Chloe was still at school. In the playground. In the dark. Uncollected. Unnoticed by teachers, as they drove off one by one. Staying hidden in the shadows rather than bringing herself to an adult’s attention. Her mother told the story while shaking her head fondly at ‘hopeless’ Charlie, and the implication was that Chloe was rather strange for allowing herself to remain abandoned like that. But although Chloe smiled along with it, she found various parts disconcerting – not least because she couldn’t remember a bit of it. As a small child she’d sat alone in a darkening, empty yard for hours, quite possibly scared out of her wits, and yet her mind was a firm blank when she tried to recall it. But her mother swore the story was true; and Charlie had shamefacedly admitted it as well. So why had she stayed silent? Why had she been so scared of being found?
It was the same when she tried to think back on other things – in fact, much of her early life was just a haze. Was that how it was for everyone? Surely no one remembered that much of their formative years anyway. So why did Chloe feel as though she were missing something; some critical piece of the jigsaw of her life, which when put into position would form a picture she could recognise?
She took a deep breath, looked at her watch, then checked herself in the mirror. Her appearance was good; and that was all she needed for today’s big event.
She headed downstairs to wait for the taxi to arrive.
36
Time slowed right down.
To almost a pause.
To a fractured sequence of movements.
To the split second when all things would change.
Alex turned around to look for the source of the noise, and as he did so he went to grab Amy’s hand, although she was not in the path of the vehicle bearing down. It was just a reflex, to grab on, but she had turned to look as well, and he missed her, by which time the van was right next to them, screeching to a halt.
A side door was flung open, metal grating as it sped along its runners, and a chubby, unshaven man jumped out. Alex had the vague impression of another man inside the van.
He didn’t understand. He didn’t get it until it was too late. Until Amy was locked in the other man’s meaty arms as he lifted her and flung her into the van’s maw as though she were an inanimate parcel.
But when he got it, he moved, lightning fast. He rushed towards the van, towards Amy, who was screaming, her terrified eyes finding Alex’s, her look beseeching him to save her from whatever this was. He reached out at the same time as she lunged forward, and their fingertips missed one another by millimetres, and then the chubby man sent a knee into Alex’s groin so that he instinctively doubled-up, eyes watering, wanting to retch as pain shot through him, and in the time he had to recover before he could react again, the other man had leapt into the shadows of the van’s interior, from which Alex could hear Amy screaming in terror, and the vehicle sped off before they had even closed the door.
There was a pause, like a missed heartbeat, when the world seemed to be frozen in an ethereal silence.
Then people converged on Alex. Hands helped him up and over to a chair. There was shouting. Someone was dialling triple 0 and relaying what had just happened in a breathless, excited voice.
Even if they had been able to crawl under Alex’s skin right then, no one could have touched him. He was somewhere else, far beyond them, stupefied, watching Amy’s small discarded flower-patterned bag lying on the pavement, unnoticed.
Then the urge to move came over him as fast as a reflex. He shrugged off his comforters and ran along the road in the direction the van had gone only seconds before, roaring. A man tried to hang on to him, but Alex swatted him off easily. It took two of them to bring him down, and he fought all the way, crying out in his impotent fury.
A woman came up, her face white with shock, and knelt down to talk to him. All his energy seemed to have been consumed by that one pointless charge. ‘The police will be here any second,’ she said. ‘They will get her back, I’m sure they will.’ But she looked stricken and her expression belied her words.
She put Amy’s small bag into his hands, and he gripped it tightly. ‘Just hang on,’ she urged him as he stared at her uncomprehendingly. ‘Hang on.’
37
Amy’s leg throbbed from the pain. It was all she was aware of for a while after she stopped screaming. Her shoulder hurt too, she realised, as she tried to move her arm to steady herself. She cried out when she leaned on it to stop herself rocking violently.
She could hear frantic voices issuing directions, but they were muted as though there were a wall between them and where she lay. She registered breathing close to her before she felt his presence, but once she had she couldn’t escape it. A bulky form next to her, crouching, leaning into her as if it were looking at her, but not touching.
Her eyes travelled upwards across the slats of light that streamed in from badly covered windows until she reached a face. It was chubby and creased, rising above a thickness of tattooed shoulders. When she stared at it she saw glassy, drug-disorientated eyes looking back at her.
She began to scream again and he fell on her, immediately covering her mouth with a meaty hand. She tried to bite down but he gave no sign of feeling it, and she quickly opened her mouth to gasp in pain as they rolled around on the metal surface of the floor, her shoulder jarring into the unforgiving surface.
There was a sudden noise and light poured in above her as some kind of divide was pulled back. She tried to look up, but could only make out a hand with dirt-blackened nails resting on the seat-back.
‘What yer doin back thir?’ said another reedier voice. ‘Ey, Dregs, wait for us.’
A deeper voice near her face grunted back, ‘Just hurry up.’ His breath reeked of spicy meat. ‘Where we goin’?’ he shouted towards his buddy.
‘The falls,’ the man answered, then the window slammed shut again and the darkness was back.
Amy tried to blank out their words, but she couldn’t. Each time the monster holding her removed his hand from her mouth she screamed as loud and hard as she could.
Suddenly the man moved and she was freer still to roll and scream. She felt a surge of triumph at this victory, but it was short-lived. Hands tried to grab her wrists and she flailed madly, her nails finding flesh, until a stinging slap across her face knocked her breathless for a second. While she was still stunned, her wrists were held tightly together above her head, and heavy knees pressed painfully into her thighs. Her mouth was pulled open by probing fingers and a cloth stuffed in. She could smell petrol fumes emanating from it and it tasted vile. Thick black tape was wound roughly around her head, catching and pulling her hair. She kept on screaming, but the noise now stuck in the back of her throat and became an unearthly guttural moan. After a while she couldn’t bear the sound she was making any longer and fell silent, concentrating on the effort of breathing enough oxygen through her nose.
She tried to think clearly, but waves of panic washed over the coherent strands of thought, breaking them down into fractured phrases – ‘
Finally, the motion stopped and a whole new realm of panic swept through her as the back doors were wrenched open.
She was pulled out roughly by the legs from the blackness of the van’s interior, and her head hit a platform as she fell a few feet onto dry spiky grass below. She moaned as she landed hard on her wounded leg.
Two men stood over her, their eyes dilated and vacant, their movements twitchy like demented dogs. The fat
