Loose Ends Page 15

  ‘Hey!’ Janine said. ‘I’m pretty sure this is the place where Kate used to work.’ She stepped back and looked up at the sign above the door. ‘Plan A. Yup, this is it.’

  ‘Let’s go in, then. They might know something.’

  Janine looked at her watch. ‘I really ought to be getting back – we’re short-handed enough, without Kate there.’

  ‘Tell you what . . . I’ll drop by later and tell you if I find out anything useful.’

  ‘Fine.’

  Inside, the bar was dark and cool. Jefferson approached the older man chatting to one of the girls behind the counter. ‘I’ll have a glass of Sauvignon Blanc, please.’ He pointed to the slate on the wall advertising the day’s Specials.

  As it was being poured, he turned to the girl. ‘Did you know Kate Fullerton?’

  She looked at the older man and then back at him. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘She seems to have gone missing, and we thought maybe you had some idea of where she might have gone.’ He was proud of that anonymous but embracing second person plural, which implied a perfect right to be asking questions, without exactly telling lies.

  ‘Issa da Stefan person, Tina,’ the man said. ‘I tellin’ you issa him!’

  ‘You mean the one who’s supposed to have been stalking her?’ said Tina.

  ‘Dassa bastard. Now he kill her too, I bet.’

  ‘One of our regulars had been following her,’ Tina said to Jefferson. ‘Stefan someone.’

  ‘When you say regulars . . .’

  ‘Frequent repeat customers – not that he’s been in for a while now, not since Kate left, actually. I think she was the draw and now she’s changed jobs.’ She shrugged. ‘He’s obviously off to bother someone else.’

  ‘He fancied her,’ said the second girl, ‘like he did poor Lindsay.’

  ‘Did he look like someone who would try to harm her?’ Jefferson asked.

  ‘Not really, he was kind of wimpy, pumped on steroids, I had a boy friend like that once.’

  ‘That other one, his friend,’ said Tina. ‘Nasty bit of work . . . I wouldn’t put anything past him. Sell his own mother down the river, he would.’

  ‘Do you know his name?’

  She shook her head. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Issa bastard,’ said the man. ‘Issa all bastards.’

  ‘Would you have an address for Kate?’

  They all shook their heads. ‘Somewhere in the Highfields area, I think,’ Tina said. ‘Near the canal, I think she said once.’

  They all looked at him anxiously, as though afraid he might start demanding to see records and income tax returns, making it obvious that these were probably a little incomplete, if not downright dodgy.

  He left, emerging into the cool sunshine of an early-summer day, not much wiser than when he went in. He stopped in at TaylorMade Travel, and told Janine his lack of further information. And for the moment, that seemed to be that.

  Kate

  Thirteen

  Her lips were cracked and dry; her tongue had swollen to fill the entire cavity of her mouth. If she didn’t drink immediately she would die of thirst. Feebly she raised her head and waved at a passing camel-train but they didn’t see her and she lay down again on the sand, her tongue rasping against her flaking lips. Water, for the love of God, my need is greater than yours, so many references to water, water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink. An oasis shimmered beneath waving date palms, cool clear water, she could hear the clatter of their leaves, and she knew she’d have to get to it if she was to survive, before her tongue turned black and her eyes dried out and her heart stopped, keep a-movin’, Dan . . .

  She tried to sit up, and immediately lay back down. Under her dehydrated cheek, the sand moved and shifted, whispering of death and desiccation, cow skulls with eye sockets picked clean by bald black vultures, smell of hot desert, Bedouin tents, stink of goats, those rattling palm leaves . . . enough to drive you insane, rattle, clatter, iron striking metal, churns full of goat’s milk . . .

  Again she tried to sit up and this time was able to remain upright. Her head felt heavy and twice as large as normal, like a medicine ball which had been blown up with a bicycle pump. She put her hands up and clasped her ears, but her head seemed the same size it always had been; something fluttered like tiny moths to the sheet on which she lay and she realized it was flakes of dried blood. Her ear was tender where Stefan’s ring had cut it. Although there was very little light, it was enough for her to see that she was lying fully dressed on a bed in an almost empty room. The tape had gone from her mouth; the restraints had been removed. Nor were there any black Bedouin tents, nor camels, nor date palms. Just the consuming thirst. She got to her feet and staggered on legs that bent under her like cooked spaghetti towards a peeling wooden door set into one end of a wall. Someone had long ago installed a washbasin and a loo, both rust-stained, both filthy. She turned on the tap and shoved her mouth under it, swallowing huge gulps of water until her stomach felt bloated and she had the sudden urge – need – to throw up. She dropped to her knees and vomited copiously into the filthy lavatory bowl, watching sake and dim sum and, in the end, when her stomach was completely empty, a thin brown slime, splash into the water. Disgusting, really, but she felt a lot better as she depressed the chrome fitment and watched the whole mess swill away.

  What the hell was going on?

  Sitting on the edge of the bed, it all came back to her: the abduction, the syringe, Stefan Michaels’ triumphant expression. Weak tears broke from her eyes. Where was she, where was he, what was he playing at, though play was about as far away from her current situation as it was possible to be. What did he want? Did he plan to keep her here until she died? There was that book, years ago, The Collector. There was that poor girl in Germany recently, or was it Austria, whose own father had imprisoned her for twenty-seven years. Unimaginable, horrific. Don’t think about it, Kate, or about them. She got up and rattled the door handle.

  ‘Let me out!’ she screamed. She hammered at the locked door. ‘Please let me out!’ Although the room was semi-dark, with outside shutters closed across a dormer window, she was able to see stripes of light. It must be daytime. The morning after the night before, or had she been there longer, days maybe, even weeks? She thought not; she didn’t feel weeks older. There were beams across the low sloping ceiling – so she was at the top of the house, in the attic. No carpet, one bed, one chair, and a small table, all made of metal. She tried to open the window, but it had been padlocked shut. She couldn’t break the glass, either: a strong steel mesh had been screwed over it.

  Outside the door, footsteps echoed on bare wooden stairs, coming nearer, stopping outside the door. Instinct made her curl up on the bed, pretend to be still drugged, weaker than whoever was coming expected.

  The door was unlocked, opened, locked again. She heard keys being removed, a faint metallic rattle as they were stowed in the pocket of either a jacket or trousers. Footsteps across the floor, stopping beside the bed. ‘Get up!’

  She didn’t react.

  ‘I said, get up.’ It was Michaels. ‘I know you’re awake, I heard the toilet flushing, heard you shouting.’

  No point pretending. She pulled herself up. ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ she demanded.

  A smile curved across his lips. ‘You’ll see.’ He was wearing a black leather jacket over an open-necked striped shirt. The gold stud glinted in his ear. Even in this situation, she had to concede that he was good-looking. Small, but perfectly formed.

  ‘Why are you doing this?’ she said.

  ‘’Cos nobody disses me and gets away with it.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  Suddenly he was whirling across the room, arms lifted, standing on the tips of his toes as though about to perform a pas seul. ‘You can’t afford me, Stefan. I’ll be washing my hair, Stefan . . .’ He spoke furiously, in a high-pitched falsetto which she realized was meant to be an imitation of her own speech. ‘In fr
ont of my brother, my father, they were laughing at me.’ Again his voice rose. ‘And this is your not-so-clever son . . . You made me look like a total moron.’

  Which is exactly what you are, Stefan, a total moron. ‘It was meant to be a joke.’

  ‘Some fuckin’ joke. I could have killed you right then and there.’

  ‘And instead you kidnap me, drug me and imprison me in some empty room.’

  ‘It’s gonna get worse.’

  ‘Do you think you’ll get away with this?’

  ‘Yes, I think I will.’

  She shivered. He sounded much too sure of himself. ‘What do you want?’ she said.

  ‘I’ll show you in a minute, but first I’ll describe it for you, tell you exactly what I’m going to do to you, so you can enjoy the anticipation.’

  ‘You have no right . . .’

  ‘I know.’ He bared a mirthless smile at her. ‘That’s what makes it such fun.’

  ‘You can’t keep me here.’

  He looked around, at the door, the windows. ‘Want to bet? Take your clothes off.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard. Take them off.’

  ‘You’re mad.’

  ‘Take them off.

  ‘NO!’

  He pulled a knife from his belt, grabbed her by the arm in the soft hurtful place above the elbow and pulled her upright, then slit her shirt and trousers from throat to crotch, so that the two halves fell down her arms and legs, and she stood there in her underwear. She folded her arms across her breasts. Her Armani trousers bought in a sale . . . thank goodness she hadn’t paid full price for them, she thought irrelevantly, though the MaxMara shirt had cost a fortune . . . ‘If you think you’ll get away with this . . .’ She lashed out at him, using both hands fisted together. She caught him high on the cheekbone and he cursed, grabbed her nipple through the lace of her bra and twisted until tears of agony ran down her cheeks, then slapped her so viciously across the face that she felt teeth loosen along her jaw.

  ‘Shut up, bitch.’ He pushed her backwards on to the bed, held her down with one hand while he shrugged out of his jacket. ‘Undo my shirt,’ he commanded.

  ‘Undo it yourself, you bastard.’ She swung her knees up, leaped up at him again, but he grabbed her breast again, the same one and she fell backwards, the pain almost unendurable.

  He laughed. Still holding her down, he pulled down his zip, pushed his jeans to the floor and stepped out of them. He wore no underpants; she could smell sexual urgency on him, like spilled whisky. He pushed a vicious knee between her legs and fell on top of her.

  Every woman at one time or another has imagined what she might do if she were raped, how she might win the battle. She’d seen it simulated so often, discussed the subject with the girls many times, batting theories back and forth over the best way to deal with it. Nothing, no amount of debate, could have prepared her for the reality. He tore her pants away, grabbed her crotch and squeezed. There was no time to consider any theory, animal instinct simply took over. She kicked and screamed, yelled obscenities, tried to butt him with her head, tried to jab her fingers into his eyes, but although he was slightly built, he was too strong for her, punching at her stomach, her breasts, her ribs while she tried vainly to stop him. Eventually, he glanced at his watch and got up.

  It was only while he was belting his trousers that she realized he had not actually done anything remotely sexual, not even by proxy, no fingers forced inside, no foreign objects introduced. She wanted to say something cutting about his performance, or lack of it, but was too shocked, in too much pain, to think of any smart-ass remark, and besides, she didn’t want to provoke him into further displays of violence: he obviously got off on pain and distress, and she’d be damned if she would show him any signs of either.

  She read his watch from upside-down. Twelve fifty-one. Had anyone missed her yet? This was Sunday – at least, she thought it was: she wasn’t even due to Janine’s place until this evening.

  ‘I’ll be back later,’ Michaels said, smoothing down his chest, preening.

  ‘You’re insane,’ she said wearily.

  ‘I. Am. Not. Insane.’

  He didn’t like that. She stored the fact away. Did she dare say anything more? Perhaps not. Not this time. She turned away from him and curled up, pulling the sheet over her.

  He approached the bed, tugged down the sheet, told her when he returned, he might use a knife on her rather than on her clothes, she was too plump here, and here, and besides, he was always excited by the sight of blood, he knew ways to inflict pain, he said, he would have her pleading for mercy, and then he would use her like the piece of filthy scum she was, use her in every way it was possible for a woman to be used. The stream of smut grew repetitive after a while, and she drifted off into a painful doze.

  Janine

  Fourteen

  It was Janine’s day to visit her mother in Kelsford, one of the little villages five or six miles from the town, with a tiny post-office-cum-general-store, bakery, two pubs (one of them with a stream flowing past the back of it, with willows weeping into the water, picturesque enough to feature in This England calendars from time to time), a chapel, a primary school. Every fourth Sunday of the month, she packed a basket with several glossy magazines (‘Ooh, look at that dress, you can see right up to her wotsit’), two pounds of best fillet steak (‘red meat’s ever so good for the heart’), two bottles of wine, one red (‘so’s red wine’) and one white (so there could be no cause for complaint about the wrong colour), a bunch of grapes (one red and one white), and a round of Stilton. She used to take flowers or chocolates, but when she arrived she would always find that her brother had just bought a bigger box, a more expensive bouquet, and long ago had decided that she wouldn’t even try to compete, instead choosing things he would never think of buying. The image of her macho brother buying a copy of Vogue was one she particularly enjoyed.

  She bent to kiss her mother’s cheek, relishing as always the smell of fresh-baked bread which rose from the older woman’s hair. After trying various jobs at which she had proved distressingly incompetent, she had been serving behind the counter of the small local bakery for seven years or more and was beginning to take on the look of one of the items on the shelves behind her, a crisp baguette, perhaps, or an empty brandy snap. ‘Hi, Mum. How are you doing?’

  ‘I’m fine, Jane. Let’s have a look at you.’

  Janine stood in front of the armchair where her mother sat, and pirouetted slowly. ‘Very nice. Nice pair of slacks.’ Her mother sighed. ‘Slacks is a good idea; I often used to wonder how you was ever going to get through life with legs like yours.’

  Thanks, Mum . . . ‘They’re Jaeger. You can never have enough pairs of good wool trousers, or so they say.’

  ‘That’s a nice top, too.’

  ‘Cashmere.’

  ‘Well, no-one can say you don’t make the best of yourself, especially given what you started out with.’

  If I ever have a daughter, Janine vowed fiercely, I shall tell her from the very beginning that she is the most beautiful, gifted, gorgeous child that ever was, even if she is as ugly as a changeling, though since she herself was getting closer and closer to thirty-four with no man – no possible husband – in sight, let alone a daughter, repulsive or otherwise, the chance to do so seemed to grow further and further away. She had a friend up in the Lake District who’d been so desperate to find a husband that she and her mother had gone into a church together and prayed that she would meet a nice man and that same evening, travelling down to London, that was exactly what happened (‘there is a God!’). Maybe I should do that, she thought, opening both the bottles of the wine she’d brought and pouring a glass from each, though she could hardly conceive of a situation where she’d be able to tempt her mother into a church, let alone in order to pray for a husband.

  ‘There you are, Mum.’ She handed one of the glasses over, knowing that whichever colour wine she gave her, she’d want the other.
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  ‘I think I’d prefer the white, thanks, Jane.’

  ‘Oh, Mum.’ More irritated by her mother than usual, Janine passed her the other glass. Kate’s continued absence was growing increasingly nerve-racking, even more so given the apparent lack of interest shown by the police, and she’d been finding it hard to ignore the grotesque images of Kate which continually rolled through her mind: Kate bound, Kate gagged, Kate subjected to unspeakable torments. At the same time, she was promising herself that one of these days she would make her mother sit down and tell her that she was no longer called Jane, make her accept that she was Janine now, had been ever since she left home, even had her name changed by deed poll, that there were people who wouldn’t know who her mother was talking about if she referred to her daughter as Jane, that she’d also, while she was at it, changed her surname, much too complicated and foreign-sounding (sorry, Dad), chosen something as innocuous as she could – Janine Taylor, like it or lump it, Mum, that’s what she would say. One of these days . . .

  For no apparent reason, unless she had spent some time developing her thought-reading skills, her mother started chuckling. ‘Funny little thing you were, Jane, and no mistake. A stick insect, that’s what I used to call you.’

  ‘I remember, Mum.’

  ‘And your brother said a stick insect with attitude would be more like.’ Her mother laughed with fond reminiscence. ‘A stick insect with attitude – I like that.’

  ‘Ha, ha, very funny, and he was the exact opposite, wasn’t he? A pig, a real porker, bloated, obese, fat as a barrel but with fewer brains, if he lay down on the beach, the Save the Whale people would come running up and try to drag him back into the sea.’ She didn’t say it, of course. What was the point? Mum would only get upset and angry. And anyway, since she hadn’t seen him for years, he might well have slimmed down now (yeah, right), double-chinned, multi-bellied, man-boobed, fat-arsed slob that he was, or had been – though if truth be told, he hadn’t been that big, she was exaggerating, enjoying herself while Mum went on and on about her darling son.