Chapter 28
XXVIII
‘FUCK!’
Natasha jerked awake.
This was not right.
This was not good.
This was . . . oh Jesus.
Where the fuck were her clothes? Grit and stones dug into the skin on her back and thighs, scraped against her elbows and heels as she thrashed in place, making something metal clink and rattle.
The bastard – the one who came to her house with a message about that dickhead Adrian – what the hell had he done?
She was blind. And deaf?
And suffocating.
Get to your bloody feet!
But her arms weren’t working properly. Every time she tried to move them it dragged her neck about. As if her wrists were . . . tied to her throat or something. Like some twisted version of Edvard Munch’s The Scream.
‘HELP ME!’ Bellowing into the darkness.
But the sound came out all muffled and distorted.
He’d put something over her head. A bag, maybe? Something sticky and salty.
Wait, wait, wait.
Breathe.
Just lie the fuck still for a moment and breathe.
You’re not an idiot. Or a victim, OK?
Whatever this shit is, you can beat it.
Every breath hissed in and whoomphed out. Caught inside the bag.
Breathe . . .
She clenched her fists, then released them again, fingertips pressing against whatever it was that covered her head.
Leather. Felt like leather. Something thick, held together with stitches. Not a bag: a mask.
Still couldn’t move her wrists.
Didn’t matter – one thing at a time.
Yeah, but it was quite a big bloody thing.
She jerked her hands to one side, then the other, then in opposite directions, and every time something dug into her neck. Like it was surrounded by a band of steel.
Sticking her right elbow in the air meant her fingertips could feel their way along the collar: metal, a good two-inches thick, with rings set into it, and a sort of handcuff thing around her left wrist to hold that in place. It was the same on the right.
Shackled.
Sweat trickled down her cheek.
Christ it was like a bloody oven in here.
Elbows down again, she traced the outline of her mouth, only it wasn’t her mouth it was a zip. With some sort of thing attached to the pull tab, stopping it from moving. Something metal. Heart-shaped.
Like this was a fucking joke.
OK, further up . . . another pair of zips, one over each eye. Only these ones weren’t fixed shut. She pulled the right one open and light flooded the world.
Then the other.
Fuck.
Not sure if that made things better or worse.
Natasha blinked away the sticky gunk and squinted up at the wooden beams and grey corrugated roof above her head.
Bluebottles droned through the hot dead air.
It was some sort of tumbledown outbuilding, maybe a dozen foot square, built from chunks of stone, held together with crumbling mortar and smaller rocks.
It had one of those heavy sliding doors, rust-streaked and hanging from a buckled metal rail.
But it wasn’t much of a barrier, given the great-big hole in the wall next to it – some sort of partially collapsed window – that let the sun stream in.
Her eyes drifted down, across the scabs and scrapes and bruises that rampaged over her naked stomach and thighs.
The bastard had taken her dress, but at least he’d left the underwear. That was something, right?
Maybe.
All she had to do now was climb out through the hole, get the hell out of here, find help, get Detective Sergeant Dickhead Davis arrested, then arrange for someone to rape the bastard to death in the prison showers.
See how he fucking liked it.
Come on, Natasha: up.
She rolled over onto her side, shoving at the dirt floor with her elbows, getting both legs under her. Heaving herself upright. Which wasn’t bloody easy, with both arms out of action.
She only managed two steps towards the window before something grabbed her throat and jerked her to a stop.
That rattling, clanking noise rang out again.
Natasha turned.
A six-foot length of thick chain stretched from her collar to a galvanised bin full of concrete.
Bracing her bare feet against the floor, she pulled. Strained.
The bloody thing didn’t move.
She glared at it.
Stepped closer and shoved it with her knee.
Solid.
Her anchor probably weighed twice what she did.
One of those big fat bluebottles settled on her shoulder, where the skin was scraped and weeping. Having itself a nice little feed.
‘FUCK OFF YOU BASTARD!’
All that came out were some mumbled vowels, but it was still enough to make the fly abandon its meal and growl into the air. Circling. Waiting for its turn to land and feast again.
Don’t cry.
Don’t blub like some little baby.
You can do this.
Just need some time to think, is all.
The caved-in window overlooked a weed-choked courtyard, with a slightly less crappy outbuilding on the right.
A bunch of rotting pallets were stacked outside it, beside a hulk of farm machinery that probably hadn’t moved in decades.
Then there was a small gap, with a view out across a scrubby field – neglected and overgrown, tall purple spears of fireweed burning against the blue sky.
A big agricultural shed sat opposite Natasha’s prison, its concrete panels half-skinned in wasp-peeled wooden slats, beneath a roof of corrugated asbestos sheeting.
Finally, off to the left, a beige-and-brown static caravan formed the final side of the square. Its windows opaque with dirt and dust. Lichen reached out from the corners and joints, spreading across the walls like mould on a corpse.
You didn’t need to be bloody psychic to know something very, very bad had happened here.
And that there’d be worse to come . . .