Chapter One Hundred
and Thirty-Five
White Farm was a smallholding, and it had been a rental property for over two years. There were no animals there any more, but the barns and the outbuildings were still in a very good state of repair. The old couple who had lived there since before the War had died within a few days of each other. Their only son, a grammar-school boy they had both doted on, had emigrated to Canada in the early sixties. His education had eventually alienated him from the people who had happily bankrolled him through university, and who had eventually paid his fare out to Toronto. They had never seen him again – or met his wife, or his children, or their great-grandchildren – but they had been very proud of him, and they had cherished the Christmas cards and photos he had sent to them sporadically. When they died he had arranged his parents’ burials, and he had then arranged for the farm he had grown up on to be rented out until property prices started to rise in the UK once again. It had all been done over the phone, and, like all absentee landlords, he had no idea of who might be occupying his old homestead. The rental agents had even less interest and, for someone like Steven Golding, that was a situation he could exploit without fear of anyone ever bothering to chase him up, or even having to meet with anyone face to face. As long as the rent was paid promptly and, in his case, three months in advance, no one could give the proverbial flying fuck.
He had found all the old couple’s belongings stored in the attic; their whole lives were packed into a few boxes. A life of occasional letters and greetings cards, the haphazard affection of a son who had left them both behind as soon as he could. He had hated the son who had walked away from parents who had loved him dearly.
Steven Golding sat at the kitchen table, a big scrubbed-pine monstrosity, that was very old and very scarred. It had seen a lot of use over its lifetime, that was evident. There were people who would pay a lot of money for it, he knew that. People who had to buy other people’s lives, other people’s possessions, because they didn’t have anything of such value in their own families. It was a sad fact, but it was true.
The rain had stopped, but the wind was gathering momentum. It was early October, and autumn was already settling in. Steven Golding stood up quickly, and glanced around him, pleased that the kitchen looked so clean and tidy. He looked at his watch – it was after eight, and he made his way down into the cellar, locking the heavy door behind him carefully. No one was ever getting past that door, it was like Fort Knox. The smell assailed his nostrils, and he smiled at the discomfort he knew it must be causing Jessie Flynn. He stepped carefully down the stairs, and walked to where she was still lying on her bed.
She looked terrible. Her legs were swollen and they looked so painful. Her face was porcelain white, the skin tight on her skull, and her eyes had sunk back into their sockets. She was dying, and she knew that as well as he did. Her breathing was laboured – every breath she took was a long and drawn out wheeze, loud in the quiet of the basement.
‘Jessie, Jessie, wake up, lovely.’ He was shaking her roughly and, as she opened her eyes, he bent over her. ‘I need to talk to you, Jessie. You’re dying, but I think you’ve worked that out for yourself, haven’t you? Your dad should have been here by now. I really thought he would have found you a lot quicker than this.’
She didn’t say anything; she was still trying to focus on him, trying to pull herself into the real world.
Steven Golding could see that Jessie Flynn was too far gone for him to have any kind of meaningful conversation with her; she had deteriorated rapidly in the last twelve hours. Her condition shocked him – he had thought she was a much stronger person, and thought she would have fought much harder than she had done. In the beginning she had been so cocky, so arrogant, threatening him with her dad. She had been convinced that he would help her. She had assumed this was about money – money was all people like the Flynns understood. When she had finally realised that it wasn’t about him getting a ransom, that she was never going to be rescued, never going to leave this basement, she seemed to have succumbed to the inevitable. It was not what he had expected – he was not pleased about this turn of events.