Someone is ringing the front doorbell. Monk answers it. The vicar has come to offer his support. I’ve only met him once, soon after we moved to Wellow. He invited us to attend a Sunday service, which still hasn’t happened. I wish I could remember his name.
‘I thought you might want to pray,’ he says softly.
‘I’m not a believer.’
‘That’s all right.’
He takes a step forward and gets down on his knees, crossing himself. I look at Monk, who looks back at me, unsure of what to do.
The vicar has lowered his head, clasping his hands.
‘Dear Lord, I ask you to look after young Charlotte O’Loughlin and bring her home safely to her family…’
Without thinking, I find myself on my knees next to him, lowering my head. Sometimes prayer is less about words than pure emotion.
57
When a man has nothing to call his own, he finds ways of acquiring other men’s possessions.
This house is an example. The Arab businessman is still away, gone south for the winter like a migrating bird. A housekeeper opens the place up when he’s due back, fluffing up the pillows and airing the rooms. There’s also a gardener who comes in twice a week during the summer, but only once a month now because the grass has stopped growing and the leaves have been raked into moulding drifts.
The house is as I remember, tall and ungainly with a turret room overlooking the bridge. A weathervane faces permanently east. The curtains are drawn. Windows and doors are secured.
The garden is soggy and smells of decay. A rope swing is broken, frayed at one end, dangling halfway between a branch and the ground. I cross beneath it, skirting the garden furniture, and stand before a wooden shed. The door is padlocked. Crouching on my haunches, I press a pick into the keyhole and feel it bounce over the pins. The first lock I ever learned to pick was like this one. I practiced for hours sitting in front of the TV.
The barrel turns. I unhook the padlock from the latch and pull the door open, letting light leak across the dirt floor. Metal shelves hold plastic flowerpots, seed trays and old paint tins. Garden tools stand in the corner. A ride- on lawnmower is parked at the centre.
I step back and look at the dimensions of the shed. There’s just enough room for me to stand. Then I start clearing the metal shelves and wrestling them to one side. I roll the lawn mower onto the grass and begin moving the paint cans and bags of fertiliser to the garage.
The back wall of the shed is now clear. I take a pickaxe and swing it at the floor. The compacted earth breaks into a jagged jigsaw of dried mud. I swing the pick again and again, pausing occasionally to shovel the soil away. After an hour I stop and rest, crouching and holding my forehead to the handle of the spade. I drink from the hosepipe outside. The hole in the floor is ten inches deep and almost as long as the wall. It’s long enough to fit the sheet of plasterboard I found in the garage. I want to make it deeper.
Setting to work again, I carry buckets of earth to the end of the garden and hide the soil amid the compost heap. I am ready to build the box now. The sun is dropping through the branches of the trees. Perhaps I should check on the girl.
Inside the house, in a second floor bedroom, she is lying on an iron-framed bed with a bare mattress. Dressed in a striped top, a cardigan, jeans and sneakers, she is curled up in a ball, trying to make herself invisible.
She cannot see me- her eyes are taped. Her hands are secured behind her back with white plastic ties and her feet are chained together with just enough width to allow her to hobble. She cannot go far. A noose is looped around her neck, tied off on a radiator, with just enough slack to allow her to reach a small bathroom with a sink and toilet. She doesn’t realise it yet. Like a blind kitten she clings to the softness of the bed, unwilling to explore.
She speaks.
‘Hello? Is anyone there?’
She listens.
‘Hello… anyone… can you hear me?’
Louder this time: ‘HELP! PLEASE HELP! HELP!’
I press record. The tape turns. Scream, little one, scream as loud as you can.
A small lamp throws light across the room but not as far as my corner. She tests the bindings on her wrists, twisting her shoulders to the left and right, trying to slide her hands free. The plastic ties are cutting into her skin.
Her head hits the wall. She turns on her back, raising her legs and kicks both feet at once against the wood panelling. The whole house seems to shake. She kicks again and again, full of fear and frustration.
She arches backwards, bending her spine, forming a bridge between her shoulders and her feet. Raising her legs in the air in a half shoulder stand, she pivots at the waist, dropping her knees to her chest and then further until they touch the bed on either side of her head. She has folded herself into a ball. Now she slides her bound wrists past the small of her back, over her hips and under her backside. Surely she’s going to dislocate something.
Her hands squeeze past her feet and she can unfurl her legs again. How clever! Her hands are now in front of her instead of behind. She pulls off her tape blindfold and turns towards the lamp. She still cannot see me in my dark corner.
Hooking her fingers through the noose around her neck, she lifts it free and then stares at her chained feet and the plastic ties on her wrists. She’s broken the skin. Blood weeps over the white strips.
I cup my hands and smash them together. The mock applause echoes like pistol shots in the quietness of the room. The girl screams and tries to run but the chains around her ankles send her sprawling to the floor.
I grab the back of her neck and pin her down under my weight, straddling her body, feeling the air being squeezed from her lungs. Grabbing her hair, I pull her head backward and whisper in her ear.
‘You’re a very clever girl, Snowflake. I’m going to have to do a better job this time.’
‘No! No! No! Please. Let me go.’
The first loop of masking tape covers her nose, sealing off the airway. The next loop covers her eyes. I do it roughly, dragging her hair. She thrashes her head as more tape loops around her forehead and her chin, encasing her in plastic. Soon only her mouth is exposed. When she opens it to scream, I slide the hose pipe between her lips and teeth, into the back of her throat. She gags. I pull it out a little. More tape loops around her head, screeching as I drag it from the spool.
Her world has become dark. I can hear her breath whistling through the hose.
I speak to her softly. ‘Listen to me, Snowflake. Don’t fight. The harder you struggle, the more difficult it is to breathe.’
She is still wrestling at my arms. I hold a finger over the end of the hose, blocking off her air supply. Her body stiffens in panic.
‘That’s how easy it is, Snowflake. I can stop you breathing with one finger. Nod, if you understand.’
She nods. I take my finger away. She sucks air through the hose.
‘Breathe normally,’ I tell her. ‘It’s a panic attack, nothing more.’
I lift her back onto the bed: she curls into a ball.
‘Do you remember the room?’ I ask.
She nods.
‘There’s a toilet about eight feet to your right, beside a sink. You can reach it. I’ll show you.’
Hauling her upright, I put her feet on the floor and count the steps as she hobbles forward to the sink. I put her hands on the edge of the basin. ‘The cold tap is on the right.’
Then I show her the toilet, making her sit.
‘I’m going to leave your hands in front of you but if you take off the mask, I will punish you. Do you understand?’
