Stolen

by Lesley Pearse

  ‘Once the police see the men on the CCTV they’ll track them down,’ Dale said confidently.

  ‘They’d put something over the camera,’ Lotte recalled. ‘They did five rings, you see, so I thought it was you and opened the door without looking at the screen. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Five rings?’ Dale said thoughtfully. ‘No one would do that just by chance. They must’ve been there this morning and heard me do it. That means they probably found you by following me.’

  ‘How did they know about you?’

  ‘Well, I was in the papers. I think the local one even said where I worked. But it’s really creepy to think someone’s been checking up on me, or hanging around to see where I go.’

  ‘I wish I knew what these people want with me,’ Lotte said fearfully. ‘I’m so sorry you’ve been dragged into it too. And Simon and Adam are going to be frantic when they find me gone.’

  ‘It’s better I was with you than you being alone,’ Dale said stoutly. ‘Together we can outwit them.’

  Neither of the girls could see their watches to find out what the time was, and in the darkness it seemed as if they were travelling for hours. When the van slowed right down and turned sharp left, they guessed that they had left the main road. While there were a lot of bends and junctions, it was obviously still a very busy road because they could hear many other vehicles. But all at once there was no other sound but the van’s engine, and they concluded they were on a country lane.

  ‘Get ready, it can’t be far now,’ Dale said, wriggling down on to her side. ‘If I manage to make a break for it, try tripping up the one who goes to follow me – anything to give me a few extra seconds.’

  They didn’t speak again, just lay side by side, their tied hands behind them, both immersed in their own thoughts and private fears. The van made a sharp right-hand turn, then continued on much slower than before, and they heard branches scrape its sides.

  ‘A remote place,’ Dale said, her voice trembling. ‘But if I can’t get away, at least we’ll have one another.’

  The van turned right again and this time it practically had to squeeze between trees or hedges because these squeaked in protest on both sides of the van. Then it came to a stop.

  ‘This is it,’ Dale said when the ignition was turned off and they heard the men get out of the van. ‘Don’t forget, act dumb and dazed, stagger about like you don’t know what day of the week it is.’

  The girls strained their ears to hear what was going on when the van doors weren’t opened immediately.

  ‘I think they must have gone to speak to someone,’ Dale said after a few minutes of complete silence. They could hear birdsong but nothing else, and it became hotter in the van as if it was standing in sunshine.

  ‘I might not be able to get away if there’s other people here,’ Dale whispered.

  Lotte sensed that Dale was terrified she’d fail her and for some reason that made her feel stronger. ‘I’ll try and make some kind of distraction so you can,’ she said. ‘But if you can’t, then it doesn’t matter.’

  It was some twenty long, uncomfortable minutes before they heard the men again.

  ‘What the fuck were we supposed to do?’ they heard the older one with the rough voice grumbling. ‘If we’d left her there that would be wrong too. He can sort this out, I’ve done my bit and I don’t wanna go no further.’

  The girls had to assume he was talking to the younger man, but he didn’t answer. Suddenly the van doors were opened and bright sunshine flooded in, blinding the girls momentarily.

  ‘Come on out,’ the older man said, grabbing Lotte’s feet and pulling her towards the door.

  Lotte didn’t open her mouth or struggle, just allowed herself to be manhandled as if she were a rag doll, and when her feet touched the ground she slumped against the man.

  ‘Is she OK?’ the younger one asked, pausing in hauling Dale out.

  Lotte didn’t feel able to look around as that would confirm she was fit and well, but to her shock, some kind of thick cloth was suddenly slipped over her head, blotting out everything. Unable to see if Dale was now upright, or if she’d had her eyes covered too, all Lotte could do was scream and kick. Kicking with bare feet made little impression on her burly captor and he punched her in the stomach, which winded her and stopped her screaming.

  She was lifted off her feet and slung across his shoulder and she knew the precise moment she was taken inside because it was suddenly much cooler. But the temperature where she was, and even her anxiety about how Dale was faring were for a moment or two less important than a familiar smell.

  Lemon geranium. Her captor had brushed against it.

  The smell brought with it a rush of memories. It could be sheer coincidence that this aromatic plant was here just inside the front door – it was after all a very common plant. But somehow she didn’t think so.

  Dazed, winded and unable to see anything, Lotte was only vaguely aware of being carried down some stairs and dumped unceremoniously on a bed.

  ‘Just keep me and dump my friend somewhere out in the country,’ she implored her captor, her voice muffled by the bag over her head. ‘I don’t know what I’m supposed to have done, but I know she’s not involved and it isn’t fair to keep her prisoner.’

  ‘It’s too late for that,’ he said. ‘And not my problem anyway. You just keep nice and quiet and do as you’re told.’

  At that she heard the other man coming in. ‘I had to whack her again. She tried to run for it,’ he said, and Lotte felt Dale being put down beside her.

  The men left then, without another word, two pairs of feet going up stairs, the sound of a key being turned in a lock and the light clicking off.

  ‘Dale,’ Lotte said tentatively, ‘are you conscious?’ It was so frustrating having her hands tied, for she couldn’t get the bag off her head or touch her friend.

  ‘That bastard hit me again,’ Dale groaned, her voice indistinct. ‘What have I got over my eyes?’

  ‘I think it’s some kind of bag. I’ve got one too,’ Lotte said. ‘We need to get them off and undo our wrists. You keep still and I’ll try and shuffle round till my hands are by your head.’

  The smell of the lemon geranium had been like putting a key into the locked box of Lotte’s memory, and as she moved around on the iron bed and felt the rail, she knew she’d definitely been here before. Everything indicated this – the musty smell of the room, the feel of the quilt on the bed beneath her, the cool smoothness of the bed rail.

  Once she was sitting with her back to Dale’s face, a simple tug removed the bag over her head as there were no fastenings. She took hold of Dale’s tied wrists, felt for the knot in the rope and quickly undid it.

  ‘That feels good to be free,’ Dale said. ‘Two ticks and I’ll get yours off too.’

  ‘Thank heavens,’ Lotte said as Dale pulled the bag off her head. The room was dark, but not totally, for a small beam of light was coming through a tiny window high up in the wall. Just one glance at that window and Lotte knew exactly where she was.

  She looked down at the bags and saw they were thick cotton ones used for making cash deposits at banks.

  ‘Ummm,’ Dale moaned appreciatively and rubbed her wrists. ‘Apart from the black eye that’s coming and the loose teeth, I feel almost fine.’

  Lotte felt a bit sick, but whether that was from the blow in her stomach or the fragments of memory returning, she didn’t know. None of it was good.

  Dale slumped back on the bed and Lotte lay beside her. They remained there silently side by side for some time, both considering their situation.

  ‘We should explore every inch of this room, hide those bits we got from my handbag, and then plan our escape,’ Dale said at length.

  ‘There’s no need to explore,’ Lotte said quietly. ‘There’s a bathroom over there, we can wash your face and put a cold compress on your eye, but there’s no way out except through the door we came in by.’

  ‘How do you know?’ Dale a
sked.

  It wasn’t curiosity in her friend’s voice, just fear, and Lotte turned over on to her stomach and began to cry.

  ‘Don’t, Lotte, we’ll be OK, we’ll blag our way out somehow,’ Dale said.

  But the plaintive tone in her friend’s voice brought back yet another chunk of memory.

  She was on the cruise ship and Dale was trying to comfort her, tears pouring down her own face.

  Lotte felt she’d come up against a huge wall, like one holding back a dam. Only it wasn’t water it was holding back but everything that had happened to her in the last couple of years. The sights, the sounds, the people, the places, the emotions, they were all there behind that wall.

  It seemed incredible that the lemon geranium plant on the sill by the front door with its tangy, sweet smell could puncture a tiny hole in that wall, but it had, and now, as other memories like that small window and the feel of the quilt beneath them began to leak out, the hole was growing larger and larger.

  She felt that any moment the whole structure would collapse, and she would be swept away on the flood of memory.

  ‘You’ve remembered what it’s all about?’ Dale asked. She moved closer to her friend and leaning up on one elbow, smoothed Lotte’s hair back from her face.

  ‘Yes, it’s all coming back,’ Lotte sobbed. ‘It’s all my fault too for being so stupid and needy. Why was it that when I had good friends like you and Scott, and Simon and Adam, I couldn’t have just admitted to one of you that I needed some help?

  ‘They’ve stolen more than a year of my life, and my baby. They nearly stole my mind and my life too.’ She paused to get her breath, for fear was bringing on a panic attack. ‘There’s no way to get any of that back and no way to get out of here alive either,’ she finished up.

  Chapter Nine

  Dale felt an icy chill down her spine at Lotte’s words. But she didn’t ask for an explanation for she sensed Lotte was overwhelmed by returning memories and perhaps being a little paranoid. She thought it best to let her cry and get it out of her system.

  Yet Dale herself was far from calm. She was terrified, bewildered and her face was sore, but above all she was furious with herself for rushing in mindlessly to try to rescue Lotte, when what she should have done was raise the alarm.

  Her mother was always accusing her of rushing into things without engaging her brain first, and this was a first-class example of it. But rushing into love affairs, buying expensive clothes she couldn’t afford or being too trusting wasn’t dangerous. Whoever was behind this hadn’t brought Lotte back here for a chat, they wanted her silenced for good, and Dale would be going with her.

  ‘I must bathe your eye with cold water to bring the swelling down,’ Lotte said a little while later.

  Dale obediently followed her friend to the bathroom, touched that even under these circumstances Lotte was still thinking of someone other than herself.

  Once the bright bathroom light was on, Dale saw that the basement room they’d been locked into was done up like a guest room. Aside from the only daylight coming from a minute window up on ground level, and the musty odour of dampness, it was a comfortable room with pretty lilac-coloured wallpaper, a carpet in a slightly darker shade and white furniture including an iron bed. There were even prints of Edwardian children having a picnic on a beach.

  The bathroom was small, just a shower, toilet and washbasin, but it was spotlessly clean, and there were thick, lilac-coloured towels on the rail.

  ‘A five-star prison then!’ Dale joked, forcing a grin and sitting down on the toilet to have her eye bathed. ‘I just hope the hot water works.’

  Lotte gave a weak smile, but didn’t respond. She took some cottonwool balls from the cabinet, soaked them in cold water and pressed them to the swelling on her friend’s right cheek.

  ‘It looks bad,’ she said, ‘it’s already very red and swollen. By tonight your eye will probably have closed up. But there’s some painkillers in the cabinet. I think you should have a couple.’

  The way she spoke was as if they were away in a bed and breakfast for the night, and it made Dale angry. She caught hold of Lotte’s wrist. ‘Never mind painkillers! Start explaining. Where is this place? Was it where you were held before?’

  ‘Yes, it is. It’s not far from Chichester,’ Lotte said. ‘A village on the harbour.’

  Dale nodded. ‘So it’s all come back?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Lotte brushed her friend’s hand off her arm and put her hands to her forehead as though it hurt, tears welling up in her eyes. ‘There’s too much to take in at once, and some of it so shocking.’ She broke off, looking at Dale with stricken eyes. ‘But you know that, don’t you? Is that why you didn’t try to remind me about being raped?’

  Dale stood up and moved to embrace Lotte. ‘I couldn’t bring myself to,’ she said softly. ‘I even thought it was best you never remembered. Was it the men grabbing you that brought it all back?’

  ‘No, just the scent of a plant.’ Lotte sobbed against Dale’s shoulder. ‘Smells take us back to all kinds of places, don’t they? The floor polish at school, the first perfume you ever wore, tar, bonfires, but the plant I smelled today when the man brushed against it, I bought it.’

  Dale frowned, not understanding. ‘Explain?’

  Lotte backed away from her, looking around the room wildly. ‘You must lie down.’ She grabbed Dale’s arm and led her back to the bed, pulling back the quilt so her friend could lie beneath it. ‘You’ve had a really bad shock today.’

  Dale did feel a bit wobbly with shock, but she wasn’t prepared to let Lotte off the hook that easily. ‘So have you. Don’t try and stall,’ she said a little harshly. ‘Tell me about this place.’

  ‘I have to go right back to Ushuaia,’ Lotte said with a desperate look on her face. ‘That man stole a part of me and that led to everything else.’

  Dale rolled her eyes with frustration. All she wanted to know now was who this place belonged to and why they were being held captive. But Lotte looked so demented she thought it best to humour her, so she lay down and pulled the quilt over her. ‘OK, fire away!’ she said.

  ‘I couldn’t talk to you about the rape on the ship,’ Lotte began and her eyes filled with tears again. ‘I wanted to, Dale, but it was too raw, too horrible, so I talked about it to Fern. I felt she and Howard were my saviours because they rescued me.

  ‘For the first few nights, every time I closed my eyes I thought it was happening again. I’d feel him forcing his way into me, smell his body odour and bad breath. Fern would hold me tightly. She’d tell me I was safe and got me to pray with her.’

  Dale snorted with derision.

  ‘I know you thought she was a weird holy roller,’ Lotte said, and she got up on the bed and sat with her back against the footboard looking at Dale. ‘But I felt safe again with her, loved and cared for. She kind of made up for my cold mother, all the injustice when I was a kid. She told me that the only way I would keep that safe, loved and cared-for feeling was if I offered up my life to God.’

  ‘So she’s behind all this?’ Dale asked incredulously. ‘She captured you and kept you here? In the name of God!’

  ‘It’s far more complicated than that, so let me explain it my way,’ Lotte begged her. ‘You need to understand how I was, to see the full picture. Remember when I went back to work on the ship? To all intents and purposes I was over the rape, a bit bruised, but recovering. Is that what you believed?’

  Dale nodded.

  ‘I wasn’t, Dale, I was a mess inside. I wanted a mother, I was like a small child lost in a busy town, I was scared of everything and everyone. I forced myself to go ashore with you and Scott a few times and I might have acted as though I was enjoying it, but in fact it was an ordeal, a kind of terrible penance to have to be in a bar drinking and dancing. I began to see it, like Fern, as the Devil’s way. I understood then why some women become nuns. I wanted to retreat from the world.’

  ‘Why on earth didn’t you tell me
this?’ Dale asked.

  ‘I was afraid you’d think I was cracking up,’ Lotte said simply. ‘Maybe I was, I don’t know. You are one smart and sassy girl, you don’t suffer nutters or neurotics gladly, and I wanted to keep you as a friend, so I made out I was fine.’

  ‘Oh, Lotte!’ Dale sighed. ‘I’d really like to say I would’ve understood, but if I’m honest I suppose I would’ve become impatient with you. But then I’m a selfish cow. I wanted you out whooping it up with me, not dwelling on something I could hardly get my head around.’

  Lotte half smiled and reached forward to smooth her friend’s hair from her face. ‘I love your honesty,’ she said. ‘But you are a much nicer person than you realize.’

  ‘Get on with the story,’ Dale said. ‘I couldn’t bear it if they dragged us out of here to execute us and I hadn’t heard it all.’

  ‘Please don’t joke about that,’ Lotte reproved her. ‘It’s not so far from the truth, we certainly are in real danger. But you need to understand what happened to me, and about them, so that we can put our heads together and find a way to survive.’

  ‘Shit, Lotte, that’s a bit heavy!’ Dale exclaimed.

  ‘It is heavy,’ Lotte said, reaching out for a pillow to put behind her back. ‘Stop me if you lose the track or you don’t understand something.’

  Dale suddenly realized this was the real deal. It wasn’t something exaggerated in the newspapers, not a bit of gossip or supposition. Lotte was ready to tell her what had really happened, and she had to pin her ears back and take it in. ‘OK,’ she said, wriggling down further under the quilt. ‘Fire away.’

  ‘You remember I told you I was going home to my parents in Brighton? I knew I could never do that and now you’ve met them you’ll understand why. But I didn’t think I could burden Simon and Adam with myself either, for they’d want me out partying with them, and I wasn’t up for that.

  ‘I didn’t really have a plan as such, but I kind of thought I would go down to Dorset or Devon, somewhere rural and pretty, and hole up till I was strong again.’