‘You’re panting, Nathan.’
‘Because I’m charging down the stairs.’
‘You sound unfit. I’m wondering if you have enough stamina for the next fortnight.’
‘After months of deprivation? Only question is, will you keep up with me?’
‘I like my chances.’
Her heels clomped loudly against the stone path. She hurried along, liberated, almost skipping in the shadows, the hotel wall to her left. She kept an eye on the ground in case her bag was lying abandoned. There was no sign of it. She raised the keys and the lights flashed to disable the lock. The hotel wall expired and the car was just beyond a narrow path behind a row of neatly clipped bushes.
‘OK, I’m virtually there –’
A figure bolted from the bushes in front of her. Someone big. Dark clothes. Balaclava. He lunged at her. She dropped the keys in shock and meant to scream, but it stuck in her throat. Her strength deserted her. Her legs turned watery. Her phone was wrenched from her fingers and clattered and skidded across the concrete. Something fluffy smothered her head. One hand gripped her from behind and something sharp dug into her side. Nathan’s voice was on the ground, repeating her name.
‘Don’t scream.’ The voice was deep and gritty.
She didn’t, but she gasped and tried to pull away from the blade. He held her tight. Her heart became a cold lump inside her chest. She was forced to keep moving. Her legs trembled as the adrenaline pumped relentlessly. The point of the blade cut through her coat. She could feel it against her bare skin, scratching then tearing, then the sensation of warm liquid sliding down her side without pain. She was forced to stumble along, blind, listening to her own breathing beneath what she guessed was a small blanket. Her brain fought to keep up. She needed to unscramble it and think. They stopped. A car door opened and the knife withdrew. Her wrists were slammed behind her back and bound with something sticky, and effective.
Nathan was yelling desperately by now. Time was crucial. Think, Naomi. Her head was pushed down. Reason had abandoned her. She saw shadows across the car park floor. The light was poor. She caught sight of a white trainer behind her. She raised her right heel and jammed down hard.
He shouted out and let go. She took her chance and rushed forward. Her freedom lasted four steps. Strong hands grabbed her arms, flipped her round, lifted her off her feet and flung her over a broad shoulder. The blanket dropped down his back, but was trapped between them. She glanced up and saw Nathan running at top speed along the path. She kicked wildly and screamed. Arms constricted like a snake around her legs, securing her more tightly.
‘If you want to live, don’t struggle.’
She struggled harder. Nathan yelled, hysteria in his voice. ‘Naomi.’
‘Nathan. Help. Help me.’ Her voice was weaker than she’d hoped, panic strangling the sound as she hung upside down. ‘Nathan,’ she screamed desperately.
Her limbs had no room for manoeuvre, but every muscle squirmed for freedom. Biting him occurred to her too late. She was thrown down. Her head crashed against something solid. She thought her arms might break. The screaming of her name grew louder and the door slammed shut, compressing her into darkness.
The pain was delayed, but it hit now like a falling axe. There was an explosion in her head then pain shot through her arms. She stayed still, repeating Nathan’s name over and over. The sound wouldn’t carry. She’d been hurled into a vacuum. An engine roared to life. The faint smell of petrol and stiff carpets registered somewhere. She thrashed around, fighting to sit up. Space was too tight.
The car was moving, screeching around sharp corners, jerking her with it, bouncing her whole weight onto her arms with her right wrist shoved into her lower back. Another car was close behind. Nathan. Without the use of her arms, it was an effort not to bash her head. Her cramped legs pushed against the solid mass in front of her and she tensed, concentrating on protecting her head. Nathan was still pursuing. Only when it dawned on her that she was in the boot of a car did she feel herself slipping from consciousness. The claustrophobic darkness felt tangible. It pressed on her, every inch. The moisture evaporated from her mouth until she couldn’t swallow.
She shuffled onto her side and gasped for breath, but the harder she inhaled, the more the blackness squeezed tight. If you want to live, don’t struggle. If you want to live, don’t struggle. The words ran through her head in his voice until her brain finally caught up. She recognised the voice. The realisation came with the force of a final blow in a boxing match, and was as effective. Her fight slunk away and her mind did her the small mercy of shutting down.
2
When Naomi came round, her body was juddering with constant movement. She didn’t know where she was, but she knew she couldn’t move. Her arms ached and her head hurt. Something scratchy grazed one cheek. She opened her eyes, closed them, opened them again, wide. The darkness was as dense either way. Confused, she frantically flicked her eyelids up and down. It made no difference. The blackness was without layers or texture and didn’t improve with time.
She lay still, listening to her breathing, feeling the warmth of her own snatched breaths against her face. The stale air had nowhere to go. Her stomach was off, rotten, a nauseating mixture of car sickness and terror. The hum of the car engine was constant. Her brain raced to make sense of things and her memory threw up a tousle with a stranger and a knife. She tried to sit up, but couldn’t. In the end, she stopped struggling and focussed on breathing and not vomiting.
Her legs were the only free part of her. She groped about with her feet, connecting with her small parameters, confirming all over again that she was trapped and definitely not dreaming.
The car moved swiftly and smoothly for an eternity. It was impossible to tell how fast it was travelling and if Nathan was still following. Her senses were heightened. She was aware of every sound and every micro moment. Each one dragged like she’d never experienced. Time wasn’t measured in events or minutes, but in milliseconds. She was lying curled up on her side. Her body was screaming all over. Her arms and wrists objected to being restrained. Her legs demanded room to stretch. Her head needed painkillers. Her stomach needed to be still. Her lungs yelled for air. Close to panic, she knew the key was to stay calm and focus on breathing, one ragged breath at a time.
Her mouth watered and she swallowed a few times. Don’t vomit. The horrible feeling slowly subsided. To escape she’d need a functioning brain. She moved her attention to the car and to what was going on outside. They were trundling along in no rush now, no urgency. It sounded as though they were in a regular traffic flow. The car slowed, working down the gears then sped up again. That could only mean he had lost Nathan by now and was behaving normally to deflect attention. A bubble of panic rose and lodged in her chest, making her gasp all over again.
Calming herself took time. Think Naomi. She couldn’t have been out for long. Nathan must be trailing somewhere close. She could hear shouting outside, then laughter. It induced some hope. She squeezed her brain, imagining the scene she couldn’t see outside: regular street, traffic lights, shops or houses, pubs, people ambling along dressed up for a Saturday night. What time would it be? Maybe nine? Nine-thirty? Instinct made her shuffle around enough to raise her legs and pound hard against the lid. The volume was encouraging. She gave it all she had. An explosion of music made her jump. Aggressively-pulsed dance music that belonged in an Ibiza nightclub thumped at the tempo of her heartbeat.
Above it, a siren was growing. She stopped kicking and listened. The music dropped but didn’t stop. The siren was drawing closer. There was more than one siren. Snatching her chance, she resumed kicking, adding her voice, yelling for help. The sirens closed in until she couldn’t hear her own voice. The car wasn’t fleeing, it was slowing down. Naomi could picture Nathan with the police, or maybe following in his own car. The car pulled over and stopped. She relaxed and drew two deep breaths as the roaring sirens caught up. Time held still. She found she was holding h
er breath. Bad idea. She exhaled again and realised the sirens had screeched past. She wasn’t the focus of the emergency. They weren’t stopping.
‘No,’ she yelled, panting. ‘Nooooooo.’ She lashed out with her legs. The final hope was only a thread – strangers outside. The music pumped up to match her efforts. She adjusted her position and stiffened to brace her head. She jabbed upwards, legs working together to damage the prison roof.
This is what it must feel like to be buried alive.
The car moved off, slowly at first. It picked up speed until it was cruising along a straight road. The worry of injuring her head was replaced by the dread of the car not stopping again. The thought of heading out of the city towards quieter roads gave her legs more strength. If only she could pierce the metal barrier and create some air holes.
The car stopped only once more. Traffic lights, she guessed. After a few minutes of driving non-stop and no sign of life outside, she gave up and lay motionless, breathless, and defeated. They were still on a straight course following an endless road without bends that took her further from Nathan every hampered breath. Maybe death lay at the end of it. Naomi shuffled onto her side again and wriggled, trying to loosen the tightness around her wrists. The aching in her arms had progressed to pain. Relaxing might help. Yeah right!
And how the hell had she landed up here?
She pictured Nathan, frantic, searching the roads. She thought about her parents too, oblivious, making their way home from the reception, complaining about the food and the service in the restaurant. Her dad would be driving, saying nothing, unable to escape her mum’s whinging, consoling himself that at least he had a Rolls-Royce. Her mum would be busy righting everything in the world that was wrong, starting with their child bride marrying an older man with an awful surname she’d be stuck with for life. Naomi thought that if her mother only knew that she might not be saddled with any name or any life for very much longer, she might mind a lot less.
At last the car turned and slowed to normal street speed. It wasn’t a relief. Naomi sensed no life outside, at least not the kind of life that could offer a rescue plan. Instead she pictured a hushed unlit lane lined with colourless swaying trees and open fields beyond them, beneath the gaze of a drowsy moon. And animals scurrying around, hunting, dicing with their lives to cross the narrow road. The unlucky one in a hundred would be splattered then pecked to nothing. The food chain would go on. Maybe she’d become part of it, mutilated, dumped, a banquet to whatever roamed the English countryside after dark.
‘Stop it,’ Naomi muttered out loud, clearing her head, realising that the person driving the car was more of a threat than anything outside. ‘Think.’
She couldn’t think; couldn’t move past the painful division of her life in a heartbeat. Why hadn’t she listened to Nathan? Why hadn’t she waited for him? Why had she even left the hotel room? Because she was stupid, that’s why. Stupid, stupid. And superstitious. If the fear hadn’t been all-consuming, she’d have been completely furious with herself. Self-pity found a small gap and trickled in. There was more room than she thought. No tears came. Childhood had drummed into her that tears changed nothing.
The car slowed, turned left, then left again. It was rattling along a road with loose stones which sprayed the underneath of the car. She sensed the end of the journey and started to fantasise about breathing freely. Outside was deathly quiet. She guessed that kicking would be futile. Save energy. Her eyes were open wide. She saw only inky blackness and breathed in the dense air that felt low in oxygen – like being at the bottom of an ocean with a near-empty oxygen tank, perhaps. She was afraid of deep water. The comparison didn’t help. The car slowed again and the air seemed to thin. The promise of breathing fresh air was all she could think about now. It overrode the thought of facing whoever was driving the car.
The car stopped. The engine coughed then died. Silence. Fresh air. Let me breathe. Suddenly her dying wish was to inhale some air. Nothing moved. Seconds slithered by. Compressed into darkness, she felt each one. Still nothing moved.
Each breath was more difficult than the last. Speaking would take too much energy, but suddenly she wasn’t in control.
‘Let me out. Please. Let me out.’ She paused to inhale the silence and snatch what oxygen there was. ‘Let. Me. Out.’ The sound was diminishing with each word. Panic was taking hold again. Maybe God wasn’t so deaf. ‘Dear God, please help me. Get me out of here and I promise –’
The boot opened. Her eyes focussed on the imposing figure in front of her in the dull light. Chilly air rushed in. She drank it in desperate gulps.
The figure, still wearing a balaclava, reached forward and grasped her arms. Even in a semi-lucid state, she knew she should take in what she could. Her instincts booted up. She scribbled some mental notes. He was tall and slim. And strong. Maybe six-one, six-two, long fingers, clean nails, nothing rough. He was wearing jeans and a dark top with writing on behind a black jacket, not fastened. He hauled her out. She felt light-headed.
‘On your feet.’
The familiarity of the voice was there again. She couldn’t place it. She noticed the white trainer that should have had white laces. The dark smear must have been blood. He followed her eyes.
‘Don’t try that again. And don’t scream or I will use this,’ he said, matter-of-factly. He pulled his jacket to one side. A gun was wedged down his jeans, just like Hollywood. The sight of it had no impact. The thought of being shot rather than raped or brutally murdered was more of a relief than anything. She’d goad him to use it if necessary.
By now she was standing, eyes scanning anything worth noting, freezing the scene in her head. She was hideously conscious that her coat had fallen open. It was torn and stained heavily down one side. Now she thought about it, her waist stung on the same side. The belt was impotent. She had no hands to cover herself and he was watching her through the two narrow slits. With no hope of deciphering the colour of his eyes, the blanket was flung over her head again. She recovered her mental picture, urgently snapped in passing. It consisted only of a dim, deserted lane, no houses, a single parked car about twenty metres away, and two huge wrought iron gates in the opposite direction attached to a high stone wall either side. There were trees too. Yes – lots of trees just as she’d imagined. Crispy leaves rustled in the cool breeze. The air smelled smoky, but it was air all the same. She was still sucking it in greedily.
She couldn’t see anything without looking at the ground. The blanket was short, but hung to thigh-length. It partly covered her at least. It shielded her from the wind. Her right arm was seized above her elbow and she was towed along in the opposite direction to the gates. Exposed as she was, she tried to keep a pace behind. They were walking along a stony path until he switched course across a strip of earth where it became too dark to see at all. The anticipation weighed on her and the fear rushed in.
‘Don’t hurt me,’ she begged. ‘I got married today. Please. My parents have money. You can call them.’
Apart from growling, ‘Save it,’ the reaction was about zero. Naomi quit babbling and allowed herself to be dragged along in her heels, balance compromised from losing the use of her arms.
He stopped and pulled her in front of a low stone wall that she could see beneath the blanket. He pulled the blanket away and at eye-level was a broken railing, beyond which she could see only bushes.
‘After you,’ he said, hoisting her off the ground, instructing her to put her feet through first. Without the use of her arms she couldn’t have managed alone. He stopped assisting when he’d steered her into a sitting position inside the bars. ‘Slide down the other side,’ he said, nudging her back.
Naomi could do nothing but obey. The wall was less than a metre, she reckoned. She slid down, grazing her back, landing on broken twigs. There was nothing to glimpse through the dense bushes in front. He was through the bars in one movement and the blanket was over her head again and he was steering her sideways to the right where they emer
ged into better light and onto a path.
‘Take your shoes off,’ was the next command.
Naomi hesitated then stepped out of them. She glimpsed a hand scoop them up, with a silver wristwatch. It was almost ten o’clock. The worst thing was weighing down on small stones. Mercifully there weren’t many. The path was long and cold and straight. If they’d been heading for a house they’d have reached one by now.
‘Where are we going?’
‘Don’t speak,’ was his comfortless answer, said with no emotion, tone almost robotic.
There was nothing left to say. The machine by her side was programmed and couldn’t be swayed. She sensed it as instinctively as she suspected that something dreadful was about to happen. In her powerless state, objecting would be pointless. In the few seconds they continued the silent trek, her legs shook. The fear had invaded her so physically, she was struggling to coordinate movement.
Glimpsing snatches of the shadowy path she stumbled on until they made a sharp left turn and moved onto grass. They were weaving between . . . what? Her heart almost stopped when she caught sight of a stone slab rising from the grass. Comprehension took its time, then its toll. She’d seen a headstone. A cemetery? Her legs failed and she was yanked to her feet and shoved forward. She found herself shivering, teeth chattering. The need to speak overcame her again.
‘Please. What’s happening? Don’t do this.’
‘I said don’t speak.’
Either Side of Midnight Page 2