The lift dinged loudly and the doors slid apart. A man stepped out, looked around, spotted her and called over to her.
“Miss Sahlberg?” He had a nasally voice, almost like he had a cold.
She stood quickly, checking everything was covered.
“Yes, that’s me.”
“Mr Saxton has asked me to take you up to the meeting room. He’s stuck on a conference call with the States right now.”
Audri followed the man into the lift and stood beside him. He pressed a button and the doors closed, the polished steel finish revealing their reflections. He stood rigidly beside her, offering no small talk, his arms by his sides like a soldier. The only movement came from his hands, which he clasped shut and then opened wide, fingers spread fully before repeating the action again and again. He was of average height, with a long gaunt face, a brown mop of hair in some kind of deliberately styled mess. He wore plain black denims and a white formal shirt, open at the neck. Instead of shoes he wore thick black boots, their top line visible through his jeans just above the ankles. Audri surmised that he didn’t own a formal suit, which was a little strange, given the high-class nature of Derek’s business and the amount of effort, and money, that Derek put into his own designer wardrobe.
The man’s eyes strayed to take in her reflection and she looked down to avoid eye contact, her peripheral vision able to observe him purposely studying her. Almost as if assessing her. She wondered if he suspected she was completely naked under the mac. But that was unlikely. Unless Derek had told him for some reason. No, she was just being silly.
“You’re working late,” she said, breaking the uncomfortable silence.
“Yes, it is late, isn’t it? Just been catching up on some paperwork while it’s quiet. Lucky for you I was still here, or Derek would have left you sitting in reception with that lecherous night security guard.”
“Huh?”
The doors slid open and he marched out, no elaboration on his unwarranted comment. She stayed put, wondering what the hell he’d meant by it. Was he just warning her about the guard? Which was odd, as the guard had shown no interest in her whatsoever. She had a sixth-sense when it came to men being attracted to her. The taxi driver for one. And Derek. Four months ago she and Derek had finally got it together for the first time, but she’d been aware of Derek’s desire for her right from her very first minute as the family au pair.
But the guard downstairs? Definitely not. He was more interested in completing his crossword.
The lift doors began to close and she jumped out. She caught up with Derek’s colleague and stayed one step behind him as they walked down the empty corridor. After four or five closed doors he opened one and stood back to allow her to pass. She looked past him.
It was a nondescript meeting room. Just an oval beech wood table with six chairs circling it, all green coloured leather with matching beech armrests. There was a window at the far end with its blinds drawn. A fake tree sat in one corner.
The man held out a brown A4-sized padded envelope. Her forename was scrawled in black ink capitals on the front. “Derek asked me to give you this, Audri.”
She recalled that he’d addressed her as Miss Sahlberg earlier. Now she was Audri? She thanked him and entered the room.
She could feel something lumpy inside the padded envelope.
“Right, I’m off home now. As you said, it’s late. I’m sure Derek will be down in a few minutes. Is there anything I can get you before I go?”
“No thanks. Please go.”
“Would you like me to take your coat?” He flashed her a sardonic smile.
He knew. And he wanted her to know it.
“Sure, thanks.” Her voice was more cheerful than she felt.
She slowly reached for her belt, not taking her eyes off him. His smile transformed into a leer.
She carefully pulled at the belt.
He licked his upper lip.
“Actually, it’s a bit cold in here. I think I’ll keep it on.”
His shoulders slumped and he turned to leave the room.
“Goodbye Audri,” he said over his shoulder. “I hope you have a good meeting with Derek.”
He pulled the door shut as he left.
“Pervert,” she said to the door.
She realised that he hadn’t given her his name. Mr Pervert would do. Wait till Derek gets here. He was in for a massive dressing-down over discussing their relationship with Mr Pervert.
How dare he.
She was surprised though. Derek went to great lengths to keep their liaisons secret from Hilary. Why would he risk discussing anything with colleagues from work? She supposed it had to do with his ego. She knew boys loved boasting about their sexual conquests. And it seemed that men did too.
Idiot.
But he was an idiot who was pretty good in bed. For an older man he kept himself fit. No flabby belly and huge tree trunks for arms and legs. She enjoyed his experienced techniques. He was able to pleasure her in ways she had never dreamed possible. Best of all though, she felt incredibly tiny in his arms, a surprisingly tender embrace for such a muscular man, especially in the minutes after climax, when they lay there panting.
She remembered the envelope in her hands and ripped it open. A sheet of paper fell out along with some folded over black cloth. She opened the cloth. A blindfold.
She smiled. This was new.
Audri read the printed sheet of paper. There was no addressee or signature.
I hope being secretly naked outdoors has turned you on just as much as the thought of you naked in my office has made me rock hard with anticipation. Follow these instructions to the letter. I promise it will be worth it. Tonight, I’ll take you to a place you’ve never been before.
Here’s what I want you to do:
1) Take off your coat but leave your shoes on. Leave the coat on the table.
2) Place one of the chairs in the centre of the room, its back to the door.
3) Straddle it, facing the door. You’ll be sitting in the chair backwards. Your legs will be wide apart.
4) Put the blindfold on.
5) Wait for me.
6) Don’t peek!
Audri giggled to herself. This looked like fun. She’d defer moaning about Mr Pervert until after. First things first.
Obediently, she grabbed one of the chairs and positioned it backwards to the door, then took off her coat and threw it on the table. The air-conditioned office was colder than she realised. On the chair, the armrests looped from the seat base to the back. She’d have to manoeuvre her legs in through each loop. Derek hadn’t thought that through! Or maybe he had. She’d almost be trapped in the chair. She nearly fell backwards doing it, but quickly caught her balance. She re-read the instructions. Yes, she’d done it right. She threw the sheet of paper onto the table. It missed, floating under it. She blindfolded herself.
Everything went dark.
Audri waited.
She could hear the hum of the air-conditioning. She felt goose bumps appear on her arms. She wasn’t sure if it was because of the cold or because she was excited. And a little nervous.
What if Mr Pervert came back? He’d be in for a huge shock, that’s for sure.
Or what if Derek’s conference call went on for ages? She couldn’t hold this position comfortably for very long. The armrest holes were smaller than she realised and were pressing into her thighs. What if the blood flow constricted and she got pins and needles in her legs? That would be no good.
The draught of air reached her skin before the slight sound of the swinging door reached her ears. She smiled and said, “Derek?”
“Sshhh, Audri.” It was his voice. Thank God. She relaxed.
She heard the door click back into place. She could feel him standing in front of her, presumably looking at her naked body.
“Did I do everything okay, Derek?”
“Sshhh, Audri,” he repeated.
She felt hands on her shoulders. He stood right behind her. H
is hands were warm and clammy. She leaned back, trying to rest into where she thought his crotch would be. She felt his hardness press onto her back. She smiled and raised her arms to wrap them around his neck. She wanted to pull him down so that she could kiss him deeply, but he caught her wrists half way and firmly pushed her hands down by her sides. She felt both his hands reach down across her shoulders. He cupped both her breasts, fondling first, then gripping hard and squeezing them like he was kneading bread dough. He pinched both nipples roughly. She gasped, flinching with the unexpected pain. One hand strayed further down, toyed briefly with her neatly trimmed pubic hair and then continued to its objective. She’d been turned on continuously since leaving the house naked, and now two of his fingers glided easily into her. She leaned back on him to make the angle better but he withdrew his fingers and stepped away from her.
Silence.
What now?
Maybe she would hear his flies unzipping. Or maybe he would instruct her to masturbate for him again. He liked that a lot. Or maybe he was just watching and waiting for her to do something.
What should she do?
“Derek?” she whispered.
Nothing.
“Derek, are you there?”
She waited, but nothing happened.
She decided enough was enough. This game was becoming too weird for her. Her nipples throbbed from the pinching. He’d never hurt her like that before. For his massive size, Derek was a gentle giant.
She reached up and removed the blindfold. Her eyes automatically squinted in the bright fluorescent light. The door was closed. She turned her head to look for Derek behind her. Catching a flash of movement out of the corner of her eye, she instinctively recoiled, but it was too late. A dagger was nearing the end of its swipe right at her face. The fist enclosing it didn’t extend and so it was the base of the protruding black metal handle that was going to connect rather than its huge double-edged blade. She quickly turned to one side but it smashed into the side of her head regardless, with the force of a battering ram.
Audri’s whole body slumped and she felt herself slowly list to one side. Her limbs wouldn’t respond to the instructions from her brain. Her scissored legs, still trapped in the chair, and her body’s imbalance caused the chair to tip over. The floor rushed up towards her. This time her face took the force full on. She heard rather than felt the bones in her nose crack and crush. One arm was trapped under the chair at a strange angle. Feeling returned to her body. And with it, the pain.
Almighty pain.
Audri cried out and, hearing she was able to make a noise, opened her mouth and took the deepest ever breath to make the loudest ever scream. Swiftly, a hand reached down and shoved a white cloth into it, gagging her. She forced the scream out anyway, but it was muffled and useless. With her working hand, she tried to rip the gag out but the knife flicked at her wrist. Her arm dropped limply to the floor, blood pumping from the clean gash.
Audri sobbed.
What had she done wrong? All those times with Derek had given no indication of this. For the first time she questioned her liberal, free-as-a-bird, risk-seeking attitude to life. She thought forlornly of Mamma crying on the pier as she’d left on the ferry towards Denmark. Audri realised she wanted to go home. She would stop running away. Stop punishing her. Live a normal life. Be with her sisters. Finish school. Meet boys her own age. Get a real job. Grow up.
Most of all she wanted to say sorry.
A boot came rushing towards her face. It was as if she was the rugby ball lined up for a penalty. She knew then that no apology would ever reach her Mamma.
The last thing she heard, before blessed unconsciousness took hold, was Derek’s voice quietly saying, “Sshhh, Audri.”
TUESDAY
CHAPTER 7
The microwave binged. Jenny removed the bowl of porridge and stirred in a generous helping of honey. She felt she’d earned it, having pushed herself hard this morning during her regular morning jog around Marble Hill Park, which formed the grounds of the nearby Georgian villa, now a tourist attraction. She’d vowed years ago to visit the grand eighteenth-century house but had somehow never found the time. According to the leaflet pinned to the corkboard in her kitchen it had been built by King George II, when he had been the Prince of Wales, for his mistress.
She’d enjoyed the route through the park, especially the riverside stretch with glimpses through the ash trees of boats moored peacefully on dark water and parkland on the opposite bank of the Thames. With so much nature around her, she always found it hard to imagine she was running within the heart of the country’s capital. The rain had finally eased off during the night, which had made this morning’s run more pleasant than of late, but she had still returned soaked through from a combination of mist and dew, persistent puddles and a well worked up sweat.
The radio on the breakfast bar was tuned to Capital Radio. The DJ handed over to the newsroom for the 7:30 a.m. bulletin. As Jenny ate her sweetened oatmeal, she heard talk of the failing economy and the Prime Minister’s visit to India. As she spooned in the final mouthful, she heard reference to her case.
Police have launched a murder enquiry after finding the body of Anna Parker, a twenty-year-old music student, in an eighteenth floor meeting room of an office building in Paddington. Speaking now is Detective Chief Inspector Da Silva of the Met’s Homicide and Serious Crime Command…
The voice changed to a recording of her boss.
We have carried out initial enquiries and are in the process of forensically examining the scene. There have been no arrests at this stage and enquiries continue. We are keeping an open mind as to the motive. Next of kin have been informed.
The newsreader’s grave voice returned.
An incident room has been set up at Holborn Police Station and anyone with information is asked to call in. They gave out the phone number and switched topics. And now on to the sport . . .
Jenny zoned out of the radio and picked up her notepad. It was covered in her scrawl and had a series of tasks she needed to do this morning. She’d written the list in the middle of the night, after waking up from a restless sleep. Her dreams had been full of images of Anna Parker’s lifeless body, pools of blood, Disney princesses and being stuck in a lift. All to the accompaniment of frenzied cello music. When the lift in her dream had started to free fall she’d sat bolt upright, completely awake.
She knew from experience that if she just laid her head straight back down sleep would escape her. This type of lucid dreaming was her brain’s subconscious attempt to make sense of the day’s events and organise outstanding issues on the case. Over the years, she’d learned to embrace it. She turned the light on, grabbed the pen and notepad she kept on the bedside table and wrote down all of the actions she could think of relating to the case. It was her way of letting her brain know that it had done its work, everything was written down, delegated safely to paper. It would be there in the morning when she awoke.
She turned the light off and lay back down.
But half an hour later, sleep had remained elusive. She was still wound up from the case and needed to take her mind off it all.
She had just the answer.
A few minutes later, wrapped in her thick, comfy dressing gown, Jenny lay sideways in her living room armchair, her legs draped over the arm. She wore a headset with a protruding microphone. A wire connected it to an Xbox One controller cradled in her hands, her thumbs and fingers a blur of activity, as she controlled what she saw on the television in front of her.
“Hank, he’s behind that building,” she said into the headset. “I’ll draw his fire and then you come up behind him. Ready . . .”
In the headset, she heard an American accent in reply. “Roger that.”
On the screen, she jumped out from behind a wall and ran across the warzone. Zombies suddenly appeared out of nowhere, but she took them out with three well-aimed shots right between their eyes. She heard bullets ricochet behind her as she jumped for s
afety through a broken window.
“Nice work, Jen,” said the voice. “It worked. I got him.”
“Brilliant,” she replied. “Okay, Jackal, where are you?”
“I’ve got your six,” said a female voice, also American. “Turn around and you’ll see me.”
“Oh right, there you are. Okay, let’s clear this building. Last time I fought against Arctic Dragons, one of their team holed out at the top of this building. He stayed silent for ages and then took me out in the open with his sniper rifle. I reckon he’s trying the same trick again.”
“Okay, let’s go for it. Cover me.”
Four years prior, in a rare fit of familial support during some leave from work, Jenny had babysat her twelve-year old nephew, Damien. She had not been able to get much more than the odd grunt out of him, as he was engrossed in playing a violent war game on his games console. In an effort to connect with him, she asked if she could have a go. He laughed patronisingly but obliged her. He showed her how to use the controller to move around and shoot everything that moved. The graphics were amazing and she found herself drawn in completely. At the end of the evening, Damien even commented, minus the condescending tone, “Not bad for a girl.” It had become a new foundation for their relationship.
Invasion of Privacy: A Deep Web Thriller #1 (Deep Web Thriller Series) Page 15