Surprised rather than stunned, the back of my head hit the door frame and I found myself on my arse looking at a pair of stockinged feet. No wonder I hadn’t heard the fucker coming. A hole in the left sock allowed a long toe with a yellowing and cracked nail to protrude. Blood trickled down my nose and I tried to get up but cold sharp steel pressed against the side of my neck and stale cigarette breath came down at me.
“Don’t fucking move.”
I considered sweeping his legs from under him but my left arm was jarred from taking the brunt of my fall and my right hand was better occupied carefully feeling the damaged flesh between my eyes. My legs were splayed; the right inside the office, which meant the left was my only properly useful limb. But the thin man, as if anticipating my thoughts, moved to the side of me – any heroics would have to wait.
“OK, get on your front. Slowly.” The cold of the knife contrasted with the warmth of the underfloor-heated hardwood against my cheek as I lay down.
“Now put your wrists together behind you.”
I did as he said – I needed to find the right moment to strike the bastard and lying on the floor with a sharp point in my neck wasn’t it. I heard rustling and looked up to see him undoing his tie with one hand. If he was planning to tie my hands he would need both of his – this could be my chance. But he had simply loosened his tie and slipped the noose over both my wrists with one hand and then pulled it tight. Still, I thought, a Windsor knot would be easy enough to loosen. But then the knife left my neck and was replaced by his foot and he swiftly bent down and secured the tie ends properly. It all took a couple of seconds and the knife was back on my skin. Then his hand gripped a handful of hair at the back of my neck and pulled.
“On your fucking knees, arsehole.”
It’s not easy getting on your knees from a prostrate position with your hands tied behind your back. And they were tightly tied, so tight that my fingers were beginning to lose feeling. I struggled to my knees and felt the point of the knife move to the back of my neck. He pulled my hair back which made it stick painfully into my skin.
“Easy,” I said evenly.
“Shut up and start walking on your knees.”
“Where to?”
“The next room.”
I shuffled forward until we reached the door which he opened with his free hand. A light came on and revealed the massage table in the middle of the room – the table I’d seen in the film earlier. A large, professional-looking camcorder sat on a heavy duty tripod at the foot of the table. Another handheld camera was on some units along the right-hand side wall. A light with a large diffuser was mounted on another stand near the table.
“What now,” I said.
“Just get on the fucking table, face down.”
I stood up gingerly, my knees cracking. All this with him remaining behind me. There was a hole in the head of the table in which he told me to stick my ugly mug. He took his hand from my hair and leaned over me. I thought he was going to whisper in my ear but something came over my middle and arms and was tightened hard. Then another strap, the sort you use to tie luggage to a car, appeared in my vision and I could feel it being tightened hard over the back of my neck. Another strap was tightened over my ankles. I heard the door close and after a few seconds realised I’d been left alone. All I could think of was the message written on the back of the photo I’d woken up to last time I was here: next time we use this on you.
I tried to move but the most I could manage was to swivel my eyes. My hands were becoming increasingly numb, and no amount of movement would loosen the tie. Even if I could get my hands free, I was still strapped like a rolled-up carpet to a roof-rack. I relaxed, tired from thrashing about, and tried to make sense of my surroundings, the bits I could see anyway.
I was lying head towards the door. To the right of me I could make out the bottom of a leather sofa against the wall. To the left I could see vinyl cupboard doors, like in a budget kitchen. I knew, from when I’d come in the room, that they sat under a counter with a sink in it and a paper towel dispenser and a first aid kit above. The first aid kit worried me. I heard a voice from the other room, just the one. Sounded like the thin man was on the phone to his American master. Stubbing probably hadn’t phoned because she didn’t know this guy from Adam.
It went quiet and he came into the room, stepped up to the table and I felt him go roughly through my pockets.
“You don’t have to do this,” I said. He pulled out my mobile phone, then the two DVDs I’d taken from the office.
“Yes I do.” He rapped me three times on the back of the head with the phone and left the room, closing the door behind him again. My head stung and I could hear his one-sided conversation again; or rather I could hear him talking without making out the words. I struggled at my ties and discovered that if I rocked left to right I could make the table move. How this was going to help I didn’t know but I did it anyway, since action seemed preferable to none. Then the door opened again and the thin man’s legs came up to the table and disappeared to my left. He dragged the table back to the middle of the room – he was strong for such a slight man, I’ll give him that. Then he pulled my jacket over my shoulders, then my shirt, forcing it over my back until the top buttons popped and the cloth scraped my shoulder wound and was bunched down at the strap that was over my waist and arms.
“What the hell are you doing?” I asked, trying to go for dignified outrage rather than helpless terror – at least he hadn’t pulled my trousers down, yet. “That’s an Armani suit you’re ruining.” I could hear him panting with his efforts. I wondered how long it would be before Stubbing started to fucking worry and come up to check on me.
My dream of being rescued was painfully interrupted by him ripping the bandage from my shoulder.
“Listen to me,” I said to the floor. “There’s a copper waiting for me downstairs, a very mean detective.”
“Of course there is. And Kim Kardashian is waiting for me in the bedroom with her legs spread.” He laughed and it turned into a giggle that he cut short, perhaps aware that it didn’t sound too manly. I heard him light up and caught the fresh smell of cigarette smoke.
“Only five stitches, eh? You’ll be needing more than that when I finish with you.”
“What would the point of that be?” I said, adopting the firm voice I’d heard Sandra use with Ashley when he demanded sweets before dinner.
“The point, you cunt, would be to teach you to stop messing in Mr Boyd’s personal business.” I felt the cold steel of his knife running between my shoulder blades and tensed.
“So you’re just doing what you’re told, right?” I said. Then I remembered something. “Why did you visit my father in the nursing home?” The knife stopped.
“Your father?”
“Yes. What the hell were you doing there?”
“Stop fucking talking,” he screamed, but only after a very slight pause. I’d hit a nerve, not a good thing.
I felt the knife move to the wound and immediately began to sweat from places I don’t usually put deodorant. I couldn’t make out what his game was here. Worse case was he just liked hurting people, but he was still an employee, and that meant he was ultimately beholden to the boss.
“Mr Boyd won’t want you committing a crime in his flat. This is already kidnapping, don’t make it worse.”
He giggled and I knew I was lost. Boyd had probably sanctioned this.
“What is it that you want?” I asked.
“I want you to tell me where Lucy is,” he said. “But first I want you to scream.” I felt the knife point in my wound. He flicked it upwards, cutting the first stitch and then pulling the semi-healed flesh apart.
And scream I did.
45
I MUST HAVE FAINTED AT SOME POINT BECAUSE I OPENED MY eyes and saw the thin man on the floor, his hands handcuffed behind him in the same position he’d had me. Someone loosened the strap around my head followed by the ones over my middle and ankles. I caught a w
hiff of Stubbing and relief washed over me, but it was immediately substituted by the pain of trying to move.
“Easy, George,” I heard Stubbing say. “You’ve been operated on by our amateur surgeon here.”
“How bad is it?” I asked.
“I’ve seen worse. It’s not bleeding too badly but you’ll need to get it seen to. I’ll patch it up for now.”
I cautiously sat up on the table – difficult with the shirt and jacket round my arms – while Stubbing got the first aid kit from the wall. I was covered in a cold layer of sweat. I looked down at my torturer and wondered if I could get away with stomping on his head. Stubbing, though, was attuned to my mood.
“Don’t worry about him,” she said. “Did you get what you came for?”
“He took it off me.”
It was all he got off me though. In between removing my stitches he’d kept asking me about Lucy and where I’d hidden her. I hadn’t told him anything, not because I was a hero, but because I’d been in too much pain to talk.
“Keep still,” Stubbing said. She ripped open a sterile dressing and placed it over the reopened wound then taped it down. She pulled my buttonless shirt and jacket gently back over my shoulders.
I got off the table and went to the sink. As I splashed cold water on my face and used the mirror to examine the damage between my eyes, Stubbing had a look round the room.
“So this is where all the action happens.” She moved to a narrow wall cupboard to my left and I heard her open the doors and whistle. I looked round. A variety of sex toys, a couple of which I recognised from the film, and one I’d posed with in the photo, were aligned neatly on a shelf in an upright position. Different colours, sizes and textures, they stood like a mismatched platoon of proud soldiers waiting to be given the order to stand easy. There were enough of them to play chess with. I’d once opened Olivia’s bedside cabinet to look for something and I’d found one of these things stuffed at the back of the drawer. It seemed odd that a lesbian would need one, but then maybe it wasn’t so odd, maybe it made perfect sense: all the benefits of a man without all the hang-ups.
“This would make your eyes water,” Stubbing said, pulling down a large pink specimen with nobbles along its length. She twisted the bottom and it started to judder obscenely. “He must spend a fortune on batteries.” She put it back carefully where she’d found it.
A noise made me turn to see the thin man getting awkwardly to his feet from his knees.
“Hey,” I shouted.
Stubbing was faster than me and in two strides had reached him and kicked him under the kneecap. I winced as he screamed and dropped back to the floor. He lay on his side making strange noises through his open mouth. I had to sit down again as a tsunami of pain spread over my shoulder. Stubbing was manipulating the limping prisoner out into the hall. I followed them to the living room. She plonked him on a leather sofa. I searched his pockets, pulling out my mobile phone, his mobile phone, some loose change, the wrapper from a Mars bar, his flick knife and a wallet containing several store cards (the man’s name was Kevin Chapman) and a wrinkled ten-pound note. There were no DVDs.
“I don’t know what he’s done with the DVDs,” I told Stubbing.
“DVDs, plural?”
I nodded. She bent down and stuck her face in Kevin’s. He sat back to create distance between them but she just followed, putting her hands either side of his head on the back of the sofa. If it weren’t for the narrowing of her eyes and lips and the throbbing veins in her neck you’d think she was about to tongue him.
“Where’re the DVDs, arsehole?”
“What DVDs?” He couldn’t control the small smile that flashed across his anaemic face. Stubbing stood up and kicked him under the knee that hadn’t been kicked. He yelled and bent over in pain.
“For fuck’s sake,” he cried, tears running down his cheeks. She pulled his head up by his hair and stuck her face back in his.
“Where’re the DVDs?”
“You’re hurting me.”
“Maybe you should break his fingers,” I said. “You know, like he did Jason’s.”
Stubbing looked at me.
“This was the guy?”
I nodded.
“Well why didn’t you say so? I wouldn’t have been so easy on the fucker.”
“You can’t do this,” Kevin whined. “You’re police aren’t you?”
“I’m off duty,” said Stubbing. “This is how I like to relax.” I was beginning to believe her as she yanked Kevin off the sofa and made him kneel on his damaged knees. She stood in front of him and leaned forward to pull up his handcuffed hands until his head was forced against her midriff. She grabbed hold of a little finger and held his arms up by it. He started to whimper. I didn’t like the look on Stubbing’s face, regardless of my disgust for Kevin, but then I remembered that he’d been alone with my father.
“Maybe he just put them back,” I said.
“Did you put them back?” she shouted, yanking his arms up.
He shook his head, tears streaming down his face.
“Just tell us where the DVDs are and this will stop,” I said, looking at Stubbing since he couldn’t see me.
Stubbing gave me a look to tell me what a wimp I was. “I flushed them,” Kevin said.
“You what now?” she said.
“I broke them up and flushed them.”
“Did Quintin tell you to do that?”
“Who?” Stubbing pulled his finger back and he yelped.
“Mr Boyd. Did Mr Boyd tell you to?” I asked.
“Why didn’t you say ‘Mr Boyd’? Yes, yes. He told me to. Please stop.”
“I interrupted him in the loo when I was let in by the caretaker,” Stubbing said. “He was standing over it flushing. I just thought he was trying to get rid of a floater.”
I went to the all-white bathroom and looked into the toilet bowl – nothing. Then I caught a glint of something on the floor behind the basin. There was one of them. He must have stashed it there when he’d been interrupted by Stubbing. I picked it up and went back into the living room. Stubbing was holding Kevin’s head to her midriff and stroking his hair like a mother who has reprimanded a child too severely and needs to comfort it. It was creepy but at least she’d let go of his fingers. I waved the DVD at her, then thought to check the date on it. It was the one from the day Trisha had died.
“You should have microwaved them, you moron,” she said to Kevin, cuffing him aside the head. Then, to me, she said, “I’m going to take little Kevin down to Parkside and book him.”
“OK, but can we talk in the other room?”
She moved Kevin over to the radiator, uncuffed his hands then recuffed one of them to the pipework. She patted him on the head and said, “Don’t go anywhere.” He scowled but it was half-hearted; he was a broken man.
We moved to the studio where Stubbing retightened her hair which had come loose in her manhandling of Kevin.
“He destroyed one DVD but didn’t have time to destroy this one.” She looked at it and I turned it so she could see the date.
“Bloody hell, George, you’re not as stupid as you look.”
“Well, it could contain something unrelated of course.”
“Yeah, but it’s more than a stab in the dark.”
“Are you going to Brampton with him?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“With what? I’ll book him for assaulting your boy, say I picked him up in a pub with that knife he’s carrying. He’ll play along ’cause otherwise it would be kidnapping and assault, but I’m assuming you don’t want to press charges?” I shook my head. “Good, my being in here would be a bugger to explain.” She rubbed her face. “I need more before I can go to Brampton. It needs to be watertight and undeniable otherwise she’ll fuck me with something bigger than all the toys in that cupboard put together. What I’m going to do is get this turd to give me something on Quintin, which might give me enough to come back here and seize his computer, whic
h might give me enough for Brampton. In fact I’ll take the DVD from you; if there’s anything on it I’ll claim I found it on him.”
I reluctantly handed it over.
“Right now we need to leave before Boyd gets back.”
I hesitated. I hadn’t got Sylvia’s tape, but with Stubbing here it was impossible. And any chance to ask Kevin what he was doing in the nursing home with my father would have to wait.
Being Stubbing she sensed my hesitation. “After you, Kocky.”
* * *
Kamal’s flatmate was mortified when he saw my wound because at first he thought his stitching wasn’t up to much and it had somehow unravelled. It took as long as it did for him to restitch me for me to reassure him that it wasn’t his fault. But there was no way I was going to go to Addenbrooke’s and explain a knife wound that had become unstitched.
Kamal was not impressed with my story, telling me that I’d ‘gone rogue’ and needed to bring things back to the right channels. I let his voice wash over me, I was dog tired and spaced out on a cocktail of painkillers and whisky. My thoughts though, were on the fact that I’d failed to recover the tape for Sylvia. Quintin would most likely be back home right now and removing everything to somewhere more secure, although Sylvia hadn’t rung me to say he was leaving. Worse still is that Stubbing was planning on going back there if she got a warrant, and the police would end up with the tape, and this time Brampton wouldn’t be able to dispose of it.
The office mobile phone went in my jacket. It was Sylvia – it was also approaching midnight.
“Hello?”
“George?” Sylvia’s voice, urgent and low.
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