watch and a glass of water on a bedside table. There was a shape in the bed. I knew straightaway by its size that it wasn't Sarah. The body stirred, maybe as a reaction to the change in air pressure as the door opened, or the fact that light was shining in his face.
As he turned I saw that he was bald and dark-skinned and had a mustache.
It was Bossman. His eyes opened fully as he settled. He wouldn't be able to see me, just the flashlight.
I moved quickly, getting my left knee on one side of him and my right on the other so I was astride him, pushing him down onto the bed. He was pinioned by the sheet across his chest and gave a quick grunt of protest.
I dropped the Maglite onto the bed. I didn't want him to see my face and, in any case, I didn't need light for what I was about to do.
With the pistol jammed against his clenched teeth he gave a long drawn-out groan as he tried to resist. I got hold of the back of his head with my left hand and forced the weapon down harder. The metal of the silencer scraped against his teeth and he eventually opened up. I pushed the muzzle in until it was nearly at the back of his throat and the suppressor was filling his mouth good style.
He struggled on for a while, not trying to escape, just wanting to work out what was going on and to breathe. He was flapping and snorting like a horse. I moved with his chest as it went up and down. At length he lay back. No one will fuck around once they realize they have a pistol in their mouth.
I leaned toward his left ear. In my bad, fluctuating American accent I whispered, 'If you speak English, nod slowly.'
He did. I could feel the pistol moving up and down.
I heard him slurping and retching as his Adam's apple worked overtime.
With his jaw wide open he'd lost the ability to swallow.
'You have two choices,' I said.
'Die if you don't help me, live if you do. Do you understand?'
It's always better to take your time at moments like this. If you've got somebody who's flapping and you say, 'OK, where's Sarah?' he can't talk because he's got this thing stuck in his mouth, so he gets all confused about what you expect of him. It's better to do it as a process of elimination, and then you know you have the right information. That is, if he knows it in the first place.
There was still a bit of hesitation here. He was still flapping too much and not thinking enough. I said, 'Do you understand?' and underlined the point with a jab of the pistol. He finally got the message and I felt the pistol move up and down.
His body smelled of shampoo and soap. Shame he hadn't cleaned his teeth. His breath smelled like road kill.
Now that he understood the facts of life, I whispered, 'You've got one woman in the house. Yes?'
I felt his immediate sense of relief. His body relaxed; it wasn't him I wanted. He nodded.
'One woman?'
He nodded again.
'Is she on this floor?'
The pistol shook from side to side.
'Is she on the floor above this one?'
Up and down.
'Do you know which room she's in?'
I could hear his breathing and slurping, but there was just a touch too much hesitation: he was thinking about what to say. He shook his head slowly.
I gave a weary sigh and said, 'Then you're no good to me, and I'm going to kill you. I think you're lying.'
No response.
I said, 'Last chance. Do you know what room she's in?'
I started to rise. He got the idea. He nodded. I came back down to his ear.
'Good. Now think about this. Is she on the left-hand side of the corridor as you go along it from the stairs?' I was assuming it was the same sort of configuration upstairs as down. I didn't know yet, but it was a good enough place to start.
He thought about it and nodded.
'Good. Is it the first door on the left?'
He shook his head. Saliva was oozing out of his mouth and running down his chin. I could feel his chest rising and falling more and more quickly; he was fighting to get oxygen in and there were too many obstructions.
'Is she in the second door on the left?'
He nodded.
'Good. If you're lying, I'll be back and I'll kill you.'
He nodded that he understood, semi choking on the suppressor because I pushed it a little more to the back of his throat, just to the point where he was starting to gag. At the same time, I reached down with my left hand, closed it around the Tazer, slid off the safety catch and gave him the good news right on the pectoral muscle. I counted the crackle for about five seconds. If I remembered correctly, that should result in the person being 'dazed for some minutes afterward.' He jerked about, and then got very dazed indeed.
I climbed off him, picked up the flashlight and put it in my mouth, then turned around and started to look for his socks amongst the clothes that were on the floor. I found one and shoved the toe end of it into his mouth, pulling down on his jaw to force him to take it all. Noise comes from the throat and below, not the mouth; for an effective gag, you have to ram obstructions down there as far as they can go, so that when the person tries to scream the sound can't amplify in the mouth. A strip of gaffer tape over the face isn't enough to achieve the desired effect. A sock stuffed in the mouth also calms people down, because they become more worried about choking than about raising the alarm.
I could hear moans and groans from the back of his throat as he began to come around. I couldn't have him alerting the others, so I gave him another three-second burst. That settled him down again, and gave me time to finish filling his mouth. Once that was done, I got his shirt from the floor and wrapped the sleeve around his face to form a seal over the sock.
I kept his nose free because he had to be able to breathe, but wrapped the sleeve as tightly as I could around his lips.
I pulled a leather belt from his trousers that was about an inch and a half wide, with a brass buckle, and grabbed the tiebacks from the curtains, lengths of rope with shiny tassels. I tied his knees together with the first tieback; if you can move your knees, you can crawl and maneuver, if not, you haven't got much scope for movement.
Next I tied his ankles together. He was semiconscious, breathing and moaning in the back of his throat. I turned him over on the bed and got his hands behind him, tying them tightly together with the belt, making sure that I'd left the buckle and some of the other end free. It was going to hurt him, and he was going to have hands like balloons by the morning, but he'd live.
By now my breathing was almost as labored as his. This was physical stuff, spinning him around, trying to do it quickly, but also trying to keep everything quiet to cut down on noise. I got hold of his shoulders and pulled him down gently, so that his head and his shoulders were on the floor, then I grabbed his legs and dropped them down, too.
There was still a little bit of moaning, especially when I got hold of his ankles and brought them up toward his tied hands. I put the ends of the belt around the tieback that secured his wrists, did up the buckle, and that was him trussed up like an oven-ready chicken.
He was coming around again. I held the Tazer on his thigh and gave him the good news for another five seconds. He tried to scream, but the sock did its stuff. As I lifted the Tazer away from him I still had the button depressed; the bolt of electricity crackled brightly as it arced between the two terminals. The glow that it cast added to the flashlight's beam, and I could see the suit carrier, now open, hanging on the wardrobe. Inside was a gray business suit, white shirt and patterned tie, already knotted and hanging around the hanger.
I got to the door, checked the corridor and turned left toward the stairs.
This flight was different, the stairs turning back on themselves to reach the top floor. As I climbed and turned left, up the next flight, the distant TV mush disappeared, its place gradually taken by the constant bass drum
