Dead Like You

Panic rose.

Must escape.

She tried to get to her feet but, with them bound together, at her first attempt she fell over sideways, striking her forehead hard on something. Moments later she felt liquid trickle down into her eye. Blood, she guessed. Snorting air, she rolled over, sat back against the side of the van and then, trying to grip the floor with her bare feet, began pushing herself up the side. But her feet kept slipping on the damned diesel oil, which had turned the floor into a skating rink.

She scrabbled around until she found the hessian she had been lying on, then put her feet on that and tried again. This time she got more grip. Steadily, she began to rise. She made it all the way up on to her feet, her head striking the roof of the van. Then, totally disoriented by the pitch darkness, she fell sideways with a jarring crash. Something slammed into her eye with the force of a hammer.

20

Saturday 3 January

There was a ping from the data unit on the dashboard. It startled Yac, who was parked up in a meter bay on the blustery seafront, close to Brighton Pier, drinking a mug of tea. His 11 p.m. mug of tea. He was actually ten minutes late drinking it, because he had been so absorbed reading the newspaper.

He looked at the screen. It was a call from the dispatcher that read:

China Garden rest. Preston St. 2 Pass. Starling. Dest. Roedean Cresc.

The China Garden restaurant was just around the corner. He knew the destination. He could visualize it now, the way he could visualize every street and every dwelling in Brighton and Hove. Roedean Crescent sat high up above the cliffs to the east of the city. All the houses were big, detached and individual, with views out across the Marina and the Cha

The sort of people who could afford nice shoes.

He hit the acknowledge button, confirming that he would make the pick-up, then continued to sip his tea and read the newspaper that had been left in his taxi.

They’d be finishing their meal still. When people ordered a taxi in a restaurant, they expected to wait a while, certainly a quarter of an hour or so on a Saturday night in downtown Brighton. And besides, he could not stop reading and then re-reading the story about the rape of the woman in the Metropole on New Year’s Eve. He was riveted.

In his mirrors he could see the twinkly lights of the pier. He knew all about those lights. He used to work on the pier as an electrical engineer, part of the team maintaining and repairing the rides. But he got the sack. It was for the same reason he usually got the sack, because he lost his temper with someone. He hadn’t yet lost his temper with anyone in his taxi, but he had once got out and shouted at another driver who’d pulled on to a rank in front of him.

He finished his tea, reluctantly folded the newspaper and put the mug back in the plastic bag alongside his Thermos, then placed the bag on the front seat.

‘Vocabulary!’ he said aloud. Then he began his checks.

First check the tyres. Next start the engine, then switch on the lights. Never the other way around, because if the battery was low, the lights might drain the energy that the starter motor needed. The owner of the taxi had taught him that. Especially in winter, when there were heavy loads on the battery. It was winter now.

As the engine idled, he checked the fuel gauge. Three-quarters of a tank. Then the oil pressure. Then the temperature gauge. The interior temperature was set to twenty degrees, as he had been instructed. Outside, a digital display told him, it was two degrees Celsius. Cold night.

Uh-huh.

He looked in his mirror, checked his seat belt was on, indicated, pulled out into the road and drove up to the junction, where the lights were red. When they changed to green he turned right into Preston Street and almost immediately pulled over to the kerb, halting outside the front door of the restaurant.

Two very drunk yobs staggered down the hill towards him, then knocked on his window and asked if he was free to take them to Coldean. He wasn’t free, he was waiting for passengers, he told them. As they walked away he wondered whether they had high-flush or low-flush toilets in their homes. It suddenly became very important to him to know. He was about to get out and hurry after them, to ask them, when finally the restaurant door opened.

Two people emerged. A slim man in a dark coat, with a scarf wound around his neck, and a woman who was clinging to him, teetering on her heels; she looked like she’d fall over if she let go. And from the height of the stilettos she was wearing, that would be a long fall.

They were nice heels. Nice shoes.

And he had their address! He always liked to know where women who had nice shoes lived.

Uh-huh.

Yac lowered his window. He didn’t want the man knocking on it. He didn’t like people knocking on his window.

‘Taxi for Starling?’ the man said.

‘Roedean Crescent?’ Yac replied.

‘That’s us!’

They climbed in the back.

‘Sixty-seven Roedean Crescent,’ the man said.

‘Sixty-seven Roedean Crescent,’ Yac repeated. He had been told always to repeat the address clearly.

The car filled with smells of alcohol and perfume. Shalimar, he recognized instantly. The perfume of his childhood. The one his mother always wore. Then he turned to the woman.

‘Nice shoes,’ he said. ‘Bruno Magli.’

‘Yesh,’ she slurred.

‘Size four,’ he added.

‘An expert on shoes, are you?’ the woman asked him sourly.

Yac looked at the woman’s face in the mirror. She was all uptight. She did not have the face of a woman who had had a good time. Or who was very nice. The man’s eyes were closed.

‘Shoes,’ Yac said. ‘Uh-huh.’

1997

21

Saturday 27 December

Rachael woke with a start. Her head was throbbing. Disoriented, for a cruel, fleeting instant she thought she was at home in bed with a mighty hangover. Then she felt the hard metal floor. The hessian matting. Breathed in the stink of diesel oil. And reality gate-crashed her consciousness, kicking her wide awake, sending dark dread spiralling through her.

Her right eye hurt like hell. God, it was agony. How long had she been lying there? He could come back at any moment, and if he did he would see that she’d freed her wrists. He would tape them up again and probably punish her. She had to free her legs and run, now, while she had the chance.

Oh, God. Please help me.

Her lips were so parched they cracked painfully when she tried to move them. Her tongue felt like a ball of fur in her mouth. She listened for an instant, to make sure she was still alone in here. All she could hear was a distant siren and again she wondered, with the faintest uplift of hope, whether that might be the police out looking for her.

But how would they find her in here?

She rolled over until she felt the side of the van, then hauled herself upright and began picking at the tape binding her ankles with her fingernails. Trying to find a join on the slippery, diesel-coated PVC where she could get a grip.

Finally she found one and slowly, carefully, worked it free, until she had a whole wide strip of it. She began to unwind it, jerking it free with a series of sharp ripping noises. Then she winced in pain as the last of it came away from the skin of her ankles.

Grabbing the sodden hessian matting, she got to her feet, stretched and rubbed her legs to get feeling back into them, and stumbled her way, weakly, to the back of the van, crying out in pain, suddenly, as she stood on something sharp in her bare feet – a nut or a bolt. Then she felt her way across the rear doors for the handle. She found a vertical metal rod and ran her hands up it until she reached the handle. She tried to pull it down. Nothing happened. She tried to move it upwards and it would not budge.