Dead Like You (37 page)

99

Saturday 17 January

In the CCTV room of Sussex Remote Monitoring Services, Dunstan Christmas shifted his twenty-stone bulk on the chair, careful not to lift his weight off altogether and trigger the alarm sensor. It was only 7.30 p.m. Shit. Another hour and half to wait before he would be relieved for a five-minute comfort break.

He was not due on nights for another two weeks, but he’d agreed to cover for someone who was sick because he needed the overtime pay. Time wasn’t even crawling by; it felt like it had stopped altogether. Maybe it was even going backwards, like in a sci-fi movie he’d watched recently on Sky. It was going to be a long night.

But thinking about the money he was making cheered him. Mr Starling might be a strange boss, but he paid well. The money here was good; much better than in his previous job, watching X-rayed luggage at Gatwick Airport.

He reached forward, pulled a handful of Doritos out of the giant-size packet in front of him, munched them and washed them down with a swig of Coca-Cola from the two-litre bottle, then belched. As he routinely ran his eyes over all twenty screens, his hand close to the microphone button in case he should happen to spot any intruder, he noticed that No. 17, which had been dead when he had started his shift, was still not showing any images. It was the old Shoreham cement works, where his dad had been a driver.

He pressed the control toggle to change the image on the screen, in case it was just one of the twenty-six CCTV cameras that was on the blink. But the screen remained blank. He picked up the phone and dialled the night engineer.

‘Hi, Ray. It’s Dunstan in Monitor Room 2. I’ve not had any image on screen 17 since I started my shift.’

‘Mr Starling’s instruction,’ the engineer replied. ‘The client hasn’t paid his bill. Over four months now apparently. Mr Starling’s suspended the service. Don’t worry about it.’

‘Right, thanks,’ Dunstan Christmas said. ‘I won’t.’

He ate some more Doritos.

100

Saturday 17 January

A terrible pain, like a vice crushing her head, woke Jessie. For an instant, utterly disoriented, she had no idea where she was.

In Benedict’s room?

She felt all muzzy and queasy. What had happened last night? What had happened at the dinner dance? Had she got drunk?

She felt a crashing jolt. There was a constant whooshing sound beneath her. She could hear the steady blatter of an engine. Was she in a plane?

Her queasiness deepened. She was close to throwing up.

Another jolt, then another. There was a banging sound like a loose door. Fear squirmed through her. Something felt very wrong; something terrible had happened. As she became more conscious, her memory trickled back, reluctantly, as if something was trying to hold it at bay.

She couldn’t move her arms or her legs. Her fear deepened. She was lying face down on something hard and constantly jolting. Her nose was bunged up and she was finding it harder and harder to breathe. She tried, desperately, to breathe in though her mouth, but something was clamped over it and no air would come through. She couldn’t breathe through her nose now either. She tried to cry out but just heard a dull moan and felt her mouth reverberating.

Panicking, juddering, fighting for breath, she sniffed harder. She could not get enough air in through her nose to fill her lungs. She squirmed, moaned, twisted on to her side, then on to her back, sniffing, sniffing, sniffing, fighting for air, close to blacking out. Then, after a few moments of lying on her back, the blockage freed a little and more air came in. Her panic subsided a little. She took several long, deep breaths, calming a fraction, then tried to call out again. But the sounds stayed trapped in her mouth and gullet.

Bright lights lit up the darkness for an instant and she could see above her the roof of the vehicle. Then darkness again.

Another bright light and she saw a hunched figure in the driver’s seat, just shoulders and the back of a baseball cap. The light passed and was instantly replaced by another. Headlights of oncoming cars, she realized.

Suddenly there were bright lights to her right, as a vehicle overtook them. For a fleeting instant she saw part of his face reflected in the interior mirror. She froze in terror. It was still masked by the black hood.

His eyes were on her.

‘Just lie back and enjoy the ride!’ he said in a bland, small voice.

She tried to speak again, struggling once more to move her arms. They were behind her back, her wrists clamped together. There was no slack, nothing to get a purchase on. She tried to move her legs, but they felt as if they had been welded together at the ankles and knees.

What time was it? How long had she been here? How long since …

She should be at the dinner dance. Benedict was going to meet her parents. He was coming round to pick her up. What was he thinking now? Doing now? Was he standing outside her flat ringing the bell? Phoning her? As headlights again brightened the interior, she looked around. Saw what seemed to be a small kitchen unit; one cupboard door was swinging, banging but not closing. Now they were slowing down. She heard him change gear, heard an indicator click-clicking.

Her fear deepened even more. Where were they going?

Then she heard a siren wailing, faintly at first, then louder. It was behind them. Now louder still! And suddenly her spirits soared. Yes! Benedict had come round to collect her and called the police when he realized she wasn’t there. They were coming! She was safe. Oh, thank God! Thank God!

Shards of blue light, as if from a shattered chandelier, flooded the interior of the van and the air filled with the scream of the siren. Then, in an instant, the blue lights were gone. Jessie heard the siren recede into the distance.

No, you idiots, no, no no no, no. Please. Come back! Please come back!

She slithered across the floor to her left, as the van made a sharp right. Two hard, jarring jolts and it pulled up. She heard the ratchet of the handbrake.
Please come back!
Then a torch beam flashed into her eyes, momentarily dazzling her.

‘Nearly there!’ he said.

All she could see when he moved the beam away from her face were his eyes through the slits in the hood. She tried to speak to him. ‘Please, who are you? What do you want? Where have you taken me?’ But all that came out was the reverberating moan, like a muffled foghorn.

She heard the driver’s door open. The engine ticked over with a steady clatter. Then she heard metal clanking – it sounded like a chain. It was followed by the creaking sound of rusty hinges. A gate being opened?

Then she heard a familiar sound. A soft, rasping buzzing. Hope suddenly sprang up inside her. It was her mobile phone! She’d switched it to silent, vibrate, for her kick-boxing class. It sounded as if it was coming from somewhere up front. Was it on the passenger seat?

Oh, God, who was it? Benedict? Wondering where she was? It stopped after four rings, going automatically to voicemail.

Moments later he jumped back in, drove forward a short distance, then jumped out again, once more leaving the engine ticking over. She heard the same creaking sound, then the same metal clanking of a chain again. Wherever they were, they were now on the far side of locked gates, she realized, her terror deepening even more. Somewhere private. Somewhere that police patrols would not drive by. Her mouth was dry and she felt as if she was going to throw up, bile rising in her throat, sharp and bitter. She swallowed it.

The van lurched, then lurched again – speed humps, she thought – dipped down an incline, sending her sliding forward, her shoulder bashing painfully into something, then rose up, so that she slid back again, helplessly. Then they were driving along a smooth surface, with a steady bump-bump every few moments, like joins in concrete. It was pitch dark in here and he seemed to be driving without lights on.

For an instant her terror turned to anger, then to wild, feral fury.
Let me out! Let me out! Untie me! You have no fucking right to do this!
She struggled against her bonds, pulling her wrists, her arms, with all her strength, shaking, thrashing. But whatever was binding them did not budge.

She lay limp and sniffing air, her eyes filled with tears. She should be at the dinner dance tonight. In her beautiful dress and her new shoes, holding Benedict’s arm as he chatted wittily to her parents, winning them over, as she was sure he would. Benedict had been nervous as hell. She had tried to reassure him that they would be charmed by him. Her mother would adore him and her father, well, he seemed a tough guy when you first met him, but underneath he was a big softie. They would adore him, she had promised him.

Yeah, right, until they find out I’m not Jewish.

The van continued its journey. They were turning left now. The headlights came on for a brief second and she saw what looked like the wall of a tall, derelict, slab-like structure with panes of broken glass. The sight sent a vortex of icy air corkscrewing through her. It was like one of the buildings the film
Hostel
was set in. The building where innocent people who had been captured were taken and tortured by wealthy sadists who paid for the privilege.

Her imagination was in freefall. She’d always been a horror movie fan. Now she was thinking about all the deranged killers in movies she had seen, who kidnapped their victims, then tortured and killed them at their leisure. Like in
Silence of the Lambs
,
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
,
The Hills Have Eyes
.

Her brain was shorting out in terror. She was breathing in short, sharp, panicky bursts, her chest thudding, thudding, thudding, and she was so angry inside.

The van stopped. He got out again. She heard the rumbling of a metal door, then a terrible grinding of metal against some other hard surface. He climbed back in, slammed his door shut and drove forward, putting his lights on again.

Have to talk to him, somehow.

Now she could see through the windscreen that they were inside some vast, disused industrial building, the height of an aircraft hangar, or several aircraft hangars. The headlights briefly showed a railed steel walkway going around the walls high up and a network of what looked like giant, dusty Apollo rocket fuel cylinders stretching into the distance, supported by massive steel and concrete cradles. As they turned, she saw rail tracks disappearing into dust and rubble, and a rusted open goods carriage, covered in graffiti, which did not look like it had moved in decades.

The van halted.

She was shaking so much in terror she could not think straight.

The man got out and switched the engine off. She heard him walking away, then the groaning noise of metal, a loud, echoing clang, following by the clanking of what sounded like a chain. She heard him walking back towards the camper.

Moments later she heard the door slide open and now he was inside the rear with her. He shone the torch down at her, first at her face, then at her body. She stared up at his hooded face, shaking in terror.

She could kick him, she thought wildly. Although her legs were strapped together, she could bend her knees, then lash out at him, but unless she could free her arms, what good would that achieve? Other than to anger him.

She needed to speak to him. She was remembering tips from all she had read in newspapers about hostages who had survived capture. You needed to try to bond with your captors. It was harder for them to harm you if you established a rapport. Somehow she had to get him to free her mouth so she could talk to him. Reason with him. Find out what he wanted.

‘You shouldn’t have kicked me,’ he said suddenly. ‘I bought you nice new shoes, the same as the ones you were going to wear tonight to take Benedict to meet your parents. You’re all the same, you women. You think yourselves so powerful. You put on all these sexy things to snare your man, then ten years later, you’re all fat and horrible, with cellulite and a slack belly. Somebody has to teach you a lesson, even if I have to do it with only one shoe.’

She tried to speak again.

He leaned down and, in a sudden movement that took her by surprise, flipped her over on to her stomach, then sat on her legs, pinioning them to the floor, crushing them painfully with his weight. She felt something being wound around her ankles and knotted tight. He stood up and suddenly her legs were being pulled over to the left. Then, after some moments, she felt them being pulled to the right. She tried to move them, but couldn’t.

Then she heard the clank of metal and an instant later felt something cold and hard being wound around her neck and pulled tight. There was a sharp snap that sound liked a lock closing. Suddenly her head was jerked forward, then to the right. She heard another snap, like another lock. Then her head was being pulled to the left. Another snap.

She was stretched out as if she was on some medieval rack. She could not move her head or her legs or her arms. She tried to breathe. Her nose was blocking up again. She shimmied in growing panic.

‘I have to go now. I’m expected for dinner,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.
Hasta la vista!
’

She moaned in terror, trying to plead with him.
No, please! No, please don’t leave me face down. I can’t breathe. Please, I’m claustrophobic. Please—

She heard the door sliding shut.

Footsteps. A distant rending and echoing bang of metal.

Then the sound of a motorcycle engine starting up, revving and fading into the distance, roaring away, fading rapidly into silence. As she listened, quaking in terror, fighting for air she felt a sudden, unpleasant warm sensation spreading around her groin and along her thighs.

101

Saturday 17 January

Roy Grace sat in the small interview room in the Custody Centre, alongside DC Michael Foreman, who, like himself, was a trained Witness and Suspect Cognitive Interviewer. But at this moment, none of that past training was doing them any good. John Kerridge had gone
no comment
on them. Thanks but no thanks to his smartalec lawyer, Ken Acott.

The tape recorder with three blank cassettes sat on the table. High up on the walls, two CCTV camera lenses peered down at them like mildly inquisitive birds. There was a tense atmosphere. Grace was feeling murderous. At this moment he could have happily reached across the narrow interview table, grabbed John Kerridge by the neck and strangled the truth out of the little shit, disability or no disability.

His client was on the autism spectrum, Ken Acott had informed them. John Kerridge, who kept insisting he be called Yac, suffered from Asperger’s syndrome. His client had informed him that he was in pursuit of a passenger who had run off without paying. It was patently obvious that it was his client’s passenger who should have been apprehended, not his client. His client was being discriminated against and victimized because of his disability. Kerridge would make no comment without a specialist medical expert present.

Grace decided he would like to strangle Ken sodding Acott too at this moment. He stared at the smooth solicitor in his elegantly tailored suit, his shirt and tie, and could even smell his cologne. In contrast his client, also in a suit, shirt and tie, cut a pathetic figure. Kerridge had short dark hair brushed forward, and a strangely haunted face that might have been quite handsome, were his eyes not a little too close together. He was thin, with rounded shoulders, and seemed unable to keep totally still. He fidgeted like a bored schoolboy.

‘It’s nine o’clock,’ Acott said. ‘My client needs a cup of tea. He has to have one every hour, on the hour. It’s his ritual.’

‘I’ve got news for your client,’ Grace said, staring pointedly at Kerridge. ‘This is not a Ritz-Carlton hotel. He’ll get tea outside of the normal times that tea is provided here if and when I decide he can have it. Now, if your client would care to be more helpful – or perhaps if his solicitor would care to be more helpful – then I’m sure something could be done to improve the quality of our room service.’

‘I’ve told you, my client is not making any comment.’

‘I have to have my tea,’ Yac said suddenly.

Grace looked at him. ‘You’ll have it when I decide.’

‘I have to have it at nine o’clock.’

Grace stared at him. There was a brief silence, then Yac eye-balled Grace back and said, ‘Do you have a high-flush or low-flush toilet in your home?’

There was a vulnerability in the taxi driver’s voice, something that touched a chord in Grace. Since the news of the reported abduction in Kemp Town two hours ago, and the discovery of a shoe on the pavement where it had allegedly taken place, there had been a development. A young man had arrived to collect his fiancée for an evening out at a black-tie function, thirty minutes after the time of the abduction and she had not answered the door. There was no response from her mobile phone, which rang unanswered, then went to voicemail.

It had already been established that the last person to have seen her was her kick-boxing instructor, at a local gym. She’d been in high spirits, looking forward to her evening out, although, the instructor had said, she was nervous at the prospect of introducing her fiancé to her parents for the first time.

So she could have funked out, Grace considered. But she didn’t sound the type of girl to stand up her boyfriend and let down her family. The more he heard, the less he liked the way the whole scenario was developing. Which made him even angrier here.

Angry at the smugness of Ken Acott.

Angry at this creepy suspect hiding behind
no comment
and behind his condition. Grace knew a child with Asperger’s. A police officer colleague and his wife, with whom he and Sandy had been friends, had a teenage son with the condition. He was a strange but very sweet boy who was obsessed with batteries. A boy who was not good at reading people, lacking normal social skills. A boy who had difficulty distinguishing between right and wrong in certain aspects of behaviour. But someone, in his view, who was capable of understanding the line between right and wrong when it came to things as major as rape or murder.

‘Why are you interested in toilets?’ Grace asked Kerridge.

‘Toilet chains! I have a collection. I could show you them some time.’

‘Yes, I’d be very interested.’

Acott was glaring daggers at him.

‘You didn’t tell me,’ Kerridge went on. ‘Do you have high flush or low flush in your home?’

Grace thought for a moment. ‘Low flush.’

‘Why?’

‘Why do you like ladies’ shoes, John?’ he replied suddenly.

‘I’m sorry,’ Acott said, his voice tight with anger. ‘I’m not having any questioning.’

Ignoring him, Grace persisted. ‘Do you find them sexy?’

‘Sexy people are bad,’ Yac replied.