through four hours of hell because of their mistake. Every hour I’d suffered would be an hour added on to the agonies of Dr Tony Hill, I vowed.
Because the Bradfield police have now committed the ultimate absurdity. Dr Tony Hill, the stupid man who hadn’t even recognized that all my crimes belonged to me, has been appointed the official police consultant to the serial-killer enquiry. The poor, deluded fools. If that’s their best hope, then they clearly have no hope.
17
In a murder of pure voluptuousness, entirely disinterested, where no hostile witness was to be removed, no extra booty to be gained and no revenge to be gratified, it is clear that to hurry would be altogether to ruin.
The agony was so extreme Tony wanted to believe he was in a nightmare. He had never understood before how many different kinds of pain there were. The dull throb in his head; the harsh rasp in his throat; the screaming, wrenching rip in his shoulders; and the knives of cramps in his thighs and calves. At first, the pain blocked all his other senses. His eyes screwed up tight, all he knew was suffering so stark it made the sweat pop out on his forehead.
Gradually, he learned to bear the extremes of his pain, realizing that if he took his weight on his feet, the cramps would slowly subside and the excruciating tearing in his shoulders grow less. As the torment became more tolerable, he grew aware that he felt nauseous, a deep queasiness that sat in his stomach and threatened to spill over at any moment. God alone knew how long he’d been hanging here.
Slowly, fearfully, he opened his eyes and raised his head, a movement which sent a spasm of agony through his neck and shoulders. Tony looked around. Instantly, he wished he hadn’t. He knew immediately where he was. The room was brightly lit, spotlights mounted on the ceiling and walls revealing a whitewashed room, its rough stone floor marked with dark stains that he knew without examination were the visible remains of the blood that had pooled and splashed there. Facing him was the blind eye of a camcorder on a tripod, a red light on the side indicating that his scrutiny was not going unrecorded. Fixed to the far wall was a magnetic strip with a selection of knives hanging neatly on it. In one corner of the room, he saw the unmistakable implements of torture. A rack; a strange contraption like a chair which he recognized but could not name at first. Something religious? Something vaguely Christian? Something treacherous, not what it seemed? A Judas chair, that was it. And on the wall, a huge wooden saltire, like some hideously perverted holy relic. A soft moan escaped from his dry lips.
Now he knew the worst, he took stock of his own position. He was naked, his skin gooseflesh in the chill of the cellar. His hands were fastened behind his back; judging by the hard edges cutting into his wrists, by handcuffs, held taut in their turn by a rope or chain or something that was obviously fastened to the ceiling. This hawser was tight enough to force his upper body forward, leaving him doubled over at the waist. Tony managed to push himself on to the tips of his toes and twist his body sideways. Out of the corner of his eyes, he could see a strong nylon rope leading from behind him, through a pulley, along the ceiling, through another pulley on to a winch.
‘Jesus Christ,’ he croaked. He was afraid to look at his feet, lest his worst fears should be confirmed, but he forced his eyes downwards nevertheless. As he had feared, each ankle was encased in a leather strap. The straps in their turn were attached to a rope cradle that held a heavy stone flag. An involuntary shudder of fear rippled through him, stressing his tortured muscles even further. He knew about torture; to treat his patients he’d had to study the history of sadism. Not even in his worst moments had he imagined he would face so inhuman a fate.
His mind was already racing ahead. He would be winched up till he reached the ceiling. His muscles would wrench and tear, his joints strain to their utmost limit. Then the winch would be released, letting him drop a few feet before the brake was applied. The weight of the stone flag, still hurtling downwards accelerating at thirty-two feet per second, would finish the job, ripping his joints apart, leaving him dangling in a jumble of dislocated limbs. If he was lucky, the shock and pain would thrust him into unconsciousness. Strappado, brought to a fine art by the Spanish Inquisition. No need for high tech in torture.
In a bid to escape the blind panic his knowledge had brought him to, he forced himself to cast his mind back to what had happened. The woman at the door, that was where it had started. As he had let her into the house, Tony had felt a niggle of familiarity. He felt sure he’d seen her somewhere, but he couldn’t imagine having seen someone so distinctively ugly and not remembering. He’d walked ahead of her down the hall and into his study. Then, the faintest whiff of a strangely medicinal, chemical smell, before a hand had sneaked round his neck and clamped a cold, disgusting pad on his face. A kick behind his knee to buckle his legs and bring him down. He’d struggled, but with her weight on top of him, it had only lasted for moment before he had lost consciousness.
Then he had drifted in and out of a half-world of light and dark, aware only of the pad that seemed constantly to send him out as soon as he struggled into consciousness. Until, finally, he had come round. In Handy Andy’s torture chamber. Out of nowhere, a quotation sprang into his mind. ‘Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.’ Somewhere, he knew there was a clue in what had happened that might just allow him to escape what seemed inevitable. All he had to do was to find it.
Had he been completely wrong in his profile? Was the woman who had kidnapped him Handy Andy? Was she the one? Or was she just the decoy, the willing accomplice who got off on her master’s vice? Again, he replayed what his memory would allow him to snatch back. He summoned up the woman’s image again. Clothes first. Beige mac, cut continental style, just like Carol’s, swinging open to reveal a white shirt, enough buttons undone to reveal the swell of full breasts and a deep cleavage. Jeans, trainers. Trainers. They were the same make and model as his own. But none of this was significant, Tony told himself. They were only outward symbols of the care Handy Andy took not to be caught. The woman’s garb had been chosen so that if she did leave any stray fibres, they wouldn’t show up as having any significance, being identifiable as having come from either Carol’s clothes or his. And Carol had been in his house often enough now for her to have left stray fibres.
The woman’s face didn’t really ring any bells either. She was tall for a woman, at least five feet ten, with chunky bone structure to match. Not even her mother could have called her attractive, with her heavy jaw, slightly bulbous nose, wide mouth and eyes set curiously far apart. Even though she was skilfully, if heavily, made up, there wasn’t a lot she could do with the basic building materials. He was sure they’d never been in a room together, though he couldn’t rule out having passed her in the street, at the tram station or on campus.
The trainers. For some reason he kept coming back to the trainers. If only the pain would stop long enough for him to focus properly. Tony locked his legs straight, trying to relieve the agonizing strain on his shoulders. The fraction of an inch he gained wasn’t nearly enough. Again, visceral fear gripped him and he blinked away a tear.
What was it about the trainers? Tony summoned every ounce of concentration he could master, and called up the image of the woman again. With a slow gasp of understanding, he realized what it was. The feet were too big. Even for a woman of that height, the feet were too big. As soon as he grasped that, he remembered the hands too. First, black leather, later thin latex gloves covering big hands, fingers thick and strong. The person who had brought him here had not always been a woman.
Carol pressed the doorbell again. Where the hell was he? The lights were on, the curtains drawn. Maybe he’d nipped out to pick up a pizza, post a letter, buy a bottle of wine, rent a video? With a frustrated sigh, she turned away and walked down to the end of the street, turning into the ginnel that ran between Tony’s street and the houses behind. She walked down to his back yard, where a previous owner had demolished the wall and concreted half the area to provide the hard standing where Tony had told her he always kept his car.
The car was in place, exactly where it should have been. ‘Oh, bloody hell,’ Carol complained. Edging past the car, she walked up to the house and peered through the kitchen window. The light from the open door into the hall cast a pale glow over the room. No sign of life. No dirty dishes, no empty bottles.
On the off chance, Carol tried the back door. No joy. ‘Bloody men,’ she grumbled as she strode back to her car. ‘Five minutes, pal, then I’m off,’ she said, throwing herself into the driver’s seat. Ten minutes crawled by, but no one appeared.
Carol started the engine and drove off. At the end of the street, she glanced across at the pub on the other side of the main road. It was worth a try, she supposed. It took less than three minutes to check the smoky, crowded rooms and discover that wherever Tony Hill was, it wasn’t in the Farewell to Arms.
Where else could he be within walking distance at nine o’clock on a Sunday night? ‘Anywhere,’ she told herself. ‘You can’t be his only friend in the world. He wasn’t expecting you; you only called round to arrange a
