LITMIR.BIZ

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      ‘Mate, you should lock your car.’

      ‘I know, but—’

      ‘I mean, it’s easy to nick ’em if you can get in. Just plug a laptop into the data port and boom, job done. I heard it takes about fifteen seconds. You can’t leave a car unlocked.’

      ‘I only left it unlocked because—’

      ‘There’s no excuse, mate. You—’

      ‘Listen to me!’ Matt shouted. ‘I left it unlocked because my kids were in there.’

      There was a long silence.

      ‘Fuck me,’ the man said. ‘You need to call the filth. Get the cops on this as soon as.’

      ‘I know.’ Matt took his phone from his pocket and unlocked the screen.

      He was about to dial 999 when the phone buzzed. A message appeared.

      Do not call the police.

      He stared at it, his eyes wide. Dots scrolled under the message, and another appeared.

      I repeat: tell no one and do not inform the authorities. I will know if you do and you will never see your children again.

      More dots scrolled, then another message appeared.

      My instructions will follow. Await them.

      3

      Matt stared at his phone. The man from the shop walked over to his side.

      ‘What is it?’ he said.

      Matt did not want to answer. ‘It’s OK. I’m fine.’

      The man tilted his head and looked at him sideways. ‘You don’t seem fine.’

      ‘I am. It’s just – I’m fine.’

      ‘Someone took your car with your kids in it, and you’re fine?’ He nodded at the phone. ‘What was that?’

      Matt had no intention of telling him, because if he told him the man might take it upon himself to call the police, which Matt was not yet ready to do – he might be, soon, but he needed to think this through.

      Which meant being alone.

      ‘Look,’ he said. ‘I appreciate the concern, but I promise. It’s all OK. That was their mum. She has them.’

      The man shrugged. It was clear from his expression that he didn’t believe a word Matt was saying, but Matt didn’t care.

      ‘OK, mate,’ he said. ‘Whatever you say.’

      He turned and walked back into the shop. Matt headed for a bus shelter a few yards up the road and sat on the bench.

      He read the messages again.

      Do not call the police.

      I repeat: tell no one and do not inform the authorities. I will know if you do and you will never see your children again.

      My instructions will follow. Await them.

      He tried to think through what all this meant. If the car wasn’t nearby then it wasn’t a prank – none of his friends would have gone this far, and besides, none of them knew how to steal a car. What had the man said? Fifteen seconds with a laptop plugged into a data port in the car? Sounded simple but so did loads of computer things, yet they were still way beyond the capabilities of him and his friends.

      So someone had come to the car while he was in the shop, climbed in, started it somehow, and driven away.

      With his children in the back seat. His stomach clenched and a cold sweat broke out on his head and neck.

      It was crazy – the one time he had left his kids in the car and some random car thief had chosen that moment to steal it.

      And then text him.

      Which meant it wasn’t a random car thief at all. If they had his number, they must have been targeting him – and his kids – specifically. But who the hell would do that?

      He had no idea, but he did know one thing. This was planned. Someone had been watching, waiting for this opportunity.

      The panic thickened, and his legs weakened. He let out a low groan. If this was planned, that meant there was a reason. Someone wanted his kids.

      But the kids weren’t all they wanted, or the person behind it would not have sent him a message. They would just have disappeared.

      So there was something else. But what? Was someone trying to punish him? He thought through all the areas of his life: family, friends, the law firm where he was a partner, any parents of the kids’ friends or classmates that they had fallen out with. Was there someone he had slighted? Or who the kids had upset?

      It was possible, but he couldn’t think of anything, and surely anything sufficient to provoke this would have been obvious.

      So what the fuck was going on?

      In his hand, his phone buzzed.

       I have his kids and his car. Easy to steal. Especially when you have the key. His spare, taken from the jar above the fridge in his kitchen, one day last summer when they were off on their family holiday. Too easy.

       It’s time to let him know what’s happening.

       Time to tear up everything he thought he knew and send him into a world of pain and confusion and fear.

       I can’t wait. He’s had it coming for a long time.

       I can’t use the same phone, though. Hopefully he’s not foolish enough to call the police, but there are no guarantees. The fucking idiot left his kids in an unlocked car, after all.

       He assumed, like people do, that the world is safe. He assumed that what he sees around him every day – polite people, organized into nice little groups at work or at home, following the rules, saying please and thank you and worrying they might have upset someone – he assumed that this is how things are.

       And he’s right. Most people are like that.

      But not all. Some of us see the truth. Some of us see that other people are mere tools to be used to get what you want. The idea you might deny yourself something because it could hurt someone’s feelings is absurd. Why would you care about feelings? You either get what you want or you don’t. To let other people’s arbitrary emotional states obstruct you is foolishness. Worse, it is weakness.

       And I am not weak. I was, once, and I learned my lesson. I suffered at the hands of someone who took what they wanted from me without a thought for what it did to me.

       It made me who I am. Showed me the way I should live my life. I made sure to explain that to them before they died.

       I also learned from them that you have to be careful. You cannot let people know you think of them as nothing but ways and means to get what you want. You have to learn to resemble them. Most of the time a smile and a question and an interested look is all it takes.

      It’s ironic: people love me. They think I’m kind and helpful, because that’s what I want them to think. They trust me.

       Which is very useful. Once you have earned somebody’s trust it is the easiest thing in the world to abuse it.

       Occasionally someone figures it out. My mother did, when she realized what I had done. Poor woman. It broke her heart.

      I know what you are, she said, her eyes wide with shock. I’ve known it all along. I just didn’t admit it to myself.

       So I was putting her out of her misery, I suppose. It didn’t have to be such a painful death, but there had to be something

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