by Diane Saxon
Fliss sniffed and instantly choked on a mouthful of blood.
Full and snotty, her nose pulsed so she could barely draw in air. Desperate to breathe, she opened her mouth, hissed at the sharp sting of her cracked lips as they stuck together while the metallic taste of old blood filled her mouth. She managed to part her lips, thin slivers of skin stretched to catch on her teeth, but she sucked in as much oxygen as she could through her mouth. The sound of her gasps filled her head, the strange clucking noise that came from her own throat roused her.
She cracked open gritty eyelids to take in her surroundings in a cautious sweep of the room as memory flooded back. Pain returned in a persistent throb to take her hard-earned oxygen away. The pop and crackle of her neck muscles sounded as she strained to raise her head to get a better view of her prison.
She scrutinised the small square room in what she assumed was a very old house. Silence hung dense and oppressive. The thick, white painted stone walls would block out most sounds. Her best guess was she was in a cellar. Even if she had the ability to shout, no one would be able to hear her through those walls. Panic gripped a tight fist in her stomach and shot icicles through her veins. No one would hear her. Dear God, how was Jenna ever to find her?
She twisted her head, inspected the walls while she ground down the fear, the ball of nausea stuck in the base of her throat and she swallowed it back. If there was one thing she’d learnt, there was no point in panicking. It only made things worse. This time, she couldn’t rely on her big sister to save her. She had to save herself, which meant she had to remain alert, completely aware of her surroundings.
With soft, slow pants, she controlled her breathing, willed her heartbeat back down to a normal rate and took her time studying her prison. Jenna would look for her. Of course she would. She’d have the entire frickin’ police force whipped into a frenzy, searching every house in the neighbourhood.
What if she wasn’t in the right neighbourhood? What if she was miles away from the Gorge and her sister was looking in the wrong place?
Panic slithered under her skin.
She stared up at the ceiling. Control. She needed control. And she needed to assess her surroundings. Start again. Take a look.
There were two doors. One, straight in front of the bed she lay on. She scanned the thick oak wooden door lined up directly between her feet. The other door was on the adjoining wall to her left. Again, thick oak, but this one had a frosted glass window panel. Both had locks she imagined had been engaged.
A vague recollection pricked her subconscious as she recalled the grating of an old key turning in an ancient lock when her captor left earlier.
Fliss dropped her head back to the hard surface of the bed to rest her neck, the tendons too taut for her to keep her head up any longer.
She willed her sluggish brain to engage. If it was still night, she had no idea what time it could possibly be.
Iciness engulfed her feet and the foetid smell of the blanket reached through the stuffiness of her nose. Chilled, despite the cover, Fliss shivered. At least it meant she didn’t have serious hypothermia, didn’t it? Had she read somewhere that if you shivered, your body was still reactive? Maybe shivering was the first sign of hypothermia and she’d die anyway. That would be shitty after surviving so far when poor Domino was dead.
Warm tears slipped down her temple to trickle into her hairline. Domino. The sharp crack of the stick hitting Domino echoed in her mind. He’d killed Domino. She sucked her bottom lip into her mouth and clamped her teeth down to stop herself from crying out. ‘Mum, oh Mum.’ Dark shadows floated in front of her eyes as her mind drifted, unhinged. Her mum had loved Domino, doted on him.
Disorientated, Fliss stared up at the bare bulb which hung from a straight wire in the ceiling. Bright white, it made her brain ache. The sensation of being hung upside down circled and the blood rushed to her head, filling it so completely she could barely think, barely breathe. The tightness in her chest pressed down as the walls closed in on her, just as the sides of the old fridge had trapped her so she knew she would die through lack of oxygen. As the memory blossomed, panic rose fast and venomous.
Fliss lay for a moment, eyes closed to concentrate on her composure. She wrestled down the fear that threatened to break free until she screamed like she’d screamed when she’d been trapped in the fridge. But this time she wasn’t a child, and there was no Jenna to rescue her. She had no option but to rescue herself.
Determined to remain calm, she waited until the frantic pulse in her throat slowed and forced her brain to think through a logical and practical solution.
He wasn’t here. She knew he wasn’t here. She could feel it in the blanketing silence of the house. Sense it, rather than hear it. No movement, no echoes, no sounds. Perhaps he had left her to die. Alone. All alone. Her biggest fear.
Ruthless, she clamped down on her terror again, forced herself to reassess. Thick, white stone walls. Soundproof. Heavy oak beamed ceiling. One bare bulb. Two heavy doors. One external. The other internal. The likelihood was she was in a house somewhere near where she had been taken, but that covered a whole host of places. Ironbridge had around a thousand houses scattered about, and then there was Broseley, Coalport. Just looking at the thick walls of her prison made her think Ironbridge though. The paint on the walls was bright white as though it had been newly painted, with a faint tide line approximately four foot-high around the room. Flooding caused that.
Claustrophobia lodged in the back of her throat and threatened to swell up. She didn’t want to drown. The Severn was near to breaking its banks. Ironbridge had the flood defences at the ready. What if it flooded? How close to the river was the house? She couldn’t drown. What an undignified way to go.
Escape was her only option, but uncertain if she had the energy or the ability to move, she gave a tentative wriggle. Every bone in her body screamed with pain. Well fuck. Fuck-a-duck. How the hell was she supposed to get out of this?
Her hands were cuffed on either side of the single metal-framed bed. With a cautious rattle, she tested the hold. The old-fashioned metal handcuffs gave her a small radius of movement, not enough to escape. If they’d been the modern plastic zip ties, she wouldn’t have a hope in hell of getting out of them, but with these, she could try.
Jenna propped herself up on her elbows and glanced down while she gave a wary tug on the restraint, twisting to manoeuvre her hand from the cold steel of the cuffs. She squeezed her thumb as close to her little finger as possible, scrunching up her palm to make her hand a tight ball, and wriggled her wrist back and forth. The handcuff slid down her wrist, over the first thumb joint… and stuck fast.
The effort too much, she flopped back onto the pillow, too exhausted to move. Her head swam, and the swirling acid ball of nausea threatened to rise up her throat and choke her. She was going to die. He’d not come back for her. She’d either freeze to death, die of starvation, or drown.
For an eternity, she lay still, until she pushed back the clouds of dizziness and the queasy roll in her stomach. She propped herself on her elbows once more, turning this time to the left.
Horror left her weak. She sucked in a sharp wheezy snatch of air while she stared at what should have been her left hand. She let out a low moan, unable to process what her brain told her was there. A grotesque twisted and swollen purple and black rubber glove which appeared to be on the verge of exploding. Only it wasn’t a rubber glove. It was her own bloated skin.
She edged towards it, tugged on the restraints on her right arm as hard as possible without cutting off her circulation and peered for a long moment at her left hand. It wasn’t hers. It couldn’t possibly belong to her. She couldn’t feel it. There was no pain, no sensation, just a disassociated numbness.
Her eyes burned, and she blinked away the wash of tears and focused on the sight of her hand. Her brain commanded her fingers to move, but they didn’t. It was some kind of sick joke, it had to be. She collapsed back onto the bed, a black w
ave rushed over her vision. She was going to lose her hand. Then she was going to die. One way or another she would die. Hypothermia, drowning, gangrene, rape, murder. Could she scare herself any more?
She quelled the panic, forced herself to remember. The man had grabbed her as she had turned to run, and his hand had wrenched at Domino’s lead which had been draped loosely around her neck. She could visualise her hand pressed between the lead and her own throat, paralysed with shock at what she had just discovered in the undergrowth. She remembered the sharp violent wrenches as he had choked the life out of her. She heard again the snap and crunch of bones as he’d twisted harder. Bones in her hand. Not her neck as he’d believed.
She stared at the ceiling. Eyes unblinking as she remembered. Oh God, he’d thought from the crackle and snap that he had broken her neck. He thought he’d killed her. He’d been wrong. Unbelievable pain had shot through her hand and she had been helpless to do anything as her life force rapidly faded. Black waves consumed her.
She closed her eyes, blinked in the brightness of the single light bulb still glowing inside her eyelids. She had no idea how much time had passed since she had fainted, her brain too sluggish to care, a distant fogginess still insistent on damping down her ability to think.
With a dispassionate glance, she took in her fat, swollen hand again. Sure it had distended even more, she inspected the tightly stretched flesh surrounded by the stainless-steel handcuff. There was no room for movement, not a spare millimetre between her wrist and the handcuff. Even if there was room to move it, her fingers still didn’t obey. The purple-hued flesh spilled over the sides of the metal. If it continued to swell, she’d lose her hand. It may already be lost. Yet she couldn’t dredge up the energy to care.
She panted through her mouth, her nose so blocked that when she swallowed it shot pain into her forehead.
Her gaze skimmed to the door, straining to listen to the silence beyond. How much longer would it be until the man returned?
Fliss wallowed through the washes of black, contemplated the idea of an escape plan, if only the marshmallow listlessness would move on. She allowed her eyes to drift closed, her brain tangled with the desire to sleep. Just sleep. The vague memory of the injection he’d administered poked at her consciousness just to be swallowed by the thick clouds. He’d seemed to know what he was doing. What normal person kept needles and pain serum in their own home?
13
Saturday 27 October, 10:55 hrs
‘Wanker!’ Mason tossed a narrow-eyed stare over his shoulder at Adrian as young PC Downey struggled to keep up with his long-legged stride. Mason punched a thumb in Adrian’s direction. ‘What kind of entitlement makes him think he can use his own fucking car for police business?’
Jenna shot a quick grin up at Mason almost hanging over her shoulder, so he could growl in her ear. It had been funny, even under the circumstances.
She gave a quick sweep over Adrian’s vehicle, a smart, black Range Rover Autobiography LR SDV8. Practical, comfortable, warm and overwhelmingly gorgeous. She couldn’t blame him for trying his luck.
Mason took her by the elbow and guided her away as Adrian ducked into his car to retrieve various items he evidently couldn’t live without. ‘Fucking Duty Inspector Connelly was having nothing of it. Did you hear?’
‘Shh.’ Jenna lowered her brows while she kept an eye on her unwanted guest.
‘He told him in no uncertain terms that, as a civilian, Chief fucking Prosecutor or not, he wasn’t fucking insured nor authorised to drive his own vehicle on police business. And when he tried to fucking wangle a bit more, Connelly said he wasn’t allowed to transport an on-duty police officer in pursuit of her duties.’ Mason tipped his head back and let out a hoot of laughter. ‘Fucking funniest thing.’
She had to give Adrian credit, he’d tried his best while she’d tapped her foot, ready to go. Mr hotshot lawyer had approached the Inspector with several different attitudes; reason, persuasion, dogmatism. All to no avail. If she hadn’t more important matters on her mind, she probably would have taken the unholy piss out of him too.
Instead, she jiggled the keys to the police issue Vauxhall Insignia.
’We’ll see you over there, Sarg.’ Mason called out as he took out the keys for another vehicle from his pocket, his lip curling in a sour smile. ‘Just got to run the kid back home to change out of his uniform.’
She raised her chin in acknowledgement and sighed as she waited for Adrian to catch up with her.
In no rush, he ambled across, overcoat slung across his arm, iPad and phone in his hands. She cruised a critical gaze over him, finding it difficult to find fault. Ill-prepared the night before, she’d shrugged into a thick, warm overcoat as they came out of Malinsgate Station.
She pursed her lips, tossed a quick glance at a rain filled sky and hoped it held off as long as possible before it soaked them all to the skin. She patted her pockets to reassure herself that her gloves were safely there for when she needed them and opened the rear door to slip her wellington boots in the car.
It was going to be a long day.
Although the same height as Mason, Adrian seemed to have more difficulty fitting in as he squeezed into the passenger seat of the Insignia, his long legs folded, his knees almost touching the dashboard. Her lips twitched at the sight of his discomfort. It was almost pitiful. Almost.
‘I prefer to drive.’ His low rumbled objection reached her ears as she turned the key and listened to the well-used engine roar to life.
‘Me too.’ The flash of her smile fell from her lips as guilt pricked her.
She shot the man another glance. ‘Entitlement’, Mason had called it. Everything about the man screamed entitlement. From his perfectly manicured fingernails to his Gucci leather shoes.
Jenna sobered. She had far more important things to think about than whether or not he bought his shoes from TK Maxx or Harrods. Fliss.
She’d said so little in Gregg’s office because, quite frankly, she couldn’t care less what arrangements they thought they were making. It made no difference. She’d find her sister, regardless. With or without their permission. She’d never stop looking, not until her dying breath.
She focused on the road ahead, blinked away the wash of tears.
Irony had succeeded in raising a response from her though. This huge hunk of a man, who’d exerted his power insisting on their enforced partnership, now suffered the consequences of his forcefulness by being squashed into her car.
‘Nice vehicle you have back there,’ she murmured, more to distract herself than him.
‘Yes,’ he grunted back.
She changed gear and knocked his knee with the side of her hand, his answer barely a distraction from her all-consuming thoughts. Fliss.
Her belly filled with a tight, clenching desperation. Where was Fliss?
‘So, what’s the plan of action?’
Aware he’d moved closer, so he could watch her, Jenna gave a shrug. She’d simplify it for him. ‘We’re going to find my sister. We’re going to find the killer. Then, we’re going to see what the connection is.’ She shot him a quick glance and then turned her attention back to the road.
‘Okay.’ His low rumbled voice filled the car. ‘And in the meantime, how do we achieve this?’
She changed down a gear and took the bend onto the suspension bridge with a little more gusto than she’d intended. ‘We do grass-roots police work, which entails door-to-door, asking questions, finding answers, lots of walking, research and a lot of cups of tea.’
‘Tea? I’m more of a coffee man myself.’
Another ripple of amusement took her by surprise, but he was in for a shock. ‘I think you’ll find you get what you’re given, in what you’re given, when we’re visiting people. Unlike in your world where the cups are most likely bone china, we accept what’s offered.’ He’d probably never come into contact with the kind of people she worked with. ‘We take the dirty mug with the chipped rim, the grey tea with t
he sour milk and just ask for three sugars to disguise the dirty dishwater taste.’
She sensed his delicate shudder of disgust and resisted the temptation to smile. Not with amusement, but with a strange satisfaction that she’d managed to make him cringe.
She changed gear and knocked his knee yet again. ‘Sorry.’
He attempted to shuffle away from her.
‘You can put the seat back, you know.’
His lip curled. ‘I believe it’s as far back as it will go.’ He huffed out a breath. ‘You do know you’re not going to be taking part in any door-to-door, any coffee drinking, any information gathering, don’t you?’
Startled, she jerked her head around to stare at him. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean that’s precisely the kind of thing to compromise this case. The only thing you’re doing is handing over your knowledge, reviewing information gathered and expressing your opinion. There’s no way you can actually take part in the investigation. I thought I’d made it abundantly clear.’
He hadn’t made it clear. She had to find Fliss. Who the fuck did he think he was?
She whipped the car through the wide curving arc up the hill in the direction of Broseley, noting Adrian’s wild grasp at the door handle, and then she deliberately slewed the car around the final bend and shot down the straight towards the Ironbridge car park.
She allowed herself a vicious smile as he shifted his weight from his left buttock to his right while she pulled the vehicle into the car park. The sight of the skid marks across the tarmac Mason had made the previous night as they’d raced across it made her lose her smile again while fear washed over her.
As she turned off the engine, Jenna turned and quirked an eyebrow at the man next to her, waiting for him to speak.
Knuckles white, he extended long fingers and gave them a wiggle. ‘Have you ever been on a police driving course?’
