The Geneva Trap

Chapter 53

For a few minutes Liz thought she was lost. She couldn’t be more than a quarter of a mile from the bistro where she was supposed to meet Martin for lunch, but so dense and confusing was the geography of the Old Port that she might as well have been in Mexico. Streets were too grand a name for the little lanes and alleyways that twisted like the Minotaur’s maze, and all the sinuous pathways seemed to lie in the shade of tenement buildings that blocked out the sun – Liz couldn’t even locate its position in the sky to establish where south lay.

Then suddenly she emerged into a street she recognised – it ran past the Koreans’ office building. Not wanting to pass that again, she decided to risk a shortcut down a narrow side road that seemed to head in the right direction. The alley was lined on both sides by the backs of old stone houses, and the smells of midday meals cooking wafted out of windows. The street itself was deserted.

She heard a vehicle turn into the alley behind her. When she looked back she saw a battered blue van, driving slowly. She continued walking and as the van drove past her it struck her as odd that it had no name stencilled on its side. Thirty feet or so in front of her the van stopped, the driver’s door opened, and a heavy-set man in a bulky leather jacket and a cloth cap got out, leaving the engine running. Without looking at Liz, he went to the rear and wrenched open the van’s double doors. She noticed that the back of the van was empty and at the same time felt there was something familiar about the driver. As she came level with him, the man turned towards her. ‘Excusez-moi, Madame,’ he said with a smile, and Liz stopped.

A big mistake: he stepped forward and grabbed her coat with his left arm, then before she could try and pull away he hit her, hard with a clenched fist, smack on the jaw. The cliché was true – Liz literally saw stars, and would have fallen down had the man not been holding her so tightly with his other hand. He turned her halfway round, circling her chest with both arms, squeezing the breath out of her as she tried to wriggle free. Then in one swift motion he lifted her up into the air and dumped her like a side of beef into the back of the van.

She lay dazed on the floor as he banged the doors shut. She heard the front driver’s door slam as the man got back in and drove off quickly.

By then she was sitting up, shouting for help, and kicking the rear doors and sides of the van as hard as she could. There was nothing to hold on to; the van was being driven fast, and every time it went round a corner, she slid across the metal floor. But she kept up the noise, though she thought it unlikely that anyone could hear her, and from what she’d seen of the neighbourhood, even if they did hear, they probably wouldn’t report it.

After about five minutes the van stopped abruptly, and Liz found herself slammed against the hard wall separating her from the driver’s cab. She heard what sounded like a metal garage door opening and closing. What would happen next? Sensing this could be her only chance of escape, she got up awkwardly, crouched under the roof of the van, ready to launch herself out and run for it.

One of the back doors suddenly swung open and a harsh light from a powerful torch shone in Liz’s eyes, briefly blinding her. A voice behind the light said, ‘My other hand is holding this,’ and the light moved down to shine on an automatic pistol pointed right at her.

‘Now lie on your stomach,’ he ordered. When Liz hesitated he jabbed the pistol at her. ‘Do it or I will kill you right now. There’s a silencer on this gun so no one will hear me fire.’ The English was good, but strongly accented.

Liz did as she was told, pressing her face against the cold metal floor of the van, her back crawling as she wondered what this man was going to do to her. He must have put the torch down; there was less direct light on her now.

‘Put your hands together behind your back,’ he said, and she obeyed. A moment later Liz felt plastic cuffs go round each of her wrists, then snap shut.

Then he pushed her legs together and what felt like rope was wrapped around her ankles, and tied quickly but tightly with double knots. The man roughly turned her on her side, then on to her back, rolling her like a trussed turkey. She could just make out his features and thought again that she recognised them. From where? Whenever it was, it seemed ages ago.

Leaning forward, he grabbed Liz by the front of her blouse, and hauled her up to a sitting position. She tried to catch his eye, but he ignored her, and reached into the side pocket of his leather jacket, bringing out a roll of surgical tape. ‘Stay still,’ he said as he tore long strips off the roll, attaching them temporarily to the side wall of the van. He then took them one at a time, pressing them against Liz’s mouth and wrapping them all the way around her head. He worked methodically, layer by layer, until the whole area from her chin to just below her nose was sealed tight with tape.

He stared at her, listening to her breathe through her nose, then nodded to himself, satisfied. ‘I’ll be back in a while and then we’re going for a bit of a ride.’ He backed out and closed the van door, leaving Liz again in darkness.

With her hands manacled behind her back, she couldn’t see her watch, and it was hard to gauge how much time had passed when she heard the garage door open and the man climb back into the cab and start the engine. An hour, she guessed, maybe more.

The van reversed and stopped, then the driver got out and closed the garage doors. When he got back in he drove at speed through the streets, while Liz tried to keep herself from banging against the inner sides of the rear compartment. They paused occasionally for what she assumed were traffic lights, and she could hear street noises from outside. But bound and gagged, there was nothing she could do to let people know that she was being held inside the van.

They drove for almost half an hour, she reckoned, speeding up on what must have been a main road, then slowing and manoeuvring through smaller roads. The man’s driving was erratic. He would speed up then suddenly slam the brakes on and turn abruptly, so Liz rolled around like a puppet, sometimes smashing into the sides and the rear doors of the van, unable to protect herself .

At last they slowed down, and then braked so sharply that again she was hurled forwards. She waited for the driver to turn off the engine and then… what? If he were going to kill her, wouldn’t he have done it in the security of the garage, then taken his time disposing of the body? The body? My body, thought Liz, filled with sudden fury. For a moment her fear receded as she determined to get away from this man, and make sure he was caught and punished. She tried to ignore the small voice in the back of her mind that was telling her she’d been brought somewhere private, far from the hubbub of the city centre, away from the eyes of the public or the police, where at his leisure the man could…

She was trying to stop herself shuddering when the van moved forward again, this time very slowly and deliberately. She felt a sudden jolt when they hit something – something big enough to jar the whole vehicle. Was it an accident? she asked herself hopefully. But it couldn’t be – not crawling forward as they were, and Liz listened as the van’s front bumper made a high-pitched grinding noise as it pushed against some large object. Slowly but surely, the van seemed to be winning against this inanimate obstacle, and suddenly it seemed that the impediment had been pushed away and they moved forward freely for several yards.

Then the van slowed and stopped, only to reverse suddenly at speed. This time the jolt came from the rear. Liz found herself pitched into the air, and thrown against the partition. She hit it with the back of her head, then crashed on to the floor of the van, knocked out cold.