Not that I’d ask him to confirm that. Though I did have questions for him.
After I’d made sure that Anne’s mare had reacted to those follicle-inducing stimulants, I was going to invite Picasso out to meet the family. The wonders of modern technology. I’d a spot of email in mind for him when he came back. That’s why I’d left him the laptop, logged on to the internet and ready to go. A slow way of communicating but effective. I could’ve rung him of course, but this had a better angle to it. Either way, he’d know that if he didn’t do what he was told, Chilly Winters’d be asking him if he had a licence to run his own private prison.
LUCILLE
If I was ever to see my mother again, I had to put the fear of Picasso catching me trying to escape out of my mind. But it wasn’t easy. Others’ lives would be at risk. I would see to that. He would force me to.
I had read in his journal that he’d been told about Gemma and me by Lisa Shine and Jackie Hay. If he could break their will, he could break mine. And the thought of informing on people I knew was more than I could bear. But I could feel myself becoming weaker. And I was afraid to sleep.
The rat in my cell had finished eating the other one. While I was awake, it stayed in its corner watching me. But when exhaustion set in, it seemed to know that it was safe to come out. I had already woken to find it sitting on my chest, staring at me. I’d bounced up and sent it scurrying. Picasso had been standing looking in through the peephole. The ones in the crate may have been his way of letting me know that I would eventually wake to find myself covered with them. The single one though was used in a far cleverer way. It was also there to keep me awake. If I slept, what would hunger force it to do? Without proper food and rest, I would begin to hallucinate. In that state, I would give him the names he wanted. I wouldn’t be able to help myself.
Because I didn’t know when it was morning or when it was night, I couldn’t tell when there was no sound of movement in the floor above, whether he had gone out or to bed. But I could tell when it was time for him to exercise his dogs. He used to take them out several at a time. They seemed to know when he was on his way and would whine. And while they were gone, I worked on as fast as I could.
I’d scored my way through the ceiling and removed a square of plaster and lath, big enough for me to squeeze up through the joists. But first I’d need to remove the same area of floor directly above. By hammering my one and only nail through the boards, then pulling it back out with the claw, I was able to make a hole. I’d straighten the nail and make another one next to it. By perforating a square outline of the floorboards I could eventually cut my way through. I could only pray that I was working on a section of flooring that was covered by a piece of furniture, to avoid Picasso discovering what I was up to from above.
And then, after about an hour or so, when I’d managed to penetrate about four inches along a line where the joist met the underside of the floor, I heard someone coming down the stairs. The remaining dogs started snarling. They didn’t do that when Picasso came down. It had to be somebody else. Whoever it was, he wouldn’t help me. I pleaded with him, but he just ignored me. Then the dogs went silent. He went into their cell and down to the rooms below. Then he left. But it was the way he’d come and gone. He’d crept under the serving hatch in my cell door. He didn’t want me to see him. Why? Why didn’t he help me?
When Picasso returned he came running down the stairs shouting my name, ‘Lucille? Lucille?’ as though he’d expected to find me gone. When he saw me through the hatch, he stood back and composed himself. Other than the time I’d told him about the computer, I’d never seen him lose control. It was the most unnerving thing about him. He was always so polite, so unruffled. In some respects he reminded me of a doctor discussing with a group of interns how to dissect a human body for medical reasons, dispassionately and matter-of-factly. He had done horrible, horrible things, yet he seemed removed from the fact that he done them to living people. It was almost as if he was referring to something as trivial as the weather.
‘I see we have had a visitor, Lucille.’
‘Yes.’
‘Yet you are still here. His motivation clearly does not extend to your freedom. You require another replacement timber?’
‘I have nothing to trade with.’
‘He did not speak to you?’
‘A glimpse of the back of a pair of corduroy trousers and men’s shoes are all that suggests he even is a he.’
‘You did not see his face?’
‘He didn’t show it.’
‘Then he has a reason for keeping it hidden. Strange, since identifying him at a later date would depend on your liberty. He is cautious. Ted Lyle?’
‘Maybe.’
‘I shall make inquiries.’
‘I thought you had.’
‘Mr Lyle has not been at home of late.’
A mobile phone rang upstairs.
‘Would you excuse me?’
With any luck, he was being
