Looking Good Dead

78

Kellie was scaring Tom. It was like being locked in the darkness with a total stranger. A completely unpredictable one. There were long periods of silence, then suddenly she would screech hysterical abuse at him. She was starting again now, her voice cracked and strained from so much screaming.

‘You stupid bastard! You idiot man! You got us into this! If you had left the bloody CD thing on the train this would never have happened! THEY’RE NEVER GOING TO LET US GO. DO YOU UNDERSTAND THAT, YOU STUPID FUCKING FAILURE OF A MAN???’

Then she burst into a fit of sobs.

Tom felt all scrunched up inside. The sound of her crying was terrible, so harrowing. But there was nothing he could say that she seemed to take on board. He had been talking to her continuously since the fat man had left the room. Trying to calm her down, trying to boost her, to keep up their spirits.

Trying to do anything to distract himself from the searing agony in his bladder. From his raging thirst. And the pangs of hunger. And his fear.

He wondered if it was the vodka that was talking, making Kellie behave like this. Or the lack of it? Had she been on the edge, the way she had been for a few months after Jessica had been born, and this had pushed her over the cliff?

All that stuff with eBay – had that been some kind of a warning, or a cry for help that he had missed?

‘YOU STUPID FUCKING FAILURE!’ she screeched again.

Tom winced. Failure. Was that how she saw him? She was right. He’d failed in business; now he’d failed in the most important thing of all, protecting his family.

He clenched his eyes shut for a few moments and prayed to the God he hadn’t spoken a word to in twenty-five years. Then he opened them again, but it made no difference; it was still totally black in here.

His legs were cramping from being bound together. He rolled over, but only did one complete loop before the chain around his ankle snagged tight and he cried out in pain as the manacle, or clamp, or whatever it was, cut into his leg.

Think, he said to himself. Think!

The wall and the floor immediately around him were smooth; he needed something jagged he could rub against to saw through the cords. But there was nothing, damned, damned, damned nothing.

‘YOU HEAR ME, YOU STUPID FUCKING FAILURE!’

Tears welled in his eyes. Oh, my darling Kellie, I love you so much. Don’t do this to me.

What did the fat creep want? Who the hell was he? How did you get through to someone like that? But deep down he knew who the man was, and why they were here.

Suddenly his fear deepened even further as his thoughts crystallized. He had dropped the kids off with Kellie’s parents some while back, during the night; her mum was feisty enough, but her bedridden father was totally helpless, poor man. Was the fat man planning to seize the kids too? What if he or his thugs came when Kellie’s mother was out?

In desperation Tom rolled over; the chain jerked tight. He pulled, ignoring the pain. Holding his breath, he pulled again, again, again.

But nothing gave.

He lay still for a while. Then he had an idea.

At that moment, some way in the distance, he saw the rectangle of light appear again: the door. Two figures came through, each with a torch. His pulse quickened; he felt a tightness in his throat. He tensed up, ready to fight, any way, any which way he could.

One figure was walking towards Kellie, the other towards himself. Kellie was silent. The next instant the beam, like quicksilver in his eyes, dazzled him. Then it swung away and lit a paper cup of water and a bread roll lying on the floor.

‘Eat for you,’ said a voice in broken English, a hard voice which sounded eastern European to his untrained ear.

‘I need to urinate,’ Tom said.

‘Go on, piss in your pants like everyone else around here!’ Kellie shouted out.

‘You do no urinate!’ the man replied.

‘I have to go,’ Tom implored. ‘Please take me to the bathroom.’

The man was tall, lean, late twenties, dressed sharply in black, stern-faced with a short modern haircut. Tom could make out his features now. But, more importantly, he could see beyond him.

The nearest row of chemical drums.

‘Eat,’ the man said again, then walked away, joined by his companion. A few seconds later they had gone; the rectangle of light went out. Tom and Kellie were back in total darkness.

‘Darling?’ Tom said.

Silence.

‘Darling, please listen to me.’

‘Why didn’t they bring me anything to drink?’ she said.

‘They brought water.’

‘That is not what I fucking meant.’

How long had she been drinking? Tom wondered. How long he had not noticed?

‘How am I supposed to drink with my arms tied to my side? Want to tell me that, Mr Smart Husband?’

Tom moved his head slowly towards where the water and the roll had been placed. His nose touched the side of the cup, and he cursed silently at the indignity of what he was being put through. Moving his lips gingerly over the rim, desperate not to spill any precious drop, he finally gripped the rim with his teeth, tilted the cup up, and drained it greedily.

Then, like some kind of blind nocturnal animal, he felt with his nose until he found the roll. He had no appetite, but forced himself to take a bite. He struggled to chew and swallow. Then he took one more bite, swallowed and spat the rest out.

‘I think we should go home now,’ Kellie announced. ‘Do you think they’ll give us goody bags?’

And for the first time in the last couple of days, Tom smiled.

Maybe she was calming down. ‘I don’t think much of their hospitality so far,’ he said, trying to crack a joke back. But his words fell away into black silence.

The water and the food were already making him feel a little better, giving him some strength. He decided to make his move.

Half rolling, half squirming, he eased his way slowly, painfully, across the floor, over to the left, in the direction he had memorized from the spill of the torch beam a few minutes ago.

Towards the line of chemical drums.

Then he panicked as the chain jerked tight on his ankle. Please, just a little more, just give a little more. He pulled hard, but the clamp bit in even harder, making him cry out in pain.

‘Tom, are you OK? Darling?’

Thank God, she was calm now. ‘Yes,’ he hissed, suddenly concerned anyone might be listening in. ‘I’m fine.’

Then his face touched something. Please don’t let it be the wall. It felt plastic, cold, round. It was a drum!

He tried to push his way up it. The drum wobbled. He slid down. Rolling onto his stomach, his legs tangled behind him, his ankle agony, he jerked himself up, then up again. Finally, taking a massive breath and exhaling and pushing himself at the same time with all he had, he succeeded. He got his chin over the rim.

And it felt beautifully, raggedly, sharp.

Slowly, inching back, keeping his chin clamped over it, he levered it back; it was heavy, much heavier than he had imagined, too heavy for him. Suddenly it toppled and fell to the floor with a loud, echoing boom.

‘Tom?’ Kellie cried out.

‘It’s OK.’

‘What are you doing?’

‘Nothing.’

Working as fast as he could, he moved up to the rim, felt in the darkness where the cord strapping his arms to his sides was, and began to rub that against the rough edge.

After some minutes – almost as surprised that it had actually worked as relieved – he was able to move his arms away from his body. Just one tiny step, he knew, but he felt as if he had just climbed Everest. Relief surged through him. He could do this!

Now he swung his hands, still tied tightly together, through the darkness, feeling for the rim. He found it and began to rub the cord between his wrists furiously against the edge. Slowly, steadily, he could feel the strands giving and the binding loosening. And suddenly his hands were free. He shook off the last bit of slack cord from his wrist, pushed himself upright, stretching his arms and flexing his hands, trying to get the blood circulating in them once more.

‘Are we going to die here, Tom?’ Kelly whimpered.

‘No, we are not.’

‘Mum and Dad couldn’t bring the children up. We’ve never thought about that, have we?’

‘We’re not going to die.’

‘I love you so much, Tom.’

Her voice brought him close to tears again. There was so much tenderness, warmth, caring in it. ‘I love you more than anything in the world, Kellie,’ he said, leaning forward, feeling his way along the cords that bound his legs until he came to the knot.

It was tied incredibly tightly. But he worked on it relentlessly and after a short while it started to come loose. And suddenly his legs were free! Except for his shackled ankle. The thought was ever present in his mind that if the fat man came in now, there would be hell to pay. But it was a risk he had to take.

He knelt, gripped the rim of the drum, then stood up and, lifting as hard as he could, righted it. Then he felt along the top for the cap, and found it quickly, clasping his hands around it, moving them across it, trying to work out how it opened, for the first time in his life having some understanding of what it must be like to be blind.

There was a twisted wire and a paper seal over it. He worked his fingers underneath the wire and pulled. It cut into his flesh. Digging his hand in his pocket, he pulled out his handkerchief and wound it round his fingers, then tried again.

The wire snapped.

‘Why are we here, Tom?’ she asked plaintively. ‘Who is that gross creep?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What did he mean, about us “looking good dead”?’

‘He was just trying to scare us,’ Tom replied, attempting to sound convincing, struggling to make the cap move, aware that his voice sounded considerably higher than usual, a vague, flimsy plan developing in his mind.

Slowly the cap began to turn. It took five, maybe six full turns before it came away in his hand. A vile, burning acrid reek instantly filled his nostrils. He lurched back, choking, dropping the cap and hearing it roll away in the darkness.

‘TOM?’ Kellie called out, alarmed.

He continued coughing, his lungs on fire. He was trying to think back to when he had done chemistry at school, a subject he had been crap at. There had been bottles of acid in the chemistry lab. Sulphuric and hydrochloric were the ones he could immediately remember. Would this stuff, whatever it was, eat through the chain attached to his ankle?

But how could he get it out of the drum in this darkness? If the drum fell over and the stuff started pouring out, it could spread over the floor to Kellie. Or choke them.

Then his heart felt as if it had stopped. He saw the ray of light out of the corner of his eye. The rectangle in the distance. Someone was coming in.