Escape takes up the story on the same day as Ransom. Again, the story does what it says on the tin. Marion and Lily are getting out of there.

The noise Marion heard when they were being brought into the house was, of course, a sudden roar from a crowd inside a football stadium. Liverpool has two of those, Anfield and Goodison Park, both uphill from the waterfront. When Lily contacted Li telepathically she was able to tell him she was in one of two places.

The area around Anfield had a lot of empty properties in the mid to late 1990s. There was a plan to extend the football ground and several terraced streets had been bought up with a mind towards demolishing them to make room for the bigger, better stadium. The plan came to nothing in the end and I think the houses were refurbished and sold off while a new plan was put forward. Anyway, it gives a realistic setting for this storyline.

When Marion tests her new-found telepathy, brought to her by her steadily advancing pregnancy, it is Anfield that she sees in her mind’s eye. She focuses on the gestalt crowd inside the football stadium. She is buoyed by their excitement and the fact that so many people are close by her. She feels that they would protect her.

Now, anyone who doesn’t believe that the home crowd at Anfield wouldn’t protect a pregnant lady in distress doesn’t really know football crowds. Don’t believe all you hear about hooliganism and mob mentality. And the motto of Liverpool Football Club, You’ll Never Walk Alone, is one that should give comfort to anyone lost and alone.

You don’t believe me? Never mind. Some people get it. Some don’t. Remember, though, Marion is a Merseyside girl. She gets it.

I originally thought of having Li and the ‘triads’ chase Billy Stett and his gang down the road, tangling with the football fans leaving the match. I decided against it because people with knives and large crowds don’t mix even if there isn’t any football hooliganism involved. Instead, Li and the staff of their favourite Chinese restaurant take the fight directly to the kidnappers inside the house, and it is quickly over. Even a couple of humans with a working knowledge of martial arts would be no match for wannabe thugs such as I depicted here. They do get off a little lightly, with the threat that Li’s ‘Triad’ connections were protecting Marion and Lily. But they probably won’t try kidnapping anyone again.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anfield
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anfield,_Liverpool
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You%27ll_Never_Walk_Alone_%28song%29