Monday 29 December
‘I can forget that I saw your face,’ Rachael said, staring up at him.
In the yellow glow of the interior light he looked jaundiced. She tried to make eye contact, because in the dim, distant, terror-addled recesses of her mind, she remembered reading somewhere that hostages should try to make eye contact. That people would find it harder to hurt you if you established a bond.
She was trying, through her parched voice, to bond with this man – this monster – this thing.
‘Sure you can, Rachael. When do you think I was born? Yesterday? Last week on Christmas fucking Day? I let you go, right, and one hour later you’ll be in a police station with one of those E-Fit guys, describing me. Is that about the size of it?’
She shook her head vigorously from side to side. ‘I promise you,’ she croaked
‘On your mother’s life?’
‘On my mother’s life. Please can I have some water? Please, something.’
‘So I could let you go, and if you do cheat me and go to the police, it would be OK for me to go round to your mother’s house, in Surrenden Close, and kill her?’
Dimly, Rachael wondered how he knew where her mother lived. Perhaps he had read it in the papers? That gave her a glimmer of hope. If he had read it in the papers, then it meant she was in the news. People would be out looking for her. Police.
‘I know everything about you, Rachael.’
‘You can let me go. I’m not going to risk her life.’
‘I can?’
‘Yes.’
‘In your dreams.’