It was a long, agonising job. The carpet was stiff; it wouldn’t roll back, and I had to try to shove it up with one hand while I worked. I managed the wing nuts eventually, but the tyre caught on something when I tried to lift it, and there was no light and no room to move, and the bloody thing seemed to weigh half a tonne. I managed finally to worm my arm beneath it, and then the back of the car swung sharply around a corner, sending me crashing into a wall of my metal prison. The tyre fell back across my wrist and I cried out in pain.
‘Ow! Shit! Rob!’ But even if he could hear me, or sense me, or whatever it was that we did, what could he do? I didn’t know where I was, so how was he supposed to? My breath came in shrill, panting sobs and hysteria rolled over me like a wave. Stop it! Stop wasting time! I thought frantically. Think!
Tyre kit, first. I shoved the wheel grimly back up to hunt for it. There – my fingertips found a limp vinyl envelope filled with tools. I dragged it towards me, scraping the skin off my knuckles, and dropped the tyre back with a painful grunt. Exploring the envelope’s contents by feel I found a wheel brace, too light to be of much use as a weapon, a tinny little jack and a pencil-thick length of metal thirty centimetres long with a hook on one end. In theory, you attached the hook to the jack and twisted to raise it – in practice it barely worked, being poorly designed and made of the cheapest and crappiest steel known to man, but a cheap and nasty metal rod is much better than no weapon at all.
I tried to force the end of the rod into the crack where the boot closed, but it was too thick. I hammered away doggedly anyway, not because I thought it could work but as a panic-diverting exercise. My head ached savagely and occasional stars burst in front of my eyes.
Then something I’d seen on the internet – probably one of those Every Woman Needs to Read This emails that well-meaning people forward – came back to me.
If you’re in the boot of a car, kick out a tail light, stick your arm out and wave. The driver won’t see it, but everyone else will.
Leaning up on one elbow, I groped for the nearest corner of the boot. Smooth, cold metal met my fingertips, curving seamlessly from the door to the car’s sides. Maybe in some cars the tail lights are get-at-able from the inside of the boot, but not in mine. I dropped back onto my side, grimly wrestling the panic back down. Shit. SHIT. Come on. Think. And then I remembered something else from that self-defence article.
If someone tries to get you into a car, fight like a wildcat. Your chances of survival decrease significantly once you’re in your attacker’s vehicle.
Somehow, for some reason, that steadied me. I found the metal rod, picked it up and pushed it down the back of my jeans, where people in movies carry handguns. Isaac wasn’t a professional; it wasn’t like he’d practised kidnapping people. And I’d heard, somewhere or other, that girls often fight ineffectually because subconsciously they don’t want to hurt anyone. Well, I’d hurt him. I’d explode out at him in a flurry of teeth and fingernails, armed with a length of steel. I’d bite bits out. I’d go for the eyes. I’d be like Lisbeth Salander. I was not going to die today.
* * *
After what seemed hours, although I had no way of judging, the road beneath the car turned from tarseal to gravel. This didn’t tell me much, since over half the roads in Northland are unsealed, but it did suggest we were going somewhere remote. Well, of course we were.
Unloading girls from car boots just isn’t the sort of thing you do in public.
Where, I wondered, was Isaac taking me? Did he have a destination in mind, or was he just driving randomly, looking for a suitably lonely patch of scrub where nobody would hear or see anything unusual? Surely he thought he’d killed me, he’d panicked, and he was trying to hide the evidence. Surely this wasn’t a premeditated plan of kidnap and murder. But what would he do when he discovered he hadn’t killed me? Would he panic again and decide he’d have to? Was he, in his current mental state, capable of realising that he couldn’t possibly get away with it, and that pleading guilty to beating someone up is a whole lot better than pleading guilty to murder?
The car slowed and then stopped, and I lay as tense as a coiled spring, half on my stomach with my head pillowed on one arm and my hair hiding the rest of my face. My plan, such as it was, was very simple. Pretend to be unconscious, wait for an opportune moment, attack like a maddened wasp, win, escape by car. Easy.
The car reversed, stopped again and turned sharp right. It drove on, slowly now, and I heard the scrape of vegetation underneath. We must be nearly there, wherever there was.
Deep breaths, I thought. Steady, now . . .
The car stopped, and the engine was cut. Eleven seconds passed – I counted them – and then I heard the driver’s door open. The car shifted as he climbed out. I waited for the slam of the door, but it didn’t come. There was no sound of footsteps, no movement, no tiny noise of someone feeling for the boot latch. Nothing.
Lying in the silent darkness I counted to a hundred, and then two hundred. Was he still here, or had he gone? Was he twenty metres off behind a tree, digging my grave? Was he standing silently, mere inches away, listening? The suspense was appalling, especially because if he was gone, I was wasting valuable seconds that could be used to try to break into the back seat of the car. But then if he wasn’t, he’d see me, and I’d have lost the advantage of surprise.
I’d count another hundred, I decided, and then move. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three . . . I made it to forty, and then I couldn’t bear it any longer. I rolled myself over and began trying to force my hand up between the car’s back seat and the roof of the boot. There was a catch somewhere, if I could reach it, and if I found it I could fold the back seat forwards and climb through.
I struggled and shoved and swore under my breath for what felt like a long time. I could, with considerable difficulty, worm my fingers up behind a seat back as far as the second knuckle. But not past the joint – the gap was too small . . .
Eventually I thought of pushing the seat forwards with my feet. It gave me another millimetre or so, and my knuckles grated through, leaving some skin behind – but where was the damn catch? Come on, I thought frantically. He’ll see, come on!
I couldn’t do it. I could just brush the edge of the catch with a fingertip, but I couldn’t get my hand any further through the gap.
Kick it! People kick in doors all the time. But he’ll hear . . . just do it. Go. Try. Bracing myself with my shoulders against the rear wall of the boot, I bent my knees and kicked forwards as hard as I could. There was a dull thump, and the car rocked.
He’ll hear it, he’ll come . . . Shut up. Again.
And finally, sobbing with pain and despair at being so bloody feeble and incompetent when my life might very well depend on doing this, I broke the catch. The back seat gave beneath my bruised heels, and there in front of me was a rectangle of light. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
I threw myself at that gap like a woman possessed. Please, God, let him have left the keys in the ignition . . .
He hadn’t. Eyes screwed into slits against the light, I pulled myself up to look out the car windows. Sunlight, head-high baby pines, a sandy clearing rutted and scored with the marks of bulldozer tracks – and Isaac watching me through the rear windscreen, both hands resting on the top of the boot. His face was utterly expressionless.
My heart gave a great, sickening bound of fear, and I felt it hammering frantically, nauseatingly, beneath my ribs. For a few awful seconds we just stared at one another, and then he moved, slowly and carefully, like a stalking cat. He came around the end of the car, never taking his eyes off me, and reached for the handle of the right back door. I hurled myself headlong at the other side of the car, wrenched the door open and launched myself out with a wild, flailing leap. I staggered as I landed and fell on my bad knee, but I was up again in half a second and running wildly through the pines, neither knowing nor caring where my feet fell, jumping fallen branches like an Olympic hurdler. I didn�
�t waste time looking back; I just ran, as fast as I could.
He caught me before I’d gone a hundred metres. Fear lends your feet wings, alright, but you need more than fear alone for any sort of sustained effort, and I’d been concussed and half strangled that morning already. He hit me from behind in a flying tackle and I fell headlong. I kicked free and lurched forwards again, but he threw himself after me, squashing me flat against the rocky, uneven ground. He lay panting for a few seconds, and then heaved himself up onto hands and knees, kneeling agonisingly on my thighs.
I started to cry, face down in the dirt.
‘Stupid bitch,’ he panted.
‘H-hurts. Please, Isaac –’
‘This is all your fault.’
‘Please,’ I sobbed. ‘Please.’
He slid his knees off me, one on each side, took me by the shoulders and rolled me onto my back. He held me there, pinned beneath him, and I stared up at him. So much for fighting like a maddened wasp; I was done. He was bigger and heavier and stronger than me, and if he wanted to strangle me right there and then, there wasn’t a thing I could do to stop him. My metal rod had slipped down the leg of my jeans; I could feel it against the back of my knee, but it may as well have been on the surface of the moon for all the good it could do me.
‘I’d have done anything for you, Lia. And now you’ve gone and fucked everything up.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I whispered. Keep him talking . . .
‘It’s too late for sorry,’ he said. There were great patches of sweat beneath his arms and around the neck of his T-shirt, and the muscles of his neck and arms were strained tight as wire ropes. His eyes were awful; the pupils dilated so widely they looked black.
Don’t disagree with him – don’t annoy him. ‘What – what should I have done?’
Isaac lowered his face towards mine, bearing his weight on the hands pinning my arms. There were three long scratches down his left cheek that I must have put there earlier that morning. ‘You should have treated me with some fucking respect!’
‘I – I did.’
‘You did not!’ he screamed, his breath hot and sour on my face. ‘You fucking cheated on me!’ He pushed himself back upright and pinned first one of my wrists and then the other beneath his knees. Then he sat back down, settling his weight across my hips, and slid sweaty hands up past my shoulders to circle my throat.
I was past terror now; past reason. Robin. I could feel him, somehow, not far away. It was nice, I thought confusedly, not to have to die alone. I shut my eyes. Love you.
‘Look at me,’ Isaac shouted, bearing down with both hands on my bruised windpipe. ‘Look at me!’
I opened my eyes again, although I couldn’t see him through the tears.
‘This is your fault, bitch. It’s all your fault.’ He was trying, I realised, to talk himself into it, or to provoke me into screaming and struggling. He couldn’t bring himself to strangle me in cold blood.
‘Please, Zac,’ I whispered.
The crushing weight on my throat eased just a fraction. And then came the noise of a vehicle, bounding along the rutted forestry track.
‘Help! Over here! Help!’ I shrieked, thrashing wildly with my legs. Isaac’s hands tightened convulsively, but only for a second. Then he stumbled to his feet, pushing himself up off my throat, and ran. His right foot caught me in the side of the head as he went.
I rolled over onto my side, desperately trying to breathe. Slowly and painfully I lifted myself onto one elbow, and then onto hands and knees. The approaching vehicle made a final, snarling rush, spluttered and died as the engine was cut. Doors slammed. Raising my head, I saw my careless, unflappable twin running at me full tilt, his face white and terrified. He fell to his knees beside me and hugged me fiercely. ‘Lia. Oh, God, Lia –’
‘Rob,’ I sobbed, clinging to him like a limpet. ‘You c-came.’ It was a good minute later that it occurred to me to ask, ‘Where’d he go?’
‘Shit,’ said Rob, looking up. Then, ‘It’s alright, Jed’s got him.’
Jed? I raised my head from his shoulder and followed his gaze. Away behind me through the young trees, Jed had tackled Isaac to the ground. He got up on his knees, pulled Isaac’s head back by the hair and hit him, so hard we heard the crack of bone on bone. I felt a savage thrill of exultation, followed immediately by fear that he might actually do the despicable little shit some serious damage. ‘Stop him!’ I gasped.
‘Why?’ said Rob. But he got up and ran towards the two men, while I climbed slowly to my feet and followed him. It took me a while to get there; by the time I arrived Rob had pulled Jed up and was holding him back by both arms. Isaac lay at their feet, spluttering and gurgling, with blood streaming from a broken nose. His left eyelid had split like the skin of a ripe plum and was swelling rapidly. He looked like he’d been hit with a mallet.
‘Jed,’ I said.
Jed turned to look at me, and Rob, either judging that the urge to beat Isaac to a pulp was going off him or not caring much one way or the other, let his arms go. His chest was rising and falling quickly and his face was tight with fury. He’d reopened the newly healed scar on his knuckle, and blood trickled from the ends of his fingertips.
‘Not again,’ I said.
He made a noise somewhere between a laugh and a sob, reached out with his left arm and pulled me tightly against him, dropping his face into my hair. I could feel his heart pounding, slowing gradually as he pulled himself back together, and it occurred to me that it didn’t matter that he had a bipolar wife in Thames and I had a café in Ratai – such things were minor details, not to be allowed to stand in the way of our future happiness. There’s nothing like a near-death experience for bringing the important things in life into focus.
These profound reflections were interrupted by my brother. ‘So,’ he said conversationally, ‘should we deliver fuckwit here to the nearest police station, or just do the world a favour and hit him on the head with a spade?’
There was a hysterical gobbling noise from the ground near our feet.
‘Shut up, arsewipe, no-one’s asking your opinion,’ said Jed, lifting his head but tightening his arm around me. ‘Is there any rope on the back of the ute?’
‘I’ve got a few tie-downs,’ Rob said.
‘Do we take him in, or ring the police and get them to come here? They’ll want to look at the scene, won’t they?’ I said.
Jed extracted his cell phone from his hip pocket and looked at it. ‘No reception,’ he said. ‘We’d better take him in.’
I stepped back and looked around. ‘Where is this, anyway?’
‘Somewhere out the back of Kaihu,’ said Rob.
‘Kaihu?’ It sounded vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place it.
‘North of Dargaville.’ He prodded Isaac with a booted foot. ‘Roll over, you. Face down.’
‘What are we going to say?’ I said suddenly.
‘About?’ Jed asked, busy wrapping his bleeding right hand in the bottom of his T-shirt.
‘About how you guys found me.’
Rob made a face. ‘“It’s a twin thing, Officer.”’
‘Yeah, they’ll love that,’ I said, crouching down to fish my metal rod from the end of my jeans leg, where it was digging into my ankle.
He shrugged. ‘If you’ve got a better idea I’d love to hear it. What is that?’
‘I got it out of the tyre-changing kit. I was going to whip it out and poke him in the eye . . .’ I shivered.
‘We’ll hold him down for you if you’d like to do it now.’
‘Rob,’ I said, shaking my head at him.
‘Yes, heaven forbid Tosser McGee here might feel scared or intimidated. Couldn’t have that. Kick him in the balls if he tries anything, Jed.’ And he stomped away to get the tie-downs from the back of his ute.
* * *
The two of them tied Isaac’s hands behind his back and his feet together, and bundled him into the boot of my car with Rob’s long crowbar wedged against the ba
ck seat in place of the catch I’d broken. I didn’t help; I sat down on a stump and concentrated on not going to pieces. My headache, temporarily forgotten in the joy of rescue, had come back with a vengeance, and I felt exceptionally fragile and weepy.
‘Do you want to come with me or Jed?’ Rob asked, squatting in front of me so our eyes were level.
‘I don’t – I –’
‘You’d better come with me; you’ll be further away from turd-face.’ He took my hands and pulled me up.
We headed south in convoy beneath the bright morning sun; Jed leading in my car, and Rob and I behind him in the ute. The dashboard clock read nine eighteen as we turned off the forestry track onto a narrow gravel road.
‘It’s so early, still,’ I said wonderingly. ‘D’you think the police’ll believe us? Isaac looks worse than I do.’
‘Like hell he does – look in the mirror,’ said Rob.
I pulled down the sun visor and looked in the mirror on its back. A white-faced, hollow-eyed girl looked back at me, dried blood in her tangled hair and a ring of livid red marks around her throat. One nostril was fetchingly outlined in blood and my pale blue T-shirt was stained and torn. ‘Oh. Good,’ I said, my mental image of Jed being convicted of assault receding slightly.
Rob grunted and handed me his cell phone. ‘Better ring Mum when we’ve got reception.’
‘She knows?’
‘Mm.’
‘How? What happened at your end?’ I asked, watching the little pine trees flicker past.
‘I got that you were afraid, so I rang you in case you were reading another scary book,’ he said, looking at me with a hint of a smile. ‘Then I went to the café to check. No car, so I went to Jed’s. He was asleep; said he hadn’t heard you leave. Then we found your note, so I decided that perhaps he had nothing to do with it after all.’
‘Of course he didn’t!’ I said indignantly.
‘Yeah, well, I wasn’t in the most coherent frame of mind.’
I thought about my recent terror and what being on the receiving end of it might have felt like, and shuddered. ‘No, I bet you weren’t. Then what?’
The Pretty Delicious Cafe Page 20
