Dark Ransom

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Former journalist SARA CRAVEN published her first novel ‘Garden of Dreams’ for Mills & Boon in 1975. Apart from her writing (naturally!) her passions include reading, bridge, Italian cities, Greek islands, the French language and countryside, and her rescue Jack Russell/cross Button. She has appeared on several TV quiz shows and in 1997 became UK TV Mastermind champion. She lives near her family in Warwickshire – Shakespeare country.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

About the Author

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

Endpage

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

‘EXCUSE ME, I wonder if you’d do me a favour …’

Charlie Graham’s lips parted in a soundless gasp of disbelief and her hands clenched on the rail of the boat until her knuckles turned white.

She went on staring down into the brown waters of the river, hoping against hope that the tentative remark might have been addressed to someone else—anyone else—but knowing at the same time that it wasn’t possible. Because there was only one other European on the boat with her—the blonde girl who’d boarded at Manaus.

I’ve come thousands of miles across the world, she thought, for some peace and quiet. To get away from appeals like that. Yet here—even here …

‘Excuse me,’ the voice insisted, and Charlie turned unsmilingly.

‘Yes?’

‘I was wondering …’ The other girl beamed ingratiatingly at her as she fished into her shoulder-bag and produced an envelope. ‘Could you deliver this for me to the hotel in Mariasanta?’

On the surface it seemed a harmless enough request, but Charlie’s interest was aroused just the same, especially as the newcomer, whose name she knew from the scrappy passenger list was Fay Preston, had stayed aloof, barely addressing one remark to her until now.

She said, ‘Why don’t you deliver it yourself? We’ll be arriving in Mariasanta the day after tomorrow.’

‘I’m not going that far,’ the girl said shortly. ‘I’m getting off at the fuel stop, and catching the next boat back to Manaus.’ She shuddered dramatically. ‘I’ve had Brazil and the mighty Amazon river right up to here.’ She gestured, giving an awkward little laugh. ‘I mean—have you seen what they call first-class accommodation on this thing?’

‘Why, yes,’ Charlie admitted levelly. ‘As a matter of fact, I’m occupying some of it.’

Fay Preston tossed her head. ‘Well, so am I, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. This whole trip’s been a disaster from day one. I just didn’t think it would be like this—so primitive and awful. I’m getting out now, while I can.’

Charlie looked at her with faint amusement. She had to admit that the other girl looked completely out of place on the unsophisticated Manoela. She exuded the high gloss that only money could buy, from her extravagant mane of streaked hair to her designer clothes and elegant sandals. Charlie had wondered more than once why Fay Preston had been attracted to such a holiday in the first place, when she’d have been far more at home on the Riviera or some other expensive European playground.

So she wasn’t surprised to learn that four days of drawing water for washing out of the river in a bucket of her own providing had been enough for Fay, not to mention the curtained-off hole in the deck which served as a toilet, and the uninterrupted diet of rice and black beans, eked out by fish and occasional pork if they tied up at an Amerindian settlement.

She said lightly, ‘That sounds serious. Have you had secret information that Manoela’s about to sink?’

‘Oh, no.’ The blue eyes seemed suddenly evasive. ‘Perhaps I phrased it badly.’ She smiled nervously. ‘I mean—I just don’t want to go any further up-river, otherwise I might miss the return trip.’ She proffered the envelope. ‘So—if you would be so kind …’

Charlie took it, making little effort to conceal her reluctance. She was being mean, she supposed, but she was fed up with doing favours for people. Of hearing them say confidently, ‘Oh, Charlie will do it’—no matter how much inconvenience might be involved.

‘Charlie by name, and Charlie by nature. The universal dogsbody,’ she’d once heard her sister Sonia say with a giggle, and it still hurt.

She would be going ashore at Mariasanta, so she wasn’t really going to be put out at all, yet at the same time she was aware of an inexplicable uneasiness.

She glanced briefly at the superscription on the envelope before tucking it into her own bag. ‘Senhor R. da Santana’ it said in a childishly rounded script. No address—not even that of the hotel, although she supposed it was doubtful whether Mariasanta would boast more than one.

Fay’s smile was anxious. ‘I’d arranged to meet friends,’ she said. ‘I thought I’d better drop them a line—explain why I couldn’t make it after all.’

Curiouser and curiouser, Charlie thought, especially as these ‘friends’ appeared to be male and in the singular. But what the hell? she called herself to order. It was really none of her business.

She said drily, ‘So—I just leave this at the hotel for collection?’

The other nodded eagerly. ‘If you wouldn’t mind. I can’t thank you enough.’

‘It’s all right,’ Charlie returned with more civility than truth, and Fay flashed her another brittle smile before walking off, her heels wobbling on the uneven deck, leaving Charlie to return to her fascinated scrutiny of the passing scenery.

When she’d begun this cruise the Amazon had seemed as wide as some vast ocean, but now it had narrowed, closed in on the Manoela, the high green forest which bordered it seeming almost accessible—as if she could stretch out her arm and touch it. Reminding her of one of the reasons behind this journey. One which she’d barely acknowledged, even to herself, before throwing off the shackles and restraints of home.

She sighed, remembering the furore when she’d announced her intention of taking a holiday in the Brazilian interior.

‘You surely aren’t serious.’ Her mother’s face had been totally outraged. ‘What on earth will you do—miles from civilisation like that?’

Be on my own for once, Charlie had thought fiercely. Enjoy a few weeks of independence.

But she hadn’t said so aloud. Like so many selfish and demanding people, her mother had feelings all too easily wounded, and any such remark from Charlie would have been met with days of sulks and pointed remarks. She’d learned to her cost and long ago that it simply wasn’t worth it.

Instead she’d said quietly, ‘It’s always been an ambition of mine.’

‘What curious ambitions you do have,’ Sonia had drawled, putting down her coffee-cup. ‘One minute you’re skivvying for a pack of ungrateful old biddies. The next you’re vanishing up the Amazon. What will the local geriatric brigade do without you?’

‘Oh, don’t even talk about it,’ Mrs Graham said pettishly. ‘It’s enough disgrace having a daughter in domestic service, without allowing it to become a topic of conversation in my own sitting-room.’

‘I’m a home help,’ Charlie said patiently. ‘And I happen to like my old ladies very much.’

Sonia gave a silvery laugh. ‘Well, you have every reason to adore the late Mrs Hughes, leaving you that weird legacy to be spent on foreign travel. Although I bet she didn’t have the Amazon in mind. She probably expected you’d do a guided educational tour round the European capitals and meet some suitable man.’ She gave her sister’s slight figure a disparaging look. ‘But then, of course, she didn’t really know you very well, did she?’

‘Perhaps not,’ Charlie agreed colourlessly. She wondered if by ‘suitable’ Sonia was thinking of someone like her own husband. In Charlie’s view, Gordon was a smug, self-opinionated bore, smart and sleek on the surface, but already running to fat in his designer suits like an over-stuffed sofa. But as Sonia and their mother were totally complacent about the marriage, Charlie kept her opinions carefully to herself.

‘So, cleaning all that silver and listening to her endless ramblings paid dividends in the end.’ Sonia lit a cigarette. ‘Really quite clever of you, sweetie.’

Charlie boiled inwardly, and silently. It hadn’t been clever at all. Mrs Hughes had seemed to enjoy her visits, and they’d struck up quite a friendship in the relatively short time available, but that was all there was to it. Charlie had been genuinely grieved when Mrs Hughes had succumbed to a final heart attack, and the subsequent letter from a solicitor informing her of her bequest had left her stunned.

Apart from anything else, Mrs Hughes had lived very modestly. There’d been nothing to suggest she’d had that sort of money at her disposal.

‘To my dear young friend Charlotte Graham, so that she may spread her wings abroad at last,’ the codicil had stated.

‘I can’t accept it,’ Charlie had said at first, and the solicitor, Mr Beckwith, had smiled understandingly.

‘You won’t be depriving some deserving relative, my dear young lady. Far from it,’ he commented with a certain dryness. ‘The rest of the estate goes to Mrs Hughes’s nephew Philip, and he, unfortunately, has not been in contact with his aunt for several years. In fact, it isn’t certain where he is, or even if he’s still alive.’ He sighed. ‘Rather a self-willed, adventurous young man, I understand.’

‘Mrs Hughes thought he was still alive,’ Charlie said. ‘She was convinced of it. She talked about him a lot—said he’d gone to South America to prospect for gold, swearing he’d come back a millionaire.’

Mr Beckwith tutted. ‘A very risky undertaking, and a great grief to his aunt. We shall advertise, of course, but he could be anywhere. South America—so vast.’

In the days that had followed Charlie had found herself thinking more and more about the missing Philip Hughes.

‘We quarrelled,’ Mrs Hughes had told her sadly. ‘I wanted him to continue training for his late father’s profession—so worthwhile—and he wanted to see the world. Neither of us was prepared to compromise.’ She sighed. ‘I, at least, know better now. He wrote a few times from Paraguay, and then from Brazil, but for the last two years—nothing.’

She’d shown Charlie a photograph. Philip Hughes was tall and fair, staring self-consciously at the camera, an arm draped across his aunt’s shoulders. There was nothing in his conventional good looks to suggest that underneath there was a wild adventurer yearning for escape.

But then, no one would think that of me either, Charlie thought with a faint grin. Especially when I’m still living at home at twenty-two.

She’d made several attempts to strike out on her own and find a bed-sitter, but each time her mother had reacted with tears and hysterical outbursts about neglect and ingratitude.

Charlie had always hated scenes, and raised, angry voices made her feel physically sick. But some inner voice told her she had to weather the storm about her holiday, or she would never have any personal freedom again.

And when she returned to England, she reasoned, the break would have been made, and she could start, in earnest, to plan a life for herself.

Her grin widened as she imagined her mother’s reaction to the fact that Charlie had bought her own hammock and cutlery in Belém for this trip. Mrs Graham, when she went abroad, insisted on every creature comfort known to the mind of man, and then some.

Charlie, on the other hand, intended to travel on the Manoela as far as the boat went, and decide what to do next when she got there.

It was odd, she thought, that all her mother’s objections to the trip had been rooted in the personal inconvenience to herself. She’d never once referred to the dangers her younger daughter might encounter en route in this alien world.

‘Probably thinks I’m too dull to worry about,’ Charlie told herself philosophically, and, compared with Sonia, for example, she undoubtedly was. Her sister had been the high flier where looks were concerned, and Charlie had existed in her shadow, learning not to resent the astonishment in people’s faces when they realised she and Sonia were related.

Now it was wonderful just to be alone, and at no one’s beck and call. To be able to stand at this rail, and watch the jungle world of the Amazon passing slowly in front of her.

And somewhere in the depths of all that greenery, on the banks of some hidden tributary, Philip Hughes might be panning for gold.

Now that she was actually here she could admit openly to herself that the idea of finding him had crossed her mind more than once. It might be a stupid romantic dream, but she had the last place-name Mrs Hughes had mentioned firmly fixed in her head. And if by some remote chance she found herself in the vicinity of Laragosa it would do no harm to make some enquiries.

Captain Gomez and some of the crew spoke a smattering of English, but they’d stared in total incomprehension at her hesitant questions.

But that hadn’t deterred her, and she planned to make some further enquiries when she went ashore at Mariasanta—and deliver that letter at the same time.

She shook her bobbed hair, smooth and shining as a shower of spring rain, back from her face.

Life might have been something of a non-event so far, but all that was going to change now—and this trip to Brazil was only the start.

Laragosa—here I come, she thought with a swift stab of excitement.

Her first glimpse of Mariasanta two days later damped her optimism a little. There was a wooden dock, built on piles, and flanked by the usual leaf-thatched Amerindian houses, rising on stilts out of the water. Behind these was a huddle of buildings with corrugated-iron roofs, and beyond them—the rain forest.

Charlie found herself wondering if there would actually be a hotel at all.

She’d had no further contact with Fay Preston, who’d left the boat at yesterday’s fuel stop without even the courtesy of a goodbye.

Before Charlie went ashore she took the usual precaution of stowing her passport and few valuables in her shoulder-bag, along with her mug and cutlery, as these items, she’d been warned, might disappear if left on the boat.

As it turned out, finding the hotel was no problem. It was a small wooden building with a sign, faded to illegibility, hanging over the front entrance, and a small veranda, which, like the paintwork, had seen better days. Charlie mounted the rickety steps with care, and went in.

The fan, affixed to the ceiling, kept the heavy, humid air moving, but did nothing to lower the temperature, she thought, wiping her face with a handkerchief as she looked round. She seemed to be in the bar, but the place was deserted. Charlie went over and rapped smartly on the unpolished wooden counter. There was a pause, then a small, fat man in a sleeveless vest and baggy trousers pushed his way through a beaded curtain behind the bar and stood looking at her in silently amazed enquiry.

Charlie said stiltedly, ‘Bom dia, senhor. Faia inglês?’

‘Não.’

Well, she supposed it had been too much to hope for, she thought resignedly as she delved for her phrase book.

She produced the letter. ‘Tenho uma carta.’ She’d looked that up already. And also how to ask if the recipient was in residence. ‘O Senhor da Santana mora aqui?’

The man’s bemused expression deepened, and the shake of his head was a decided negative, but he took the letter from her, first wiping his hand on his trousers, and examined it as if it might bite him.

Charlie was almost relieved that the unknown Senhor da Santana didn’t live at the hotel after all. She hadn’t relished the prospect of trying to explain in her minimal Portuguese that Fay Preston had chickened out on his family’s hospitality. But then Ms Preston hadn’t seemed exactly a linguist either, so perhaps the senhor spoke a modicum of English.

She shrugged mentally. Well, she’d done all that she’d been asked, and now she could see something of the town before the Manoela sailed. It was clearly no use in pursuing any enquiries about Laragosa with the hotel proprietor, but tracing Philip Hughes had only been a silly dream anyway.

She realised the man was gesturing at her, pantomiming a drink, and she hesitated. Judging by what she’d seen on the way, this was the only bar in town, she thought, touching her dry lips with the tip of her tongue, so she might as well take advantage of it, unprepossessing though it was.

‘Agua mineral?’ she asked, adding a precautionary, ‘Sem gelo.’

The man shrugged, clearly contemptuous of anyone who would ask for a drink without ice in such heat. He waved her towards one of the stools at the bar, and uncapped a bottle taken from a primitive refrigerator.

But the glass she was handed, along with the bottle, was surprisingly clean, and the drink tasted magical. Good old Coca Cola, she thought, taking a healthy swig.

The hotel proprietor had vanished back into the domain behind the beaded curtain. Charlie suspected that he was probably steaming open Senhor da Santana’s letter at that very moment, and wondered whether it would ever reach its rightful destination. Well, fortunately that wasn’t her problem. She was simply the messenger girl.

She glanced at her watch, decided there was time for another Coke, and tapped on the counter with a coin. There was no response, so she knocked again more loudly. The bead curtain stirred, and this time two men entered, both strangers.

More customers, she decided, dismissing a faint uneasiness as they came round the bar to stand beside her.

‘Senhorita.’ It was the smaller and swarthier of the two men who spoke. He was wearing denims and a faded checked shirt, his hair covered by an ancient panama hat which he lifted politely. ‘Senhorita, the boat, he wait.’

‘Oh, my God.’ Charlie slid off her stool, thrusting a handful of coins on to the bar-top. Either she’d lost all track of time, or her watch must have stopped. Thank heavens Captain Gomez had sent someone to find her. The last thing she wanted was to remain here in Mariasanta, possibly at this hotel, until the Manoela came downstream again.

A battered jeep was waiting outside the hotel. The small man opened its door, motioning Charlie on to the bench seat.

Under normal circumstances she wouldn’t have dreamed of accepting such a lift, but time was of the essence now, and she scrambled in. However, she was slightly taken aback when the other man, taller, with a melancholy black moustache, climbed in beside her, effectively trapping her between the two of them.

Her uneasiness returned in full force. She began, ‘I’ve changed my mind …’ but got no further as the jeep roared into life with a jerk that nearly sent her through its grimy windscreen.

By the time she’d recovered her equilibrium they were heading out of town—in the opposite direction to the dock and Manoela, she realised with horror.

Suddenly she was very frightened indeed. She turned to the driver, trying to speak calmly. ‘There’s been a mistake—um engano. Let me out of here, please.’

The driver beamed, revealing several unsightly gaps in his teeth. ‘We go boat,’ he assured her happily.

‘But it’s the wrong way,’ Charlie protested, but to no avail. The jeep thundered on towards the heavy green of the forest, and if she was going to scream, now was the time, before they got completely out of town. But she wasn’t in the least sure that her throat muscles would obey her.

She took a deep breath, trying to think rationally, then reached in her bag for her wallet.

‘Money,’ she said, tugging notes out of their compartment. ‘Money for you—to let me go.’ She thrust the cash at the man with the moustache. ‘It’s all I’ve got, really.’

The man inspected the cash, nodded with a sad smile, and handed it back.

‘I haven’t any more,’ she tried again desperately. ‘I’m not rich.’

Or were all tourists deemed to be millionaires in the face of the poverty she saw around her? Maybe so.

But if they didn’t want her money—what did they want? Her mind quailed from the obvious answer.

The road was little more than a track now, and the jeep rocketed along, taking pot-holes and tree roots in its stride. It occurred to Charlie that if and when she emerged from this adventure it would be with a dislocated spine.

The driver was whistling cheerfully through one of the gaps in his teeth, and the sound made her shiver.

He glanced at her and nodded. ‘Boat soon.’

She said wearily, ‘The bloody boat’s in the other direction,’ no longer caring whether they understood or not.

The track forked suddenly, and they were plunged deeper into the forest. It was like entering a damp green tunnel. Animal and bird cries echoed raucously above the sound of the engine, and tall ferns and undergrowth scratched at the sides of the vehicle as they sped along.

Charlie had a feeling of total unreality. This couldn’t be happening to her, she thought. Presently she would wake up and find herself safely in her hammock on board the Manoela. And when she did her first action would be to tear up Fay Preston’s letter.

The jeep began to slow, and Charlie saw a dark gleam of water ahead of them. Perhaps there was going to be a miracle after all, she thought incredulously. Maybe this was just a very roundabout way to the dock, and the Manoela would be there, waiting for her.

But the age of miracles was definitely past. Journey’s end was a makeshift landing stage, at which a small craft with an outboard motor was moored.

The driver nudged Charlie. ‘Boat,’ he said triumphantly.

‘But it’s the wrong boat,’ she said despairingly. ‘Um engano.’

They looked at each other, and shook their heads as if in pity. Charlie dived for her wallet again.

‘Look,’ she said rapidly, ‘turn the jeep round, and take me back to Mariasanta, and I won’t tell a living soul about all this. You can take the money, and there’ll be no trouble—I swear it. But—please—just—let me go …’

The driver said, ‘Boat now, senhorita,’ and his voice was firm.

She walked between them to the landing stage. They didn’t touch her, or use any form of restraint, and she was tempted to make a run for it—but where?

People, she knew, had walked into the Brazilian jungle and never emerged again. And by the time she managed to make it back to Mariasanta, if she ever did, Captain Gomez would have sailed anyway. He waited for no one.

For the first time in her life she understood why extreme danger often made its victims passive.

You clung to the hope, she thought, that things couldn’t possibly be as bad as they seemed—or get any worse—right up to the last minute.

She could always dive into the river, she thought almost detachedly, except that she was a lousy swimmer. And the thought of the shoals of piranha and other horrors which might lurk under the brown water was an equally effective deterrent.

She got into the boat and sat where they indicated, watching as they fussed over the unrolling of a small awning set on poles.

If she was going to a fate worse than death it seemed she was going in comparative comfort.