just do what they do and don’t care about the consequences. This man’s not like that. He plans. Plots. Schemes. He knows what he’s doing. He may have a good job, he may even be married. A sociopath can fool people for years.’ She looked round the room again, a slight smile on her face. ‘One of us, in this room, could quite easily be just like him. And the rest of us would never know.’
‘Some more than others,’ said Nick Lines.
Phil hid his smile.
‘So how will we recognise him?’ said Anni. ‘What can we look for?’
Fiona glanced at her notes once more, then back up to the room. ‘You were wrong, Phil, by the way. Right with a lot, wrong with one crucial point.’
Phil leaned forward.
‘Age. I don’t see him as being all that young. Everything points towards an older man.’
‘How old?’ said Anni.
Fiona shrugged. ‘Could be anything up to forties, fifties, even?’
‘And what would his character be like?’ Anni said. ‘Any pointers?’
‘Arrogant, that would be the main thing. This is someone who knows what he’s doing. He’s intelligent. Fiercely intelligent. And that makes him confident he won’t get caught.’
‘Can he be caught?’ said Fenwick.
‘It’s taken him a long time to get into this position. He’s been practising, escalating his behaviour, building up to this and now that he’s actually gone through with it, well… he thinks he’s found his purpose. His calling.’ She looked over at Fenwick. ‘So he’s not going to stop any time soon, if that’s what you’re asking.’
‘Would he be arrogant in real life, too?’ said Anni. ‘Would we recognise that about him?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Fiona. ‘He would want you to.’
Anni sat back. ‘I know who it is.’
All eyes were on her.
‘Anthony Howe.’
51
Suzanne lay in her box, staring straight ahead, blinking, her breathing shallow. Almost calm. She felt different. Not sure if it was better or worse. Just different.
Because she had been out of her coffin.
It started when she heard footsteps. Julie, if that was really her name, started shushing her, telling her to be quiet. Suzanne was still talking, wanting to know what was going on, but when she got no response and she listened for herself, hearing the footsteps, she did as she was told.
‘Close your eyes.’
The voice was muffled, disguised, hidden by something thick and distorting.
Suzanne did as she was told.
‘Don’t open them. Not for a second. Or you’re dead. Right?’
She nodded.
‘Right?’
‘Yes… yes…’
She closed her eyes tight.
There were sounds of scraping, like something heavy was being removed from somewhere, followed by a creaking, tearing sound. Suzanne felt a change of air on her feet, her ankles. The box was being opened.
She was tempted to look, just a peek, a squint. The temptation was great, almost overwhelming.
‘No looking.’ The muffled voice again, threat explicit in its tones.
She kept her eyes closed.
Something landed on her chest. She jumped.
‘Put that on.’
Her hands found the object. It was flaccid and rough. Working with her eyes closed, she discovered it was made of sacking or hessian, something like that. A hood. She pulled it over her head, opened her eyes again. Thinking quickly, she had expected to see something, some small amount of light between the weave, but there was nothing. It was tightly woven, thick and heavy. It smelled bad too. She didn’t like to think what it must have originally contained.
‘Come on.’
Suzanne just lay there.
‘Come on…’ More threat laced into the words.
She realised then that she was expected to get out. She couldn’t believe it, her heart suddenly soared. This is it, she thought, I’m going, I’m being set free. She dared to hope.
Suzanne wriggled her body towards where her feet had been and found only open air. Encouraged by that, she hurried out. She put her feet down, expecting solid ground, a flat floor. And gasped. There was no floor, just water. She had put her feet straight into freezing water. Gasping at the sudden cold, she stopped moving.
A hand reached in and grabbed her, pulling her out of the box entirely. She put her feet out to steady herself and found the water only came over her ankles. She was standing in what felt like a shallow trough. The rest of her body was pulled upright.
Suzanne didn’t have time to orient herself as the same hand grabbed her and forced her to start walking. She sloshed through the water until she came to a small step, stepped up. The floor here was dry and flat, cool. Concrete, she thought.
Suzanne breathed in, to see if she could recognise any smells, either from her surroundings or from her captor. It was impossible. Whatever made the hood smell overrode anything else.
She could hear something, though. A rumbling, throbbing sound like a car turning over. A generator?
She was pushed along, her hands in front of her, held together in an attitude of prayer by the plasticuffs. She kept moving at the speed at which the hand propelled her.
‘Who… who are you? Why are you doing this?’
No answer.
‘Are, are you the man I saw in my flat? In my bedroom?’
No answer.
‘Please… talk to me, let me know what’s happening… please…’
Nothing.
Suzanne kept walking until the hand grasped her harder, forcing her to halt.
‘Here,’ the voice said. ‘The toilet.’
Suzanne was pushed forward. She put her hands up to stop herself from falling into whatever was in front of her but it was her legs that connected first. She gasped in pain as her shins slammed into the hard porcelain of a toilet bowl.
‘Hurry up,’ the voice said.
She did so. Suzanne thought she had had some pretty bad toilet experiences when she was backpacking round the Greek islands as a student but nothing compared to this one.
She managed to do what she wanted to. Even found paper at the side. She flushed. It made no sound.
‘Finished?’
The hand grabbed her once more, pulled her away from the toilet, back the way she had come.
Her heart began to sink as realised what was happening. She was being led back to the coffin once more, made to lie down, be closed up, sealed in once more. She made one last attempt to talk.
‘Why are you doing this? Why?’
She tried pulling away from the hand.
‘Let me go. Now, let me go.’ She put her hands up to her hood. ‘I’ll pull this off. I will, see what you look like. I’ll do it…’
Literally, she didn’t know where the punch came from. All she knew was that it connected with the side of her
