Land of the Living Read Free Page B

days. Terry would have reported me missing. I wouldn’t have turned up at work. They would phone Terry, he would be baffled. He would have tried my mobile phone. Where was that? The police might have been called within hours. By now there would be a huge hunt. Lines of people scouring wasteland. All leave cancelled. Sniffer dogs. Helicopters. Another promising thought. You can’t just grab an adult off the street and hide them somewhere without creating some sort of suspicion. They would be out there, knocking at doors, marching into houses, shining torches into dark places. Any time now I’d hear them, see them. All I had to do was stay alive as long as … Just stay alive. Stay alive.
    I had shouted at him before. I’d said I’d kill him. That was the only thing I could remember having said to him, except I’d said, ‘Thank you,’ when he gave me water. I hated the fact I’d said thank you. But when I’d shouted, I’d made him angry. What were his words? ‘You kill me? That’s a good one.’ Something like that. That’s not promising. ‘ You kill me ?’ That might seem good to him because in fact he’s going to kill me.
    I tried to seize some other kind of comfort. It might just seem funny to him because I was so much in his power that the idea of me getting back at him was completely ludicrous. I was taking a risk being rude to him. I’d made him angry. He could have tortured me or hit me or anything. But he hadn’t done anything. That might be useful to know. He had kidnapped me, he had me tied down and I’d threatened him. It could be that if I stand up to him he feels weakened and unable to do anything to me. If I don’t give in to him, that may be the best way of playing him along. He might have kidnapped a woman because he’s frightened of women and this is the only way to control at least one woman. He might expect me just to be begging pathetically for my life and that would give him the control he wants. But if I don’t yield, then it’s not going according to his plan.
    Or it might be the opposite. It might have shown nothing more than that he’s in control. It doesn’t matter to him what I say. He just finds it funny and is proceeding with his plan, whatever that is. Surely the point is to be as much of a flesh-and-blood person for him as possible so that he finds it harder to do anything to me. But if that is threatening to him, then it might make him angrier. I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t fight, I couldn’t escape. All I could do was slow him up.
    What was the best way of doing that? Making him angry? Happy? Scared? I lay on the floor and stared into the stifling darkness of my hood.
    There was a change of texture in the blackness around me. There was a sound and a smell. Once again there was that hoarse, croaking whisper. ‘I’m going to take your gag out. If you shout I’ll bleed you like an animal. If you’ve heard and understood what I’ve said, nod your head.’
    I nodded frantically. The hands—large, warm hands—fiddled behind my neck. The knot was untied, the cloth pulled roughly from my mouth. As soon as I was free I coughed and coughed. A hand held my head down and I felt the straw pushed into my mouth. I sucked the water until a bubbling sound told me it was gone.
    ‘There,’ he said. ‘There’s a bucket here. Do you want to use it?’
    ‘What do you mean?’ Get him talking.
    ‘You know. Toilet.’
    He was embarrassed. Was that a good sign?
    ‘I want to go to a proper one.’
    ‘It’s the bucket or you can lie in your own piss, sweetheart.’
    ‘All right.’
    ‘I’ll put you by the bucket. You can feel it with your feet. I’ll stand back. You try anything funny I’ll cut you up. All right?’
    ‘Yes.’
    There was the sound of him going down some steps, and then I felt his arms under my armpits, then, as I slithered towards him, around me. Hard, strong hands. I was pressed against him. An animal smell, sweat, something else. One arm under my