Looking Good Dead

74

Tom woke with a start, with a blinding headache, badly in need of a pee, thinking there must have been a power cut. It was never this dark, normally; there was always the neon glow of the street lights, tinging the bedroom orange.

And what the hell was he lying on? Rock hard…

And then, as if a sluice had released cold water into his belly, he remembered something indistinct but bad.

Oh shit, bad.

His right arm hurt. He tried to raise it but it would not move. Must have been lying on it, he thought, made it go to sleep. He tried again. Then he realized he couldn’t move his left arm either.

Nor his legs.

Something was digging into his right thigh. His jaw ached and his mouth was parched. He tried to speak and found to his shock he couldn’t. All he could hear was a muffled hum, as he felt the roof of his mouth vibrate. Something was clamped over his mouth, bound tight around his face, pulling his cheeks in. Then a shiver ripped through him as he remembered the words last night. On his computer screen:… get out of the house, take Kellie’s car, head north on the A23 London Road and wait for her to call you…

That’s exactly what he had done. It was coming back now. Driving up the A23. The phone call telling him to pull over into the lay-by.

Now here.

Oh Christ, oh God, oh sweet Jesus Christ, where was he? Where was Kellie? What the hell had he done? Who the hell had-

Light suddenly appeared, an upright rectangle of yellow some distance away. A doorway. A figure coming through it, holding a powerful torch, the beam glinting like a mirror.

Tom held his breath, watching as the figure moved nearer. In the swinging beam of the torch he could see he was in some kind of storeroom stacked with massive plastic and metal drums that looked as if they contained fuel or chemicals.

As the figure came closer, Tom made out a very fat man in a loose-fitting open-necked shirt, his hair gelled back and squeezed into a short pigtail. A large medallion swung on a chain from his neck. There wasn’t enough light to see his face clearly but Tom put him in his late fifties to early sixties.

Then the savage beam shone straight in his face; it felt like it was burning the backs of his retinas and he squeezed his eyes shut.

In a Louisiana drawl, and sounding sincere, as if it were a genuine question to which he was expecting an answer, the man said, ‘So you think you’re a bit of a hero, do you, Mr Bryce?’

Unsure how to respond and in any case unable to speak Tom kept silent.

He felt the beam move away and opened his eyes. The man squatted down in front of him, put out his hands until they were touching Tom’s face, and then jerked them back, hard. Tom screamed. The pain was unreal. For several seconds he was convinced that half his face had been ripped clean off.

A length of gaffer tape dangled in front of his eyes. He could move his jaw again, open his mouth, speak. ‘Where’s my wife?’ Tom said. ‘Where is Kellie? Please tell me where she is.’

The man swung the beam across the room. And Tom’s heart nearly broke as he saw, a short distance away, what at first he thought was a rolled-up carpet, then realized was Kellie. She was lying on the floor, trussed up, a manacle on her ankle, with a chain running from it up to a hoop on the wall, gaffer tape across her mouth, pleading at him with her eyes.

Tom’s first instinct was to scream at the fat creep in fury, but somehow he managed to hold himself in check, trying to think clearly, to work out what had happened, just what the hell this nightmare really was. ‘Who are you?’ he said.

‘You ask too many questions,’ the man responded dismissively. ‘You want water?’

‘I want to know why I’m here. Why my wife is here.’

For an answer the man turned and walked away, back into the shadows.

‘Kellie!’ Tom called. ‘Kellie, are you OK?’

He couldn’t see her any more. Or hear her. ‘Kellie, my darling!’

‘Shut the fuck up,’ the fat man said.

No, I won’t shut up! Tom nearly shouted out. One second his insides were squirming with fear, the next blind anger seized him. How dare this bastard keep Kellie tied up? Or himself.

Got the most important presentation of my career in the morning. It could save my business. And I’m missing it because of you, you fat-

In the morning?

Was it morning?

It was coming back to him, unevenly, like trying to put sheets of paper strewn across a room by a gust of wind back into their proper order.

Kellie had gone. Her car had been burned out. Then he had responded to the email. And now she was lying across the room, all trussed-

He thought of the young woman on his computer screen, in her evening dress, the hooded man, the stiletto blade.

Pain welled in his bladder. ‘Please,’ he called out, ‘I need to pee.’

‘No one’s stopping you,’ the American said from the shadows.

Tom wriggled round. The man was stooped over Kellie. He ripped the tape away from her mouth. Tom winced at the sound.

Instantly she screamed at the man, ‘Fuck you! Fuck you, you bastard!’

‘Just be a little more ladylike; people will want to see you looking ladylike. Would you like a little more vodka?’

‘Fuck you!’

Oh, God, Kellie! It was so good to hear her voice, to know she was alive, that she was OK, that she had fight in her. Yet this wasn’t the way to deal with this situation.

He clenched his thighs together, and his abdomen, fighting the surge of pain from his bladder. Surely the man didn’t mean him to relieve himself where he lay?

‘Kellie, my darling!’ Tom called out.

‘Get this fucking bastard to get us out of here. I want Jessica and Max. I want my children. LET ME FUCKING GO!’

‘Do you want the tape back over your face, Mrs Bryce?’

She rolled over onto her stomach and lay still, sobbing hysterically, deep, gulping sobs. And Tom felt wretched, useless, so utterly, utterly useless. There had to be something he could do. Something. Oh God, something.

The pain in his bladder was stopping him thinking and his head felt like it had been split open. The torch beam was moving. As it did, Tom saw hundreds of dark-coloured drums, stacked floor to ceiling, huge bloody things, many bearing hazard labels. It was cold in here. There was a slightly sour smell in the chilly air.

Where the hell are we?

‘Oh Tom, please do something!’ she shrieked.

‘Do you want money?’ Tom called out to the man. ‘Is that what you want? I’ll rustle together whatever I can.’

‘You mean you’d like to subscribe?’

‘Subscribe?’ Tom said, pleased at last to get some sort of response to his questions. Engage the man in conversation, reason with him, try to find a-

‘You’d like to subscribe so you could watch yourself and your wife.’ The American laughed. ‘That’s rich!’

Tom’s spirits lifted a fraction. ‘Yes, whatever, however much you want!’

The beam shone straight into his eyes again. ‘You don’t get it, fuckwit, do you? How are you going to be able to see yourselves?’

‘I – I don’t – know.’

‘You’re even more stupid than I thought. You want to pay money so you and your vain little drunk of a wife can watch yourselves looking good dead?’