Two men emerged. One was around the six-foot mark, with the broad shoulders and narrow hips of a body builder. He had thinning dark hair cut close to his head, and his sharp features with their five o’clock shadow were exaggerated by the limited lighting. He looked like a tough Mephistopheles. The other was smaller and more wiry, with a mop of dark hair contorted into a curly perm. Both wore leather bomber jackets and training shoes. All this Lindsay absorbed as they moved towards her, understanding at once that something unpleasant was going to happen to her. She discovered that she couldn’t swallow. Her stomach felt as if she’d been punched in the middle of a period pain. Almost without thinking, Lindsay locked the driver’s door as Curly Perm tried the passenger door, and Mephistopheles reached her side of the car. He tried the handle, then said clearly and coldly, “Open it.”
Lindsay shook her head. “No way,” she croaked through dry lips. She was too scared even to demand to be told what was going on.
She saw him sigh. His breath was a white puff in the night air. “Look,” he said reasonably. “Open it now. Or else it’s a brick through the window. Or, since you’ve done us the favor of bringing the soft-top, the Stanley knife across this very expensive hood. You choose.”
He looked completely capable of carrying out his threat without turning a hair. Unlocking the door, Lindsay suddenly ached for a life with such certainties, without qualms. Immediately, he wrenched the door open and gestured with his thumb for her to get out. Numbly, she shook her head. Then, behind her, another voice chimed in.
“I should do as he asks if I were you.” Lindsay twisted in her seat and saw Stone leaning against the car. Somehow it came as no surprise. She even felt a slight sense of relief. At least she could be sure which side had her. You bastard, Jack Rigano, she thought.
Stone smiled encouragingly. “I assure you, you’ll be out of that car one way or another within the next few minutes. It’s up to you how painless the experience will be. And don’t get carried away with the notion of extracting a price in pain from us. I promise you that your suffering will be immeasurably greater. Now, why don’t you just get out of the car?” His voice was all the more chilling for having a warm West Country drawl.
Lindsay turned back to Mephistopheles. If he’d stripped naked in the interval, she wouldn’t have noticed. What grabbed her attention was the short-barrelled pistol which was pointing unwaveringly at her right leg. The last flickering of defiance penetrated her fear, and she said abruptly, “Because I don’t want to get out of the bloody car.”
Curly Perm marched round the back of the car, past Stone. He took something from his pocket, and suddenly a gleaming blade leapt forward from his fist. He leaned into the car as Lindsay flinched away from him. He looked like a malevolent monkey. He waved the knife in front of her, then, in one swift movement, he sliced her seat belt through the middle, leaving the ends dangling uselessly over her. He moved back, looking speculatively at the soft black vinyl roof.
“The first cut is the deepest,” said Stone conversationally. “He’s very good with the knife. He knows how to cause serious scars without endangering your life. I wonder if Deborah Patterson would be quite so keen then? Or indeed, that foxy lady you live with. Don’t be a hero, Lindsay. Get out of the car.”
His matter-of-fact air and the use of her first name were far more frightening than the flick-knife or the gun. The quiet menace Stone gave off was another matter. Lindsay knew enough about herself to realize that he was the one whose threats had the power to invest her life with paranoid nightmares. Co-operation seemed the best way to fight her fear now. So she got out of the car. “Leave the keys,” said Mephistopheles as she reached automatically for them on the way out.
As she stood up, Stone moved forward and grasped her right arm above the elbow. Swiftly, he fastened one end of a pair of handcuffs round her wrist. “Am I under arrest or what?” she demanded. He ignored the question.
“Over to the van, please,” he said politely, betraying his words by twisting her arm up her back. Stone steered her round to the back of the Transit. Curly Perm opened the doors and illuminated the interior with a small torch. Lindsay glimpsed two benches fixed to the van’s sides, then she was bundled inside and the other shackle of the cuffs was fixed to one of the solid steel struts that formed the interior ribs of the van. The doors were hastily slammed behind her, casting her into complete darkness, as she asked again, “What’s going on? Eh?” There were no windows. If she stretched out her leg as far as she could reach, she could just touch the doors. She could stand almost upright but couldn’t quite reach the opposite side of the van with her arm. It was clear that any escape attempt would be futile. She felt thankful that she’d never suffered from claustrophobia.
Lindsay heard the sound of her MG’s engine starting, familiar enough to be recognizable even inside the Transit. Then it was drowned as the van’s engine revved up, and she was driven off. She had to hold on to the bench to keep her balance as the van lurched. At first, she tried to memorize turnings but realized very quickly that it was impossible; the darkness was disorientating. With her one free hand, she checked through the contents of her pockets to see if she had anything that might conceivably be useful. A handkerchief, some money (she guessed at ?30.57), a packet of cigarettes, and her Zippo. Not exactly the Count of Monte Cristo escape kit, she thought bitterly. Why did reality never provide the fillips of fiction? Where was her Swiss army knife and her portable office with the scissors, stapler, adhesive tape, and flexible metal tape measure? In her handbag, she remembered, on the floor of the MG. Oh well, if she’d tried to bring it, they would have taken it from her, she decided.
The journey lasted for over an hour and a half. Debs would be wondering why she hadn’t appeared, thought Lindsay worriedly. And Cordelia would soon start getting cross that she wasn’t home when she said she’d be. They’d probably each assume she was with the other and feel betrayed rather than anxious; no hope of either of them giving the alarm. She was beginning to wonder exactly where she was being taken. If it was central London, they should have been there by now, given the traffic at that time of night. But there were none of the stops and starts of city traffic, just the uninterrupted run of a motorway or major road. If it wasn’t London, it must be the other direction. Bristol? Bath? Then it dawned. Cheltenham. General Communications Headquarters. It made a kind of sense.
The van was behaving more erratically now, turning and slowing down at frequent intervals. At 8:12 p.m., according to the luminous dial on Lindsay’s watch, it stopped, and the engine was turned off. She could hear indeterminate, muffled sounds outside, then the doors opened. Her eyes adjusted to the surge of light and she saw they were in an underground car park. The MG was parked opposite them, the red Fiesta next to it. Stone climbed into the van and unlocked the handcuff linking Lindsay to the van. He snapped it round his left wrist and led her out into the car park.
The four of them moved in ill-assorted convoy to a bank of lifts. Stone took a credit-card-sized piece of black plastic from his pocket and inserted it in a slot, which swallowed it. Above the slot was a grey rubber pad. He pressed his right thumb to the pad, then punched a number into a console. The slot spat the black plastic oblong out, and the lift doors opened for them. Curly Perm hit the button marked 5, and they shot upwards silently. They emerged in an empty corridor, brightly lit with fluorescent tubes. Lindsay could see half a dozen closed doors. Stone opened one marked K57 and ushered Lindsay in. The other two remained outside.
The room was almost exactly what Lindsay expected. The walls were painted white. The floor was covered with grey vinyl tiles, pitted with cigarette burns. A couple of bare fluorescent strips illuminated a large metal table in the middle of the room. The table held a telephone and a couple of adjustable study lamps clamped to it. Behind the table stood three comfortable-looking office chairs. Facing it, a metal-framed chair with a vinyl-padded seat and back was fixed to the floor. “My God, what a cliche this room is,” said Lindsay.
“What makes you think you deserve anything else?” Stone asked mildly. “Sit in the chair facing the table,” he instructed. There seemed no point in argument, so she did as she was told. He unlocked the cuffs again, and this time fastened her to the solid-looking arm of the chair.
A couple of hours had passed since she had been really frightened, and she was beginning to feel a little confidence seeping back into her bones. “Look,” she said. “Who are you, Stone? What’s going on? What am I here for?”
He smiled and shook his head. “Too late for those questions, Lindsay. Those are the first things an innocent person would have asked back in that alley in Fordham. You knew too much. So why ask questions now when you know the answers already?”
“Jesus Christ,” she muttered. “You people have got minds so devious you think everyone’s part of some plot. When you hemmed me in that alleyway, I was too bloody stunned to come up with the questions that would have made you happy. Why have I been brought here? What’s going to happen to me?”
“That rather depends on you,” he replied grimly. “Don’t go away, now,” he added as he left the room.
