away.
She lay still, breathing hard, breathing heavy. Trying to work out where she was, what had happened to her. She closed her eyes, cast her mind back to how she got there, what had happened.
There was that figure. The one from her dream. Back in her bedroom again, looming over her, lights at the side of its head, sharp, white demon eyes staring right down at her. Had she screamed? She thought she had but it had happened so quickly. One second it was at the end of the bed, the next on her. Hand clamped over her mouth, tight and hard, cutting off her words, her breath.
She remembered being lifted up, carried. Trying to kick and scream and making no impact, her hands and feet held firmly. And then…
Oh God.
Zoe. Lying there, on the kitchen floor. Blood all over the place. So much blood, it seemed more than one body could hold…
And the gash across her best friend’s throat. The way her legs lay, her arms, her face.
Oh God, her face…
She screamed again, kicked again. Kept screaming and kicking until her body rode out the wave of fear and anger, leaving her still, panting. She looked round, willed her eyes to grow accustomed to the dark, make something out of her surroundings.
She was in a box of some kind. She breathed in, deeply. Smelled wood. A wooden box. Big, big enough for her.
Oh God, she thought. A coffin.
She held her hysteria down, tried to think.
The box was sealed. Tight. But she was breathing so there must be some air holes somewhere, some kind of contact with outside. She looked around. Blinked. Looked away, tried to see out of the corners of her eyes, like looking for stars on a dark, cloudless night.
There were some holes, just above her head. Round, like they’d been drilled. Still dark, but different. She couldn’t tell if it was day or night.
And her hands were tied together in front of her body. She tried pulling them apart, felt nothing but pain around her wrists. Either sharp plastic or wire. Something that would only make things worse for her the more she pulled. The same for her ankles. Her feet were bare and she was cold. There was a blanket wrapped round her, old and itchy. But she still felt cold. Not uncomfortably so, just not warm.
Suzanne lay still, listened. Tried to take in sounds beyond the box, make out where she was. Nothing. Silence.
She sighed. Tried not to let her fear overwhelm her once more. Because she had always been claustrophobic, that was bad enough. But there was something else.
There had been a film out years ago,
Ever since she was a child she had had a recurring dream. Her arms and legs would stop moving, stop responding. Her dreaming mind would tell her that she had to run, escape. And she would try. But she could never move. Not an arm, not a leg. Nothing, until she woke up.
And when she did the dream was always so vivid and terrifying, she would spend the next day trying to shake it away. But it was harder to get rid of than tattoos.
And now the dream was back again.
Except this time it was real.
The fear, the panic, welled up inside Suzanne once more and she screamed. As loud and as hard as she could. And when the scream subsided she started it up again. Accompanied by kicks from her tied feet, punches from her tied wrists. She hit the wood, felt the blows bounce harmlessly off. She may as well have been trying to break into Fort Knox with a toffee hammer.
She lay back panting for breath, sweat on her face, trickling down her body. Let her pulse rate fall back, gather her strength.
Try to keep the panic down.
Soon, all she heard was her own breathing, all she could see was the different coloured blackness of the air holes.
She lay as still as she could, waiting to see what would happen next.
‘Be quiet… just be quiet…’
Suzanne’s heart skipped a beat. Then another. Was that her voice? Was she speaking aloud or imagining she was speaking aloud?
‘Hello?’
‘Please, be quiet…’
No. It was definitely a voice. Coming from outside her box. Not her own.
Suzanne looked round but of course she couldn’t see anything or anyone. Hope rose within her. There was someone there, someone else besides herself. They could help her, get her out. She should talk, communicate. Let them know she was here.
Then another thought struck her. Maybe this was her captor. What had the voice said? Be quiet. Maybe if she made more noise the voice would open the box. Do to her what it had done to Zoe.
She lay in the darkness, heart thudding, terrified. Waiting.
The voice spoke again. ‘There’s no point in shouting… or trying to get out. There’s no one here to hear you. But me.’
‘What… what… who are you?’
Nothing. Suzanne waited. Nothing.
‘Just, please… who are you? How do you know you can’t get out?’
The voice sighed. ‘Because I tried…’
34
‘So,’ said Phil, pulling the hood of his blue paper suit round his face, ‘Suzanne Perry had been stalked before?’
Anni nodded. ‘Anthony Howe, one of her lecturers at university. Apparently they had an affair and he couldn’t let go. Apparently. There was some doubt.’
Phil looked round the flat. The CSIs were moving through, sifting, numbering, examining, analysing. ‘Someone couldn’t let go…’
Anni had brought him up to speed about Suzanne Perry. The intruder of the night before, the rape examination. Also the lack of physical evidence for a break-in and the previous trouble with Anthony Howe, including the unsubstantiated allegations Suzanne made against him. Plus her subsequent scepticism about Suzanne’s claims.
Phil saw the look on her face, the guilt-ridden, haunted look in her eyes. She wasn’t sceptical now.
‘What about the ex-boyfriend?’ said Phil.
‘I don’t know till I talk to Rose Martin. She spoke to him last night.’
Phil nodded. Perhaps punishing the errant DS by giving her unpaid overtime on a case that wasn’t hers hadn’t been, in retrospect, such a good idea.
Mickey had suited up, come to join them. ‘So where do we go from here, boss?’
‘Out, I think,’ said Phil. It was another hot day and the small flat couldn’t take the press of extra bodies. Plus they were getting in the way of the CSIs.
They moved out to the landing, which wasn’t much bigger but was slightly cooler. Outside, the whole of the old Edwardian house had been cordoned off, the street outside swathed in yellow and black tape as if it had been gift
