Stalker

Chapter Forty-One

Derek supposed there came a point when a hostage gave up all hope and resigned themselves to certain death. The news sometimes featured people who’d been taken hostage in lawless and war-torn countries, and previously other than feeling some sympathy for the family as they made an emotional plea for their loved one’s safe return, he’d never given much thought to the actual captive, and how they must be preparing for death. Now he had first-hand experience and it was terrifying.

Possibly if you were religious, and believed you were going to a better place, then death didn’t hold the same horror. Although it was the actual dying he found more frightening than death itself. But try as he might, he couldn’t summon the belief he needed to ask God to help him through it, and knew that when the time came he wouldn’t be brave, but would scream and cry like a baby.

The long lapses into unconsciousness were a welcome relief. There was a cosy feel in being enveloped by darkness, like the embracing hug of a loving parent. But as soon as he woke, his fevered brain took over and tortured him with thoughts past and present; there was no future to worry about. Dying was a great leveller, he’d found; it had forced him to see what he’d done wrong in his life – just when it was too late to do anything about it. His mother, for example; his eyes filled every time he thought of her. He should have been kinder to her, more understanding and patient. He should have spent time with her rather than shut in his room with his clients as his family. Little wonder she’d taken solace in the television; it was all she’d had. What the hell had been so important that he’d spent all those years immersed in his clients’ lives rather than his own mother’s? She was his family, not them, but ironically it had taken his impending death to see that, and he was truly sorry.

Derek also thought about his father, whom he’d succeeded in tracing many years before but had never had the courage to confront. Given the chance, would he visit him as he’d envisaged doing so many times over the years? Turn up on his doorstep and say, ‘Hi Dad, remember me? I’m your son?’ Would he? Given the opportunity? No. Because any visit would be fuelled by bitterness, recrimination and resentment, which only now he saw he needed to let go of. His father had left him and he had to accept it, painful though it was.

Acceptance, physical weakness and delirium from the accumulative effect of the drug they kept injecting him with made him shout out things he quickly regretted. He called them names: scumbags, tossers, pathetic cowards. They beat him for it and he laughed. ‘You can’t reach me now,’ he said, and they beat him again, but it didn’t matter. He was just one step closer to the end. There was no escape and he’d overheard them talking, sometimes arguing, about the best way to dispose of him.

Through the darkness in the room he could see them grouped around the computer, busy planning their next ‘mission’. The challenge had been set by someone in the Far East and it involved all three of them this time. He learnt it was a high-status challenge, where, if successful, the points they earned would take them all to the next level.

It was the abduction and gang rape of a fourteen-year-old girl on her way home from school, and they were going to live-stream it onto the dark net for others to ‘enjoy’. They’d been planning it for some days now, stalking her through the webcam on her laptop and the CCTV at her parents’ home. He’d heard it going on in the background as he’d lapsed in and out of consciousness. But when he realized who the victim was, he exploded into anger and found the strength to shout at them again.

‘You fucking depraved idiots! Leave her alone. She’s done nothing to you.’ He knew her and her family; they’d been clients of his. He cursed and swore at them even as they beat him senseless.

When he’d come to, his mouth had been taped shut with heavy-duty parcel tape, which no one bothered to remove to let him drink. So he knew it wouldn’t be long. You couldn’t go for many days without water.