “She’s bringing my secret weapon.”
§ § §
Nikolas was awake when the door to the shed next opened. It let in a brilliant light from the snow outside. He was totally blinded. He got on his knees, head lowered, showing submission. Rule 5: Prove you’re no threat (and not worth killing—he made up that part of the rule, but who was going to call him on it?). He heard the door being closed and looked up cautiously. It didn’t bode well, in his professional opinion, that he wasn’t blindfolded. He blinked a couple of times then exclaimed in a croaky, amazed voice, “Anna?”
She went to the butcher’s table and put a basket on it. “You’ve made a terrible mess! Look at what you’ve done!”
“What? Mess? You fucking psychotic cunt of a fucking bitch! Let me go! You cunt. You fucking ugly, fat whore! I thought I was being held by the fucking Chechens! I thought fucking Special Forces had taken me down. I thought I was going to be hung up and fucking castrated! I thought I was going to be skinned by electric sanders! But I’ve been chained by a cunt in a skirt who thinks she’s in love with my fucking boyfriend! Fuck you! Fucking come back―!” He lunged, stretched to the extent of the chains, screaming at her as she left. He couldn’t even reach the basket.
Rule 1 clearly needed a little work.
§ § §
Ben was back at the lake when Alan and his son Jacob drove up with the boat. Overnight, there had been a freezing frost, and all the trees were white, sparkling in the bright sun. It was bitterly cold. They launched the boat into the lake by the dock.
Ben oriented his map and started the engine. It was shockingly loud in the silent calm of the beautiful place. He motored slowly down the southern edge of the lake, marking each house and dock he came to on his map then stopping and checking them out. Firstly, he let Radulf sniff around and then he checked each building. Most of them were empty for the winter, but one or two were occupied. Interestingly, they all reported hearing a boat about the time Nikolas had gone missing. It was too quiet and too cold for a boat on the lake to be missed at this time of the year. He asked each of those he spoke with to phone the police and tell them what they’d heard, and then continued on his slow navigation of the lake.
By lunchtime, he’d covered about one mile of one side of a lake that stretched for over fifteen miles of inlets, small islands and one little village. It was hopeless. He reckoned with the short daylight hours, it would take him weeks to cover the place in the way he was now. He was never so grateful to have his phone ring and see it was Kate. “Where are you?”
“In a place called Aero-esk-o-bing, or something like that.”
“Aeroeskoebing.”
“That’s what I just said.”
“I’ll come get you. Is he with you?”
She laughed. “Unfortunately. He reminds me of someone, and not in the good ways, yeah?” For the first time since Nikolas left him—was taken—Ben felt hopeful.
§ § §
He met Kate at Alan Lund’s. She was standing surrounded by suitcases and exuded glamour. The man standing next to her was hunched against the cold and swearing in a fluid and inventive stream about everything from the cold to the length of the trip to the dumb-assed buildings. But when he saw Ben, he grinned and came over and hugged him. “Fucking Diesel, man. How can you lose a great big fucker like that boss of yours? You dumbnut shithead.” He rubbed Ben’s hair with his knuckles then stood back. “What the fuck do you call that poncy girly shit? Cus that ain’t hair man—that’s just fucking gay.”
“Hello, Squeezy.”
“Yeah, don’t you fucking hello me, this—” and he returned to his theme about the cold and the ferry crossing, but Ben tuned him out as he had for the four years they’d served together.
Kate hugged him as well. “I like the hair, Ben, and don’t let anyone tell you it’s not manly.” He chuckled into the warm, beautiful-smelling crook of her neck.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, cut the girly shit and let’s go somewhere warm. It was T-shirts in fucking London when we left, and now it’s like Father fucking Christmas is fucking passing over.” They both stared at Squeezy, and he amended, “Jack Frost? Whatever. Fuck.”
Ben took them into the restaurant and to his usual table. Alan came over, asking how the search had gone, and Ben shook his head. “I’ve been in contact with some friends who have hunting sheds near the lake. They’ll meet with you this afternoon and help you search them. They know them all. Also, my son Jacob has asked his friends who have cabins on the lake to check them if they’re empty,” Alan told him. “I’m so sorry, but it’s all I could think of to do. The police are doing the same, of course, but it’s a very small force here.” Ben just nodded his thanks. He couldn’t speak and bit his lip, tipping his face up. Squeezy apparently saw an opportunity to make a new friend, so clapped Alan over the shoulder and led him off, proclaiming he hadn’t had a fucking bite to eat in fucking years.
Alone at last, Kate looked more seriously at Ben. “You need to eat, and you need to sleep, Ben. If he’s still alive—”
“If? What the fuck, Kate!”
“If he’s still alive, which you have to admit isn’t very likely—Stop, listen. Ben! Listen. He was almost taken in London, and if they’d got him there, he’d have been dead within hours—if he was lucky. You know this.”
“No, Kate. You’re wrong. This isn’t related to that. This has nothing to do with Gregory or the Chechens.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Of course it has. He’s been in Russia for months. They’ve followed—”
“No. This is different. I can’t explain it, but it is. They wouldn’t have taken him like this. They’d have taken me as well, for a start. I was there, too. I was naked. We had no weapons. Why not take me? I killed two of them, remember?”
“Yes, Benjamin, I do. I saw the autopsy reports. Thank you for that reminder. Okay, I see what you’re saying, but who’d take him here, and why? He’s not even here as Aleksey, is he?”
“You mean Nikolas.”
“Oh, yes, silly me, how could I have got that wrong? But my point is, no one knows he’s here on the island.”
“Well, the woman I lived with does, but I think we can rule her out.”
“Fuck. Okay, we go to work. I’m downloading geo-sat maps of the lake and surrounds for you, but Ben, just because he was taken by boat doesn’t mean he’s anywhere near the lake. He could’ve been put in a vehicle and be anywhere by now—Okay, we have to start somewhere. Where’re we staying? I assume we can’t use the cabin yet.”
“I’ve got a friend to put you up. She’s nice. Gabby. She’s being really helpful. She speaks okay English. Squeezy’s in with me at Ingrid’s.”
“Okay, I’ll go to Gabby’s and set up. You and Squeezy—does he have a real name? I can’t call him that—seriously, Ben.”
Ben frowned in puzzlement. She put a hand on his arm. “Priorities. Go. Go and look for him.”
Ben and Squeezy took the boat back out with Daddybark, Radulf’s new Op Fucking Cold nickname. No one in Special Forces could avoid a nickname so Squeezy had given their new sniffer dog one. (He’d been instrumental in naming the operation, too.)
They picked up where Ben left off that morning. They met with Alan’s friends who all sympathised with Ben, promised this kind of thing was unheard of for such a small place as Aeroe, and then topped them up with thermoses of hot coffee and rolls.
At each place they stopped, Daddybark was let out to run around sniffing, but he scented nothing relevant. Ben knew Squeezy wanted to point out that it was far more likely Nikolas had been abducted by car, and that Daddybark had probably been following a deer scent to the lake. Ben was grateful his friend kept the thought to himself though and let him dictate the search parameters. As he told Ben, everyone in the Regiment had learnt to respect his spooky hunches. Ben reckoned Squeezy’s eagerness to search the lake was more because he’d discovered the small boat had a space heater in the cabin, and between stops he had it on full blast.
It was dark by four—such a short day. Ben was frantic now. He could hear ice cracking on the lake. A second night of an ice storm was expected. He couldn’t shake his last picture of Nik naked in the snow. He knew how long people lasted in weather like this.
They docked the boat and returned to the car.
Ben wanted to kill something but he didn’t have the energy.