shadows and echoes. She vaguely remembered the sensation of falling. Then the impact to the head. She rubbed it and felt the bruise. Struggled to clear her mind. Nothing would come. She blinked and shook her head. Still nothing.
Panic began to grip her. She couldn’t remember anything. Didn’t know anything about what she was doing here, or, she realised with horror, even who she was. Something had happened to her. A bad fall. Some kind of damage inside her head. She prayed it was only temporary.
All she knew was that she was in danger. It was the instinctive knowledge of a trapped animal in the presence of a predator.
That instinct helped her focus.
There was nobody in the room with her. But as the breeze ruffled the drapes she saw the man in the chair on the balcony outside.
The first thing she noticed about him was the gun. It was clasped loosely in his hand, a big boxy thing, pointing right at her. He was sitting facing her, leaning right back in a deck chair in the sunshine, and at first she thought he was staring at her through his wraparound shades. But his chest was heaving slowly, and from the way he didn’t respond to her waking up she guessed he was asleep. At his feet were a bottle of Ouzo and an empty glass. His fair hair blew lightly in the sea breeze.
Zoe struggled out of the bed, clenching her teeth against the tearing pain in her side. She planted one foot on the tiled floor, then the other. The tiles were cool against her soles.
The man didn’t move.
She slowly stood up and stepped away from the bed. Her head was spinning wildly and she reached out to steady herself. She saw that she was fully dressed, in white trousers and a yellow top. The clothes felt grubby on her skin, as though she’d been sleeping in them for a couple of days. The right knee of the trousers was ripped, and there was a smear of dirt up her right side where the pain was. From the fall, she guessed.
Wobbly on her feet, she reached for the pair of heeled sandals by the bed. They matched the yellow top. Were they hers? She didn’t know. She carried them by their straps as she crept towards the door, praying the man in the chair wouldn’t wake up.
When she grasped the door handle and felt its initial resistance, she was sure the door would be locked. But then it turned and her heart surged with excitement. The door opened without a sound. There was a hallway outside, and a flight of stairs leading down. She tiptoed across the hall and peered down over the metal rail into the stairwell. Voices, far away somewhere in the house. She heard a woman talking, and a man laugh.
Her heart was hammering now. She started down the stairs, wincing at every step, her bare feet padding silently on the ceramic tiling. The fear sharpened her mind. She had no idea where she was, but she knew she had to get away from this place.
She made it downstairs without anyone hearing. Nobody had come running from the bedroom. She was safe – so far.
At the bottom of the stairs was another door. It was open, and bright light was shining in from outside. She hobbled out, clutching the shoes and her ribs, and found herself standing on a little terrace with potted plants and flowers. Down three steps was the white pebbled beach. The stones were sharp against her feet, and burning hot. She pulled on the shoes. They fitted her perfectly, even though they seemed like a stranger’s.
She crept down the beach and looked back at the house. It was a pitted white stone block with shuttered windows and a red tile roof. Through the railings of the first-floor balcony she could see the back of the man’s deck chair. Behind the house, a wooded incline rose up steeply to the cliff above. There was no way she could climb it. She looked around her in desperation. The beach was empty. There was a long ramshackle wooden jetty with a small motor boat moored up to it, bobbing gently on the swell.
She headed for it, her steps quickening. She stumbled in the slim three-inch heels. Kept glancing back at the house. Nobody. She was getting away.
She made it to the jetty. The boards were solid and she could run better than on the loose stones and sand. She hurried on, the pain in her side forgotten now.
That was when she heard the yell. It came from the house. A man’s voice, loud and full of rage. She gasped and spun round. Her heart jumped. It was him – the fair-haired man from the balcony. The gun was in his hand. He bounded down the steps to the beach and sprinted towards her, screaming.
Then more of them came from the house. A woman and two more men. The woman pointed at her. They all started running. More yells.
She was halfway across the jetty. She could make it to the boat. Could she get the outboard motor started? Would they shoot her? What did these people want from her? Her legs were shaking as she stumbled along.
Then she fell. She sprawled across the rough wood and felt her ankle twist. Her heel was caught in a gap in the planking. She jerked and struggled. It was jammed tight. She reached down and tried to tear the shoe off.
They were coming. Footsteps thundered on the jetty, and then there was a gun pressing hard into the back of her neck, heavy breathing in her ear. She looked up to see the man’s face contorted in anger, teeth bared.
The others caught up.
‘What the hell happened?’ one voice said.
‘The bitch came round,’ the man with the gun snapped back over his shoulder.
‘And what the fuck were you doing?’ the woman’s voice demanded. ‘Sleeping?’
He ignored her and yanked Zoe to her feet. The four of them marched her roughly back along the jetty. She was kicking and screaming hysterically. They said nothing to her. Dragged her limping back to the house, back up to her room, and shoved her down on the bed. Her ankles and knees were roughly bound together with duct tape. The fair-haired man thrust the pistol into the back of his belt and grabbed her right wrist. His grip was crushing. He jerked her arm up and there was a rattle of metal as he cuffed it to the bed frame. Then the left arm.
She fought them wildly. ‘What do you want with me? Let go of me!
Then they pressed a length of the tape across her mouth, stifling her screams. Tears poured uncontrollably down her face.
The man took the gun out of his belt and pressed the muzzle to the side of her head. She tried to shrink away from the cold steel, screwing her eyes shut.
Then he smiled and took the gun away. They all stood back and watched her. She was too exhausted to fight any more. Her breath came in gasps and she felt she was going to faint.
The woman had her hands on her hips, head cocked to one side, a thin smile on her lips. ‘Leave her a while,’ she said. ‘I have to make a call. Then we can go to work on her.’
‘
Nobody answered as they filtered out one by one.
The fair-haired man was the last to leave the room. ‘I can hardly wait to get started,’ he said, grinning down at her.
Chapter Seven
Ben surfaced slowly from a murky sleep filled with threatening dreams, and his mind drifted back into focus. He remembered now. He was in his new flat. Oxford was hardly a strange city to him, but it felt weird actually to be living here again after so many years. He wouldn’t be home in Ireland until December.
Fighting away the numbing torpor that made him want to crawl back deep under the covers, he kicked his legs out of the bed. He shrugged on a tracksuit top, walked through to the living room, stepped over the mess of half- unpacked luggage that was in there and headed for the kitchen. The flat was tucked into a secluded block of apartments in the quiet northern end of the city. It felt modern and compact, so different from the rambling old seaside house in Ireland, with its stone floors and draughty fireplaces.
