by Nick Louth
‘I was brought up a Catholic. So I’d say especially where you’re going.’
‘If you’ve been through what I’ve been through, you can never believe in a God.’
‘If you believe in justice you should release me,’ Leticia said.
‘No.’ Poppy was consumed by an enormous hacking cough that went on and on and shook the room. Finally, she was quiet. ‘Gary, you know what to do.’
Leticia screamed, but Gary’s hand was quickly over her mouth, the gag in place shortly afterwards.
Chapter Thirty-two
Gary seized hold of Leticia, blindfolded her again and marched her carefully down the stairs. Her hands remained tied behind her back as she was manoeuvred out of the house and to the shed. Once there the blindfold was removed but her wrists and ankles were secured again by cable ties to the bed frame. ‘Not so tight, Gary, it hurts,’ she said. The big man responded by loosening her ankles a little but kept the wrists taut.
He was about to put the golf ball in her mouth again when she said: ‘I’m hungry.’
He scratched his head, releasing a cloud of dandruff. ‘I forgot,’ he foghorned. ‘I was going to get you some food.’ He settled for tying the gag around her mouth, told her not to make any noise and slipped out of the shed, closing the door behind him.
He was back within five minutes with a steaming Pot Noodle. ‘This one’s my favourite flavour, but you can have it. Macaroni cheese.’ He untied her, allowed her to sit up, and removed the gag.
‘Don’t you have anything else?’ she asked, wondering how far she could push him. ‘Something with vegetables. Do you have any fruit?’
‘I don’t eat fruit. Mum does sometimes. I do have a Skittles winter fruit pouch in my anorak. And a raspberry doughnut. I like to eat them when I go wildlife spotting.’
That didn’t sound like much of an improvement on the Pot Noodle. ‘Okay, I’ll stop being fussy.’ She gestured for the snack pot and he passed it to her, together with a plastic spoon and fork. She was so hungry she almost burned her mouth gobbling it down. He looked at her as she ate, gradually risking brief eye contact.
‘That was so fast, you could go on mukbang, like Mum.’
She risked a smile and carried on eating.
‘Good, isn’t it? I like Sundays because I always have macaroni cheese flavour. On Monday I have Vietnam street food flavour. The cupboard holds exactly two weeks’ worth, so I know what day it is just by looking at what flavour is next.’
‘You’re very organised, Gary.’
‘Thank you. I mend laptops for my job. Monday to Friday, nine thirty a.m. to four p.m. with half an hour for lunch.’
Leticia needed to coax him to talk but wanted to divert him onto something a little less tedious.
‘What sort of wildlife do you like, Gary?’
A grin lit up his face. ‘I like night creatures most. You don’t see so much during the day. I go to Hurst Meadows by the Thames and use my tent as a hide. I often hear owls.’
‘I adore owls! Two years ago, I went on a trek to northern India and we saw lots of beautiful birds of prey and lots of owls. Some of them were really big.’
‘I like water voles. Some people call them water rats but they are not rats. They have got the wrong kind of tails for rats and they just live in the riverbank. There aren’t many in the Thames, because mink eat them. Do you want to see some pictures of otters?’
‘I’d love to,’ she said. This was going better than she dared hope.
He got out his phone and started to fiddle with it.
‘It would be good to see a nice big picture of an otter,’ she said.
Gary thought for a minute. ‘I have to tie you up again while I fetch my laptop.’
‘I have a better idea. Why don’t you take me into the house so I can see your laptop there?’
‘I’m not supposed to. You are supposed to stay in the shed.’
‘Who’s going to know? I certainly won’t tell.’
Gary considered her for a minute, sitting on the edge of the bed frame. One of his knees started to move rapidly up and down. A sign of stress or anxiety. She’d covered it on the mental health course.
‘If you keep tying me up and untying me like this you’re going to run out of cable ties.’
He shook his head. ‘I got a carton of 1,000 on eBay. Enough for a long time.’
‘I’d like not to be tied up. It hurts my wrists. Please.’ She gave him her most winning smile. It always worked with Anton.
He looked away and both his legs started to tap, tap, tap on the floor. He caught her looking at his oscillating knee.
‘Mum hates it when I do this. She says “Stop throstling, Gary, it’s doing my head in”.’
‘Throstling?’
‘It’s just her name for it. When I get nervous. With my legs.’
‘I don’t want to make you nervous, Gary. If I promised not to run away, would you untie me?’
He shook his head. ‘I can’t do that. Mum would be angry. She’s not well. I’m not to upset her. She shouts at me, and then gets out of breath. I hate it when she can’t breathe.’
Leticia realised she was trying to move too fast. ‘All right. Would you free my feet? Then I can walk in with you to see the pictures of the otters.’
He considered this for a long while, a frown deepening on his face.
‘We could look at some videos of otters on YouTube as well,’ Leticia said. ‘That would be fun.’
‘I’m not sure. I should phone Mum.’
‘She’ll say no, Gary. And she’ll be angry with you.’
He nodded. ‘I’ve got some good meerkat videos.’ He looked at Leticia quizzically. ‘Verity wouldn’t watch them with me.’
‘I will, Gary. I adore meerkats.’
‘We will have to be quiet,’ he said. ‘But I’ve got some spare headphones, and a two-into-one audio jack that I bought for £3.75. Half price.’
‘Okay, Gary,’ she whispered, and held out her wrists in front of her. He tied her up loosely with the baler twine. Previously her wrists had been tied behind her back, which was much more difficult to deal with. She was confident that with three or four minutes unobserved she could be free of her last remaining bonds. She was already much freer. No gag, no blindfold, nothing around her ankles.
Gary led her into the house, through the lounge and into his den, which was piled high with computer equipment, cables, modems and all sorts of things she didn’t recognise. The carpet was filthy. Obviously no one had vacuumed for months. He picked up a couple of long cables and some big over-ear headphones, and spent a few minutes connecting the laptop to the big TV in the lounge. Five minutes later they were sitting side by side on the grubby sofa watching videos of otters. Her captor had stopped his throstling and appeared to be quite relaxed. He was so focused on the animal images that Leticia was able to work away, rotating her wrists and loosening the knots.
In half an hour the first long video, about otters in Scotland, ended. Gary turned to the laptop beside him to select the next. Leticia knew that he wouldn’t hear much with the headphones still on. This was her big moment. She slid one wrist from the twine, then the other, but held it loosely over her hands. Then she slipped off the headphones and eased her weight gradually off the low settee. He was still busy at the laptop.
Leticia stood and then ran. The front door was just a few short strides away. She got there just as Gary looked up.
* * *
Gary bellowed his anguish and levered himself clumsily from the sofa. The security chain on the door was on, and Leticia fumbled trying to remove it. What she hadn’t counted on was that it was locked too and she couldn’t see the key. She had no time to look for it, so had to retrace a couple of steps to go for the side entrance into the garden. She ducked through with a second to spare as Gary’s huge arm reached out for her. Seen properly for the first time, the garden was not an easy escape prospect. A large unkempt leylandii hedge fifteen feet high ran around three-quarter
s of it, where it abutted neighbouring properties. The lowest point was where a pair of five-foot-high wooden gates barred the driveway from the street beyond. They were padlocked.
Leticia was twenty-eight and had last done any serious athletics at half that age. Hurdling had been one of her worst disciplines at school though she was a decent enough runner. An hour a week on a treadmill or an exercise bike was all she managed these days.
But nothing steels the body for action like fearing for your life.
She scrambled her way over those gates in a couple of seconds, landing in a heap on the other side. The short drive led to a curved suburban residential street of tired-looking semi-detached homes, many of the front gardens paved over for parking. As she stood, she heard the rattle of wood, and behind her the looming form of Gary, attempting to reach over the gates for her.
She jumped away and sprinted down the short drive.
‘You promised me you wouldn’t try to escape,’ he called after her.
A car had just stopped ten yards away to the right, and she pelted towards it, sensing rescue.
She was wrong. Verity Winter emerged from the vehicle, sunglasses balanced on her head, car keys in hand, a big suitcase on the back seat. She hadn’t seen Leticia at first and froze.
Leticia ran straight at her former boss, targeting the keys. Verity hid her hand behind her even as Leticia grabbed. The two struggling women smashed into the side of her car, where the driver’s side door was still open. The creaking of wood and some male shouting signified that Gary had clambered over the gates and was now lumbering down towards them at the kerbside just thirty yards away.
Time to abandon the fight. Leticia shoved Verity, who fell backwards against the car, then began to run. She didn’t recognise the area at all. She sprinted around 200 yards to a suburban T-junction. She was looking for a rescuer, preferably a solidly built one. One old gentleman working his garden and an elderly lady pushing a shopping trolley didn’t quite fit the bill. However, a beefy middle-aged man in rugby shirt and jeans did. He was just getting into his Audi when Leticia basically threw herself onto the bonnet.
‘Please, please help me,’ Leticia pleaded. ‘Call 999.’
The man emerged from the car and saw the bulky figure of Gary Tilling lumbering up the road towards them.
‘He after you?’ the man asked as Leticia got to her feet.
‘Stop her,’ Gary bellowed, having stopped some distance away. ‘She’s a thief.’
The man looked from one to the other and then said. ‘Not many thieves would ask to ring 999. Get in the car, love. I won’t let him get at you. We can sort it all out when the Old Bill arrive.’
Chapter Thirty-three
The unmarked grey Vauxhall swept into Linden Avenue, Gillard having turned off the blue lights a couple of minutes before. Gillard slewed the car to a stop across the front drive of Tilling’s home. While Carl Hoskins went around the back, the detective chief inspector banged on the door. Before he got a reply the first of two patrol cars arrived in the street.
Through the reeded glass, Gillard watched the shuffling shambolic figure of Gary Tilling fumbling with the locked door. The moment he opened it, Gillard put his foot inside and grabbed his wrist. ‘You’re under arrest in connection with the abduction of Ms Leticia Mountjoy. We’ve got a warrant to search your home too.’ Tilling didn’t resist and nodded as if he’d expected it.
While two uniformed officers handcuffed Tilling, Gillard directed others to the den to seize the many laptops there. Hoskins read Tilling his rights, while Gillard began to climb the stairs. He was soon struggling against the stench.
‘Please don’t disturb Mum,’ Tilling called out to him. ‘She’s taken a turn for the worse recently, and the doctors say she is not to be disturbed.’
Gillard located the room, knocked lightly on the door and called out: ‘Mrs Tilling, it’s the police. I’m afraid we need to come into your room.’
There was no reply, but the detective was aware that this was where the penetrating smell emanated from. Twisting the handle, he pushed, and shed light on a stinking darkness.
* * *
The curtains were drawn, but a faint light seeped into the room. In the centre was a large double bed, which groaned under the movement of its large occupant, whose suppressed hoarse breathing filled the room. The detective groped for the light switch, but a powerful gravelly voice said: ‘Leave it.’
Gillard flicked the switch anyway and flooded the room with light. ‘Turn it off!’ It was an almost feral growl. Emerging from under the duvet was a head, greasy hair loose around the face, a small feminine hand shielding her from the light. The entire bed creaked and squealed as the woman adjusted her position. Leticia Mountjoy had not exaggerated. The woman was gargantuan.
‘Are you Mrs Penelope Tilling?’
Machinery whirred and the far end of the bed began to tilt, lifting the upper body of the woman into a sitting position. A finger pointed directly at Gillard, and its owner rasped: ‘What right have you to come in here?’ She reached for something on the bedside table. An oxygen mask. Placed it on her face. A uniformed police officer joined him in the room, took one glance at the woman within, and almost gagged.
Gillard said: ‘Mrs Tilling, you are under arrest for the abduction of Leticia Mountjoy. You are not obliged…’
She set the mask aside. ‘Detective Chief Inspector,’ she said, her voice now at a more conventional register. ‘I have been confined to my bed for nearly thirty years. Whatever it is that you are investigating, I’m afraid I can’t help you.’
Gillard completed reading her rights.
‘Are you going to arrest me then? Drag me out of my sickbed? Squeeze me into a police car? Leave me overnight in a cell? The truth, Detective Chief Inspector, is that if I resisted, even ten of you couldn’t get me down the stairs.’
Gillard had no answer to that. She was right. The staircase was steep and narrow, obstructed even further by the stairlift screwed into the floor that was clearly far too insubstantial for this woman.
Her small deep-set eyes stared out at him from her fleshy face, like two currants from a bun. She gathered her hair up and tied it into a ponytail, the wobbling dough of her numerous chins flopping from one side to the other as she did so.
‘I can tell that you are repulsed by my appearance,’ she said. ‘Most people would be. But I wasn’t always like this.’
‘I remember. I met you, briefly.’ The wall was hung with framed photos, including a large studio portrait of a slender young woman with a 1980s-style perm.
‘That was another life,’ she said. ‘Before I got married, before I had any children, before my eldest son was murdered.’
‘Robert. Yes, we talked about him. I remember you from the public appeal, and the reconstruction.’
‘If you are investigating a murder, Detective Chief Inspector, let’s start at the beginning, with my son.’
‘The disappearance of your son has been investigated many, many times—’
‘Without result. Now it seems you prefer to persecute the victims of murder, the vulnerable and those with disabilities.’
‘I’m not persecuting you. I’m investigating two murders. Rollason, and a man called Dr Wei-Ling Chen.’
She said nothing, sucking on oxygen, her eyes boring into him.
‘Mrs Tilling, did you kill Dr Chen?’
‘I didn’t murder him, if that’s what you mean. He had terminal cancer. I helped him.’
‘The Charon Foundation sent him to you, didn’t they?’
‘That’s right. He was willing to pay a big woman to dominate him, to smother him. They tried a lot of the professional dominatrices, the so-called big beautiful women. They couldn’t find anyone who would go right through with it, to the ultimate conclusion.’
‘How did they find you?’
‘Through my mukbang channel.’
‘Your what?’
‘I eat, professionally. People watch me on the Inter
net.’
Gillard tried to hide his amazement. ‘Who pays you?’
‘It’s advertiser-funded. I have my own channel on YouTube, with 16,719 followers at last count. They’re mostly from South Korea, but there’s a smattering from all over the world. I get paid, by noodle manufacturers mainly, to display, eat and promote their products. I do three one-hour shows per week. I’m an influencer, and the bigger I get the more followers I attract.’
‘That’s incredible.’
‘Yes, it certainly is. I stumbled on it by accident when researching bariatric diets. But it’s been great for me. Fat faming, instead of fat shaming. I make even the biggest people feel slim. I’m a normaliser, if you like. It empowers them to know how wide, how broad, is the range of human sizes. I’m famous, successful and earning a good living. I show them there’s hope. A twenty-stone woman emailed me to say she was so happy to realise she’s in the slimmest quarter of humanity’s size scale.’
‘You’re paid to make people feel good about themselves?’
She giggled, an incongruous process that made her chins jiggle. ‘Not all of them. I’m sure for some casual viewers it is Elephant Man syndrome, a circus freak show. But the Internet means I don’t have to watch them stare at me. And it paid for all this.’ She lifted an arm, serried folds of blubber dangling, and pointed to a large blue wheeled frame on the far side of her bed. He saw that it was a medical hoist: stabilising legs that would slide under the bed and an arcing jib that suspended a sling. Further to the left was a bath-sized bariatric toilet, only partially screened by a curtain, and beyond it what appeared to be a wet room.
‘And it covers my care bill.’
‘If you had money, why kill Dr Chen?’
‘Just to help him out.’ Another giggle. ‘Actually, I needed more money, but I also needed to practise asphyxiation techniques before Rollason’s release date, before I tried it for real. Poor Dr Chen. I emailed a photo of someone else, a plus-size model, when Charon put him in contact. When he saw me in the flesh, he changed his mind. Boy, did he change his mind! He panicked and cried out and didn’t want to go through with it. But Gary had already fixed him to the bed. He wore this weird plastic mesh bodysuit that he’d had specially made so that he would feel helpless, and it was firmly cable-tied to the bed, so he couldn’t move an inch.’
