Captive (17 page)

‘I didn’t know. I’m sure Feather would never . . . But she’s changed. She won’t listen to me any more. She spends all this time with Scar – and he’s
bad, Robyn. Really bad. His ex-girlfriend went missing a few years back and there was a rumour, he . . . you know.’

‘Killed her?’

‘I don’t know. But there’s something wrong with him. You’ve seen his fingers? Who does that to themselves? And he doesn’t care about Marble or Jez or animal
welfare, or any of the other stuff Feather and I do. He just likes to break things and hurt people.’

I open my mouth to tell him about my conversation with Dad when he was in the hospital. I want him to understand that it’s Feather and Scar who are wrong. They are lying, not my dad. The
sound of the bolt being drawn back stops me.

Feather opens the door and steps into the cell. She’s cast in light like some kind of avenging angel. Talon says her name, but Feather cuts right through him. ‘Shut your mouth.
I’m not here to talk to you. It’s all agreed, Princess. You’re going home. We’re getting Marble back.’ She crouches over Talon and grabs a handful of his T-shirt.
‘I will never forgive you for what you’ve done.’ I draw back my leg, ready to kick her if she hits him again. She stands up, though, and her voice is controlled as she says,
‘I hate you for this.’ With the light behind her and her face in shadow, it takes a second to realise she was talking to me.

With a blanket over my head, I am led from the van. We set off from the house at about lunchtime. Talon and I had been left chained up in the cell all night, with no food or
water. Feather gave us a couple of stale bread rolls and a bottle of water this morning. That was hours ago, though, and I’m especially thirsty after being locked in the back of the
windowless, airless truck. As our hands were cuffed behind our backs, we couldn’t hold on to anything properly and were bumped and battered against the metal walls. Eventually Talon managed
to wedge himself in one corner by pressing one leg against the right wall of the van and the other against the curve of metal that covered the wheel. He told me to sit in between his legs and hold
on to his T-shirt. ‘At least then you’ll bump against my legs rather than the wall.’ It felt too intimate to sit that close to him, but after knocking my head against the metal
for the third time, I finally agreed. Holding on to him was really difficult and after a while my hand ached too much.

‘Just lean against me,’ he said. ‘I mean, it’s okay, if you want to.’ I leaned back slowly. I could feel the tension in his body too, but also the warmth of him,
and the steady beat of his heart was soothing. My own was racing. I should have had more faith in Dad. Of course he couldn’t announce on national TV that he was going to release a known
terrorist, but he’s obviously been working with the police and Parliament to get it sorted.

Feather pushes me forward now with a sharp jab to my spine. I’m bundled up some steps. I stumble over the last one, banging my knee painfully against the ground, and into some sort of
building, then up more stairs and along a corridor. We stop as a door is unlocked, and she shoves me down a shorter hallway, across a room and finally knocks me to the floor.

‘Move and I’ll cut your throat,’ Feather says after securing my handcuffs to a radiator. I expect to hear her footsteps crossing the floor, but instead she grabs me roughly by
the chin and rips the blanket from my face. I’m staring into her cold, dark eyes. ‘You might have tricked Talon into believing you give a shit about our cause but not me. I know you
just played him so you had a chance to escape.’

Talon is brought into the room then by Scar. He is pushed down next to me and Scar binds him to the same radiator, pulling the cuffs tight, so they bite into Talon’s skin. Then Feather
ties something around my eyes and I can’t see anything else. ‘If I hear so much as a squeak out of either of you, I’ll lock Scar in here with you,’ she says.

Scar laughs. ‘Any excuse,’ he says. ‘Any excuse.’

‘Feather, can’t we talk about this . . .?’ Talon begins.

‘I’m done talking with you,’ Feather says. ‘Now shut your mouth and keep it shut.’ I hear her and Scar cross the room, then the sound of a door opening and closing,
and finally a key turning in a lock.

‘Well,’ Talon whispers, ‘I guess this is marginally better than the van. At least the walls are no longer trying to knock us out.’

‘Where are we?’ I ask. It’s horrible not being able to see.

‘I don’t know. Another safe house, one closer to the handover point probably.’

‘Which is . . .?’

‘Cos they’d definitely tell me that.’

‘You’re angry with me?’

‘With you? No. Not really. A bit. I thought you’d listen to me, but you just kept defending your dad.’

‘Because he’s my
dad
. You have to understand that, surely?’

‘But he’s been lying to you.’

‘Not about everything. He wasn’t lying about doing anything to get me back, like you said he was. He’s releasing Marble.’

‘He took his time about it.’

There’s no denying that, but I don’t want to talk about it. ‘Do you think you can do one bad thing and still be a good person?’ I ask.

Talon sighs. ‘No one is ever just one thing. It takes a whole lifetime of decisions to make you who you are.’

‘“We are the choices we make.”’

‘What?’

‘It’s just something my dad said once.’ The night he told me that Jez hadn’t died because of Michael’s drug, but I don’t tell Talon that. ‘How did you
know about the voicemail message?’

‘Feather. She’d been working with a journalist to uncover some of the dodgy animal-testing programmes at Bell-Barkov, and they came across it.’

‘They hacked into my dad’s voicemail messages, you mean.’

‘So what? Your dad and Michael are best friends. There was a chance Michael would talk to him about what was going on.’

‘How did you get involved in all of it?’

‘Dad had been in contact with Feather. I don’t know if she got in touch with him or the other way around. Anyway, after he died, she called up. Said she had some stuff on Bell-Barkov
if I was interested. And of course I was. I was a mess after Dad and Jez died. Mum was even worse. I couldn’t stand being at home. Feather had a flat with Marble in London. Their parents died
in a car accident a few years before and left them some cash. She got what I was going through. Said she wanted to help me. Said we could work together to bring Bell-Barkov down. And it appealed to
me. I felt like I’d found not only how to fight but someone to do it with.’

‘And Marble too?’

‘Not really. He didn’t get what Feather was trying to do with the AFC. He just wanted to go on marches and lobby for better conditions for animals in labs. He thought Feather was too
aggressive with Bell-Barkov. He worried about her getting arrested. It became difficult living in the flat. We’d argue a lot. Feather can be brilliant, passionate – but she’s
moody as hell. On her bad days, me and Marble would be walking on eggshells around her. She believes in total equality: woman, man, animal, tree, plant. Anything that exists basically should be
valued and protected, by violent means if necessary. She couldn’t understand how getting justice for Jez meant more to me than animal welfare. She called it “personal
campaigning”. You’re doing it because it does something good for you, when in actual fact anything you do should be selfless and for the common good.’

‘But you still helped her? You still kidnapped me?’

‘Marble is my friend and he’s innocent.’

‘How can you be so sure about that?’

‘Because he was with me when your dad was shot. We were in the flat, playing video games all afternoon.’

‘Why didn’t you tell the police that?’

‘I have! Loads of times. Marble keeps telling them I’m lying. He’s obviously covering for someone or something. I don’t know.’

And it hasn’t occurred to Talon who that person might be. ‘Where was Feather that day?’

‘Out with Scar somewhere or . . . No, oh no. She wouldn’t. She couldn’t have done. I know Feather and there’s no way.’

I thought there was no way my dad would ever lie to me.

My arms are hurting; I try to shift into a more comfortable position.

‘I was angry and desperate when we took you captive. One of my best friends was in jail, facing a life sentence for something he didn’t do. My brother and my dad were dead. My mum
was going crazy with grief. But I swear if I thought for a single second that Feather had – had tried to kill someone, there is no way I would have got involved in this.’

I try again to move into a more comfortable position, fail and say, ‘I don’t want to talk about this any more. Talk to me about something else. Anything. Let’s just pretend for
two seconds that we’re not tied to a radiator, that we’re in a café, drinking hot chocolate. We’ve just met because there are no other tables and so you have to share
mine.’

His voice is full of emotion. ‘You want to imagine meeting me somewhere else?’

Do I? There are too many questions I don’t want to answer in that sentence. ‘I want to imagine being somewhere else. But you can’t talk about birds. Not spotting them, watching
them, or pretending to be them. Okay?’

‘I do have other topics of conversation, you know.’

‘Like badgers? Dolphins? Fish?’

‘Okay, Little Miss Interesting, you choose a topic.’

‘A favourite day. Tell me about your best memory.’

‘That’s easy. The beach at Brighton the summer before Jez died. Your turn.’

‘Christmas this year. I got a digital camera. Addy had wrapped it in brown paper that she’d covered in stickers. And I mean,
covered
it in stickers. It looked like the glitter
monster had had a serious case of diarrhoea. Anyway she started crying as soon as I took the paper off and she realised that her paper wasn’t the present. I had to pretend all afternoon that
it was. But it was kind of special really. She’s silly, my sister, but I like how easy she is to please and that she thinks I’m like the best person ever.’

‘How old is she?’

‘Three. She’ll be four in September. I know it’s weird her being so much younger. I don’t think my parents thought they could have more kids . . . Wait, I don’t
even want to think about kids and my parents, because that means . . .’

Talon laughs. ‘You’re not how I expected you’d be. In your photos, you look – don’t take this the wrong way – like you think you’re better than everyone
else.’

‘I hate having my photo taken. I feel really awkward.’

‘And you’re always going to parties.’

‘My dad’s the PM. I get invited to stuff. It’s rude to say no to everything.’

‘I wish we’d met under different circumstances.’

‘What, like at one of those stupid parties?’

‘Hell, no. You wouldn’t catch me dead at one of those things. You all look dumb, in your fancy clothes, posing for the cameras.’

‘You wouldn’t have been invited anyway. They have a strict door policy. “No terrorists allowed.”’ In my head, it was funny. We would both laugh. Said out loud, it
is anything but. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘It’s okay. It’s what I am. I’m ashamed of what I’ve done. If I could take it back, I would. I guess Mum isn’t the only one who went a bit mad after Jez and
my dad died.’

‘The exchange will take place over there.’ Feather points at a patch of green about ten metres or so from where we are standing. I can’t see much more of it
because the trees rise up so thickly around us. Several paths wind off from where the four of us are standing by the back of the van, one of which leads to the field. It’s a bit less
overgrown than the others, but the track the van is parked on is the only one wide enough for a vehicle. It will be hard for Feather and the others to escape if anything goes wrong.

Unsurprisingly, I didn’t sleep, and my eyes are itchy and sore. My head aches. It was a long drive. We stopped several times but I wasn’t let out. Talon is wearing a mask again, so I
guess that means Feather has forgiven him, or at least doesn’t want him recognised. I don’t think he slept much either; there are dark purple blotches under both his eyes. He
hasn’t spoken to me or even looked at me since I got out of the van. We’re all on edge. Tension crackles in the air like static – a stillness just before something detonates.

Feather reaches into a metal box fastened to the inside wall of the van and pulls out a rifle. She throws it to Scar. ‘I want you in those trees there. Keep the gun trained on the cops at
all times. They’ll have their own snipers, so don’t use it unless absolutely necessary. But if anyone is going to die, I don’t want it to be me.’

The thought of Scar watching, gun primed, is not comforting, but then neither is the thought of the police snipers. They might shoot someone accidentally. Involuntarily my gaze flits to
Talon.

Feather takes another gun – a small pistol – from the box and tucks it in her belt. ‘We didn’t get you one,’ she says to Talon. ‘I know you don’t have
much experience with guns. Against your ethics.’

‘And you might get confused and shoot one of us,’ Scar adds with a leer.

‘Right, Princess, listen up.’ Feather gives me instructions in short sharp sentences. I am to walk through the trees and out into the field beyond. I am not to stop. I am not to look
back. I must keep walking, no matter what. When I am halfway across the field, the police will release Marble. We will then pass each other. I am not to talk, look, breathe, blink at him. I am to
keep walking straight. ‘Do not mess this up. Talon and I will be behind you the whole time. Any funny business and I will shoot. Got it?’

Whatever happens today, I’ll never see Talon again. I shouldn’t care – he’s my kidnapper. The man who stole me from my family and kept me locked in darkness and silence
and fear. But that is only half the story and, like he said, no one is ever just one thing. It takes a whole lifetime of decisions to make you who you are. As well as Talon the kidnapper, he is
Talon the twitcher, Talon grieving for his dead brother and dad, Talon who was kind to me when no one else was and – as crazy as it sounds – I like those Talons. I suspect if I spent
longer with him I would like them even more. And now it’s time to say goodbye. But how? Words may be a powerful weapon, but sometimes the words you want don’t exist.