by G H Mockford
She had already tidied the flat, got the meal ready, and bathed. Everything was perfect. Except for the Hoover she had left by the window. She would have time to put it away after getting dressed.
Reaching into the dresser drawer, Sarah took out a matching set of simple lacy black lingerie with pink trim, and a pair of lace top hold up stockings. Sarah wanted to put on something that would make her feel beautiful, sexy and confident.
She was just finishing rolling a stocking up her slender leg when she thought she heard something. Maybe it was Alex at the door, but she realized it couldn’t be him because he’d have to buzz her so she could let him in. Suddenly aware he could arrive at any moment she quickly swapped legs and put the other one up onto the bed, pointing her toes so she could roll the next stocking on as quickly and easily as possible.
‘Well, that’s just about perfect,’ came a muffled voice from Sarah’s bedroom door.
‘How did you get in here?’ she demanded. Her heart beat faster as she looked at the stranger. He was wearing a black hoodie and a mask painted to look like a snarling wolf. It looked ridiculous, and she had to stop herself from laughing. He dangled a large bunch of keys from his hand in response to her question.
‘Leave, now, and I won’t call the police,’ Sarah said, removing her foot from the bed. She snatched her robe to cover herself up.
‘And miss the wonderful view?’ he said as he leered at her. She could clearly see the lust in his eyes as well as in the growing bulge in his tight jeans. ‘Besides, I hardly think you’re hiding a phone anywhere in that outfit. I, on the other hand…’ He reached down to his right ankle, ‘am hiding this.’ He slowly withdrew a knife and twisted the blade. ‘Maybe me and my friend can have a little look and see if you are hiding anything.’
Forty-Two
Sarah threw her robe at the man like a gladiator throwing a net. It fanned out and dropped over his arm and knife. Before he could react, she snatched her quilt with both hands, ran at him and threw it over him too. Wasting no more time, she ran out into the hallway.
Sprinting into the dining area, she turned sharply between the dining table and the units in the kitchen. Her stocking clad feet slipped on the smooth, hardwood flooring and before she could do anything about it, there was nothing but air beneath her. She came crashing down, hard, landing on her right arm. Pain shot through her.
The sound of the table scraping across the floor made Sarah look up. It was the masked man. With a powerful tug, he spun it behind him, sending it crashing into the wall, causing a picture to smash on the floor. The light weight chairs around the table scattered across the floor. He reached down for her. She wasn’t fast enough to stop him grabbing her hair.
In an instant, her training came flooding back. Before she was a teacher she had worked in a bank and all the staff had been trained in self-defence. Sarah knew the most important thing, apart from running, was to act fast. As soon as she felt his fist close around her hair, she spun on her back and swept his legs out from under him. He fell to the floor beside her. His head cracked against the kitchen units. His grip on the knife slackened, and it slipped from his grasp and spun away across the floor.
Without stopping, Sarah pulled back her leg and kicked her attacker in the face as he leaned against the back of the cupboard. Scrambling to her feet, she ran around the end of the units and snatched up the heavy, ceramic roasting dish that was full of potato wedges and vegetables. She jumped onto the worktop and took a long wide swing at her attacker’s head. Food spilled out behind it like a comet’s tail.
But he was no longer on the other side.
He was behind her.
The attacker grabbed her leg. He tugged, pulling her off the worktop. Sarah landed on the kitchen floor on the flat of her back. The wind hissed from her lungs. Dazed, she rolled against the hot oven door. The dish was still in her hand. She had to make use of it.
Taking her left ankle in both of his small, but powerful, hands, he dragged her into the lounge area. His grip was vice-like as if he had practised strengthening all the muscles in his hands. Sarah kicked out at him with her right leg. He used one of his hands to knock her blows aside. Now she had more freedom of movement, Sarah swung the dish at his shins, but he was too far away.
She looked past him and at the French windows. The open French windows! Maybe someone outside would hear her if she called for help.
Sarah began to scream.
With his foot, her attacker pushed the coffee table out of the way so he could create more room, and hissed, ‘Shut the fuck up, bitch. Shut up!’ He grabbed one of the large throw cushions off the corner group, and he was upon her before she could do anything. His left hand pinned her wrist to the floor, and he wrenched the empty dish from her grasp. Disarmed, he rammed the cushion over her face.
Sarah roared into the cushion until she ran out of breath, and then panicked for a moment when she found it hard to breathe back in. She kicked her legs about and tried to pull the mask down and scratch his face. His legs pinned hers to the floor and then, to her horror, his hands began to pull and tear at her knickers.
Forty-Three
Despite the cushion over her head, Sarah could hear buzzing coming from the phones in the kitchen and the hallway,
It was Alex! It had to be. He was using the intercom. Thank God, she thought.
The attacker froze, and then looked back over his shoulder at the phone in the kitchen. His weight shifted slightly giving Sarah a little more freedom to move and breathe. She reached out for a pot plant next to the TV, and her hands closed around the dense, glazed pot. Without pausing or thinking, she brought it up onto the back of the man’s head. He tumbled off her and rolled against the sofa, pushing it across the carpet.
Sarah grabbed the mask and pulled down.
Her hand snapped back from the mask as if her fingers had been burnt. She looked upon the face of the man who was trying to rape her. Their eyes locked as she took in his familiar features.
Overcoming her fear, Sarah scrambled to her feet. He lashed out and tried to grab her, but his hands slid down her fast moving nylon clad legs. She sprinted through the dining area, bent down and scooped up his knife. She pointed it back toward her attacker. It was surprisingly light.
He was already on his feet and running toward her, faster than she expected. Without taking her eyes off him, she reached out for the phone on the hallway wall and felt her fingers brush against its white, plastic surface. She glanced at the phone and then back to the living area to check his progress.
She was too late.
His small, but powerful hand grabbed her wrist and twisted. Sarah dropped the knife. He pulled her away from the phone just as she lifted it from the cradle. It fell, hit the carpet, bounced back up on its coiled cable and clattered against the wall.
Sarah screamed with frustration as her attacker stamped on the handset, crushing and burying it in the wall. Then he clamped his hand over her mouth. Sarah knew she needed to act fast, or she would be dead and she didn’t want to contemplate what he would do before or after he had accomplished that little task. She bit into his left hand as she drove her elbow into his ribs. She ran her stocking foot down his shin. The final attack had little effect on him as she had no shoes on, but as her heel connected with the top of his foot, he roared with pain. He let go and for a split second tried to comfort all three places at once.
The phone buzzed again, this time from within the kitchen.
Alex was still down there!
Sarah had to try to get to him, or at very least let him know what was happening. All too late she realized she should have gone to the kitchen phone, it was closer and maybe she would have got to it in time. Better yet, all she needed to do was press the door release button on the handset. She cursed her stupidity.
Unable to get to the kitchen, Sarah ran to her front door. She reached for the door handle and twisted it. The door opened ten centimetres.
And stopped.
The bastar
d had put the chain on. Belatedly, Sarah realized that was the sound she had heard moments before he had appeared in her bedroom.
She spun around. He was there, knife in hand. There was just enough time to bring her hands up in front of her face when the blade sliced across both her palms. A red line of blood crossed the soft flesh and continued through the air, painting the off-white walls, and the photos of her parents, with a spray of red.
Sarah fell back against the door, slamming it shut once again. She pressed her bleeding palms under her armpits hoping to ease the stinging pain, but only achieved smearing blood across the pink lace of her bra.
‘Give up, Sarah. Give yourself to me willingly, and I promise to kill you quickly. It’s the best I can offer. It’s all you deserve, any of your kind.’
Sarah spat in his face. If she was going to go down, she was going to go down fighting.
No, that wasn’t the way to think. Alex was just a few metres away. She had to let him know.
As her attacker wiped the spit from his face, she drove her knee into his unprotected groin. He doubled over, and she ran down the corridor toward the kitchen. She had to get to the French window and shout for help; it was her only hope. She burst into the dining area. Her feet slipped on the flooring once more.
The French doors weren’t far now. She began to scream as loud as she could.
‘Come back, bitch!’
As she ran round the back of the sofa by the window, Sarah snapped her head round to look at him. Her foot snagged on something, and before she could stop herself, she lost her balance and tumbled over the safety rail and out the window.
Forty-Four
I pushed the buzzer for a fifth time. The wine was by my feet while I held the flowers in my hands. I was about to give up when the door suddenly opened, and a man came rushing out. He stopped for a second and stared at me. I should have known that something was wrong because he was wearing a mask with what looked like a dog’s face painted on it. A large black hood shrouded his head. I was sure his eyes widened in recognition. Was it the man I had bumped into ten minutes ago?
He ran straight past me toward the Keane’s Head, where a group of lads I had passed a few minutes before were standing. The masked man skidded to a halt in front of them, turned around and ran back past me.
I didn’t waste any more time watching where he went. I had to check on Sarah. Something was wrong. Very wrong. I could feel it. And to make matters worse, I feared I’d just let whoever had done it escape.
Leaving the wine on the doorstep, I raced up the stairs, grabbing the railings as I skidded around the corners. She lived in flat eight. I’d seen the number next to her name on the buzzer. The front door was wide open, but somehow I knew she hadn’t left it as a welcoming gesture.
‘Sarah!’ I shouted as I dashed inside.
The first door I came to was the bedroom. The floor was a pool of feathers. The next door was an empty bathroom. The next, a cupboard, and then came the spare room. Its bed piled high with junk. I ran in and checked down the side of the bed, which I couldn’t see from the door. There was nothing there but an unused rowing machine.
I went back into the hallway and glanced back at the front door. There was blood on the wall. The bad feeling I had now turned all my insides to knots.
I ran into the living area and noticed the French windows were open. I sprinted across the room, jumped over a discarded vacuum, grabbed the railing and looked down.
‘Oh my God!’ I whispered. I ran back through the flat. I jumped down the stairs, the flowers still in my hand, whipped around the corner and then jumped the next flight too. At the bottom, I stumbled and crashed into a bin, spilling newspapers and takeaway menus all over the floor. Somehow the flowers survived.
I picked myself up and stumbled out onto the street. The lads were no longer to be seen, but I could hear them. It was like I had suddenly developed super sensitive hearing, despite the throbbing sound of my blood pounding in my ears.
I tore around the corner, dodged the bollards at the end of the path and ran down it.
‘Get out the way! Get out the way!’ I shouted as I barged my way through the group. They didn’t say anything, just parted as quickly as they could.
‘I need an ambulance,’ I heard one of them saying into his phone, but I didn’t look at him. I could only look at one thing.
Sarah was flat on her back, her body twisted and broken. Her tibia and fibula had pierced the flesh of her right leg, and a growing pool of blood was gathering on the cobblestones below them.
‘Sarah? Sarah, can you hear me?’ I asked.
She didn’t answer. A thin trail of blood trickled out of her nose and ears, and I knew there and then that it could be worse than it initially looked.
Forty-Five
‘Sarah? Sarah?’ I said, hoping she would open her eyes and speak to me. All I wanted was to hold her close to me, but as I began to reach out for her I realized that it might not be the best thing for her right now. Judging by the height of the fall, I was afraid she might have sustained a spinal injury. I wanted to touch her face, to see if I could get her to react somehow, so she would know that there was someone there who cared. My trembling fingertips were about to caress her soft skin when a voice barked out from behind me.
‘No, you don’t.’ It was one of the lads. I felt my collar being grabbed, and I was pulled to my feet.
‘Get off me,’ I shouted and tried to wriggle free.
‘No fucking way, mister, you’re going to pay for this!’
‘Pay for what?’ I said, and froze, already knowing what they were going to say.
‘What you’ve done,’ he whispered in my ear.
‘The paramedics are on their way. The police too,’ the one on the phone said, raising his eyebrows at me challengingly.
‘What? You think I did this?’
‘We saw you look down from the window after she fell,’ another said, as they crowded closer and hemmed me in.
‘It wasn’t me!’
‘It was. I remember you were holding those flowers,’ he said, jerking his head to the window.
I looked at the bouquet in my trembling hand. ‘That’s not what I meant! It was me up there, but I didn’t push her! We were on a date for goodness sake.’
‘Oh yeah, and things didn’t go exactly as you’d planned, eh? So you thought you’d get a little rough.’ They crowded in even closer. I was trapped against the wall as they formed a human shield between me and Sarah.
‘No, no, you’ve got it all wrong. You walked right past me a few moments ago. I was trying to get inside the flat, remember?’
‘That doesn’t prove you didn’t do it,’ said the one who had my collar. He let go, and I started to relax, but he then put his hand on my chest and pushed me hard against the wall.
‘It wasn’t me. It was the man in the black hoodie and the dog mask,’ I said. I was beginning to get desperate. They, on the other hand, were looking angrier.
‘Hang on,’ said another of the group, pushing his way to the front. ‘There was a man in a hoodie. Remember? He skidded in front of us and ran off. He was wearing a mask. It was a wolf, I think.’ Some of them started to nod or give verbal agreements.
‘Thinking 'bout it, he looked this way when he ran back.’
‘That’s him; that’s the one I mean!’ I said as I looked into his eyes, searching them and hoping he would see my truth, my honesty. ‘He came bursting out of the flat. That was how I was able to get in.’
I felt the pressure of the hand on my chest lessen. Without saying another word, I pushed past them and returned to Sarah’s side. He reached out to grab me again, but when he saw me take off my coat and cover her up, protecting her modesty, he finally backed off. I was finally able to brush her cheek with my fingertips. I heard them all moving away. Maybe my display of affection had finally placated them.
‘We should get after him,’ one of them said.
‘He’ll be miles away by now,’ said ano
ther.
Their voices drifted away. It was like listening to them through a thick blanket of fog, and I wasn’t sure if it was because I was so focused on Sarah or if they had gone off after the masked man.
I felt a hand touch my shoulder. I looked up thinking it was the lad who had grabbed my collar, but it was a policeman. He was talking into his radio. I hadn’t noticed the sounds of the car engine or seen the flashing blue lights as the police car had driven down St Mary’s Gate and stopped outside The Keane’s Head.
‘She was pushed,’ I said. ‘She was pushed from the window. It was a man in a wolf mask. He ran back towards town.’
The policeman nodded at me. He relayed the information back through the radio as his partner, a woman, gently pulled me away from Sarah. She spoke to me with words I can only assume were ones of comfort as I didn’t really hear her. I wasn’t listening. I only cared about one thing.
A crowd had begun to gather around the police car. Its flashing lights drawing people from the pub and out into the night air. The mixture of hushed whispers and yelling was soon interspersed with the sound of the approaching ambulance.
‘It’s all right, the paramedics will get your friend sorted out. They’ll be here soon,’ said the female officer. ‘But for now I’m going to have to ask you to step back.’ I looked at her. I got the impression that while the words were said neutrally, there was an implication within them. Who was I to blame them; they didn’t know me from Adam. I could be the one who did it. My eyes flicked across to the lads who had suspected me.
‘Amanda, we’re to seal the area. More help is on the way. HQ are sending CID as soon as they can.’ The PC stared at me and added, ‘They’ll want to talk to you.’
Forty-Six
To their credit, the ambulance crew didn’t hang around once they arrived on the scene. I stepped further out of the way and noticed the two police officers keeping a close eye on me, watching my every move and reaction. More backup had arrived and was sealing off the area to protect the evidence; others were collecting interviews from witnesses.
