Kiss the Hare's Foot Read online

  “If that stuff over there,” Mel indicated the mattresses and bedding “is for us, it looks like we’re going to be kept here for who knows how long.” she said gloomily.

  “Well at least with two of us we can form an escape committee.” This time there was lightness in his voice.

  “But why are we here? There’s no point to all of this, is there?”

  Clive shrugged and rose from the table. Pacing aimlessly around the room, he occasionally kicked at pieces of debris, which lay strewn on the floor. Suddenly, they heard heavy footsteps descending the stairs outside the room followed by the clatter of the metal bolt being withdrawn from the outside of the door. Clive immediately withdrew from the proximity of the steps to stand beside the table, waiting apprehensively.

  A young man, in his early thirties, tidily dressed in green corduroy trousers and brown sweater, entered the room carrying a small plastic box. Placing the box on the ground at the top of the short steps to the floor level, he spoke in an educated voice, “You’ll soon be getting another visitor. Better keep some for him.” With that he swiftly retreated from the room, slamming the heavy door behind him.

  Clive approached the box, peered gingerly inside and then confidently picked it up and brought it to the table. He lifted out two large thermos flasks and a bag containing half a dozen crusty bread rolls. Inside one flask was hot steaming vegetable soup and the other contained tea. The aroma of the soup was wonderful and, realising their hunger, began biting into the bread rolls as they retrieved two bowls and plates from the box previously placed in the room.

  “It sounds like they’ve subjected someone else to this awful place then,” Mel remarked sourly as she watched Clive carefully pour the rich soup into two bowls, squinting occasionally into the flask to ensure sufficient quantity remained in the container for a third person. They ate the soup and two rolls appreciatively, washing it down with a plastic mug of tea. Feeling warmer and slightly reassured by the hot rations, Mel enquired about Clive’s line of work.

  “I’m a doctor, an anaesthetist actually,” he brushed some crumbs from the lapels of his jacket. “I’ve a wife and two small sons. God knows what she will be thinking or how they’ll cope with this - we’re expecting our third baby in a couple of months.” Mel noticed again how he clenched one fist inside the other and he stood up from the table, trying to hide the anxiety he felt. “I’ve no funds for a ransom, only a bloody big mortgage” he expounded with frustration.

  “Well they’ll hardly get a ransom for me” she replied meekly and suggested, “Perhaps they’ve got some kind of grievance against the hospitals.”

  “Let’s wait and see who else they’ve caught up in their horrible little web,” he said angrily.

  They didn’t have to wait long. Pounding footsteps down the wooden staircase followed once more by the clanging of the bolt and their new arrival was pushed roughly into the room.

  Silas Maxwell stumbled forwards, regained his composure and stood at the top of the steps with an arrogance and authoritarian presence that contradicted the squalid and uncivilized circumstances into which he had been forced. He was a short, dark haired gentleman, meticulously dressed in a dark navy suit, his maroon bow tie hanging loosely from his white stiff collar. A trickle of blood, now darkened and dry, streaked from the hairline of his forehead to his temple where the stain diverted into a broad smudge, showing clearly an attempt to resist his seizure. He paused for a few moments, surveying his surroundings and fellow cell-mates before descending the steps to the floor. He grimaced at his new surroundings, but with head held high, slowly approached the fellow-prisoners at the table.

  Clive stepped forward to meet him and offered his hand. “I’m Clive Roberts. We,” he indicated Mel’s presence behind him, “have also been taken captive. Are you hurt?” he asked the newcomer, observing the bloodstain.

  “It’s nothing,” the newcomer curtly dismissed the enquiry. “I can’t believe this has happened!” he exploded, appearing to ignore the presence of the others. “How dare they treat me like this? They won’t get away with it. I’ve been hours tied up in the back of a car and treated abominably. Who are these people and what do they want? Where are the police to stop this sort of thing?”

  Mel poured the remainder of the soup into a bowl and placed the bag with the two rolls opened on the table making a primitive place setting at the end of the table. Calmly Clive indicated the modest offering to their newest inmate and seeming to acknowledge Mel properly for the first time, Silas nodded his thanks and reluctantly sat down. She noticed him rub both of his wrists before picking up the spoon. Coarse red wheels scored the flesh where tethers had been tightly bound throughout his journey but he said nothing more and accepted the hot soup placed before him.

  Whilst the newest arrival devoured the simple refreshment, Clive returned to wandering the extremities of the room, almost as though expecting to find a previously overlooked escape door. Occasionally he paused to prod a wall or peer into one of the dark crevasses, examining the security of their confinement.

  Draining the last of the hot tea, the resumption of anger was evident on the newcomer by the reappearance of deep frown lines and thin tight lips.

  With Mel’s presence having hardly been graced with a second glance, she decided to break the silence and introduce herself, explaining briefly her abduction from the hospital theatre department, adding that Clive had been similarly assaulted in the car park of the hospital where he worked as an anaesthetist. He listened intently, his grave expression revealing no emotion as he looked from Mel to Clive and back again.

  “Silas Maxwell, consultant general surgeon, Bristol.” He accepted the opportunity to reveal his identity, but his voice was deep and trite. “This is an abomination. I was accosted at knifepoint, trussed up and brought here like an animal. Do you know who these people are; what they want?”

  “No idea,” Clive joined in. “Since we’re all from different hospitals it could be, as Mel suggested earlier, some sort of grievance against the hospitals, or maybe it’s a political statement against the Health Service in general. Perhaps we’re just the unfortunate victims of a vendetta.” Again Mel noticed how stress initiated his habit of twisting one clenched fist inside his other hand as he paced about.

  “Well they can’t keep us here in this squalor!” Maxwell retorted indignantly and, rising from the table, marched deliberately to the door and punched the solid obstruction with a clenched fist. They watched, as exasperated by the futility of this action, which produced only a barely audible thud on the wood, he only succeeded in inflicting more pain to his hand. He then stood disconsolately viewing his prison from the top of the steps.

  Mel remained seated at the table. Still enveloped in the camel coat, she so craved for warmth and clean surroundings. The roller coaster of emotions that she’d experienced during the last few hours had left her thoroughly disheartened and depressed. Whatever those awful people had in mind for them, she doubted they could do much to stop them and their chances of escaping from this prison looked unlikely.

  After several minutes watching the aimless frustration of her fellow captives, she became angry that her own negativity was hardly going to help the situation. More confident now that she had been joined by two male companions caught in the same snare, she made a conscious decision to be more constructive and purposeful.

  “Where do you think we are? I’m sure it will help if we can work out roughly where they’ve brought us to,” Mel attempted to sound businesslike and, without waiting for an answer, continued, “And how many people do we know to be involved in this gang, so far?”

  Both men, distracted by her questions, looked first in her direction, then to each other, and back towards Mel. Slowly returning to the table, they reclaimed their seats and for the first time she felt a sense of unity and purpose tentatively bound them together.

  “I was taken
from my Berkshire hospital at about quarter past nine,” she began slowly and deliberately. “Two men from the hospital drove me here. I don’t know how long it took; probably about two to three hours I should think.”

  “A bit before that,’ Clive joined in. “Left Oxford about half seven. Stopped twice, once to change cars and once for petrol, I think. Two men - haven’t seen them since I was brought down here.”

  They both turned to look towards the surgeon, waiting for his response. Eventually, after a lengthy pause he added his contribution.

  “I was taken at 7:55am as I walked along a hospital corridor. I expect my junior colleagues to be ready waiting for me to start my ward round promptly at eight. Two ignoble thugs with a knife.” He grimaced and lightly touched beyond the hairline of his forehead as he recollected the aggression and violence he had sustained in his abduction. “We stopped twice; once to change vehicles. I don’t know why we stopped the second time. We just seemed to be waiting for something, and then we carried on. I couldn’t see anything on the journey,” he concluded, making a visible effort to participate in what he considered to be a pointless exercise.

  “Then there was the chap who brought us the soup and the man in the sheepskin coat,” Mel interjected, counting with her fingers. “So there are at least eight people that we know of involved in this.”

  Collectively they considered these few facts in silence. Clive was the first to break the silence, choosing his words carefully. “I arrived from Oxfordshire first, about an hour before Mel, from Berkshire. Bristol is clearly the furthest distance; therefore we are not in the southwest or west of the country. Motorway seemed to be used for the earlier part of the journey, then good ‘A’ roads, judging by the momentum of what seemed to be a series of roundabouts. Only the last ten minutes or so seemed to be off-road. I would guess that we have travelled either north or east; definitely not south, by the countryside surrounding this place.”

  His logical evaluation appeared realistic and, without any other evidence to the contrary the group quietly accepted his conclusions.

  “It’s a damned isolated place for a church,” Silas reflected. “There didn’t appear to be any houses or farms nearby; none that I saw, anyway.”

  The church! Yes, thought Mel, there was something significant about that old church. She strained to recollect the neglected ruins within sight of the complex of buildings in which they were being held. What was it? Closing her eyes, she revisited those moments earlier when she had waited out in the cold with the big man. “Got it!” she exclaimed excitedly. “The church had the remains of a round tower.”

  Silas raised his dark eyebrows in exasperation and, giving way to sarcasm, snapped, “Have a name plaque too, did it?”

  Mel looked towards Clive. Not to be put off by Silas’s superior attitude and already beginning to dislike the arrogance of the man, she directed her attention to the gentler companion. “Round towers built of flint are typical of churches in East Anglia. There are loads of them in Suffolk and Norfolk. And the marshland around is like that of the Norfolk Broads.” she claimed with some self-satisfaction.

  “Well done,” exclaimed Clive appreciatively. “That’s a start.”

  The surgeon again raised his eyebrows and Mel thought she detected a slight nod of approval, but instead said, “I don’t see what difference it makes where we are. It doesn’t help us to get out of here. We might as well be on the moon!”

  There was no more to be said and with little else to occupy their thoughts, time dragged slowly. The room was cold and draughty, the smell unrelenting, and the realisation that they might be imprisoned in the filthy dungeon for a long while, seemed more and more likely as the time passed. There was no sound from outside the room and despite Silas’s further attempts to attract attention by banging on the door with a lump of wood, which he had found discarded on the floor, no one came.

  Food, warmth and the lack of cleanliness monopolised their thoughts and Mel longed for more appropriate clothing to replace the flimsy cotton top and trousers beneath the camel coat, which she still clutched around her like a blanket. She wandered around the room periodically for modest warmth and exercise, whilst Clive and Silas exchanged information relating to their professional positions. She left the doctors to it, once again disillusioned and depressed by their circumstances and tried to resist thoughts of home.

  How had the girls back in Recovery reacted to her disappearance? Had anyone at the hospital seen or realised that she had been taken? Not for the first time she thought that they were probably cursing her absence and perhaps thinking that she had left the department not feeling well. Despondently she rejected any hope that anyone might actually be out there looking for her, certainly not so far away from the Berkshire hospital. She could only worry about what their future might hold.

  Then, after what seemed an eternity, heavy footsteps were at last heard approaching down the stairs. The heavy metal bolt clanged across and simultaneously they all turned to watch the door as it opened.

  4

  A man of extensive proportions, dressed in a creased and limp grey suit, stepped onto the top step of the basement. Sagging cheeks hung in folds, turning down the corners of his mouth and a pronounced double chin made the contours of his jaw-line difficult to define. A man of only average height, his morbid obesity required him to stand with legs apart and feet splayed. With thumbs hooked into his jacket pockets, his short plump hands rested against his sides. Hard cold blue eyes scrutinised the three captives before him as though they were animals caught in a trap.

  Behind him and to each side two of his henchmen stood inside the doorway, looking like nightclub bouncers. Mel immediately recognised Hood, one of the men as the rough-looking man who had abducted her, and the other, whom she had not seen before, was a shorter, younger man, somewhat hidden from view by the imposing giant in front of him.

  “I take it you are responsible for this outrage!” Silas confronted the huge man, striding forwards and immediately launching into a torrent of pent-up anger from the bottom of the steps. “How dare you lock us up in this pigsty! Have you any idea who we are? If you’re trying to make some sort of political statement against the NHS, then you’re going about it quite the wrong way. Abduction is a serious criminal offence and I’ll see to it that you pay the price for this. Let us out of here immediately! Treating us like animals; we’re professional people. You won’t get away with this!”

  “Shut up and sit down!” the fat man boomed. Pointing a fat finger at Silas and maintaining his stance, “Sit down!” he repeated. Hood and his companion took a step forward, prepared to physically enforce the command if necessary.

  His face flushed with temper, Silas, stared hard at his captors for a couple of moments before eventually turning away. With his chest expanded like a peacock and head held high, he walked slowly and deliberately back to the table and resumed his seat, turning it so that he deliberately faced away from the trio by the door.

  The fat man’s eyes roved constantly from one hostage to another, the flush of his cheeks reflecting the beads of perspiration which now appeared along the sides of his nose making it shiny.

  “If you want to get out of here, you’ll do exactly what you’re told. “ He ignored Silas’s outburst. “ Meanwhile, you’ll be staying right here until I’m ready to move you. Tonight at least. We have a little job for you and in case you’re thinking otherwise, failure to co-operate is not an option. Never forget you are easily expendable and can be replaced by staff from any hospital in the country within hours, so there’s no point in getting clever and thinking you can get out of here. This place is like a fortress. Try to escape and you will be shot. We are a very long way from the nearest village and we’ve made sure there’s no chance that you can be found, so do the sensible thing and just do as you’re told.”

  His formidable form had the desired effect. Mel and the two doctors
sat silently, now fearful of what might lie ahead. She glanced furtively at Silas who looked as though he were about to interject again and then thought better of it. Used to getting his own way, intimidation was not an emotion he could easily accept without protest. The fat man stood like a rock, his size even more impressive with the extra height gained by remaining at the top of the four steps by the door.

  “You’ll stay here until I’m ready to move you,” he repeated. “Until then, you just wait.”

  “Who are you?” Silas could contain himself no longer. Throwing his head back in a gesture of defiance, he continued, “I like to know who is giving the orders.”

  “You don’t need to know. But I guess you can call me Boss,” he smirked. A droplet of sweat ran down his cheek and paused momentarily before releasing its hold and falling to his collar. He too was finding the airless stuffy atmosphere of the cellar uncomfortable, although its temperature was chilly and uncomfortable.

  “We need some hot food and a bathroom,” Silas persisted firmly and glaring directly into the fat man’s eyes, added, “and some warm proper clothes for this lass here.” He indicated to Mel with a vague gesture of his hand over his shoulder.

  “You’ll get all you need - in time. Like I said, I have a task for you to do. Provided you comply, you will be well looked after and not harmed. But never forget, any resistance and you can forget about ever getting home. You will not leave here alive,” he asserted. “A slight movement by Hood caught Mel’s eye and she saw, with horror, the butt of a revolver exposed in his belt. It was an act calculated to reinforce the seriousness of the threat and had the desired effect. When the fat man chose next to address Mel, suddenly her heart was pounding in her chest and her mouth dry like parchment.

  “You! The nurse. You’re coming with me. Now!” he demanded as he stomped heavily down the steps and approached the table.