Cold as Ice

Chapter 50

As Ebony opened her eyes the pain shot across the side of her head. She shut them fast and tried to breathe through the pain and nausea. She couldn’t risk vomiting; she had a gag across her mouth. She opened her eyes again slowly and could see nothing but darkness.

She lay there trying hard to remember how she got wherever she was. She could smell: wood, urine and sweat. She listened hard. Against her back and buttocks she felt rough wood. She knew she was inside a coffin. Her fingers stretched upwards and her fingertips ran along the grooves that other nails had dug. Waves of nausea surged upward. Pain shot across her skull. She tried to calm herself. She could breathe – air must be coming from somewhere. She must try and come out of the pain and fog – try and think – it was her only chance.

She stopped as she heard movement above her. She heard him unlatch the first of the three locks on her box.

Ebony opened her eyes as she heard the box being opened. Three locks, to her left. The sound of music again. She held her breath, waited. As he opened the box, she was temporarily blinded by the light. He shone a torch in her face. She saw Yan’s face loom close to hers as he pulled up her eyelids and examined her. He pulled her to a sitting position by her wrists. Her eyes squinted as he directed the light straight at her. A hot bulb shining on her swollen face. He pulled down her gag.

‘Welcome to my world.’

His voice chilled her. It was a voice she knew well but she had never heard it in those tones. Now she realized she didn’t know him at all. He was bare-chested, had on a pair of combat trousers and was wearing black leather gloves on his hands. He lifted her from the box by her wrists, pulled her over his shoulder and carried her out of the room.

She grimaced in pain as he squashed her bruised ribs and almost ran along the corridor. Try as she might, Ebony could not clear her head and was dipping in and out of consciousness. She tried to focus on where she could be in the house. She looked at the floor and the edges of doors: four, five. He carried her along a low-ceilinged corridor. It felt like they were underground. Suddenly, Yan stopped at a door on their right.

‘Welcome to your new home. I’ve been waiting for you. I’ve been busy spinning my webs and you walked straight into them, my little fly.’

‘Let me talk to you, Yan.’

He didn’t answer as he opened a door. Inside she felt the temperature drop. It was completely black and there was the rank smell of something rotting. She felt the air flow over her body as he tipped her from his shoulder. She landed on a mat covered with grit and dirt.

When Ebony opened her eyes she shuffled forward in the dark. She had no sense of time or place. She didn’t know where she was. The floor was crunching beneath her palms, something was sticking to her hands and knees. Her shoulder brushed against something that moved back and forth, banging, tapping her lightly. She recoiled quickly as she thought it was him, then in the silence that followed she inched forward again and reached out with her hand to touch the hanging object; her fingers touched a woman’s feet covered in silken thread.

At the same time as she recoiled the lights went on and she saw that all around her on the floor, the crunchy paper particles were dead insects and above her, hanging from the ceiling, was a woman’s body embalmed in spiders’ webs. In the corner of the room she saw a woman she recognized as Danielle, suspended by her wrists from a hook in the ceiling; she was gagged, staring at Ebony. Her eyes were glaring at her, willing her to understand something that she couldn’t say.

Ebony couldn’t focus, she tried to keep her head very still as she crawled towards Danielle. Danielle began whimpering. Her eyes were fixed on Ebony; the nearer she got to her the louder the sounds she made. Ebony stopped where she was. She kept her head very still as she focused on Danielle and saw why she was crying. Yan was watching them. He had slipped into the room.

‘What’s this? A party? We need some music.’

Classical music started blasting out from a speaker on the wall. Yan moved to the middle of the room and held onto the hanging corpse as he pretended to waltz in a small circle. He lay on the floor breathing hard and laughing as he looked across at Ebony, who was retching now as the pain in her head distorted her vision and took away her balance. She couldn’t stand; she swayed on her knees.

‘Ebony, Ebony, Ebony.’ She watched him as he circled her. She realized that she only had underwear on and it wasn’t hers. It was a red metallic bikini. Her pendant was gone. She glared up at him.

‘Yes, you’re angry, I know. You fell for the oldest trick in the book, didn’t you? Oh Ebony, I can be your boyfriend.’ He simpered then laughed loudly. ‘You’re all the same. You’re all pretenders: selfish liars, mercenary cheats, uncaring, ruthless in your pursuit of selfish dreams. And you, Ebony, are the lowest of the low. I intend to put all my skills to use on you. You are my pièce de résistance.’ he said flamboyantly, waving his arms in the air as he struck a dancer’s pose.

Ebony closed her eyes and sank to the floor. How could she have messed up so badly?

She heard Danielle try and say something to her from the corner of the room.

‘You jealous?’ He danced across to Danielle and ran his fingers slowly down her body whilst she twisted from his touch.

‘Your turn will come.’

Ebony looked around the room, trying to get her bearings. There was no window. She thought they must be in the basement. Her heart sank – no way of tracking her anyway, all her devices were gone. If she was ever going to get out she had to outwit him and this place had to become as familiar to her as it was to him.

‘I’ve been waiting for them to send someone to try and trap me. I knew if I left enough clues you’d narrow it down to the college but there were so many choices in there. I wouldn’t have known for sure it was you if you hadn’t failed. You didn’t know a basic fact about your supposed home town. In the café, you didn’t get my text because you were on a different phone, which I saw you stuff into your bag. But don’t feel bad, I saw you way before that. I saw you from the bridge the day that Emily rose to the surface. For weeks I’d been coming this way and that, different routes, different viewpoints. I had a feeling something would happen that day. I felt her beginning to rise beneath the surface. I saw you walk along the towpath and you didn’t see me. You had your eyes on the man with you – Detective Inspector Dan Carter. With his expensive clothes and his black shiny hair like a raven’s. That’s all you were worried about. “I’m not your mate… you all right Guv?”’ He mimicked them both. ‘If you had walked up onto the bridge, past the press, you would have seen me. But I saw you. And you know what? I’m glad you’re here now because we are going to play a special game, just me and you and Danielle and Jenny here. Just the four of us. We have plenty of time.’

Yan walked across to the side of the room and picked up a box. He came across to Ebony and slid open a door at the front of the box. It came level with Ebony’s face. She tried hard to focus. Inside she could make out something hanging, wrapped in silk. It had a tail, an ear poking out of the white bag that wrapped it. She focused on the mouse first, its beady little eyes watched hers. Then her eyes shifted to the right and she saw the massive spider that had wrapped it in white silk. He began swinging the box in front of her face.

The spider moved to the back of the box. It began to rear and sway; in the dark she saw its bright yellow markings.

‘Tell me, Ebony, does the brown recluse spider always bite?’

‘No,’ Ebony whispered, keeping as still as possible.

‘No. That’s right,’ he said, allowing the spider to stay still in front of her face. ‘Very good, Ebony. But this isn’t the brown recluse spider, this is the jumping tree spider, highly venomous and aggressive and she…’ The spider reared onto its back legs and showed two red fangs. ‘…does.’

‘Tell me about Australia.’

‘My client…’

Christian Goddard turned to his lawyer to indicate he wanted to speak for himself.

‘Look, I’ve got nothing to hide here. I’ll tell you what I know about Yan but I’m not sure it will help. I am fond of Ebony and Danielle. If I can help I will.’

‘How did you meet Yan?’

‘In a bar in Adelaide. He was with his mother. She was a hippy type. They’d travelled the world. By the time I met them they weren’t getting on very well. His mum had a really wild side and a habit of sleeping with Yan’s mates.’

‘Including you?’

Christian shrugged. ‘Actually no – it didn’t work for me.’

‘What were you doing at the time?’

‘Drifting, working where I could. I got work in a bat sanctuary and then a zoo. That’s when I learnt about looking after pets.’

‘And Yan?’

‘They had enough money sent over by his dad to keep them going but they lived very frugally. They rented out shitty old places and lived like tramps. Yan had been brought up like that. Ever since his mum left the UK supposedly to find herself and left Yan’s dad and never came back. By the time I met Yan he was bitter and angry and seemed to be on the brink of just flying back to the UK without his mum. Then his dad died over here and it seemed to be a massive blow to him. All he ever talked about was his memories of his dad. He talked about getting back here and making up for all the lost time. He really hated his mum then.’

‘What happened to them then?’

‘I didn’t see him for a while. The next time I met him out in a bar on his own I asked after his mum. He told me she was back at the farm they were renting. She was pretty ill. He said he was waiting for her to get better then he was definitely coming back to the UK and he had inherited his dad’s house.’

‘Where – did he say?’

‘Yes, off Upper Street somewhere. I didn’t see him again until he contacted me on Facebook and I found out he was working at the college. I decided I would take a couple of courses and it just snowballed from there.’

‘So you are friends?’

Christian shook his head. ‘Not really. I don’t like him and he doesn’t like me.’

‘Would it surprise you to know that his mother died in that remote farm outside Adelaide?’

‘Not really. How?’

‘Strangled. By the time they found her she was cocooned in spiders’ webs.’