The Torment of Others (37 page)

Into the yard, through the door, up the stairs. She never pauses for a moment, just keeps wittering on, thinking there’s somebody listening to her giving directions to the room that’s
been prepared for her. She doesn’t even hesitate at the double door that looks just like a cupboard when you open the outer door on the landing. She comments on it, though, thinking she’s passing the message on. When he tells her to lie down on the bed and spread her legs and arms, she does as she’s told. He can smell the anxiety coming off her, but she isn’t scared, not really scared, not nearly scared enough. The cuffs go on and still he can tell she’s waiting for the cavalry to burst through the door and save her. She doesn’t even kick when he fastens the ankle restraints
.

But when the gag goes on, that’s a different story. He can tell she doesn’t like that, not one bit. Her eyes widen and a tide of colour sweeps up from her juicy round tits to her hairline. All at once it’s dawning on her that maybe it isn’t going to play out the way it’s supposed to. That he is in control, not her and the pathetic plods on her side. He smiles at her then, the relaxed, triumphant smile of the winner
.

‘They’re not coming,’ he says. ‘You’re on your own.’ He leans over and reaches under her body. He pulls the transmitter out from under her skirt. Then he reaches into her cleavage and yanks out the mike and its cable. He waves the cut ends in front of her eyes. ‘You’ve been talking to yourself,’ he taunts her. ‘They don’t have a fucking clue where you are. You could be anywhere in Temple Fields by now. You thought you could beat us, but you were wrong. You’re fucked, plod.’

He turns away, ignoring the mewling noises coming through the gag. He takes out the dildo he prepared earlier. The bright light gleams on the sharp edges of the razor blades. It’s fucking wicked, this death machine. He swivels on the balls of his feet, spinning round to face her. When she sees the dildo, the colour drains from her face, leaving her chest blotchy and ugly. He steps forward, pushes up her
skirt and rips her pants away. He waves the dildo in her face and grins
.

That’s when she pisses herself. Which annoys him, because it’s going to make the room smell, and that’s not very nice. Because this one’s a keeper
.

PART FOUR

It’s a well-known fact that there exist books that change people’s lives. If anyone were to ask me if such a book had ever swept through my life, I imagine they’d be profoundly surprised by the answer. But I can still remember the impact I felt when I first read John Buchan’s
The Three Hostages.

We were on a family holiday on the Norfolk Broads. It was as if my parents were aware of the concept of holidays but didn’t really understand how they should be done. Other people got to spend the week messing about on boats, exploring the waterways and experiencing a way of life utterly different from their normal routines – locks, fens, waterfowl, the strange sensation of unreality when their feet hit solid ground after days on the water. But not us. My parents had rented a static caravan on a site where hundreds of the metal boxes sat in serried rows along a low bluff that looked out over the blue-grey waters of the North Sea. The van we’d ended up in didn’t even have that view to commend it. All we could see from the windows was other caravans. It wasn’t an improvement on home; even in a two-bedroomed council house, there was more space and privacy than in this thirty-two-foot tin can. I hated it
,
resented the other kids whose parents had taken them on a proper holiday, counted the hours till we’d be on the road home
.

The weather didn’t help either. A typically English summer week, grey drizzle alternating with days of watery sunlight when everybody from the caravan site trooped off to the shingle beach, stripped down to their bathing suits, hopping from one foot to the other over the painful stones to the water’s edge. Then they screamed at the temperature, turned round and hopped shivering back up the beach again to flasks of hot weak coffee and egg sandwiches
.

One afternoon when the rain was particularly undeniable my parents decided to go and play bingo in the community-hall-cum-snack-bar that squatted in a low concrete block in the middle of the vans. I had to go too, because at twelve I wasn’t legally old enough to be left on my own. And my parents were always nauseatingly law-abiding. Smarting at the indignity, I trailed behind them, grudging and resentful. I wanted to hang out with Amanda, the beautiful blonde girl from the van two rows down, not watch a bunch of old fogeys playing bingo
.

Dad bought me a Coke and a bag of crisps, pointed me in the direction of the ping-pong table and told me to amuse myself for a couple of hours and not to wander off. Like I was a little kid. Fuming, I stomped off. The ping-pong room was noisy with kids who looked at me like I’d dropped in from another planet. I slouched off towards the furthest corner and that’s when I spotted the shelf of tattered hardbacks. I took a couple down from the shelves, but they didn’t grab me. Then I picked
The Three Hostages
and from the first page, with its images of a
social milieu whose lives were utterly alien to mine, I was hooked
.

Until that moment I’d never imagined it was possible to achieve total domination over another’s conscious will.
The Three Hostages
spoke to me of two things I wanted above everything else: absolute superiority, and access to a world of power and success. I’d been deprived of the latter by birth, but if I seized the former for myself, I could grasp at something almost as fine
.

The Three Hostages
was the first step on a long journey to the heart of other people’s minds. That control was possible, I never doubted. That I could achieve it, I never doubted. That I could use it to change the world around me remained to be seen. But on balance, I thought I could probably manage it
.

At first, my path was less than clear. I chose information as my highway, tracking down everything I could about hypnosis, altered states, brainwashing and mind control. And the more I learned, the more I tried to demonstrate my abilities to myself. I practised on school friends, I sneaked under the guard of lovers, I even tried it at work. I soon learned that my skills weren’t all I had hoped for. Sometimes I achieved remarkable results. But, more often, I failed. Most minds remained resolutely beyond my grasp. And no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t break through
.

Then I discovered that there was a category of weaker minds that had few defences against my techniques. People the rest of the world dismissed as slow and stupid could be bent to my will. Not perhaps the world-shattering effect I had dreamed of, but something that offered distinct possibilities
.

The question then became what I would do with the
power I had prepared myself to wield. How could I magnify what was in my grasp?

The answer came out of nowhere. The power of two
.

Chapter 4

If knowledge was power, then the choice of how to disseminate it was power in action. So Sam Evans was always willing to trade a little to get a lot. It was surprising how much people would spill if they thought you were being candid with them. So it was with Kevin. In exchange for a couple of snippets he’d picked up about Stacey Chen’s background, Evans had garnered a wealth of information about Don, Paula and Kevin himself. Just the sort of things that could come in useful as subtle little pressure points if he ever needed to push them off balance.

They were sitting in a country pub a few miles from Swindale, recharging their batteries with a well-earned pint after a long and frustrating day fighting petty turf wars and conducting painstaking interviews. They were supposed to be formulating a plan of action for the morning, but they’d tacitly acknowledged that they’d had enough of the grinding depression of dealing with the deaths of children. Station gossip was far more appealing.

Kevin broke off from the story he was telling when his mobile beeped, indicating the arrival of a text message. He looked incredulously at the screen. ‘Is she at the wind-up, or what?’ he exclaimed, turning the phone so Evans could read the screen.

Under the heading STACEY MOBY, it read ‘Killr hs capturd Paula. She’s missng.’

Evans shook his head. ‘Not Stacey. Not her style.’

Kevin was already dialling. As soon as the line opened, he said, ‘What do you mean, the killer has captured Paula? Is this some kind of sick joke?’

‘I wouldn’t joke about something like that,’ Stacey said, clearly offended at the suggestion. ‘I meant just what I said. He’s got Paula. He took her into an alley and she went off the air. By the time we got there, they’d vanished. That was about half an hour ago and we’ve not seen hide nor hair of either of them since.’

‘Shit,’ Kevin swore. ‘We’re coming over. We’ll be there inside the hour.’ He ended the call and turned to Evans. ‘She meant it. While we were sitting here enjoying a pint, our fucking colleagues sat on their hands and let the killer snatch Paula from under their noses.’ He jumped to his feet. ‘Come on, we’re going back to Bradfield.’

Evans abandoned his half-drunk pint and led the way to the door. ‘How the hell did that happen?’ he said.

‘I don’t know,’ Kevin said. ‘Carol Jordan was so sure she had all the bases covered.’

Evans raised his eyebrows as he followed Kevin to the car. If anything happened to Paula, it would be goodnight, Vienna for Carol Jordan. He was glad he was well clear of the night’s debacle, working a case that had a better prospect of resolution. It was every man for himself out there. Anyone who thought otherwise was prey. And prey got eaten.

He had no intention of being anyone’s next meal.

It was just after three in the morning when Carol made it home. Paula McIntyre had been missing for a little over six hours. Every door in Temple Fields that would respond to a thunderous tattoo of knocking had opened, every respondent had been questioned. They’d shaken down massage parlours and brothels, accosted whores and rent boys, disrupted bars and clubs. Short of taking a battering ram to all the remaining doors of Temple Fields–shops, offices, flats, bedsits and who knew what else–they had done everything they could to find Paula. But it was as if she and her assailant had vanished into thin air. The maze of alleys, back yards and lanes had yielded nothing in the way of clues. Jan Shields had led a team through the gate in the wall and into the building behind it, which seemed mostly to serve as storage for a local printshop. Their search had turned up nothing to indicate that anyone had passed that way for days.

Finally, Carol had called it a night. Several officers had protested, expressing their willingness to continue searching, but Carol had vetoed their requests. Nothing of use could be done before daybreak, she said firmly. The best service they could offer Paula now was to get some sleep. What none of them was prepared to voice was their conviction that they were already too late.

Carol had walked back to the surveillance van with Jan Shields and Don Merrick in a despondent silence. When they got there, Jan had shaken her head. ‘I’m not coming back yet. I’ve still got contacts out there. There are people I need to talk to. You’ll be amazed who ends up on our side once they realize it’s a cop on the missing list. They’ll want this sorted nearly as badly as we do.’

‘Bad for business, is it?’ Merrick said sourly.

‘Yeah, you could say that.’ Jan pulled her soft leather jacket closer to her face. ‘I’ll see you at the briefing.’

Carol made no attempt to stop her. They watched till she was swallowed up by the mist. ‘I told her this morning she didn’t need to go through with this,’ Merrick said.

Carol could feel the heat of his hostility but was too weary to get into it with him. ‘She knew that already, Don. It was her choice,’ she said heavily. She yanked open the door of the van and climbed inside. ‘I’m going home to get some sleep. I suggest you do the same rather than chase your tail round Temple Fields for the rest of the night.’ She didn’t wait for his response. When he hadn’t followed her after twenty seconds, she slammed the door shut and ordered the driver to take them back to the station.

She thanked Stacey for holding the fort, then asked one of the technicians to run the CCTV footage of Paula’s last encounter again. They watched it half a dozen times on the journey, but none of them saw anything new. When they arrived back at base, she ordered the technicians to do everything they could to enhance both sound and vision. Then she walked to her car, feeling so old and tired she could hardly put one foot in front of the other.