Something hooked into the neckline of Elizabeth’s dress, pulling her forward against the pressure from behind. The thin summer dress strained for an instant, then tore apart as the material ripped and the buttons gave way.
Elizabeth tried to struggle again, more wildly but just as uselessly, the wires cutting into her wrists. Then she went rigid as she felt something hook into her brassiere between her breasts: the brassiere stretched for a second, then seemed to fall apart as though it had been cut—
Oh God! Oh God.’
But then nothing happened. The hands released her shoulders— and she was sobbing again. But nothing happened.
“Ssso … very nice, Miss Loftus! So … just listen, then.”
Still nothing—nothing but the pounding of her heart, which hammered the blood in her ears in the darkness, and the sweat on her face.
“Did you hear that? No? Well… I was striking a match to light my cigarette…which is strange, because I don’t smoke, you know.” The voice was animated by pure pleasure. “Smoking is bad for you—and particularly bad for you, Miss Loftus.”
Still nothing.
“Evidently you don’t understand—or you’re very brave—brave and foolish.” More pleasure. “Nowadays they have lots of equipment—microchips too, I shouldn’t wonder—but I’m old-fashioned. In fact, although they say the Gestapo got it down to a fine art, I believe it was the Okrana and the Cheka who pioneered it… Apart from which it’s highly cost-effective—even now, with cigarettes the price they are. One packet and a box of matches, and you’re in business.”
Just as the unbelievable dawned on her, and she opened her mouth to scream, something soft pressed through the material of the hood between her lips—something soft which was then pulled tight as the gag was fastened, so that she could only make incoherent sounds of hysteria, doubly muted.
“Yesss … I know you want to tell me everything now—of course you do! But you didn’t take me at my word the first time, and I don’t want you to have second thoughts again, so I propose to demonstrate the technique just a little in order to concentrate your mind absolutely on my requirements.”
A hand gently parted the wreckage of her clothing.
“There now!” The voice and the hand both caressed her. “And I see that you don’t much indulge in sun-bathing… which is really just as well, because you won’t feel like wearing your bikini for quite a long time to come, if at all, you know.”
Elizabeth wanted to faint, but her senses refused to leave her. If anything they seemed to have become sharper, even to the gossamer touch on her skin.
“Wait a mo’—‘old on.” The rough voice came suddenly from above, just behind her.
“What is it?” Irritation harshened the snake-voice.
“I thought I ‘eard somethin’.”
“Heard something? Where?”
“Out back. Just ‘old on a mo’, like I said.”
They were listening, and Elizabeth listened with them, yearning for any sound, but above all for Dr Mitchell’s knock on the front door. It didn’t matter to her now what might happen to him if he fell foul of the gorilla-man—nothing mattered but her own deliverance from those other hands, which had crawled over her with such sickening gentleness.
“I can’t hear anything,” hissed the snake-voice.
“No, nor I can’t neither—not now,” the gorilla-man admitted grudgingly. “But I could swear I ‘eard somethin’, an’ that’s a fact.” The pressure on Elizabeth’s shoulders slackened. “Better ‘ave a look-see, I reckon—just to be on the safe side, okay?”
The snake-man sighed. “Very well—if you must. But make it snappy. We don’t have all the time in the world at our disposal.”
Time, thought Elizabeth desperately. Like them, she had heard nothing. But just as the hood disorientated her sense of place, so the dark tide of fear within her had swamped her sense of time, and what had seemed like only a few minutes of nightmare might in reality have taken much longer.
The pressure lifted altogether, and she could move again within the painful constraints of the bonds which held her wrists and ankles.
Time was what she had to hold on to—she had to think of ways to spin it out: she had to hold on to it, and get control of herself.
Then, out of the darkness, he touched her again, and the control she was striving for slipped from her mind in a wave of sick revulsion and instantly-revived panic. The chair rocked and the bonds cut into her flesh agonisingly. Whatever it was that she had been on the point of thinking vanished from her mind, and all she wanted to scream was Please don’t—please don’t!
But she couldn’t scream, and even the incoherent sounds she started to make were stilled as it came to her with a flash of bitter clarity that all pleading was useless, and worse than useless: please don’t had been the ultimate encouragement he wanted from her, adding spice to what he was going to do, and had always wanted to do … and nothing she could say or do—there was nothing she could say or do—would change that. She didn’t even know any of the answers to his insane questions, but resistance or submission was all the same to him now.
So … there was nothing left to her but helplessness and terrible numbing fear in the dark—and the quiet of his silent enjoyment of her terror, which joined him to her.
The crash of noise which broke the bond between them was so unexpected and so shattering that for a fraction of time she thought it was inside her, as though her brain and her heart had exploded simultaneously.
Then the noise was outside her, repeated and so loud that it convulsed her into movement, regardless of the pain which tore at her again and as the chair toppled turning black into screaming red into nothing as her head hit something hard—
III
THERE WERE COLOURS, bright as flowers, but crowned with stars—
“Come on, Miss Loftus—Miss Loftus, come on now—wake up, Miss Loftus …” The voice surrounded her, hectoring and encouraging her at the same time.
The colours revolved, and then became flowers in reality: the flowers in the curtains of the study, with the evening sun shining through them and starring the gaps in the folds of the pelmet with light. Elizabeth blinked the tears out of her eyes and fought her way upwards into consciousness.
She could see again!
More, she could see and her hands moved—hands, wrists and arms … all of them moved, freely though painfully, falling where gravity took them.
“Come on, Miss Loftus—damn it!” The voice became peremptory and irritable. “Wake up!”
First, she felt aggrieved—then she became aware of hands holding her, lifting and dragging at her, which roused her into a flurry of fresh resistance against them.
The hands became arms, imprisoning her again. “No! Come on, now—it’s me—stop it.’”
The hands weren’t those hands—they crushed her, but they didn’t touch her … it was as though, even though ungentle, they were unwilling to hold her, never mind to touch her—
Elizabeth relaxed, suddenly boneless.
“That’s better! Now then … I’m putting you down—it’s all right, but I’m putting you down—do you understand? Don’t move—it’s all right… I’ll come back … right?”
There was no way she could answer any of that. But she accepted the soft-hard feel of the carpet against her cheek, and the movement of the bright flowers of the curtains and the stars twisting at impossible angles—and the desk and table legs horizontal when they should have been vertical.
She wrinkled her nose against the smell of burning carpet …
Burning carpet! The smell registered in her brain, triggering consciousness and a proper focus on her surroundings at the same time.
The desk blocked half her view of the room from ground level, but there at the end of it, a yard from her face and sending up a spiralling blue-grey smoke signal to her, a cigarette smouldered on Father’s best-quality Wilton carpet!
Elizabeth hauled herself on to one elbow and reac
hed out towards the cigarette. But it was too far away after all, and she had to go on hands and knees in order to extend her reach. To her annoyance she saw, as she picked it up, that it had already gouged an ugly brown mark into the thick pile of the Wilton, and—
God! There was someone lying behind the desk!
She froze on two knees and one hand, the cigarette pinched between thumb and forefinger of the other hand, hypnotised by the dark suede shoes, and the grey trousers rucked up to reveal socks and an inch of hairy white leg.
“Don’t look,” said a voice from behind her.
Elizabeth hadn’t wanted to look, there was no danger of that: not only the legs themselves, but also their stillness terrified her. But she found it impossible to take her eyes off them.
“Look at me instead,” commanded the voice. “Come on, Miss Loftus—look at me.”
She didn’t want to turn round either, but in the end it was the lesser of two evils.
“There now … it’s all right, Miss Loftus—Elizabeth—can I call you ‘Elizabeth’? And you can call me ‘Paul’—right?”
Elizabeth stared at Dr Mitchell uncomprehendingly.
“There’s nothing to be afraid of. It’s all over, and there’s nothing to be afraid of—do you understand?”
She didn’t understand … except that she knew he was trying to reassure her about … about things for which there could never be reassurance.
“It’s all right, Elizabeth.” He was speaking to her as though to a child, in exactly the same way that she had spoken to little Helen Powell when she’d come offher bike outside the school and broken her wrist.
“Dr Mitchell …” she heard her own voice from far away, half-strangled.
“Paul.” He advanced towards her. “Here—you put this on, Elizabeth.”
She frowned at what he was offering her: it was her old raincoat from the peg by the kitchen door. What could he possibly have in mind—that she should wear her old raincoat?
Then she looked down at herself, and saw with horror how her dress gaped open, and fumbled instantly in a panic of embarrassment with her free hand to draw the torn edges of her dress across her breasts.
“Here—“ He held the raincoat out with one hand and took the cigarette from her with the other “—put it on … and then we’ll get out of here.”
Elizabeth rose to her feet and tried to take the coat from him, but her knees were so weak that she found herself holding to his hand through the coat to keep her balance.
“Are you all right?” He took the cigarette from her.
“I’m all right.” Belatedly she realised that one edge of the torn dress had escaped her, and one breast with it; and the sight of it somehow put strength back into her knees and allowed her to get the coat round her, for modesty’s sake.
He was trying to propel her out of the study, but she saw the legs protruding from behind the desk and the sight of them immobilised her again.
“He can’t hurt you.” Dr Mitchell’s voice suddenly became harsher. “Come on!”
She had known that already in her heart, or at least half-known it, from the stillness of those suede shoes; but although she believed him she could not take in her own belief with understanding, so that she turned to him in horror at his confirmation of what she had known.
And then she stared at the open doorway.
“And the other one won’t bother you either.” Dr Mitchell read her mind, but this time he had control of his voice. “He’s got two bullets in his chest, so he’s not going anywhere. Come on!”
Elizabeth allowed herself to be half-led, half-pushed, and half-supported out of the study, and across the hall, and into the sitting room.
Bullets—
There had been those noises—they still rang in her head, she could still hear them—before her head had hit the desk—noises—two bullets in the chest—and the suede shoes protruding from behind the desk—
He pushed her against an armchair—it pressed against the back of her legs, and she collapsed into it, letting it engulf her.
She hugged the old raincoat against her. “I’m cold.”
He knelt down obediently in the fireplace, to switch on the electric fire which stood in it during the summer. She heard the switches click—one, two, three.
“Where do you keep your drinks?”
“In the cabinet—in the corner,” she answered automatically. There was a thing in the back of her mind, just beyond her reach—like the cigarette on the carpet.
He tried to put a glass in her hand, and she could smell brandy.
“I don’t drink—not this.”
“You’re drinking it now. And so am I.” He paused to drink. “Go on.”
She drank, and the fiery stuff burnt her throat, squeezing tears from her eyes.
“Here you are.”
He was offering her something else. Incredulously, she saw the same blue-grey smoke curl from a cigarette.
“Take it—go on.”
“I don’t smoke.” The cigarette brought back an obscene memory, making her shiver involuntarily.
“But you were—“ he bit off the end of the sentence. “Christ! Was that… Christ!”
She drank again. This time it didn’t burn so much—burn! She shivered again, her teeth rattling against the cut-glass, and focussed on him.
He was staring at the little golden packet in his hand, as though he was seeing it for the first time, and she was seeing him for the first time too—not as he had stared at her from the dust-jacket of The Breaking of the Hindenburg Line—not the Paul Mitchell born in Gloucestershire and educated at Lord Mansfield’s Grammar School and Cambridge University—
“Who are you?” Suddenly she knew what it was that she had been reaching out for, beyond the smouldering cigarette. “Have you phoned the police?
He took another drink. “You know who I am.”
“Have you phoned—?” The question died inside her as she repeated it, and a terrible fear invaded her across the gap it left in its fall—a fear which took her back to the question he had left unanswered. “Who are you?”
Who are you? What are you? She shrank away from him into the softness of the armchair, graduating from fear again into greater and uncomprehending panic.
“It’s all right, Elizabeth—“ he put his hand out towards her, but she tried to shrink farther into the chair, away from him.
He pulled back his hand quickly, and she watched it turn into a fist and almost thought for a moment that he was going to hit her. But instead he dropped it to his side and looked down at the cigarette he was still holding in the other one.
“All right, Miss Loftus. I can understand how you feel.” He flicked the cigarette into the empty fireplace, behind the electric fire.
He couldn’t possibly know how she felt, thought Elizabeth. But there was no point in telling him so. There was only one thing worth saying, though perhaps that was pointless too. But she had to say it.
“I’d like you to call the police, Dr Mitchell—the phone’s in the study.” She licked her lips. “Or … if you won’t… then I intend to call them.”
“No.” His eyes left her, switching first to the French windows behind her, then to those on either side of the fireplace. “No phoning. It isn’t necessary.”
“It isn’t—?” She stopped as he moved past her, watching him draw the curtains on each of the windows in turn. They had drawn the curtains in the study too, she remembered.
But he was already between her and the door. “But that was necessary—a necessary precaution.” He switched on the light.
She tried to lick her lips again, but her mouth was dry. “What do you mean? Why can’t I phone the police?”
“Because I am the police, Miss Loftus.”
Elizabeth could feel the heat from the electric fire on her face, but under the raincoat she was shaking now. “I—I don’t believe you.”
He shrugged. “There are different sorts of policemen. I’m one of the different sort
s, that’s all.”
His lack of concern angered her—it surprised her that she could be so frightened and yet still also be angry. “The sort that shoots people, you mean?”
“Or gets shot by them—yes.” He watched her. “But this time the sort that shoots people—yes again. Fortunately for you this time … yes?”
Suddenly Elizabeth was half-way to believing him. But she knew that was because she wanted to do so, against all the evidence of what had happened from the moment she had first set eyes on him at the fete. “But why … why …” she trailed off.
“Why did I shoot them? It’s called ‘self-defence’, Miss Loftus.” He looked at his watch. “But if you want me to regret it then I will.”
He was waiting for someone, thought Elizabeth. That was why he was merely talking to her, and not doing anything else.
But what was that “anything else”? The thought queue-jumped all the other questions which were jostling each other in her head.
“Please—“
He held up his hand to silence her while he concentrated on some other sound. In the distance she heard a car on the road outside, but the sound diminished. “Yes, Miss Loftus?”
He still had only one ear for her. “What are you listening for?”
He considered her for a second. “It’s possible that your … visitors were not alone.” He pointed to the curtains. “Hence the precaution … though fortunately your windows are burglar-locked, and I’ve wedged the back door … so I don’t think we’ll be disturbed.”
“But… they got in. “She heard her voice tremble at the thought of the snake-man having other animals with him.
“But they had all the time in the world—and an unattended house.” He shook his head. “Don’t worry.”
Don’t worry? Don’t worry! Elizabeth hugged herself even more tightly as the awfulness of her situation possessed her: it wasn’t a nightmare—he was here, she wasn’t dreaming him, and he was waiting for someone—it was a daymare, and it was real: there was a dead man lying behind the desk in the study—and she dared not imagine what he might have been doing if he hadn’t been killed … and there was another man desperately wounded, lying somewhere else—
The Old Vengeful Page 5
