The secret of anatomy, p.26
The Secret of Anatomy, page 26
He half-fell off the bed, staggered to the door and pulled it open. Damien was gazing up at him with his dark glittering eyes. “For you! For you!” he shrieked in David’s face.
“What the hell do you want?” David growled.
“For you,” Damien repeated, lowering the decibel level only slightly.
“What is?” David snapped.
“Telephone!” Damien shrilled. “Telephone! Telephone! Telephone!”
The significance of that took a moment to seep into David’s brain, but when it did he suddenly felt wide-awake. His eyes opened as wide as the devil-child’s and he muttered, “Oh God, right.”
He plunged past the boy and clattered down the stairs. The telephone receiver was waiting for him, off the hook and lying on its back on the hall table. David snatched it up. “Hello?” he said.
“Am I speaking to David Fox?”
“Yes. Who is this?”
“Never mind that. Just listen.”
“What do you mean? I—”
“Just listen, Mr Fox, or you will never see your wife and daughters again. That I can promise you.”
It was a line David had heard a million times on TV cop shows, but hearing it for real was not the slightest bit funny. He felt himself go cold all over.
“What do you want?” he said softly.
“The bottle, Mr Fox, that’s all. The bottle in exchange for your friends and family. I’m going to give you an address, Mr Fox. I want you to be there at nine o’clock tonight and I want you to bring the bottle with you. I want you to hand it over and then tomorrow morning your family and your friends will be released. It’s as simple as that, Mr Fox. Do you understand what I’ve told you?”
David couldn’t believe that this was happening. He said, “You’ve kidnapped my family?”
The man sighed. “Yes. And your two friends, Ralph and Diane Joyce.”
“How … I mean … how do I know you’re telling the truth?”
“Oh dear, how tedious,” said the man. Then David heard him say, “Bring Fox’s wife over here.”
David listened hard but heard nothing. Then all at once, shockingly, he heard Ellen say, “David? Is that you?”
“Ellen!” David cried. There was no response. “Ellen!” he shouted.
“Don’t draw attention to yourself, Mr Fox,” the man said. His voice was calm and cultured and mocking. “If you do as I say, nobody will be hurt. Now, here’s the address. Can you remember this?”
“Yes,” said David. He could think of nothing else to say. He wanted to scream and shout, but he was terrified that if he did so the man would hurt Ellen and the girls. He listened as the man told him the address, repeated it over and over to himself though he knew he would not forget it.
“Nine o’clock tonight,” the man repeated. “You hand over the bottle and your family and friends will be released tomorrow morning.”
“Why not tonight?” said David, his voice wavering up and down the scale. “Why can’t you bring them with you?”
“Use your head, you fucking moron,” the man said wearily. “It’s to stop you informing the police, of course.”
“But … but how do I know you’ll let them go? How do I know?” David was trying to prevent himself from sobbing out the words, trying to keep his voice steady.
“You’ll have to trust me, won’t you?” the man said smugly, and put the phone down.
Chapter Thirty-One
Jane watched the man with the white hair and moustache put his mobile phone back into his pocket, and wished she could wake up in bed and find that it had all been a dream. She knew she wouldn’t, even though so much of what had been happening felt as if it was too weird to be real. After being carried downstairs by Marc and passing out, she remembered nothing before waking up here, in this horrible, scary place. Because of the white-haired man, she was too scared even to move or make a sound. She just lay where she was, looking up at his cruel face, unable to stop trembling.
At least Mummy and Rachel and Aunty Diane and Uncle Ralph were sort of all right, although they were tied up just like she was, and each of them had thick brown tape wrapped round and round their heads, covering their mouths. When she’d first woken up to find the tape over her mouth, Jane had panicked, thinking she couldn’t breathe. Then she found that if she calmed herself down a bit, which was not easy, and didn’t move around so much, she was able to breathe through her nose. The worst thing about the tape was that it pulled all your hairs really hard even if you just moved your head a little bit. It also made the bottom half of your face really hot, as if the skin wanted to sweat but couldn’t.
Jane could tell by everyone’s eyes that they were very scared, but that they were trying to pretend they weren’t for her sake. Except for looking scared, though, everyone looked okay, apart from Uncle Ralph, who looked awful. His nose was one huge purple-black bruise, all crusted with dried blood, and the flesh around his eyes was swollen and black too and covered with little cuts, reducing the eyes themselves, one of which was bright red as if full of blood, to slits.
When she had woken up, there had been just the five of them in what she had thought at first was a dungeon. They had all been half-lying, half-leaning in a row against a stone wall that was damp and smelly and dirty and very, very cold. Jane had been lying at the end of the row, next to Mummy. Then there was Rachel, then Aunty Diane, then Uncle Ralph, whose breathing sounded like someone stirring a bowl of gravel with a stick. All of them were dirty, and Mummy’s and Rachel’s eyes were all red as if they’d been crying. Mummy was just wearing a dressing gown and her nightdress; her feet were bare and covered in dirt and one of them was bleeding. Aunty Diane, who had been naked the last time Jane had seen her, was now wearing a baggy black t-shirt that had faded to a greeny grey and a pair of jeans with a hole in the knee that looked too big for her. Her feet had been bare and dirty too (although now, of course, they were bleeding a lot worse than Mummy’s after what that horrible man had done to her), and her hair was wet-looking and hung down in matted rat’s-tails.
Looking around, Jane had quickly realised that they were not in a dungeon but in a cellar. It was a very damp and dirty cellar, full of cobwebs and rusty old tools and bits of wood and broken flower pots and other rubbish. There was an old cracked sink against the right-hand wall, above which were taps that were covered with some sort of yellowy-grey gunge. Above these was a window, perhaps just large enough for a small child to squeeze through. The window contained reinforced glass and was covered in grime and swathed in cobwebs, but it still admitted enough light for them to see by. The only door to the cellar was up a narrow flight of stone steps on the far wall.
Before the man with the white hair had come down into the cellar, Jane had heard people moving about in the house above. She’d heard their feet clumping on floorboards, the buzz of their voices from which, by some acoustic quirk, the odd word had emerged crystal-clear. There was nothing special or even sinister about the words she heard, though they enabled her to guess that there were at least three people in the house, one of which was a woman. She heard the woman say two words, “before” and “everything,” and she heard someone else say “consciously” and the other person say “whenever” and “certain.”
And then the door had opened, throwing light on to the stairs, and the white-haired man had come down and he had been horrible. He had stood looking at them for a while, all neat and smug in his pinstriped suit, and then he had smiled, though not in a friendly way, and had said, “Good afternoon. I trust you’re all comfortable?”
Nobody had said anything, of course, though Aunty Diane had tried to, making muffled “Mmmm-mmmm” noises behind her gag. The man had walked forward and squatted down, tilting his head towards her.
“I’m sorry,” he had said. “I’m afraid I didn’t quite catch that.”
So quickly that Jane had jerked her head back, startled, bumping it on the wall, Aunty Diane had then sort of spun round on her bottom and lashed out with her bound legs. Her feet, though bare, would have made contact with the man’s head, probably sending him sprawling, if they had been allowed to. Like a striking cobra, so fast that Jane saw the movement as nothing more than a blur, his arm shot up and his hand snapped round her left foot, stopping the momentum of the swing in mid-air.
The man seemed completely unruffled by Aunty Diane’s attempt to kick him.
“I’m afraid that wasn’t very nice,” he said pleasantly.
Then he turned his head and sank his teeth into the bottom of Aunty Diane’s left foot until blood was running down it and dripping on to the floor, and Aunty Diane was writhing and squealing, and everyone else was squealing and trying to kick out at him too.
Jane squeezed her eyes tight shut and would have blocked her ears too if she’d been able to do so. Just as the muffled squealing reached fever pitch, and she thought her head was going to pop with the sheer awfulness of the sound, the squealing faded into puppy-like whimpering, and she opened her eyes.
The white-haired man was standing up again, blood smeared all round his mouth and coating his moustache. He reached gingerly into his pocket with bloody fingers and plucked out a wad of something small and white, which became a fluttering bird when he flicked his wrist, or at least Jane thought it had before realising it was a handkerchief. The man walked over to the cracked sink and twisted one of the taps. It squeaked and spluttered, then coughed up some rusty spurts of water. After a few seconds, the water began running more freely. The man put his handkerchief under the water until it was soaked, then wrung it out and used it to wipe the blood from his face and hands.
Aunty Diane, meanwhile, had her head bowed and her face creased up with pain. Tears were running out of her eyes and dripping off the end of her nose. Her feet were red with blood, which welled up from a crescent of teeth marks on the sole of the left one. Her toes on that foot were curled inwards and the foot itself was taut and bent like a banana.
The white-haired man, his face clean, scrunched up his now bloody handkerchief and threw it at Aunty Diane. She turned her head away, but it still hit her on the cheek and flopped on to her stomach.
“You’re welcome to use this,” he said, “but don’t think I’m washing your feet for you.” He seemed to find this funny and chuckled to himself. “Well,” he said, “that was fun. Now, where were we?” He appeared to consider the question for a moment, and then his face brightened. Looking at Mummy he said, “Oh yes. I was just about to molest your youngest daughter. You haven’t any objections, have you?”
Mummy’s eyes opened wide and she began to moan behind her gag—
“Thought not,” said the man brightly and walked slowly towards Jane.
Jane felt something inside her shrinking away, trying to hide. She began to whimper like Aunty Diane was now doing, and drew up her knees, her feet dragging across the gritty floor. Beside her, Mummy looked as if she was having a fit. Her eyes were wide and full of outrage and terror. She was rocking back and forth, thrashing like a worm on a fishhook.
The horrible man crouched in front of Jane and bared his teeth in the horriblest grin she had ever seen. Though he had wiped the blood from his face, his teeth were still pink with it, and up this close Jane could see tiny beads of glittering redness still clinging to the white wiry strands of his moustache. His eyes were horrible too, flat and silver like metal, like the eyes of a robot. He reached out a hand towards her and she twisted away, wishing she could push herself right inside the rotten damp plaster of the wall, out of his reach.
His hand, warm and dry and smelling of soap, touched her cheek. He stroked it gently and crooned, “Beautiful girl.” Almost idly he glanced to his right where Mummy was trying to shuffle into a position where she could put herself bodily between the man and Jane. “Oh, for God’s sake,” he murmured, then he stood and picked Jane up and carried her to the other side of the room.
Jane began to cry but that didn’t seem to perturb the man one bit. He put her down, got down on all fours in front of her and ran his tongue up her bare leg, from her ankle to her knee. Across the other side of the room, Mummy was thrashing from side to side, Uncle Ralph too, and Rachel had tears pouring down her face. Instinctively Jane was trying to keep her knees as tightly together as she could. She wasn’t sure exactly what was going to happen, but she knew it was going to be awful.
And then light tumbled down the steps again and the white-haired man twisted his head towards it. As footsteps clacked on the stone steps, Jane saw a terrifying expression cross the man’s face, a look of absolute fury and frustration and hatred. He looked like an animal, or worse than an animal. He looked like madness. He looked Jane directly in the eyes and in that instant she thought she was going to die. Then he hissed, “Later,” and scrambled to his feet.
He was brushing the dirt from the knees and elbows of his suit when an old fat woman and a young gangly nervous-looking man entered the cellar. The fat woman looked at him through spectacles so dark you could not see her eyes, her bangles and beads jangling. “What are you doing?” she asked suspiciously.
“What does it look like?” the white-haired man spat back at her. “Checking the hostages.”
The woman made a clucking noise with her tongue. “Hostages. You make everything sound so dramatic. This isn’t Beirut, you know.”
“What would you suggest calling them, then?” the man asked, contempt in his voice.
“Why do we have to call them anything?” said the fat woman.
“What about prisoners?” the young man suggested timidly, flashing an almost shameful glance at Jane, who was breathing quickly and heavily, trying to blink tears out of her eyes.
“Shut up, Bernard,” said the horrible man.
Bernard visibly flinched.
The fat woman stepped towards the horrible man. Even though Jane couldn’t see her eyes, she could tell that she was furious.
“No names!” she snapped at him. “That was stupid and irresponsible. You know the rules.”
The horrible man gestured dismissively at the four older captives. “What does it matter if they hear our names?” he said. “We can make them forget easily enough. Besides, they won’t get out of here alive in any case.”
“That’s enough!” barked the fat woman. She was quivering with rage now. She took another step forward as if she was planning to strike the horrible man. He stood his ground, and though he was stone-faced, Jane could see that he was daring her to try it, perhaps even hoping that she would.
She didn’t. Instead she said again, more quietly, “That’s enough.” Though she was facing the horrible man, Jane knew she wanted them all to hear her when she said, “These people are distressed enough as it is. Now, nobody is going to get hurt here. Are they?”
Her voice hardened on those last two words. The horrible man just stared at her for a long, long moment, still as a mannequin, his face like stone. Then he smiled, gave a snort of laughter, and in a voice so calm it made Jane shiver, he said, “I think you ought to remember something, fat lady. I think you ought to remember that your authority is not what it was. Your charge is dead, or had you forgotten? Had it slipped your mind that your precious little Danny was no more?” Suddenly his arm snapped out as if to punch the old woman. Bernard gave a startled shriek. But instead of punching her, the horrible man opened his fist and patted her non-too-gently on the cheek, making the flesh wobble like jelly. “In which case,” he continued, “I think it would be very wise on your part to show me a little more respect. Don’t you?”
The fat woman stood her ground, but refused to get annoyed, even though, by patting her cheek, the horrible man had tried to make her look small and stupid. She let him have his say and then she replied, in just as silky a voice as his, “You know as well as I do that it’s not just my authority you’re opposing. If something happens here because of your … lack of control, and you jeopardise this assignment, then it won’t just be me you’ll be answering to.”
The horrible man sneered. “And you know just as well,” he said, “that if something happens here, then it will be because it was meant to happen. The pattern, fat lady. Always remember the pattern.”
“That’s exactly what I am doing,” the fat woman said curtly. Then, as if she couldn’t keep the argument up any longer, she sighed, shook her head and reached out to touch the horrible man’s arm. “Please,” she said, her voice softer as if prepared to make friends again, “let’s play this one by the book. We can’t afford any mishaps. It’s a very delicate time, but with Danny dead, things are in a state of …”
“Flux?” suggested the horrible man, smiling as if he’d made a joke.
“Flux,” said the woman, smiling too. “So let’s just carry things through as we were instructed, shall we?”
The horrible man spread his hands. “Of course. It never crossed my mind to do otherwise.”
The fat woman looked at him, but because of her dark glasses, it was hard to tell what she was thinking. Eventually she said, “Good,” then she looked around as if it was the first time she had been in here. She pointed at Jane. “Why is the little girl over here? And why is that woman’s foot bleeding so badly?”
Worthington glanced at Jane, and then at Aunty Diane, as if he had only just noticed them. “The girl was being disruptive,” he said, “agitating the adults, so I decided to move her. While I was doing so the woman tried to attack me. She was so frenzied that only violence would subdue her. I used the minimum force necessary.”
On occasion, Jane had heard Mummy and Daddy using the phrase, “If looks could kill…,” and now, looking at Mummy and Aunty Diane and Uncle Ralph, she suddenly knew exactly what that phrase meant. They were glaring at the white-haired man as if they wanted to kill him. Jane wondered whether they really would kill him if they got the chance. She thought maybe they would.
Maybe she would too. She thought she would be prepared to do anything to get away from here, though she didn’t like to think that she might have to. She was so glad that the fat woman and the young man had come down when they did, but she was still shivering with fear, so scared that she thought her breath might freeze into a solid block in her throat and suffocate her.
