Dead Man's Gift 01 - Yesterday by Simon Kernick Page B

lawn towards the back of the house and the gate to the track where the car they’d come here in was parked.
    So far it had all gone exactly to plan, and the Hortons had no idea what was about to hit them, and how helpless they were to do anything about it.

2
4 p.m.
    As the security gates to his house opened, Tim Horton spun the Porsche into the driveway in an angry screech of gravel. He was in a foul mood. His wife had called him at a very sensitive time and demanded that he come home immediately. She’d told him it was extremely urgent and concerned Max, but wouldn’t give him any further details, even after repeated requests, which was typical of Diane. She loved to make things complicated. He’d almost decided against coming back at all – he wasn’t due back from London until Thursday and couldn’t see why she couldn’t just discuss it over the phone – but because it concerned his son he’d given her the benefit of the doubt.
    This had better be good, he thought as he opened the front door and stomped inside.
    The house was silent, which was a surprise at this time of day. Max was usually back from school, and he and Gina always made a racket. But there was nothing like that at all.
    ‘Diane?’ he called out, stepping further into the entrance hall.
    ‘I’m in here,’ she answered, a strange calm in her voice.
    Tim walked into the dining room and was surprised to see her sitting rigidly in one of the antique chairs, a mobile phone and one of the landline handsets on the table in front of her. Her face was pale and she looked like she’d seen a ghost.
    ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked, still standing in the doorway.
    ‘They’ve got Max, Tim.’
    ‘Who?’ he demanded. ‘Who’s got him?’
    ‘I don’t know. I got a call at work on Gina’s mobile. It was a man. He had one of those things that disguise your voice. He said that they’d killed Gina, and taken Max.’
    ‘Taken him where?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘What do they want, for Christ’s sake?’
    ‘Jesus, Tim, I don’t know. I don’t know anything right now.’ Her face seemed to crumple and it was clear she was trying to stop herself from crying.
    Tim took a series of deep breaths, forcing himself to calm down. He wasn’t a man given to panic. He was a senior politician, a man with real power. ‘How do we know he’s got Max?’ he asked quietly, conscious that he was still keeping his distance from Diane, which would have told any observer about the poor state of their marriage.
    ‘He sent me this.’ She picked up the mobile, pressed a couple of buttons and slid it across the table towards him.
    Tim stared at the photo filling the screen, feeling his chest tighten. It showed Max in his school uniform, blindfolded, gagged, and tied to an unmade bed in a darkened room. Even with his face half-covered, Tim could see that his son looked absolutely terrified.
    For a few moments Tim couldn’t speak. When he finally found words, they sounded cracked and defeated. ‘We’ve got to call the police.’
    Diane shook her head emphatically. ‘No police.’
    ‘What do you mean, no police? Someone’s kidnapped our son. They’re torturing him.’ He held up the phone accusingly. ‘We’ve got to do something about it. We can’t just sit here.’
    ‘They’ve got cameras all over the house.’
    ‘How do you know?’
    ‘Because the man who first called me on Gina’s phone rang me on the landline the moment I walked in the front door. He knew I was back, Tim. He
knew
I was back.’
    ‘How can they have planted cameras in here? We’ve got a bloody state-of-the-art alarm system.’ He looked round with a growing sense of fear and frustration. Then stopped.
    The landline was ringing.
    They both stared at the handset on the table. It rang twice before Diane picked it up. She listened in silence before sliding the phone over to Tim. ‘It’s for you.’
    Gingerly, Tim picked up the phone, terrified about what he might hear.
    ‘We bypassed