by Louise Voss
He removed his hand from her throat and his voice changed, became gentle. He stroked her cheek with a finger. ‘Let me show you, sweetheart.’
Sweetheart.
He lifted his own glass and took a gulp, keeping the liquid in his mouth. Then he leaned forward and pressed his lips against hers. Amy kept her mouth shut at first, but he jabbed her beneath the table in her churning stomach with his fingers, hard, and her lips opened involuntarily.
The warm wine poured from his mouth into hers.
She wanted to spit it out, to spit it in his face, but she forced herself to swallow. Another cold wave of nausea rolled through her and she had to stop herself from puking.
‘That’s the way. Delicious?’ he said, pulling away.
Amy nodded, her stomach roiling, tears rolling down her cheeks.
He set aside the glass and studied her. ‘So like your sister. Beautiful – except for that.’
He looked down at her tummy and she pulled it in, as though trying to make it disappear. What was wrong with her stomach? Her skin was covered with goose bumps, even though it was so hot in the room. He moved around the table and crouched beside her chair, thrusting his hand with difficulty down the front of the sheer corset until he grasped between his finger and thumb her gold belly bar, the little star with the tiny diamond that usually made her feel so sexy. So that was what he had seen through the fabric, seen and disapproved of. Glancing down, Amy thought his hand looked like an alien moving under the front of the corset, or a child rummaging in a Christmas stocking. She braced herself for him to move his hand further down, between her legs.
‘I don’t like this,’ he said. He seemed to be talking to himself. ‘You shouldn’t have this.’
With sudden force, he ripped it out.
Amy screamed. The pain was searing, making her vision flash white. Blood poured from the hole he’d made, staining the front of the white corset crimson. She could not prevent herself sobbing.
He stood up. ‘Shut up!’ he shouted in her face.
She realized she couldn’t stop. Not this time.
‘Shut the fuck up!’
He stomped away across the room, shouting, ‘You’re ruining it. Shut up!’
Amy looked down, trying to see the damage, trying to be quiet. She sniffed back snot, the taste of his saliva and the wine in her mouth, a great throbbing pain in her belly. Blood blossoming across the corset as though she had been shot in the stomach.
‘Nathan, don’t!’ she cried, without realizing what she’d said. He stiffened. ‘Nathan? You don’t even have the courtesy to call me by my right name?’
He came back across the room again, into the candlelight. His face was twisting with tension, as if he was trying to control his anger. He was breathing quickly, loudly, completely different to the suave, controlled man she had met for coffee.
Eventually, he sat back down. Amy’s stomach was throbbing with pain, blood oozing thickly through the silk corset like porridge through a sieve. He noticed and handed her a napkin.
‘I forgive you,’ he said. Then his face twisted into that strange, cold smile again. There was excitement there, but no warmth. ‘I have something for you.’
He went over to the corner of the room, picked up what looked like a suit carrier and unzipped it, producing a dress. Black velvet. He brought it over to Amy, draping it across two hands as if it was the finest fur. It stank, not of mothballs, but of body odour and dust, as though it hadn’t been washed for years. In the half-light, Amy was sure she could see some kind of revolting crispy white stain on the hem.
‘Put it on,’ he ordered.
Despite the stench and the heat in the room, Amy was relieved to put something else on, to cover herself. She moved slowly to try to manage the pain in her gut, wincing when the dress came into contact with the wound.
When he saw her in the dress his pupils dilated and his breathing changed. He was aroused.
Fear spiralled up inside Amy. He hadn’t yet done anything to her sexually – but now he was definitely aroused. She wrapped her arms around her breasts.
‘Sit down.’
So maybe he wasn’t going to rape her. Yet.
He pushed a bowl towards her. Prawn cocktail. It stank even worse than the dress, making her stomach flip over. It took all her self-control not to vomit.
‘Tuck in,’ he said, and she lifted the spoon, her whole arm shaking.
‘I love you,’ he said, and her head jerked up with shock. There was something experimental about the way he said it, as though he was trying the words on for size. Was he some inadequate creep who couldn’t get a woman? It seemed so odd, from what she remembered of meeting him before. He’d seemed so harmless then, and now it was as though several layers had been stripped away, leaving his ugly psycho self, exposed for her to see. The word alien came to her mind again.
He was looking expectantly at her and she thought, No, surely not … He wanted her to say it back?
Nathan’s bullying tactics suddenly faded into insignificance in the face of this pure insanity.
Stalling for time, she took another mouthful of the prawn cocktail, forcing herself to block out the fishy smell and swallow the food, to try to keep some strength in her body.
‘I love you,’ he repeated insistently, not taking his eyes off her for a second. She dug into the bowl and took another, bigger mouthful. Then she paused, pretending to think, and leaned in towards him as if for a kiss. She made out that she was chewing the prawns and then, with all the force she could muster, spat them out, right into his face.
‘You fucking psychopath,’ she screamed, jumping up and throwing the table over before she had time to think about the wisdom of what she was doing. ‘Let me go! LET ME GO! LET ME GO! LET ME GO!’ Her voice raised in pitch and volume until she was screaming the words over and over at the top of her lungs, even though it made blood pump out of her bellybutton and she felt that she was going to explode in a red haze of panic and pain.
45
Declan
Friday, 26 July
Declan took a step back as Gary hammered on the door, yelling Amy’s name. The scream had undoubtedly come from within the house – deep in the house, from the volume of the cry. But there was no doubt: it had been a woman’s scream.
‘Hold on,’ he said. ‘You think Amy Coltman is in there? Not Becky Coltman?’
Gary turned and stared at him as if he wasn’t really seeing the other man, his eyes wild with panic. ‘Yes, Amy has been trying to find Becky and figured out that she went to this high-class sex party …’ He broke off, staring up at the windows.
‘And?’
‘She came to see me at work but rushed off before we could talk. She dropped this list –’ he pulled a sheet of crumpled paper from his pocket and waved it in his direction – ‘and when I looked at it, I saw what she must have seen: Lewis’s name.’
‘You know Lewis Vine?’
‘Yeah, he’s a friend. Amy’s met him. But he never … he never told me he went to that sex party, even though he knew we were looking for Becky. Amy texted me to say she was meeting up with Daniel, who was one of the men Becky went on a date with, and she also sent me her Find My iPhone details so that I could trace her. It led me here.’
‘Hang on, what’s Find My iPhone?’
Gary explained. ‘I couldn’t believe it when the dot on the map showed the iPhone was here, at Lewis’s. The only explanation I can think of is that Lewis and Daniel must be the same person.’
Gary banged on the door again while Declan went up to the front window to try to look in, but the curtains were drawn tight despite it being late afternoon. Taking a few steps back, he saw that the upstairs windows were also heavily curtained.
‘Oh, God,’ Gary was saying. ‘Amy. What’s he doing to her?’
Before Declan could say anything else, Gary dashed away, heading towards the right-hand corner of the house. Declan had no choice but to follow, jogging after him.
They followed
a path along the side of the huge house, both of them scanning the wall for a way in. But there was nothing but a sealed wooden door and more windows, all with their curtains pulled so tightly closed that not a chink of daylight would have penetrated the interior. The screams had ceased, which made Declan even more fearful about the fate of the woman inside. Gary sprinted off ahead of him again, and Declan ran after him until they reached the back of the house.
A vast, neat lawn stretched out ahead of them, and a small cluster of buildings stood nearby – a summerhouse, a little shed, and what looked like a converted stable. In other circumstances, it would have seemed idyllic, peaceful, but now the silence was eerie. He couldn’t even hear any birdsong, just the faint sound of cars passing in the distance. Adrenaline had rushed through his body so rapidly that he was dizzy, but the constant throbbing in his shoulder had gone.
Gary stood by some French windows, rattling the handle, but they wouldn’t open.
‘The key’s in the lock,’ Declan pointed out.
Gary looked around and, as Declan took out his phone, ran off to the shed. As he kicked at the shed door, Declan called for backup, giving his location and briefly explaining the situation. Claygate was the kind of place with just one full-time police officer plus a couple of PCSOs – police community support officers – with the nearest station two miles away in Esher. As he disconnected the call, Declan watched Gary kick open the shed door then emerge a few moments later holding a spade.
He marched up to the French windows and lifted the spade above his head.
‘No,’ Declan ordered, trying to grab the shaft of the spade. ‘I’ve called for backup. They’ll be here soon.’
Gary shook his head, but lowered the spade. ‘Soon is too long. He could be killing her right now.’
He pushed past Declan and rammed the head of the spade into the glass pane immediately next to the door handle, reaching through to turn the key. As he pulled his hand out, it caught on a jagged piece of glass that cut deep into his skin. Blood sprang from the wound, trickling over his wrist and up his forearm, but he didn’t seem to care. He pushed open the door and they entered the house. Declan hoped Gary hadn’t hit a vein, though it would serve the stupid sod right if he had.
Gary moved fast, striding through what Declan believed would be called a summer sitting room, with a strange mixture of antique and IKEA furniture, and cardboard boxes piled in the corners as if the owner had got bored halfway through unpacking. He caught Gary’s arm.
‘Be careful.’ He wasn’t sure why he was whispering – all the banging and smashing of glass had probably sent Vine running through the front door, if he had any sense.
Gary slowly pulled open the door, the spade held aloft in his other hand. He peered through into a long hallway. It was dark, but some sunlight had followed them into the house through a fanlight over the front door, illuminating half a dozen erotic photographs on the wall – naked women, all blondes, each with a similar look to Amber and the Coltman sisters.
‘Where the fuck is he?’ Gary said.
They crept along the hallway, listening at the two doors they passed. No sound. Gary opened one while Declan tried the other. Two completely empty rooms with closed curtains.
The hallway led into an entrance hall, with a staircase that wound up to the first floor.
Declan called up the stairs: ‘Police.’ But unsurprisingly, there was no response. He opened the front door and left it standing open, so when backup arrived it would be easy for them to get into the house. It would also mean it would be easy for Declan and Gary to get out if they needed to.
Gary went up the stairs and Declan followed, their footsteps silent on the thick plush carpet. He felt foolish, with Gary leading the way everywhere, and deliberately overtook him as they reached the top of the staircase. More drawn curtains. More erotic pictures on the walls. A woman being eaten by a crocodile. But apart from the images, the house had the air of a place that wasn’t really lived in. This huge house should be a home to a big family, kids and dogs running about. At the very least, a Hugh Hefner-style mansion. But it felt like an empty, unloved gallery. It seemed hard to believe that a scream had rung out from here earlier. There was no sign of life – or recent life – at all.
Declan and Gary explored the first floor, opening doors and peering into rooms.
‘There’s no one here,’ Gary said.
Declan began to speak but Gary looked over his shoulder and edged round him, jogging back down the stairs. Declan followed him, round the edge of the staircase, until they reached another set of stairs – stairs that led down.
‘We should wait for backup,’ Declan said again, quietly.
But Gary ignored him and Declan followed; he knew that he would have gone down there himself anyway. Who knew how long backup would take to arrive?
Once at the bottom of the tiled stairs – no plush carpet here – it was as if they had left the house and entered another building entirely, as the space opened out around them. It was much more than a basement, more like a bunker. The acoustics felt completely different, as though the subterranean ions had rearranged themselves into new formations. The corridor stretched ahead of them for thirty or forty metres. Opening the nearest door, Declan found himself looking at a narrow swimming pool. He stepped into the room and stared at the still turquoise water shimmering beneath bright spotlights.
Gary was already striding down the corridor, banging on doors, leaving small blood splashes in his wake.
‘Lewis,’ he shouted. ‘Where the fuck are you, you freak? Where’s Amy?’
At the end of the corridor, Declan could see an open door. Gary paused – he must have noticed it too – before walking towards it, the spade raised. There was music coming from the room, something from the eighties that Declan hated. Hurrying after Gary, he glanced at his phone. No signal. Shit. He knew he should turn back, go upstairs and wait for the other officers to arrive, but he was compelled to go on, to look into the room.
Gary stood there, looking around with horror. A small table lay on its side, a half-eaten meal scattered around it, and there was a bed in the corner with handcuffs attached to the metal headboard. Aside from the luxurious-looking satin bedclothes, it looked like a prison cell, or the kind of room you’d find in a nuclear shelter.
‘Look,’ said Gary, pointing to the floor near the upturned table. Blood. It was dripping off the bed, spreading out in a small but viscous pool around a dirty discarded plate.
From the other end of the long, silent corridor, a door slammed shut.
46
Amy
Friday, 26 July
Amy screamed in Lewis’s face, drawing on all the anger and desperation inside her and channelling it into that cry, a cry that contained all the pain she’d felt since Becky had disappeared – no, before that, since the horror-days with Nathan. Years of locking down her emotions, of bottling it all up inside her, of being nice, strong, normal Amy – she hit Lewis with it now, this primal scream that bounced off the walls of her cell and caused something to start banging above their heads, an insistent thump thump thump that Amy barely registered as she let Lewis have it, have it all.
He grabbed her by the throat and squeezed hard, trapping the scream inside her.
‘Shut up,’ he yelled. ‘Shut …’
He stopped dead, looking up towards the ceiling, noticing the banging from above and letting go of Amy’s throat, sending her stumbling backwards until her shoulder blades hit the wall in two painful spikes.
As she coughed and tried to get her breath back, rubbing at her windpipe and wiping her eyes with the back of her hand, she looked around for a weapon, but before she could focus on anything, he grabbed her wrist and pulled her over to the door, deftly stepping around the small puddle of blood on the floor from where he’d ripped open her bellybutton.
He dragged her down the corridor, hissing at her to stop struggling, his grip on her wrist so strong that she pictured the bones inside snapping. The ba
nging from upstairs had stopped and she wanted to scream again, ‘Come back, don’t go … I’m here,’ but before she could gather enough breath, Lewis opened a door at the end of the corridor, close to steps that must lead up to the house, and shoved her inside.
It was a galley kitchen, like one you might find in a small fast-food restaurant, stainless-steel surfaces gleaming dully beneath a fluorescent strip light, the stench of the food he’d served her hanging in the air.
He pushed her up against one of the worktops, grabbed a knife from a block that stood on the surface and pointed it at her face. ‘Make a noise and I’ll cut your tongue out.’
Over his shoulder, she could see the other knives in the block. If she could distract him, get past him, she could get hold of one and …
He noticed her looking and a thin smile appeared on his face.
‘Stop looking at those or I’ll cut your eyes out too.’ He reached behind him and moved the block of knives into a cupboard above his head. She wondered where the Taser gun was and realized, with some relief, that he must have left it in the room he’d just made her leave.
‘Want to threaten any more of my body parts?’ she asked, her mouth so dry the words came out half formed.
‘Don’t tempt me, Amy.’
‘Why are you doing this?’ she said. She was praying that the banging at the door was the police. ‘Maybe we can talk, you can make me understand. Maybe we could go out for dinner properly sometime. That would be nice.’
He sneered at her. ‘You’re not The One.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You wouldn’t understand. I thought you might, but you don’t. You’re not who I thought you would be.’ He wouldn’t meet her eye and, even though he was holding a knife to her throat, he struck her as vulnerable – a pathetic and awkward man with a whine in his voice, a million miles from the wealthy-businessman image he portrayed to the outside world. ‘I should never have compromised.’
He looked at her now, his face twisted with contempt. ‘You’re not all you’re cracked up to be.’
She was bewildered. What the hell was he talking about? She opened her mouth to ask him but heard a noise overhead. It sounded, faintly, like something smashing.
