Nowadays Violet Denning only flew business class. Such privilege had arrived on the back of promotion. For the last three years she had flourished in a high-powered job as the CEO of Thames Meadows, one of London’s premier hotels and conference centres. The sprawling suburban estate had been purchased, private members’ club and all, by the prestigious Diamond Alliance International group from an oil company who had originally established the place to provide a training and leisure environment for their employees. So not only could she afford the best quality travel available, she had a professional obligation to use it in confederacy with the vast majority of her business clients. Much hard work, intelligence and determination had enabled her to access this elevated station in life – the glass ceiling exquisitely demolished. Such thoughts comforted Violet Denning, sipping her whisky sour an hour into the six thousand miles journey.

It had been a difficult financial year. She had fallen short of the conference targets set by the American owners who knew little about the UK market. After a long drawn out struggle with the local council she had failed to gain planning approval for an outdoor pool and for tennis court flood lighting on the riverside of the fifty acres estate. Then there had been the deaths of a colleague and a club member, over which tragedies stretched the ominous shadow of Justin Markam. “Get a grip, woman!” she chastised herself as she ordered a second cocktail. “Do not let your mind wander back to that deranged pariah.”

For a while she escaped into a newspaper. She read an article about the punitive tariffs imposed by the US president on the countries with which his nation traded, then a related opinion piece entitled, The Arrogance Of Power. Amongst the litany of insults Markam had inflicted on her after the termination of his club membership, arrogant and power-crazed stood prominently out. At the time such hyperbolic nonsense had wafted past her as innocuously as a butterfly. “You brought this on your own head by punching our tennis coach,” she scolded him. “Once you raise your fists in anger all other justifications fade away into utter insignificance.” Markam’s contention had been that the coach, a thirty-one year old called Ralph Cliff, unreasonably excluded him from joining in a social tennis session, repeatedly ignoring his polite requests to participate. He had felt increasingly humiliated and frustrated. There had been no punch either, merely a valedictory shove on Cliff’s shoulder. “If you are seen on these premises again, I shall call the police and have you evicted,” she had reprimanded him at his appeal hearing. “The matter is now concluded.” And with that she had summoned the heaviest of her security guards to accompany the miscreant out on the public road.

After 25 years of continuous membership Violet should not have been surprised that Markam refused to take his expulsion lying down. He emailed her a letter, most of it just repeating his opinion of her highhanded judgmentalism. Why had she chosen to believe the coach and his chief witness, one Robert Street, a Johnny-come-lately, snooty young member, and not him – a distinguished septuagenarian with an unblemished record of loyalty and good conduct? Between them Cliff and Street had confabulated a ridiculous story about the coach being held hostage in the pavilion by his racket wielding good self and threatened with a severe horse-whipping. On account of the alleged trauma resulting from this attack Cliff had gone sick for a month, bombarding the CEO with medical and psychiatric reports. “It is a charade! A hoax!” Markam declared. “And you have been dim witted enough to buy it! He’s afraid he could be fired for professional negligence. The man is an ex soldier! I’ve read his Linked In blurb. He’s seen active service in Afghanistan! How could an old arthritic geezer like me possibly inflict such damage on him? It beggars credulity!”

None of this vituperation remotely bothered Violet. Her MBA course, passed with distinction, had taught her how to develop a thick skin and cloth ears when confronted with mindless acrimony. Markam was simply bad for the hotel business. End of. Medical reports could not be fabricated. However the final paragraph of his email did give her cause for a mild spasm of alarm. It was phrased as follows: “Unless your decision to exclude me is immediately reversed and unless those two liars apologise to me in writing and show proper contrition, all three of you will suffer extreme punishment. I can absolutely promise you that.” She took the letter to the police and they in turn sought out its writer at his home where the door was opened by a most convivial, grey-haired lady. She confirmed her name to be Mrs Markam and offered them a cup of tea until such a time as her husband stirred from his bed. “He has no club to go to any more,” she explained, “and therefore very little reason to get up before noon.”

When the investigating officers reported back to Violet she hung on their every word. Markam had been asked what he meant by promising the CEO that she would suffer extreme punishment then warned him that if any harm befell the named parties the law would be instantly on his case. She asked them how the man had reacted to this caution. “Well, to be honest, Miss Denning, he just grinned and shrugged it off,” replied the male officer. “He claimed he was not personally threatening anybody. He was simply pointing out that the law of karma would function as it always did in cases of evil doing and injustice. The imbalance you had created in the cosmic order of things had necessarily to be corrected.”

“What! He actually said that?” she exclaimed. “He’s not in his right mind. You should refer him to a mental institution, section him if necessary, surely?”

“We can’t do that, I’m afraid,” sympathised the officer. “He’s only voicing a private opinion. And I’m afraid his opinion of you is rather low.” Violet demanded to know what else he had said and the officer reluctantly took out his notebook in order to quote Markam verbatim. “That woman is such an obtuse person, so intoxicated by the cheap perfume of her power, I doubt that she would recognise a patent injustice if it fell out of the sky like bird shit and splattered on her head.”

When the police left, Violet had laughed heartily. The man was totally unhinged just as Ralph Cliff had always privately claimed. Possibly he suffered from dementia or bouts of delirium. Whatever the case the hotel complex with its five star leisure facilities and seven hundred plus private members was well rid of him. Three months passed uneventfully. No more letters were received from Markam. Nobody mentioned his name. Then one morning her deputy club manager knocked on the door and apologised for being the bearer of sad news. Robert Street had died in a traffic accident. His wife had been on the phone in a tearful state to request that the subscription be changed from couple to single membership status forthwith. It transpired that Robert had been run over crossing a one way thoroughfare adjacent to their home. The motorist had not stopped. No witnesses to the incident had come forward. He died two days later in hospital from his injuries.

Violet of course attended the funeral along with dozens of members that Robert had known. As the undertakers carried the oak coffin into the church she happened to look round, only to catch the eye of Markam who was positioned two pews behind and appeared to be gloating. “When you say gloating, Miss Denning, what exactly do you mean?” inquired the duty sergeant when she dropped by at the local police station the next day.

“I mean it was a funeral,” she almost spat back. “An extremely sombre occasion. People were openly weeping. But this man, Markam – God knows why he was allowed in! – sat there beaming from ear to ear with pleasure. Has the hit and run murderer been apprehended yet? No? Then may I be so bold as to suggest that a useful place to start a meaningful investigation of the offence would be at Markam’s home?” The officer remained silent as this deposition gathered momentum, merely making a few written notes and politely thanking her at the conclusion. Two weeks later when Violet rang back and was eventually connected to the appropriate officer, however, still no arrest had been made. Yes, Mr Markam had been checked out but found to have an unimpeachable alibi. He had been out at the local cinema watching a film called Oppenheimer at the time of the hit and run incident. The purchase of his ticket had been verified.

Violet did not like it one bit. “That isn’t a proper alibi,” she objected. “He could have gone in one door and immediately come out another!” The officer took this comment in his stride. Markam’s car had been examined and bore no sign of damage to the body work. “Yes but he could have – !“ she retorted before deciding on the balance of things not to conclude her line of paranoid thought.

After another two months Violet’s peace of mind returned. Her equanimity took the form of a few basic mantras. “The police are not inherently stupid. Coincidences do occur. Work-related stress can alter your perception of reality.” That sort of thing. But then came along a Monday in mid April which annihilated those lazy nostrums all at once. It began badly when the sports director of a premier league football club who had booked the first team squad into the hotel for a five day stint to include full use of the elite gym and training facilities prior to a semi-final match at Wembley phoned up to cancel. The team manager had opted instead for a rival hotel in Virginia Water which better suited the players’ complex needs, he apologetically explained. Just after midday, as she munched at a salmon salad lunch in her office sanctuary, the club manager popped his bald head round the door without knocking. An unprecedented contravention of protocol. “What now?” she demanded irately but some part of her instantly knew, even before the hapless messenger opened his mouth.

Misadventure, the media announced. Foul play is not suspected. This time Violet thought long and hard before going to the police. Eventually she decided to bypass the local constabulary who were clearly amateurs. She wrote directly to the chief constable of the Met, enclosing a copy of the threatening email Markam had sent her. When after three weeks he failed to even acknowledge receipt of her documents, she took her concerns directly to the surgery of her local member of parliament, a woman roughly her own age who had attended the same Cambridge college. If the right honourable lady did not empathise, nobody would. The MP obligingly read the letter and the various newspaper cuttings without comment then patiently listened as her constituent outlined the reasons why she felt she would soon be the third victim of this deranged serial killer unless he was put behind bars.

“First the coach’s witness, a member called Street, is run over by a hit and run driver in his very own street,” she summarised. “A few weeks later the main complainant, who goes by the name of Cliff, is found dead at the bottom of a cliff in West Sussex with injuries that indicate he had suffered a fall from the upper ledge. The only one left to be punished is me. There is a pattern. It is a diabolical and crazed scheme. The murderer is working up the hierarchy so to speak.”

“I see,” said the MP after a long pause. “And the person you believe to be the perpetrator of these deaths has, according to the police, got foolproof alibis?”

“Yes – but the police are wrong,” retorted Violet. “He is deviously clever as well as vengeful. I’ve interviewed him. Looked him hard in his demonic eyes. And he is having a joke at the same time as committing murder. He’s laughing at us. Taunting the authorities. I’m certain of it.”

“What would you like me to do then?” the MP asked.

“Speak to the home secretary. Get him to put pressure on the law enforcement agencies to review the case files,” replied Violet. “You are my last hope.”

The politician, having promised to expedite the matter and to get back to Violet within a fortnight, turned out to be as good as her word. Unfortunately that word was no. Of course MPs infrequently trade in such bald negativity when dealing with their constituents’ petitions. An official letter typed on House Of Commons paper contained eighty-nine additional words, carefully particularised into five sentences. The overall sense, however, remained exactly the same. No.

Violet, in accordance with her tenacious nature, refused to accept this pronouncement as a final resolution. She took the bull by both horns and phoned up Markam to offer him a deal. He sounded taken aback, wrong-footed even, by her audacity. “It may well be that on proper reflection I was mistaken to believe those two men,” she intimated. “I am prepared not just to allow you back in the club, Mr Markam, but to waive your subscriptions for the rest of your life – which I trust will be a very long and active one. What do you say to that?”

“Oh, I’ve joined another club now and I’m very happy there,” he replied flippantly. “It’s got a heated outdoor pool, two huge jacuzzis and tennis coaches who understand the difference between a forehand and backhand.” She put it to him that he would be saving himself thousands of pounds to rejoin her outfit, a remark that served only to amuse him. “My pension is more than reasonable,” he laughed. “Money is not an issue for me. If you can afford to be so generous, I suggest you invest the cash you propose to offer me on courses in basic interpersonal skills for the surliest and most facetious of your colleagues – of which I am afraid there are far too many.”

“But what about your friends?” she persisted. “Didn’t you tell me at the appeal that after such a long period of membership all your social life revolved around the club and how badly you would miss your friends?”

“Haaa!” he exclaimed. “My so-called friends did not exactly beat your door down to demand my reinstatement, did they?” She had no choice but to confirm that supposition. “So those mealy-mouthed fine weather chums can all go to the devil. I underestimated my ability to live without them.”

“Look, I’m trying to apologise to you,” she countered directly. “Frankly I don’t wish to suffer the same kind of fate as Street and Cliff. Is there nothing I can do to placate you? Nothing at all?”

“Why are you bringing me into this?” Markam objected. “Your debt is to the cosmic order, not to me. I did not create the principle of karma. I am equally as subject to it as everyone else. You have made your bed in the careless way you have and now you have no choice but to lie in it.”

“I had sincerely hoped you might be far more helpful than this,” complained Violet.

“Look, in the great scheme of human wickedness,” he replied in a bantering tone, “your callousness, your sadistic need to strut powerfully around that poxy hotel complex, may seem very small beer. But the cosmic law is not negotiable. It will not be flouted. At least that’s what I have come to understand during my three score years and fifteen. And one day you will understand it too and smile, yes smile to know the perfidious ways of humankind do not go unpunished.”

“There must be some way I can rectify the mistake I might have made?” she persisted.

“If there is, I am not aware of it,” considered Markam solemnly. “The moving finger writes and having writ moves on, you know. It is beyond the piety and ingenuity of mere mortals to intervene in the inexorable progress of fate. But then again I could be wrong. There may be a way out. I mean if you prostrated yourself, for instance, went fully public with an apology and resigned your job – then maybe Providence might show pity and prevent the inevitable from happening? A long shot but nothing much lost in trying, I suppose?”

Violet hung up in disgust. The man was beyond loathsome, a demented windbag. How dare he sermonise and torment her in such a pompous way! She stood up erect in front of a wardrobe mirror and examined herself from head to foot. The beatific image she had temporarily neglected instantly emboldened her. The achievements, the charisma, the courage that her slender personage embodied remained second to none. Nobody but nobody would intimidate this high achieving woman ever again! She swore an oath of self-affirmation and then resolutely got on with the day.

Thus normal executive service was resumed at the Thames Meadows Hotel which had, according to hushed downstairs whispers, become just a little frayed at the edges in recent weeks. A full steam ahead administrative agenda went into overdrive. A regeneration of entertaining and family-centred activities. Summer advanced without further alarms or cancellations and when September finally arrived Violet decided to take the holiday she knew her resilience deserved. The operation was left in the more than capable hands of her first lieutenant.

A chauffeur driven itinerary had been constructed that involved safaris, museums, sites of archeological interest, shopping expeditions, beach resorts, ayurvedic spa massages and exotic culinary experiences. Having slept peacefully for several hours and been served breakfast, Violet checked through the details as the pilot announced preparations for landing. Once through security she emerged into a concourse packed tight with people thrusting placards into the arriving passengers’ faces. Momentarily the noise and humidity felt overwhelming. Then she spotted her name. Or what seemed to be her name except that for the briefest moment the letters seemed to change position and elide into another phrase before returning to their original configuration. “You must be Dwayne? Very pleased to meet you,” she said as she confronted the tall, broad-shouldered young man holding the placard.

The tour guide bowed and removed his shades in a clear gesture of respect. “My pleasure entirely, madam,” he said. “Allow me to take your case. The car is parked two minutes from here.” They chatted as he led the way, mainly about her flight and the weather in London. The vehicle turned out to be a black Volvo saloon, upholstered in leather with enough space to seat three in the rear. “This is our driver, Tunde,” Dwayne declared as she got in. “Unfortunately he knows very little English.” She caught Tunde’s eye in the mirror and exchanged smiles as the driver muttered something in his own language. “Tunde wants to know if this is your first visit to our country,” Dwayne interpreted and Violet replied in the affirmative.

The departing traffic seemed to be making slow progress. They inched past a couple of police officers who stared ferociously into the innards of the Volvo before nodding them through. Tunde and Dwayne exchanged words. “Is everything alright?” she asked.

“It is often like this, I’m afraid,” answered Dwayne and produced a bottle of ice cold water which she gladly took. Within a few more minutes the air conditioning kicked in. Several more police cars clustered by the side of the road. Sullen faced men in militaristic uniforms swaggered around domineeringly.

“Has there been some sort of incident?” she wanted to know. By virtue of a reply the driver swung the vehicle suddenly right and headed up a rustic track. “Where are we going?” Violet responded simultaneously.

“It is a short cut,” explained Dwayne eventually. “We think there has been a crash on the main highway. It will lead to a long delay. I apologise for any inconvenience.”

The body is often a far more capable processor of information than the mind and so it now proved with Violet. Understanding arrived gradually as a bilious feeling at first in the pit of her stomach then moving into her bowels. “Will you stop somewhere please?” she demanded. “I need to go to the bathroom.” No reply was forthcoming and the Volvo merely picked up speed. “Did you hear what I said?” she implored.

At a bend in the narrow road some obstruction caused the driver to jerk to a stop and instantaneously Violet yanked on the door handle to get out. It resisted every effort. “The central locking will stay on,” remarked Dwayne matter of factly without turning his head. On the other side of the passenger window Violet observed a woman crossing the road, balancing on her head a large compacted load while simultaneously holding the hand of a spindly waif of a girl wearing not much more than a few rags of clothing. “From now on we can either do this the easy way or the hard way,” advised the guide.

“I have been a platinum level client of Travel Pioneers for over eleven years and it entitles me to have any reasonable request immediately met,” droned Violet, clearly not quite believing her own supposition. It remained consequently ignored, unworthy of even a token snort of derision. The man called Tunde accelerated brusquely onwards through a pool of muddy water.

When the kidnappers reached a safe place well outside the airport security surveillance zone, they parked up and educated their victim in the facts of life and death that had so far stubbornly eluded her imagination. “This car is worth a certain amount of money to us,” began Dwayne, “and so are you. However – “

“What happened to the real Dwayne and Tunde?” Violet interrupted.

“They have been detained temporarily but are quite safe,” he reassured her. “As I was saying, you are worth something to us but less than I was hoping. I find you physically, – how do you English put it? – rather unprepossessing.”

He speaks very good English, she found herself incongruously reflecting, and is obviously well-educated. She wondered what he did for a living when he wasn’t kidnapping tourists. Maybe she should ask him? “I’m a CEO in an upmarket chain of luxury hotels,” she told him instead. “The owners are loaded. They will pay whatever reasonable ransom you ask of them, I’m sure.”

Dwayne continued talking as if he had not heard. He explained that she had little value as a commodity in the sex slave or trafficking industry. They would cut their losses and take whatever valuables they could get out of her. “How exactly does that work?” she heard herself ask peevishly. A great fug of dissonance had taken possession of her mind, the unreality of reality.

“You have cash in your handbag and maybe your suitcase too,” Dwayne shrugged. “And you have jewelry and bank cards. We shall need you to tell us the codes so that we can withdraw money from ATMs while it’s safe to do so. I assume you have no objection in supplying the numbers to me?”

She thrust her handbag towards him. The quicker they got the grubby details sorted the better. She would take refuge in the British embassy, file an insurance claim, recuperate. It would be a very sizable claim, given all the circumstances. “Just two cards,” she advised and told him the codes for each. No point in lying. He was bound to check before releasing her. After that he pulled her case out of the boot and let Tunde rifle through it. “Tell him to repack it neatly,” she demanded. Tunde guffawed as he received the instruction in his own language but completed the task to Violet’s satisfaction. “Thank you tell him,” she approved. “Now where is the nearest ATM to this godforsaken place?”

Dwayne mentioned the name of a town she had never heard of. “About forty minutes drive,” he calculated. “We cannot be too careful when we get there,” he added. “That means no fuss, no trying to make a run for it. Understand?” She nodded her head. It would very soon be over now. He said something to Tunde who opened a glove compartment. “This is a revolver,” Dwayne said. “It has a silencer fitted. If you make any noise or movement while I go to the ATM he will shoot you. Okay?” Again she silently assented and within seconds Tunde had revved the engine back into life.

It emerged in due course from the heat haze, a ramshackle backwater settlement bearing the cosmetic aspect of a cheap film set. The extras peddled and pushed and gawped. Only the saloon car looked out of place. It turned a few heads. Tunde parked in a sidestreet and whistled idly to himself in Dwayne’s absence. It irritated her. “Will you shut up please!” she ordered but he pretended not to understand. “Can I leave now?” she asked Dwayne when he slid back into the front seat. He ignored her and muttered something to the driver.

It was only when the last building had been left behind and the savannah filled the windscreen as far as the horizon that the penny finally dropped. Even then her mind kept burrowing after reasons not to believe it. She thought about Markam and his gloating face as he sat in the church at the funeral, his pontificating estuary English accent on the phone, his fatuous conviction that you must always reap the wrongs that you sow. Suddenly Dwayne’s voice broke in. “I want to thank you for making this easy for us,” he said. “This is not personal. It is a business transaction, that’s all.”

“And your business is what exactly?” she replied. “Playing at Dick Turpin or Robin Hood?” It came out more ironically than she had intended.

“A bit of both,” Dwayne replied. “The world is riddled with poverty and inequality and corruption and there is no collective will to do anything to change it. – just hand wringing and gesturism. As one of the conspicuously affluent, if you are reckless enough to venture on holiday so close to one of its sinkholes then you should expect to run into, at the very least, some token resentment.”

The pathologist who examined the body, which had been found in a ditch by children two days later, reported that the female victim had been killed by a single bullet to the back of the head. In the process she had soiled herself. He also noted that her mouth had curved into the shape of a smile but modified this anomaly with the observation that rigor mortis had quickly worn off and muscular relaxation set in.