by Pip Drysdale
But I can do this. Because I know about car boots. I’ve written about them. There’s an emergency release catch somewhere. I squint in the dark searching for something that glows: nothing. I lift my hands to feel along the perimeter. But I can’t see anything and beneath my fingertips is just carpet.
Panic grips me as I feel around some more but I can’t find it.
Where the fuck is it? What good was my fucking column?
The tail lights.
That’s my other option.
I can push out the tail lights. Wave to an oncoming car.
Or I could, if I had use of my hands.
I can’t even reach for the jack near the spare tyre beneath me.
My breath gets faster and faster and my lungs burn.
And it’s hot. It’s so fucking hot. So much hotter than I thought it might be. Did those YouTube videos I watched ever talk about how fucking hot it is in a car boot?
Panic rushes through me like a volt of electricity. Realisation hits.
He’s taking me to the second location.
My stomach turns to oil and my ears roar like the ocean.
Because everybody knows the second location is where everything bad happens.
I clench my eyes shut. How can this be happening?
I’m never going to get to go to Japan and see the maple trees. I’ll never see Camilla again, or have sex with another beautiful stranger in the rain on a rooftop. I’ll never have my heart broken in that way that only sounds like a good idea when you know it’s already happened for the last time.
Who will tell Mum?
What will they think happened to me?
I struggle for air.
In. Two. Three. Four. Five.
Out. Two. Three. Four. Five.
In. Two. Three. Four. Five.
And then I go limp. Denial, shock, something pulsing through me. Like it’s not really me in this car boot. It’s somebody else.
This can’t be real.
Think, Harper, think.
I wrote a column once on how to get out of duct tape – hands over your head, pull down hard to your hips and back. I even tried it out with Camilla. It wasn’t that hard.
But I can’t do any of that lying in a car boot. I can barely move and hope is slipping from my grasp.
But Camilla. Find My Friends. Maybe she will check it when I don’t reply, see I’m… where the fuck am I? I do some mental calculations. He knocked me out. How long have I been unconscious? It could have been two minutes or two hours. How far are we from Paris now?
How close to the second location?
And I realise: this is it, this is how normal women like Matilde, like Sabine, like me, end up on the front page of a newspaper. How we end up just another dead girl in a murder podcast.
My breath gets faster and I’m sweating. I don’t want to die I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die. My eyes burn with tears and I’m going to pass out from the heat.
Uh-oh. We’re slowing down.
I swallow hard, shake my head to cover my face with my hair in case I blink and force my limbs to go limp.
And then I lie and wait for the boot to pop open.
Click.
A cool rush of air. It smells of soil and pine needles and rain – we’re in the countryside somewhere – and the sound of some sort of insect fills the air. Arms reach in and grab me. Forcefully, I’m hoisted over his shoulder. I crack open my eyes to look around and he slams the boot shut. It’s Thomas. I recognise the scent. He’s holding a torch and the light sweeps across the number plate. The last two letters are AA.
It’s the same number plate as that car I saw speeding off on the night Sabine was taken.
My pulse thuds in my ears and I struggle to stay limp as we move to the passenger seat of the car and he reaches for the handle. Who is in the passenger seat?
What are they going to do to me?
But when the door opens and the car’s interior light flicks on, all I see is a big black bag. Thomas reaches for it and then slams the door and we move away from the car.
Something isn’t fitting together properly. Because it’s just me and him here.
And he was dating my neighbour. And I know from his number plate that he was there the night Sabine died. And he was on that bridge with Matilde.
I think back to his iMessage. There was nothing in there from Agnès. Nothing about me. Nothing about Le Voltage. And if Agnès Bisset had decided I knew too much and it was time to get rid of me, I’d be dead by now. There would be no value in keeping me alive.
No, something about all this – the car boot, the countryside, and every murder podcast I’ve ever listened to – tells me Thomas did this alone.
My brain struggles to recalibrate.
If Thomas did it alone then it was him who planted the white covering near the crime scene not Agnès Bisset. Him who was trying to frame Noah. Was he covering his tracks after that article about Paris having a serial killer came out? I think of the evidence in the most recent instalment: blunt force trauma to the back of the head. And my own head is throbbing right now… And Noah was the perfect person to frame because he was already in the papers as being questioned…
But how the fuck did Thomas get that white sheet of fabric to begin with?
We’re walking up steps now. Thomas’s footsteps are heavy with our combined weight and the wood creaks. A door opens and we move inside. It’s dark aside from the torchlight then flick. The light switch. A yellow buzzy glow fills the room. I’m facing the door and I can see the windows. They’re covered in thick black fabric, duct taped to the walls. The same sort of duct tape I got at Franprix for the CCTV at Le Voltage.
He drops me on a bed and I lie there as though still unconscious, watching through cracked lids and strands of hair as he takes the big black bag over to a small kitchenette. There’s a rusty-looking sink, one of those gas hotplates for camping, an old kettle and a dirty looking bar fridge. To the side of the fridge is a long wooden counter with three plastic trays on it. There are some metal tongs. Some sort of equipment I vaguely recognise, a drying rack and a small sort of washing line with analogue film hanging from it.
It’s a photographic darkroom.
He’s brought me to a darkroom.
When I saw those books on Henri Cartier-Bresson and Man Ray on his bookshelf, this is not how I saw things playing out.
He moves to the big black bag and the sound of it unzipping echoes in the silence. Every murder documentary I’ve ever watched, every podcast I have ever listened to, flickers in my mind. What the fuck does he have in that bag?
And I don’t know why he’s doing this. I don’t know what’s going to happen.
But I do know this: I must not cry.
I must not scream.
I must not show fear.
Because men who kill get off on one common thing: control. And so the best way to stay alive a little longer is to not give him what he needs.
Then he’ll keep trying to get it. And that will buy me time.
Chapitre trente-huit
I never realised how big Thomas was before now. You could fit three of my biceps in his. Maybe four. And he’s tall, too. Looming over the rusty sink, having to bend himself in half just to put a litre of milk in the buzzing bar fridge. And where the hell did he get milk? Did he stop at a corner store while I was bound and gagged in the boot to buy that? Or did he calmly grab it from the fridge at work when he saw me on his security app and knew he was in for a long night?
But still, a litre of milk is good. A litre of milk means he thinks he’s going to be here for a few days. He’ll need multiple cups of tea. That means he’s not going to kill me tonight.
These are the things I am consoling myself with.
I watch as he turns on the tap to wash his hands. My wrists are sore from the duct tape and the hair over my eyes is tickling my face. But I lie dead still and focus on not moving. I can’t let him know I’m awake until I have figured out how to play this.
I piece together the room from what I saw when we came in and what I can see now through the thin veil of my hair. Because there’s a way out of everywhere, if you look hard enough. I just have to find it. A window to be broken, a heavy object to use as a weapon, something. I could probably use the thick fabric covering the windows to protect my arm while I break a window, if I could just get free. There’s nothing I could use as a weapon around me, but there are three flickering, dusty globes, buzzing from the wooden ceiling. If I could somehow reach them, maybe I could break them, use them…
I look down at the lumpy bed I’m lying on. It has sheets and a duvet cover with pale yellow daisies and that has to be good. It’s not a bare stained mattress. Sheets are humane. Sheets are hopeful. But also: it looks like a girl’s bedspread and that makes my stomach twist. Who did it belong to? Matilde? Some other girl they haven’t found yet?
But still, the milk.
The tea.
I watch him wash his hands, like germs are the most dangerous thing in the room, and think back to last Wednesday night: me watching Thomas through those flimsy curtains. A flash of him grabbing Mr Tall and Creepy by the throat. It seemed so protective back then, but now everything looks different. Because he wasn’t protecting me. He was protecting himself. He wanted to know who the hell I’d led to his house: the police, a journalist, who?
He didn’t want to get caught.
Shit.
The taps turn off and he moves back to the door and outside. I can hear him opening the car doors. Shutting the doors.
Oh god, what the hell is he doing out there? What’s he getting from the back seat?
A flash of the apricot sunset reflected by the Seine behind that bridge. That jacket. Matilde’s blonde hair shining. All caught on camera.
Was that why Thomas killed Sabine?
But how did he know she had caught him on video?
And my neighbour… how does she fit into all this?
And Agnès Bisset? Everything she’s been doing.
And Hyacinth. Will she run my story? Will they arrest Agnès? I think of the evidence I sent through. Everyone will think Agnès killed Sabine.
And so nobody will be looking for Thomas.
And nobody will be looking for me.
And, even if they are, they sure as shit won’t be looking for us out here.
No. The first seventy-two hours that are so vital in a missing person case will tick past. Soon it’ll be too late. And when they find my body, the media will do what the media do and I’ll be famous for a few days if they can even tell it was me.
But if they can’t, if Thomas makes me unrecognisable, or harder to find, the French police won’t take DNA and if they do they won’t bother to match it to me. Because I will be diluted on that ever expanding list of people who disappeared this year.
My heart is beating loud in my ears and tears threaten to fall, but I won’t let them. I need to figure this out.
I have to get out of here.
A car door slams loudly. Footsteps.
Boots scraping over gravel. They get louder and louder as they approach. The floorboards squeak with his weight outside, then the door creaks open and all my cells recoil simultaneously.
But I know what I have to do.
‘Thomas?’ I try to say, but it comes out like a mew. I’m moving slowly, like I’m just waking up, looking over at him through confused eyes. His face is the colour of cement and he’s carrying my handbag over his shoulder. The video is in my bag. All the evidence I have. Nobody will see that video of him with Matilde if I die.
He stares at me and shuts the door. I look around, like it’s the first time I’m seeing things, and try to talk again.
I look down at my hands and fake-notice they’re tied up. I look up at him, eyes wide as I struggle to sit up.
My breath is quick now, just like it should be, given the situation. But I’m not freaking out quite as much as I might be if this were the first I knew of what he’d done. Of course, I could get out of this. I could hold my hands over my head and pull them down and break the tape, but then what? No, I’d best save that party trick for later. Make him think I’m helpless.
‘Thomas?’ I mew again from beneath the tape.
‘Harper, you need to stay calm,’ he says, in his polite way.
I nod. And he comes over to me, reaches for one corner of the tape and pulls it off my mouth.
‘What’s going on?’ I ask as he watches me. I need to humanise myself. Maybe I can negotiate with him.
But he ignores me, and instead just empties my bag onto the table. The clattering sounds of plastic and metal hitting wood: Sabine’s drive, my lipstick, a tampon, some wrinkled receipts, a couple of pens, the bobby pins, my article on that memory stick, Anne’s bottle of pills and my locksmith tools.
But every cell within me clenches, because all I really notice is: no phone. No way for Camilla to find me.
I bite back tears. I will not cry.
‘Please let me go,’ I say to him. Sweet. Kind.
He ignores me, picking up the hard drive, putting it in his pocket, then the locksmith tools.
‘Please?’ I try again. ‘This isn’t you.’ But he just ignores me. And so I change tack. ‘Thomas. The least you can do is tell me why I’m here.’
‘Shut,’ he starts slowly, ‘the fuck up.’ He’s yelling by the end of that sentence, his jaw set, like I just said something terrible. And his face is almost purple it’s so red. There’s a little vein popping out of his left temple, spittle flying from his mouth. Then he turns to face me. Rabid. Like he’s spitting out the truth and I need to hear it. ‘This is all your fucking fault. None of this is how it was meant to go.’ I’ve never seen him like this. Not even when he was on the street, yelling at that guy Agnès had sent to follow me.
I don’t know how to react, I don’t want to make it worse.
So I just sit there, watching him, digesting the phrase ‘how it was meant to go’.
None of this is random. He had a well-laid plan. A plan he’d used before.
An echo of Stan’s voice: You look just like the dead girl we aren’t allowed to write about anymore.
Matilde Beaumont and I are a ‘type’.
My stomach twists as I think, Is this how he does it? He approaches a woman in a safe space. With me it was a laundromat. Where was it for Matilde? A supermarket? Did he ask her about which brand of coffee he should get? Strike up a rapport? Take her for a walk on that bridge? Is that what he gets off on? Making us trust him and then watching the horror in our eyes when we realise what he really is?
And then what? Does he always sleep with us, or was that just me? Does he do it then and there, or does he offer to drive us home, sedate us with a drink, drive us out here… to this? Or does he do it a few days later? Grab us in the dark?
Whatever the plan, it worked with Matilde.
But what about me? If he’d picked me out, chosen me, why didn’t he kill me?
And then my throat burns with bile because I know the answer.
He didn’t kill me because he couldn’t.
I’m thinking back to that night in bed with him, when I told him I’d sent a photograph of him to my mother. No wonder he tensed up. He knew what he was planning, but now my mother knew what he looked like…
He needed to reassess. Take a beat. Create some distance between us first. Take me from somewhere that couldn’t be linked to him.
I’m biting back tears; there’s heat on my cheeks and I can taste salt.
And then, as quickly as it came on, his face relaxes and goes back to a normal colour.
He moves over towards me, a small kind smile on his face. ‘I’m going to have to go out,’ he says. ‘But you should get some sleep.’ And then he pulls back the daisy duvet cover for me to get in.
And the sheet is white, but there’s a stain. A streak of brownish red.
Blood. Is that blood?
My skin burns hot.
And even th
ough nobody can help me, I do the one thing I wasn’t going to do: I open my mouth and scream.
Chapitre trente-neuf
I wake up with a mouth that tastes like the barrel of a gun: metal. No, not metal, blood. My head throbs and my face is sore and swollen. My eyes crack open: there’s a trickle of red on the pillowcase.
A flash of memory: his hand coming down hard to silence me.
I lie still, controlling my breath as I listen. But there’s nothing, just the hum of the bar fridge. I slowly, cautiously, glance around the room.
He’s not here.
My wrists aren’t taped together anymore, which on the surface sounds like good news, but it’s not, because I knew how to get out of duct tape. But now one hand is free and the other is attached to the bedframe above my head with a handcuff. I sit up, inspect it. It’s your stock-standard-buy-it-off-eBay type and I could get out of it easily, if only I had a paperclip, a bobby pin, anything.
But I don’t.
I glance across at the wooden table. He’s taken my bag and everything that was in it, bobby pins included. Not that I could reach it from here anyway.
My glance flickers around the room, searching for a means of escape. There’s a thin crack of grey light coming in through the space under the door, and the insects outside have been replaced by chirping birds. It’s morning.
And I don’t know when he’s coming back.
There has to be a way.
I look back at the handcuff and try contorting my hand, pushing my thumb up against my palm, and pulling. But it’s no use. My hand is too big and now it’s red and there’s a bruised mark around my wrist from the pressure. I think back to the details about Matilde in the paper: damage to her wrist believed to have been caused by some sort of restraint…
Shit. Shit. Shit.
But think, Harper, think. Even if I do get out, what then?
I look across at the covered windows, to the locked door and then the rusty kitchenette: there must be something, somewhere in here, that I can use.
