She lay back down on the mattress and yet again tried to work out what the hell was going on. As each day had come and gone she began to think maybe she wasn’t in the hands of some nutter after all. Perhaps she had been kidnapped and was being held to ransom. If so, then the kidnapper had made a big mistake. Since her mum had died Dad had given up his job in Exeter and now taught part-time at the local college. They hadn’t been well off before then, but now they had no money. That was why she had taken the job at the nursery.
Thinking about her mum made Alice cry again, but it also gave her some resolve. Mum had said Alice had to be brave and look after Dad and Alfie, her younger brother, and Alice promised she would. She wasn’t going to let some guy make her renege on that.
She got off the bed and for the umpteenth time took a tour of the room. She touched the wooden shutters and moved on. At first the window had seemed like the obvious way out, but no longer. She had scratched a larger hole in the paint and discovered iron bars set into the stonework on the outside. No way out there. That only left the door. She went over and tried the handle but it was locked, as always. She bent to look through the keyhole expecting to see the opposite wall of the dark corridor she had seen many times before. Nothing. The hole had been blocked up or… the key was still in the lock!
She remembered a trick her Dad had shown her where you slid a piece of paper under the door and pushed the key out from the inside, retrieving the paper with the key on it. She didn’t have any paper, but she did have the tray from her morning delivery. The tray was a single piece of preformed plastic, the sort you got in a cafeteria, and the gap beneath the door measured about two fingers, just enough to allow it to be pushed under. Now she needed something to poke the key with. She racked her brains, listing things in the room she might use. She had gone through everything and was beginning to despair when… fruit to the rescue again: a banana! She grabbed the peel and felt the woody stalk, perfect. The stalk didn’t fit into the keyhole so she whittled away at it with her fingernails until she had trimmed the excess and then pushed it in. The key wasn’t straight in the lock so it didn’t drop out, but after a bit of wiggling and twisting she heard it fall down and clatter onto the tray.
Silence. The only noise the beating of her heart. Thump, thump, thump, thump. No footsteps in the hallway, no sound of anybody coming to investigate. She pulled the tray in, picked up the key and tried it in the lock. Click. She pushed the handle down and opened the door.
The door swung open to reveal a hallway lit by a bare bulb glowing white and hanging from an old, twisted wire. A carpet ran down the centre exposing stained wooden floorboards either side. The carpet was ancient and in an old-fashioned style, coloured deep red with gold swirls in amongst the dirt somewhere, the pile worn and threadbare. A short way along the corridor to the left a door stood half-open. Inside the room a huge roll-top bath sat beneath a window. There was no blind or curtain, just glass with condensation streaming down in rivulets. The bath and a cracked washbasin had antique fittings, the tap on the basin dripping dirty water onto brown stained enamel.
To her right she could see another door, closed this time, and beyond the corridor turned a corner. In front of her stairs led down to either a hallway or a room below. The stairs were steep with the carpet held in place with brass rods and had a wooden banister to the right.
Alice retrieved the duvet from the bed and wrapped it around her. Then she padded out of the room and across to the stairs and began to descend, stopping on each step to listen.
For what?
Nothing but the distant drip, drip, drip, drip of the tap echoing the cadence of her heart thumping.
A board creaked under her foot and she froze. She lifted her foot and eased it away and down onto the next step. An old song, one of her mum's favourites, began to play in her head. Kris Kristofferson was it? And how did it go?
One step at a time, sweet Jesus, only that didn’t sound quite right. Fuck knows, who cares anyway?
She carried on down, mouthing the words of her new song until she reached the bottom step.
Another corridor, a closed door next to her and the hallway turning back in the opposite direction from the stairs. Halfway along another bare bulb hung down, the light so weak she could see the coil of red wire glowing hot inside the glass. At the end of the hall was a big, old door, thick with years of paint. Black iron bolts top and bottom and a burglar bar dropped into U shaped cups fastened to the frame. A rough, bristled mat lay on the floor.
Front door. The way out!
She eased herself along the corridor, half-sliding, half-shuffling. Down on the left an opening revealed a large room, dim with no light. In the gloom she could see a long table with high-backed chairs. She inched past the room and moved toward the front door. To the right yet another door stood open, a flickering light dancing within. She crept nearer. There seemed to be a rhythmical sound, a slight rubbing noise, coming from somewhere close.
Shuffle, slide, shuffle, slide. Her own rhythm this time, the Alice Nashville two-step.
She was at the door now and when she peered in she had to bite her lip to prevent herself letting out a cry.
In the centre of the room a man knelt on the floor. Short dark hair, mid-thirties and naked. And she recognised him. The nakedness shocked her, but the recognition chilled her.
Always best to go with your first opinion of someone, girl. Best not to go for a drink with them. Asking for trouble that.
She remembered now. It had all been Cath’s fault. She said it would be a giggle so when he asked them to go to the pub with him they accepted.
Who is giggling now, Cath?
She didn’t think he had taken her for the money. He as good as had weirdo tattooed on his forehead. She had felt uncomfortable when she first met him, the way his eyes drank her in and his tongue flicked in and out like a snake or a lizard tasting the air.
The man was sideways on to her and she had a clear view of his right hand moving up and down in the age- old manner. The man’s face contorted, creasing and flattening in time with his hand’s rhythm, although whether the expressions showed pleasure, pain or grief Alice found impossible to tell.
To each side of the man a candle burnt in a tall, silver candlestick. The candles guttered every now and then sending shadows feathering across the floor, the fluttering light picking out a bare room with heavy, velvet curtains at the window and an open fire crackling in a grate.
The man was staring forward, a grey tongue lolling in the corner of his open mouth as he gazed at something in front of him. Alice couldn’t see what it was. She knew she should turn and run, but she didn’t. Instead she edged closer to the door, craning her head to see.
Oh no. Fucking hell!
Her mouth dropped open and the shakes returned. Now she knew she should move and she tried to inch backwards. One step. Two steps.
A creak from a floorboard.
The man’s hand stopped moving and he turned his head towards her, a smile broadening on his face before changing to a manic grin below staring eyes of pure madness.
‘Emma! Are you clean at last?’
Alice screamed and dropping the duvet from around her she ran.
Chapter 24
Crownhill Police Station, Plymouth. Wednesday 3rd November. 10.15 am
Back at her desk Wednesday morning and Savage was trying to make sense of it all. As she scribbled a couple of Post-Its and clicked through some documents on her screen she began to realise how much the scope of the investigation had widened. The boundary between Leash and Zebo had become indistinct and the clear picture the team had been working with blurred. Focus shift. She had seen it before and knew the danger. They now had a tangle of threads to tease apart: Rosina, Kelly, Alice, Forester, Trent, Leash, Zebo. Kelly had got involved with Forester through the modelling and the drugs and they had linked Forester with the rapes thanks to the videos and the GHB the CSI team had found at Forester’s flat. But what did the videos have to do with Kelly’s murder?
The answer came with Riley. He breezed in with a cup of coffee for Savage and some good news too. He had been given a heads up by DC Susan Bridge, the statement reader on Leash.
