I Will Keep Her

By Georgina Maynard

'I Will Keep Her’ is a thrilling adventure with a twist at the end which is not easy to forget. The story is full of action, coupled with insightful and diverse characters, and an unexpected and enthralling plot.

When Steve Jackson, army veteran and Fleur Edson, well-known artist, are thrown together in a desperate search for the teenage daughter of surveillance guru, Sir Charles Wells, the sparks start to fly. Armed only with their mutual animosity their hunt for the kidnapper takes them from the English countryside, backstreets, and palaces of Riyadh to a heart-stopping race for survival across the Saudi Desert.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Conrad Press
• Release date: Aug 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9781839785177

Book preview

PROLOGUE

The two men were sitting in a plain white taxi. The driver was wearing an open-necked shirt and linen jacket. His bald head looked sweaty, and his fingers drummed nervously on the steering wheel.

The guy in the back was older and more relaxed. Both were wearing sunglasses although the midday sun was hidden behind clouds. The car was parked on the Corso di Tintori, just down from the Basilica Di Santa Croce, central Florence.

It was lunchtime. Their engine was running. The air was warm and smelt of diesel. The tourists milled about taking selfies, their eyes flashing from side to side as they tried to capture the sights of the city. A dog ran across the road, dodging between the cars, horns blew, pigeons took to the air. The man in the front seat of the car grunted, pointed, and said something in Arabic. In the back, Hassan tapped his top pocket and nodded.

There was no great hurry. They knew where the two girls were heading. After all, they had been tracking them for several days. Listening to their silly girly conversations. The driver leant forward, his jacket peeling away from the warm plastic of his seat. He slipped the car into gear, inched along the kerb, following them, then accelerating slightly until he was about fifty yards in front. In his rear-view mirror, he could see their laughing faces, short skirts, long brown legs, shopping bags swinging by their sides.

The instructions, a text message, had been precise.

Only take the girl with the long blonde hair. Leave the other one. Be careful do not harm her.

Unusual, Hassan had thought at the time.

As they drew level, Hassan opened the rear door, climbed half-out and grabbed the girl by her arm. He swept her into the back of the car. He heard her fallen sunglasses crunch under his foot as he slammed the door. Then they were away. The Florentine traffic swallowing them up as they headed out towards the autostrada.

The girl stopped struggling and her body slumped against Hassan’s shoulder as soon as the tranquilliser took effect. The car crossed over a bridge, and he threw her phone into the Arno.

Behind them, the other girl stood stationary on the pavement, her mouth wide open, screaming, the carrier bags spilling their contents on to the road.

Cars slowed, people paused for a second, before the shouting, hooting and hand waving started.

A woman ran out of a nearby restaurant heading towards the lone girl.

The whole operation had taken less than a minute.

PART ONE

The birds they sang at the break of day

Start again, I hear them say

Don’t dwell on what has passed away

Or what is yet to be.

Leonard Cohen - Anthem

CHAPTER ONE

There is a moment, perhaps only a couple of seconds, between sleeping and waking. Like the pressing of the pause button on the television so that the screen freezes, when the conscience mind blinks, then reality floods back into the brain, all the thoughts and memories, good or bad.

Fleur Edson lay very still, the shock of yesterday’s events was such a physical pain that she was afraid even to move her head.

She listened to the thrump, thrump, thrump, of the ceiling fan above her, as it slowly turned, pushing the warm autumn air around the room.

Yesterday morning she had woken to the fast footsteps of the girls running down the stairs, their laughter, and the sound of the radio as they crashed round the kitchen making coffee and plans for their last day in Italy.

Today she should have been stretching and purring like a cat at the prospect of a gloriously indulgent day when she could please herself. Maybe walking with the dog to the market in the village, then tidying her studio. All with the backdrop of the prospect of staying at her Italian bolthole for as long as she liked.

Instead, her heart felt like it was in a vice, being wound tight by some alien force until she could hardly breathe.

Her head fell back on the pillow. She tried to think clearly. The events of yesterday still seemed like a bad dream.

‘Why?’ she asked herself for the hundredth time.

Why would anyone want to abduct Alice? Granted she was young and beautiful, and a bit of research would show that her parents were wealthy. But why only Alice and not her friend, Mollie as well? The same rules applied.

She threw back the sheet, shuddering as she felt a cold chill as her feet hit the terracotta tiles.

Her long suntanned fingers grabbed her dressing gown and wrapped it tight around her thin body.

She sat down at her dressing table covering her face with her hands.

‘Oh, dear God.’

She sighed, staring hard in the mirror. The healthy bronzed glow, acquired from three months in the Tuscan hills outside Florence, seemed to have drained away. Leaving in its wake a drawn and paler look, with dark rings under her green eyes.

She brushed her red hair, the bane of her life, now mercifully bleached to a slightly softer hue. It still hung in a thick unruly mass framing her face. As usual she struggled to rack her tresses into some sort of submission.

Giving up the fight Fleur slammed the brush down and lent back in the chair.

The earlier conversation she had with Alice’s father, her old friend, Charles Wells, still stung.

He had barked at her down the phone.

‘What the hell do you think you were doing? I trusted you, Fleur. You promised me you would look after the girls. You’re always too indulgent. I thought they would be safe with you.’ He was shouting angrily now. ‘I think we’d better fly out straight away. Caroline and I will try to get a flight today and hire a car. I’ll text you.’ He cut the call.

Her fitful sleep last night had been fuelled with dreams of young girls locked in cellars, hurt, and abused. Alice, pale and shaky, holding a newspaper and begging her father to pay a ransom.

‘Coffee, I need coffee,’ she said out loud.

She went over the events of the previous lunchtime.

Was it less than twenty-four hours ago?

She remembered running out of the restaurant and hugging Mollie hard. Someone had called the police. After they arrived it was all a bit of a blur.

At the Via Zara Stazione di Polizia there were interviews, statements taken. A couple of officers brought her car with the girls’ luggage to the station. But she could tell by their expressions that there seemed so little they could do immediately. There were promises of roadblocks and looking at the CCTV footage. But what they said had seemed like a professional abduction, would be just that – professional.

Fleur had phoned Mollie’s parents, then their tearful daughter had spoken to them. Mollie still had time to catch her plane, and to Fleur’s relief, it was decided that it would be best if she did just that and she headed home, in case the kidnappers had planned to take another bite of the cherry. Fleur felt guilty enough already, but also a little relieved. But her main emotion was anger. It was so unfair of Charles to blame her.

Pulling on some jeans, t-shirt, and cardigan, she scraped her hair up on to the top of her head, anchoring it with a blunt pencil.

She smiled at herself ruefully in the mirror. Even after all these years hardly a day went by without her remembering the unkind chants of her classmates. Carrot top! She’s a vegetable not a flower! Or the hours she had spent scrubbing her face raw attempting to remove the fine haze of freckles that, even now, still stretched across her nose.

She walked across her farmhouse kitchen. The warm light of the early Italian morning was spilling in through the doors onto the terrace. Her lurcher watched her go outside. He stayed lying under the table. Even the dog knew that Fleur’s temper could erupt quickly, dark, and red, like her long hair, which was already trying to escape from its anchor.

She looked across the vines, towards the row of skyrocket cypress trees silhouetted against the horizon, and behind them the faint outline of Florence’s Duomo in the far distance. However angry or frustrated she was, that view always captivated her and calmed her spirit. Except this morning.

All day she had kept imagining the headlines, if, or when, the press got hold of the story.

‘Only daughter of insurance and surveillance guru, Sir Charles Wells, goes missing in Florence. Alice Wells, aged eighteen, had been staying with her godmother, artist and wild child of the nineties, Fleur Edson.’

The day seemed to drag on relentlessly like quicksand sucking her deeper into the mire. She phoned the police again, but they still had no news. She went to her studio, picked up her brushes, put them down again. Tried to eat, tried to read.

Later she showered and sat down again at her dressing table. She put on her earrings, then took them off again. She undid the top two buttons on her shirt, showing the edges of her brown breasts, changed her mind and did them up again. She stared at her face in the mirror. Despite what she perceived as its many imperfections, the too wide mouth and well-defined cheekbones, most people would have considered that, at fifty-five, she was a good-looking woman, her body firm and tanned after three months of long walks and games of tennis with the girls and their neighbours.

She had not seen Charles and Caroline since the funeral. She looked at the photograph in its silver frame, seeing her late husband’s smiling face, his arm draped around her shoulders as she looked up at him. She sighed deeply.

She had just come downstairs and poured herself a stiff gin and tonic when there was a crunch of wheels on gravel. Her dog pricked up his ears. Scrambling up, barking, he headed in the direction of the front door, his claws click-clacking on the stone floors.

Here we go.

A dark grey Fiat Punto had pulled up at the bottom of the steps. The engine died and Sir Charles Wells squeezed his frame out of the driver’s seat. As he slammed the car door, he looked up at Fleur, her face golden, lit by the lamps on either side of the front porch.

‘Well?’ he growled.

He stared at her with his hands on his hips. The soft flesh of his gut rested on the edge of his Gucci belt, his corned beef-coloured face looked angry and his were eyes cold.

Fleur thought that Caroline, still sitting in the passenger seat, seemed to be in some sort of a trance. She looked at Charles who raised an eyebrow and shook his head.

‘Any news?’

‘I’m so sorry, Charles. Nothing… Look, come on in. I’m sure you could both do with a drink. You look exhausted.’

They all walked in silence up to the front door. Charles stopped on the top step and looked out at the view.

‘Not really living the dream now, are we?’ Charles said to Fleur, as he steered Caroline through into the hall.

‘Why don’t you go and lie down, darling, I’ll talk to Fleur. Do you remember the bedrooms?’

Fleur tried to look away as Caroline stared blankly at Charles. But she obediently picked up her bag and walked slowly up the stairs.

‘Shouldn’t you go after her?’ Fleur asked.

‘She’s hardly said a word since we got the news. Her mind seems to have gone into a sort of lock-down.’ He shook his head ‘She’s on some pretty heavy meds. I thought she seemed a little better, but now…’ His voice trailed away.

Fleur had tried to persuade Charles and Caroline to come and stay during the summer, but Charles had always produced some excuse. Looking at the pair of them right now she could see why.

‘You should have told me how bad she was, Charles,’ Fleur said in a quiet voice as they went into the kitchen. As she walked towards the fridge, she could feel him staring at her as she got out the cold bottle of Pinot and poured him a glass. She then picked up her own drink, the sound of the clinking ice magnified in the tense atmosphere.

‘I suppose I was just being an ostrich in denial. Now all the skeletons are going to fall out of the cupboard.’ He said with a sigh.

‘Oh, Charles, this is all too awful. I’ve been worried out of my mind. I’m sure you have too. It’s like some ghastly dream.’ She paused. ‘Do you have any idea why someone would want to take her?’

‘Not really, to be honest. But just take me through what actually happened again.’

Fleur put down her drink.

‘OK!’ she sighed. She had been over and over it, but it still didn’t make any sense. ‘On our last morning Alice and Mollie wanted to go into town and do a bit of shopping. I said I would drive in with their luggage and meet them for lunch and then head off for the airport.’

‘When did it start to unravel?’ Charles asked, his expression fixed.

Fleur noticed the thick flecks of white hair round his temples that made him look older than his sixty years. ‘I told you on the phone.’

‘Well, tell me again.’

‘I got to the restaurant a bit early, chose a table by the window. I’d just got a glass of wine and was settling in to wait for the girls.’ Fleur shuddered at the memory. ‘I heard this awful scream, the whole restaurant did. I looked out of the window and…’ She shuddered again. ‘I could hardly believe my eyes. Mollie was standing on her own, on the pavement.’

She took a sip of her drink. ‘I thought at first that Alice might have been hit by a car.’

Charles was still staring at her not moving.

‘One of the police cars took us to the station. They were very nice and spoke quite good English. I suppose they took witness statements. But it all happened so quickly. As I said, they talked about CCTV, watching airports, about it being a professional job.’ Her tone changed. ‘Did I do the right thing, letting Mollie go straight back to England?’

‘I should think her parents were delighted to have her back in sensible, safe hands and surroundings.’

Fleur drew in a sharp breath. ‘That’s not fair, Charles. You really can’t blame me. We’d had a marvellous time, all three of us.’ Fleur felt her throat tighten. ‘Has there been a note asking for money? Threatening phone calls? Anything?’

‘Total silence, so far.’ Charles studied his fingernails then took a hefty swig of his wine.

‘Do you think it was a random kidnap? You read such ghastly stories about sex trafficking, modern slavery. I couldn’t bear it if something happened to her. She’s the nearest thing I shall ever have to a daughter. Although I just don’t understand why they didn’t take Mollie too.’

‘Maybe they only like blondes. Christ, I don’t know.’

Charles looked up at Fleur. She wondered if the deep sadness she could read in his eyes was due to Alice’s disappearance or something even deeper. ‘But’ he said, his voice hardly more than a whisper. ‘There is another… possibility.’

Fleur waited, her heart pounding, the hairs on her arms standing to attention.

‘There is something you should know. I suppose we should have told you years ago. You see,’ he continued almost in a whisper, ‘Alice is not my daughter.’

‘Mumps. I had mumps as a child. Firing blanks, they told me when we went to various specialists, always had been. They said there was no way I could have fathered a child or could in the future.’ Charles tried to smile at Fleur. ‘Quite a pink ticket in other circumstances. All the fun and no downside.’

‘So, who is Alice’s real father? Did Caroline have an affair?’

They had moved out on to the terrace. The sky was beginning to turn an inky blue and the air warm. Fleur’s mind was still reeling with the enormity of his confession, and all its implications.

When Charles didn’t answer she went on.

‘But surely Caroline must know.’

‘You would have thought so, wouldn’t you? Allegedly, she had a one-night stand about three weeks before our wedding. Some guy she met at a polo match after another of our legendary rows. By the time she discovered she was pregnant we were already married. No reason for either of us to think Alice wasn’t mine.’

He poured another glass of wine and continued.

‘Caroline said she got drunk. Couldn’t remember what happened. Thought the guy might have spiked her drink. Said she was frightened and embarrassed. Didn’t tell me about it before the wedding in case I called the whole thing off.’ Charles looked grim. ‘Too bloody right.’

He got up quickly, falling over the dog’s supine body lying under his chair.

‘Fuck it!’ he said regaining his balance.

‘But you must have been curious. Didn’t you try and find out who the father might be right after Caroline’s confession?’

‘After she told me, and I’d calmed down a bit, we made the decision to let sleeping dogs lie. I tried to think of it like an adoption or a surrogate donor. Tried to put it in the back of my mind. The fact that Caroline had conceived Alice…’ He half smiled. ‘… in the old-fashioned way. Well, I just had to learn to live with it. Everyone thought she was my daughter, including Alice, and I wanted to keep it that way. Caroline and I made a pact never to talk about it.’

‘But surely, over the years, you must have continued to wonder? After all, you had all this modern technology at your fingertips. You could have pumped Caroline for some more information, trawled through the web and so on. Legally, won’t you have to tell Alice one day?’ Fleur chewed the side of her finger, trying to imagine what she would have done in a similar situation.

‘Possibly, I don’t know, but what would be the point? To all intents and purposes, she was my daughter, still is, in my eyes. It’s just another avenue of possibilities now.’ He shuddered. ‘Now, she’s gone.’

Charles looked at her, his eyes dark. A choking sound started in the back of his throat.

‘Please, Charles, don’t. I’m sorry, so deeply sorry.’

‘It may have nothing to do with her kidnapping, but…’ Charles’ voice cracked. ‘It’ll break my family apart whatever comes out.’ He blew his nose. ‘God knows how Caroline will react if she stays missing much longer. She’s so…’ He searched for the word. ‘Mercurial. And I can’t go chasing after Alice myself, wherever she is.’

As he began to walk back towards the kitchen, his mobile rang. She watched Charles fumble in his pocket, then read the text. A small amount of relief flooded into his face.

‘He’s on his way.’

‘Who is?’

‘Steve Jackson. Ex-military. We had some dealings in Afghan about ten years ago. He’s been off the radar for a while. I wasn’t sure he’d come. He used to be seriously up there with the big boys. Then, well. . .’ He paused. ‘Long story. I’ll need to be back in London tomorrow. He’s due to meet me on Friday.’

‘But you’ve only just got here.’

‘I know. But I wanted to tell you about Alice face to face. But now we are here I can see that, frankly, there’s not a lot I can do, especially with Caroline in such a state.’

‘I guess so.’ Fleur changed the subject.

‘You seem to be putting a lot of confidence in this guy, Steve Jackson. Is he an expert negotiator or something? Where has he been up until now?’

‘Somewhere off the coast of Somalia warding off pirates, apparently. Now, hopefully, on a plane back to the UK.’

‘Well, I suppose you know what you’re doing.’

Charles let out a long breath. ‘So do I.’ He closed the terrace door.

There was an awkward silence until Fleur said, ‘Are you going to stay?’

She could feel Charles hesitating for a heartbeat too long.

‘I suppose it makes sense. Now I think about it, I’ve hardly eaten since yesterday. I’ll go and see how she is.’

She heard him puffing slightly as he carried his bag upstairs.

Fleur shook her head. Too many fancy business lunches.

March 25th three years ago, the date of her husband’s funeral was engraved on her heart. The last time they had all been together. Fleur was horrified how far downhill Caroline seemed to have fallen since then. Fleur knew she had been having some mental problems. Even so, she was shocked by how thin and drawn she looked.

She walked round the kitchen trying to concentrate on making some pasta.

She had to admit that she had been surprised when Charles had married Caroline, so much younger. Daughter of his local MP. She remembered that Charles had joked about her ‘great figure and great contacts.’ They seemed good together, and so happy when Alice had been born. She shook her head sadly. Now, of course, it all began to make a different kind of sense.

Charles came back into the kitchen.

‘She’s asleep, I think she’s taken one of her pills.’

Fleur thought that Charles seemed at breaking point. She couldn’t help wondering if there was something else eating into his mind.

Better not to ask, there was enough to think about already.

After dinner they watched the news on Sky in silence.

‘I really don’t want to appear on this.’ Charles gestured towards the screen. ‘With Caroline, high on her meds, tearfully begging for news of our missing daughter. Or worse, all my clients thinking I’m a dick who can’t even keep my own daughter safe.’

‘I’m not keen to be dragged back into the limelight either,’ Fleur said.

It had been a long time since she had been the darling of the gossip columns. She shuddered, imagining a collection of ghastly ‘then and now’ photos being put up on social media.

‘We’ll go back to the police station in Florence on our way to the airport tomorrow. Just in case they’ve come up with anything.’

‘Yes, that might be best. I’ll close up here and drive back at the weekend. Heaven knows when I’ll be back again.’ Fleur was surprised how sad she suddenly felt at leaving the villa. ‘You go to bed. I’ll clear up a bit. Breakfast about eight?’ She picked up the plates and turned back to him. ‘Why didn’t you call me to tell me about Caroline? She looks, well, awful.’

‘I know. But she’s always been a bit jealous of you, and I…’

He walked over to Fleur, kissed her on the cheek. She felt his hands resting on her shoulder a moment too long, the warmth of it spreading through her skin. Part of her longed to feel strong arms around her again, holding her, loving her. But not Charles, certainly not now.

‘Good night,’ she said, pulling away from him. ‘I hope you can get some sleep.’

The following morning, after the briefest of farewells, they were gone.

CHAPTER TWO

Steve Jackson hated night flights.

He also hated economy class. His non-existent hand ached and the woman sitting on his right was chewing gum and humming tunelessly to the music coming through her headphones. He hated that too.

On the screen in front of him, the little airplane made its slow progress across the globe, along with details of speed, time of arrival, and current time at destination. Jackson looked at his watch. Another eight hours to go. The Air India Flight 171 was due to land at Heathrow at 9.55 a.m. He could go to Wells Securities tomorrow morning, straight from the airport.

‘Would you like a drink, sir?’

Jackson stared at the flight attendant. The answer, of course, was yes. For three months now, ever since he had decided to go cold turkey on that creaking hulk of a ship, he had wanted a drink.

‘Black coffee, please.’

The plane gave a sudden lurch, and the woman chewing gum quickly grabbed his right arm, and as quickly let it go. The seat belt sign went on and Jackson gave her a wry smile. It’s going to be a long night, he thought.

Jackson was experienced at long nights.

Long nights in the desert in Afghanistan on patrol. Long nights of pain in hospital while they tried to stitch him back together. Cold nights on the streets or in shelters, listening to the coughing, drinking, and hawking of the other homeless souls. Nights lying, staring at the ceiling next to his now ex-wife’s cold back, hearing her breathing. Christ, she even seemed angry and disappointed when she was asleep.

He was still trying to work out why Sir Charles Wells had called him.

He had been lying on his bunk reading a dog-eared paperback as the container ship, Red Ruby ploughed her way through the waves, when the call came through. They had been six weeks into a three-and-a-half-month charter along the East African coast, not a pirate in sight, when Captain Serge Topolski had banged on his cabin door. ‘Someone wants to speak to you, Steve.’

Jackson raised an eyebrow. ‘Really?’ His Scottish burr coming through as he spoke.

He liked the captain. He was the only member of the crew that really had any idea of how it might just be possible to defend the vessel if need be. They had discussed it often enough over their games of backgammon in what passed for the mess on board.

‘They must want to speak to you pretty bad. Don’t know how they got this number. You have friends in high places, eh?’

Jackson had to duck as he walked out of the cabin door following the captain along the rusting metal gangways that rose like a block of flats towering over the multi-coloured crates all the way to the bridge. Jackson swayed slightly. Over the last few months, he had pretty much got used to the sensation of movement. It was the smell of the place that still turned his stomach. A cocktail of unwashed men with a back note of old cabbage and engine oil.

He wondered what anyone could want with him. Some misdemeanours that had suddenly come to light. Possible. There were enough blank periods in his life.

With a nod to the other members of the crew, he picked up the handset.

‘Well, well, you're a difficult guy to track down.’ The smooth vowels of Sir Charles Wells oiled their way across the oceans.

Jackson felt his stomach lurch, hit the deck, and bounce back up again.

‘Charlie,’ he said, trying to keep his voice steady and the tone light. ‘Must be at least eight years. Surely I can’t still owe you money.’

‘Nearer ten, actually. What the hell are you doing on some bloody floating rust bucket? Peter Pan waiting for Captain Hook, I suppose.’

More the other way around, Jackson thought, trying to clear the fog that was thickening in his brain.

‘It’s