A Spring Betrayal

Chapter 45

Somehow in the fall, I’d managed to lose my shoes and socks, and pull some kind of sack over my head. I’d taken two of those little plastic ties that hold computer cables together to attach my thumbs together. I’d also done the same with my big toes. I must have looked as if I were practicing a particularly strenuous yoga exercise. Except I wasn’t.

“You always have to be careful just how tight you make those restraints,” a woman’s voice said, so close to my ear I would have jumped, had I been able to move.

“Too loose and your captive might just be able to wriggle their way out of them,” she continued. “Too tight and the blood gets cut off and after a few hours, it’s amputation time. Just be grateful I didn’t put one around your dick.”

“They don’t make them in that big a size,” I said.

“If you’re going to mouth off, then I’ve got some other toys I like. You won’t, but that’s the least of your problems,” the woman said, her mouth against my ear. I could smell her scent, floral, powerful, but somehow reminding me of decay. Her voice rasped, as if she’d been kicked in the throat a long time ago and never quite recovered. She didn’t need to whisper threats to sound terrifying.

“Have you ever noticed how someone walks when they’ve had their toes cut off? You wouldn’t think it would make much difference, such small bones, with hardly any meat on them. And it takes very little effort, it’s like trimming your toenails, only a little further down. But, believe me, it does. People shuffle as if they’re drunk, or they’ve only recently learned to walk. They walk round obstacles rather than over them, they can’t manage stairs, and they’ll never play football again.”

I said nothing.

“You must think us very simple, Inspector Borubaev. Or is that ex-Inspector? Haven’t you become one of the little people now? Looking over your shoulder in case some ment keen on glory spots the wanted child pornographer, puts two between your shoulder blades and gets a quick promotion?”

I could feel her staring at me, imagined her head cocked to one side.

“Sometimes people like you just make it all too easy. Like filling in all the hard answers in a crossword puzzle. I knew you’d come back here sooner or later. We put a little locator on the top of your front door. When you opened it, the connection broke and told us you were back. Fifteen minutes later, we were here, parked outside, about to come up when we saw the lights go out. You had your little stumble in the dark, we picked you up and dusted you off.”

I felt hands pick me up, heard the slam of the apartment block’s metal door as it clanged shut, then I was being carried face down. A car trunk opened, and I bounced off the spare wheel as they dropped me inside. I felt the vibration as the car doors opened and closed, and the grunt of the engine as it turned over and fired.

The journey was uncomfortable, but at least it was on roads, which gave me a faint hope I wasn’t being taken to the mountains for a quick scenic tour followed by a bullet in the back of my head. Or worse.

I did my best to shift my weight off the spare, tried to get more comfortable. But comfort is a relative term when you’re tied up. I could feel the rim of the wheel pressing against my knee, and heard my trousers snag and tear as I levered myself backward. I moved around a little more, and rolled forward slightly, until I could place my thumbs against the wheel rim. Cold metal, a sharp jagged edge maybe a centimeter long, where a stone or rock must have hit it. One of the unexpected benefits of living in a country with potholed roads. I rubbed my thumbs against the cold metal, felt it scratch and tear at my skin, drawing blood. It wasn’t much of a chance, but it was all I had.

I shifted position once more, until I was lying face down, ass up in the air, my thumbs against the metal. I started to saw at the plastic restraint tying my thumbs together, wondering how much time I’d have. Every time the car took a corner, it threw me backward, and I had to scramble back into position and start again.

In the darkness, it was hard to guess the exact spot, and after a few minutes, the metal was slick with blood. The pain was a fire biting into my flesh with each stroke of the metal against plastic. But I carried on sawing away. Maybe I’d lose the use of my thumbs, but that was the very least of my worries. God only knew what I’d done to my toe, but then I wasn’t planning on playing football anyway. But I sawed on for what felt like a couple of hours, until I felt the restraint suddenly fall apart. I sucked at my thumb, my tongue running along the length of the gash, my mouth filling with blood and skin.

With my hands free, I pulled off the hood, took out my cigarettes and matches. I resisted the temptation to light up, struck a match instead.

It took a couple of matches before my eyes got used to the sudden flare, and I was worried about setting fire to a petrol can, so I made sure each match was safely out before I lit another.

I’d never taken a ride in a car trunk before, and it wasn’t anything anyone would want to write to relatives about. The usual debris lay in a heap to one side, including a couple of blankets. I was a little pissed off no one had thought to spread them out to make my journey a little less uncomfortable. I was definitely going to complain to the tour operator. A tire lever looked like a suitable way to make my point, but I quickly decided against that. Whoever opened the trunk wasn’t going to be standing there, wondering what I was doing, as I clambered out, tire lever in hand, and took my best shot.

Instead, I reached for the package I’d found back in my apartment and started to pick at the tape I’d used to seal it. What was inside was going to get me out of that car. Not a lockpick, not a saw. Two knives, but not just ordinary kitchen knives.

These were Uighur knives.