Dead Like You

by Peter James

  1997

  17

  Saturday 27 December

  Rachael was shivering. A deep, dark terror swirled inside her. She was so cold it was hard to think. Her mouth was parched and she was starving. Desperate for water and for food. She had no idea what the time was: it was pitch black in here, so she could not see her watch, could not tell whether it was night or day outside.

  Had he left her here to die or was he coming back? She had to get away. Somehow.

  She strained her ears for traffic noise that might give her a clue as to whether it was day or night, or for the caw of a gull that might tell her if she was still near the sea. But all she could hear was the occasional, very faint wail of a siren. Each time her hopes rose. Were the police out looking for her?

  They were, weren’t they?

  Surely her parents would have reported her missing? They would have told the police that she hadn’t turned up for Christmas lunch. They’d be worried. She knew them, knew they would have gone to her flat to find her. She wasn’t even sure what day it was now. Boxing Day? The day after?

  Her shivering was getting worse, the cold seeping deep inside her bones. It was all right, though, she thought, so long as she was shivering. Four years ago, when she had left school, she’d worked for a season as a washer-upper in a ski resort in France. A Japanese skier had taken the last chairlift up one afternoon in a snowstorm. There was a mistake by the lift attendants, who thought the last person had already gone up and been counted at the top, so they turned the lift off. In the morning, when they switched it back on, he arrived at the top, covered in ice, dead, stark naked, with a big smile on his face.

  No one could understand why he was naked or smiling. Then a local ski instructor she’d had a brief fling with explained to her that during the last stages of hypothermia people hallucinated that they were too hot and would start removing their clothes.

  She knew that somehow she had to keep warm, had to ward off hypothermia. So she did the only movements she could, rolling, left and then right on the hessian matting. Rolling. Rolling. Totally disoriented by the darkness, there were moments when she lay on her side and toppled on to her face and others when she fell on to her back.

  She had to get out. Somehow. Had to. How? Oh, God, how?

  She couldn’t move her hands or her feet. She couldn’t shout. Her naked body was covered in goose pimples so sharp they felt like millions of needle points piercing her flesh.

  Oh, please God, help me.

  She rolled again and crashed into the side of the van. Something fell over with a loud, echoing clangggggg.

  Then she heard a gurgling noise.

  Smelt something foul, rancid. Diesel oil, she realized. Gurgling. Glug . . . glug . . . glug.

  She rolled again. And again. Then her face pressed into it, the sticky, stinking stuff, stinging her eyes, making her cry even more.

  But, she figured, it must be coming from a can!

  If it was pouring out, then the top had come off. The neck of the can would be round and thin! She rolled again and something moved through the stinking wet slimy stuff, clattering, scraping.

  Clatter . . . clatter . . . clangggg.

  She trapped it against the side of the van. Wriggled around it, felt it move, made it turn, forced it to turn until it was square on, spout outwards. Then she pressed against the sharpness of the neck. Felt its rough edge cutting into her. She wormed her body against it, jigging, slowly, forcefully, then felt it spin away from her.

  Don’t do this to me!

  She wriggled and twisted until the can moved again, until she felt the rough neck of the spout again, then she pressed against it, gently at first, then applying more pressure, until she had it wedged firmly. Now she moved slowly, rubbing right, left, right, left, for an eternity at whatever was binding her wrists. Suddenly, the grip around them slackened, just a fraction.

  But enough to give her hope.

  She kept on rubbing, twisting, rubbing. Breathing in and out through her nose. Breathing in the noxious, dizzying stink of the diesel oil. Her face, her hair, her whole body soaked in the stuff.

  The grip on her wrists slackened a tiny bit further.

  Then she heard a sudden loud metallic clang and she froze. No, please no. It sounded like the garage door opening. She rolled on to her back and held her breath. Moments later she heard the rear doors of the van opening. A flashlight beam suddenly blinded her. She blinked into it. Felt his stare. Lay in frozen terror wondering what he was going to do.

  He just seemed to be standing in silence. She heard heavy breathing. Not her own. She tried to cry out, but no sound came.

  Then the light went out.

  She heard the van doors clang shut. Another loud clang, like the garage door closing.

  Then silence.

  She listened, unsure whether he was still in here. She listened for a long time before she began to rub against the neck once more. She could feel it cutting into her flesh, but she didn’t care. Each time she rubbed now, she was certain the bonds holding her wrists were slackening more and more.

  18

  Saturday 3 January

  Garry Starling and his wife, Denise, had gone to the China Garden restaurant most Saturday nights for the past twelve years. They favoured the table just up the steps, to the right of the main part of the restaurant, the table where Garry had proposed to Denise almost twelve years ago.

  Separated from the rest of the room by a railing, it had a degree of privacy, and with Denise’s increasingly heavy drinking, they could sit here without the rest of the diners being privy to her frequent tirades – mostly against him.

  She was usually drunk before they had even left home, particularly since the smoking ban, when she would quaff the best part of a bottle of white wine and smoke several cigarettes, despite his nagging her for years to quit, before tottering out to the waiting taxi. Then, at the restaurant, Denise would polish off one and often two Cosmopolitans in the bar area before they got to their table.

  At which point she usually kicked off and began complaining about defects she perceived in her husband. Sometimes the same old ones, sometimes new ones. It was water off a duck’s back to Garry, who remained placid and unemotional, which usually wound her up even more. He was a control freak, she told her girlfriends. As well as being a sodding fitness freak.

  The couple they normally came here with, Maurice and Ulla Stein, were heavy drinkers too and, long used to Denise’s tirades, they tended to humour her. Besides, there were plenty of undercurrents in their own relationship.

  Tonight, the first Saturday of the New Year, Denise, Maurice and Ulla were in particularly heavy drinking mode. Their hangovers from New Year’s Eve, which they had celebrated together at the Metropole Hotel, were now distant memories. But they were also a little tired and Denise was in an uncharacteristically subdued mood. She was even drinking a little water – which, normally, she rarely touched.

  The third bottle of Sauvignon Blanc had just been poured. As she picked her glass up, Denise watched Garry, who had stepped out to take a phone call, walking back towards them and slipping his phone into his top pocket.

  He had a slight frame and a sly, studious face topped with short, tidy black hair that was thinning and turning grey. His big, round, staring eyes, set beneath arched eyebrows, had earned him the nickname Owl at school. Now, in middle age, wearing small, rimless glasses, a neat suit over a neat shirt and sober tie, he had the air of a scientist quietly observing the world in front of him with a look of quizzical disdain, as if it was an experiment he had created in his laboratory with which he was not entirely happy.

  In contrast to her husband, Denise, who had been a slender blonde with an hourglass figure when they had first met, had ballooned recently. She was still blonde, thanks to her colourist, but years of heavy drinking had taken their toll. With her clothes off, in Garry’s opinion – which he had never actually voiced to her because he was too reserved – she had the body of a flabby pig.<
br />
  ‘Lizzie – my sister,’ Garry announced apologetically, sitting down again. ‘She’s been at the police station for the last few hours – she’s been done for drink-driving. I was just checking that she’s seen a solicitor and that she’s getting a lift home.’

  ‘Lizzie? Stupid woman, what’s she gone and done that for?’ said Denise.

  ‘Oh, sure,’ Garry said. ‘She did it deliberately, right? Give her a break, for God’s sake! She’s been through the marriage from hell and now she’s going through the divorce from hell from that bastard.’

  ‘Poor thing,’ said Ulla.

  ‘She’s still way over the limit. They won’t let her drive home. I wonder if I should go and—’

  ‘Don’t you dare!’ Denise said. ‘You’ve been drinking too.’

  ‘You have to be so damned careful, drinking and driving now,’ Maurice slurred. ‘I just won’t do it. I’m afraid I don’t have much sympathy with people who get caught.’ Then, seeing his friend’s darkening expression, he said, ‘Of course, except for Lizzie.’ He smiled awkwardly.

  Maurice had made gazillions out of building sheltered homes for the aged. His Swedish wife, Ulla, had become heavily involved in animal rights in recent years and not long ago had led a blockade of Shoreham Harbour – Brighton’s main harbour – to stop what she considered to be the inhumane way that sheep were exported. Garry had noticed, particularly in the past couple of years, that the two of them had less and less in common.

  Garry had been Maurice’s best man. He’d secretly lusted after Ulla in those days. She had been the classic flaxen-haired, leggy Swedish blonde. In fact he’d continued to lust after her until quite recently, when she had begun to let her looks go. She too had put on weight, and had taken to dressing like an Earth Mother, in shapeless smocks, sandals and hippy jewellery. Her hair was wild and she seemed to apply make-up as if it was warpaint.

  ‘Do you know about the Coolidge effect?’ Garry said.

  ‘What’s that?’ Maurice asked.

  ‘When Calvin Coolidge was president of the United States he and his wife were being taken around a chicken farm. The farmer got embarrassed when a rooster began shagging a hen right in front of Mrs Coolidge. When he apologized the President’s wife asked him how many times a day the rooster did this and the farmer replied that it was dozens. She turned to him and whispered, “Would you mind telling my husband?”’

  Garry paused while Maurice and Ulla laughed. Denise, who had heard it before, remained stony-faced.

  He continued, ‘Then a little later Coolidge asked the farmer more about the rooster. “Tell me, does it always screw the same hen?” The farmer replied, “No, Mr President, always a different one.” Coolidge whispered to the man, “Would you mind telling my wife?”’

  Maurice and Ulla were still laughing when crispy duck and pancakes arrived.

  ‘I like that one!’ Maurice said, then winced as Ulla kicked him under the table.

  ‘A bit close to home for you,’ she said acidly.

  Maurice had confided to Garry, over the years, about a string off affairs. Ulla had found out about more than one of them.

  ‘At least the rooster has proper sex,’ Denise said to her husband. ‘Not the weird stuff you get off on.’

  Garry’s mask smiled implacably at her, humouring her. They sat in awkward silence as the pancakes and spring onions and hoisin sauce appeared, and while the waiter shredded the duck before retreating.

  Helping himself to a pancake and rapidly changing the subject, Maurice asked, ‘So, how’s business looking going into the New Year, Garry? Think people are going to cut down?’

  ‘How would he know?’ Denise butted in. ‘He’s always on the sodding golf course.’

  ‘Of course I am, my darling!’ Garry retorted. ‘That’s where I get my new leads. That’s how I built my business. I got the police as customers through playing golf with an officer one day.’

  Garry Starling had started in life as an electrician, working for Chubb Alarms, doing installations. Then he had left and taken the gamble of forming his own company, operating at first from a tiny office in central Brighton. His timing had been perfect, as it was just when the security business began to boom.

  It was a winning formula. He used his membership of his golf club, of the Round Table and then the Rotary Club to work on everyone he met. Within a few years of opening his doors, he had built up Sussex Security Systems and its sister company, Sussex Remote Monitoring Services, into one of the major security businesses in the Brighton area for home and commercial premises.

  Turning back to Maurice, he said, ‘Actually, business is OK. We’re holding our own. How about you?’

  ‘Booming!’ Maurice said. ‘Incredible, but it is!’ He raised his glass. ‘Well, cheers, everyone! Here’s to a brilliant year! Never actually got to toast you on New Year’s Eve, did we, Denise?’

  ‘Yep, well, sorry about that. Don’t know what came over me. Must be the bottle of champagne we had in our room while we were getting changed!’

  ‘That you had,’ Garry corrected her.

  ‘Poor thing!’ Ulla said.

  ‘Still,’ Maurice said, ‘Garry did his best to make up for you by drinking your share, didn’t you, old son?’

  Garry smiled. ‘I made a sterling effort.’

  ‘He did,’ Ulla said. ‘He was well away!’

  ‘Hey, did you see the Argus today?’ Maurice said with an abrupt change of tone.

  ‘No,’ Garry said. ‘Haven’t read it yet. Why?’

  ‘A woman was raped in the hotel! Right while we were partying! Incredible!’

  ‘In the Metropole?’ Denise said.

  ‘Yes! In a bedroom. Can you believe it?’

  ‘Great,’ she said. ‘Terrific to know your caring husband is getting shit-faced while his wife’s in bed alone, with a rapist at large.’

  ‘What did it say in the paper?’ Garry said, ignoring the comment.

  ‘Not much – just a few lines.’

  ‘Don’t look so guilty, darling,’ Denise said. ‘You couldn’t keep it up long enough to rape a flea.’

  Maurice busied himself with his chopsticks, lifting strands of duck on to his pancake.’

  ‘Unless of course she was wearing some high – ouch!’ she cried out.

  Garry had kicked her hard under the table. Silencing her.

  1997

  19

  Saturday 27 December

  Rachael was beyond caring about the pain she was in. Her wrists, behind her back, were numb from cold as she sawed, desperately, back and forward against the sharp rim of the fuel can spout. Her bum was numb and a sharp, cramping pain shot down her right leg every few moments. But she ignored it all. Just sawing. Sawing. Sawing in utter desperation.

  It was desperation that kept her going. Desperation to get free before he came back. Desperation for water. Desperation for food. Desperation to speak to her parents, to hear their voices, to tell them she was OK. She was crying, shedding tears as she sawed, writhed, wriggled, struggled.

  Then, suddenly, to her utter joy, the gap between her wrists widened a fraction. She could feel the bonds slackening. She sawed even harder and now they were becoming slacker by the second.

  Then her hands were free.

  Almost in disbelief, she moved them further and further apart in the darkness, as if they might suddenly be propelled back together and she would wake to find it was all an illusion.

  Her arms ached terribly, but she did not care. Thoughts were racing through her mind.

  I’m free.

  He’s going to come back.

  My phone. Where’s my phone?

  She needed to phone for help. Except, she realized, she did not know where she was. Could they locate you from where your phone was? She didn’t think so. Which meant all she could tell them, until she got out of the door and found her bearings, was that she was in a van in a garage somewhere in Brighton or Hove, perhaps.

  He might come back at any moment
. She needed to free her legs. In the darkness she felt the area around her for her phone, her bag, anything. But there was just slimy, stinky diesel oil. She reached forward, to her ankles, and felt the PVC tape around them, wound so tight it was as hard as a plaster cast. Then she reached up to her face, to see if she could free her mouth and at least shout for help.

  But would that be smart?

  The tape was just as tight around her mouth. She got a grip on it with difficulty, her fingers slippery with the diesel oil, and tore it off, almost oblivious to the pain in her urgency. Then she tried to get a grip on an edge of the tape around her legs, but her fingers were shaking so much she couldn’t find one.

  Panic rose.

  Must escape.

  She tried to get to her feet but, with them bound together, at her first attempt she fell over sideways, striking her forehead hard on something. Moments later she felt liquid trickle down into her eye. Blood, she guessed. Snorting air, she rolled over, sat back against the side of the van and then, trying to grip the floor with her bare feet, began pushing herself up the side. But her feet kept slipping on the damned diesel oil, which had turned the floor into a skating rink.

  She scrabbled around until she found the hessian she had been lying on, then put her feet on that and tried again. This time she got more grip. Steadily, she began to rise. She made it all the way up on to her feet, her head striking the roof of the van. Then, totally disoriented by the pitch darkness, she fell sideways with a jarring crash. Something slammed into her eye with the force of a hammer.

  20

  Saturday 3 January

  There was a ping from the data unit on the dashboard. It startled Yac, who was parked up in a meter bay on the blustery seafront, close to Brighton Pier, drinking a mug of tea. His 11 p.m. mug of tea. He was actually ten minutes late drinking it, because he had been so absorbed reading the newspaper.