Beth thought Darryl was strange to look at. His eyes were soft and brown, but deep-set and small, giving them a piggy quality. He had a round little face, thin lips, and no real chin, just a slope of podgy flesh from his bottom lip to neck. It was those baby teeth which disturbed her the most, so small and sharp.
Beth watched as he left through the low door of the furnace and returned a moment later with a black backpack, which he placed on the floor. Keeping his back to her, he rummaged in it. She wanted to shout out and ask what he was doing.
He came close to the cage, a sharp little baby-toothed smile on his face, his hands behind his back.
She shrank away. ‘Please. No,’ she said.
‘You don’t know what I’m doing. How can you say “no” to something when you don’t know what it is? I could have a treat behind my back,’ he said.
‘A treat?’
‘Yes. Now choose. Left or right?’ He leaned closer: ‘Left or right.’ She closed her eyes, feeling a hot tear escaping her left eye. ‘I said, left or right, now CHOOSE!’
‘No.’
‘If you don’t pick, it will be worse for you. I promise. CHOOSE.’
She opened her eyes. His face held a smile so dark and full of malevolence that her stomach contracted.
‘Choose, or you’ll die!’ he screamed.
‘Left, I choose left,’ she stuttered.
He swiftly brought his left hand round. In it he held a small silver scalpel. He brought out his right hand, and it held an identical scalpel. He giggled and pushed the left-hand one through the bars and dragged it across her forearm. She looked down in shock, the feeling of pain delayed for a moment. And then it felt as if her arm was on fire, and blood began to ooze and then pour. She tried to pull away, but her hands were chained together, and he sliced through her flailing arm several times. She landed a blow to his hand, and he dropped the scalpel. Quick as lightning, she picked it up and held it out.
‘You come any closer you sick fuck, and I’ll slash you!’ she cried. Grendel lifted her head and growled. ‘And your dog too.’
Darryl laughed and walked back over to the backpack. He returned with something in his hand, watching impassively as the blood poured from her wounds.
‘You’ll want this,’ he said, holding up a roll of gauze bandage. ‘Throw out the scalpel and I’ll give you this.’ She gripped the scalpel in her hands as a stream of blood dripped down on to her legs. ‘You can use the bandage to stem the bleeding. I’m serious, Beth. Give it back and this will be forgotten.’
‘No.’
‘Beth, I’m sorry, take the bandage. I have another scalpel. I have a boxful in that bag, and I could take them all out now and go to town on your body, and on that pretty, pretty face. Who would want to hire an actress with a messed-up face?’
Beth yelled in pain and despair and threw it outside the cage. It landed with a clink on the brick floor. He picked it up, and dropped the packet of gauze bandage through one of the mesh holes above her head.
‘Such a stupid bitch,’ he said, holding up the bloody scalpel. ‘If you’d kept hold of this, it would have given you leverage. Now all you have is a packet of bandages. I used this on the other girls. I cut them out of their underwear, along the seam between their legs. It was tricky without nicking them.’
He picked up the backpack and left, Grendel following.
The door to the furnace clanged shut, and she was in darkness. She heard the outer door open and close.
* * *
Beth scrabbled at the bandage, using her teeth to tear the plastic open. Twisting her hands in opposite directions where they were bound and using her teeth, she crudely wrapped the material around the cuts on her forearm. It felt better not to have them open to the air, but her blood rapidly soaked through. Just as she wound the last of the bandage around her arm, she felt something small and hard. It was a little safety pin attached to the very end. She quickly unfastened it from the material. It was small but sturdily made. She held it between her fingers for a moment. His words echoed in her head… other girls… and then she knew for sure who had taken her.
Chapter Seventy-Two
Erika called her team in for 10 a.m. on Sunday morning, and again the day started slowly. Just before 3 p.m., Moss knocked on her office door and poked her head round. Erika looked up from the pile of paperwork on her desk.
‘Boss, I’ve managed to track down the grey-haired woman seen leaving the office on Latimer Road. Her name’s Lynn Holbrook, and she’s on line one.’
‘Great, come in. I’ll put her on loudspeaker,’ said Erika.
Moss came in, closed the door and sat opposite.
‘Hello, Lynn, this is Detective Chief Inspector Erika Foster. Can I call you Lynn?’
‘No, I prefer Ms Holbrook,’ said a snooty voice through the loudspeaker. Moss rolled her eyes. ‘Why have I been pulled out of a meeting to speak to you?’
‘You’ve been pulled out of a meeting because we believe, on Friday night, you may have witnessed the abduction of a young girl,’ said Erika.
‘You must be mistaken.’
‘We believe the girl was abducted outside your office last night as you were leaving work.’
‘What?’ she cried.
‘We have CCTV footage of you leaving the office building at Latimer Road on Friday night at 8.13 p.m. Is that correct?’
There was a pause. ‘I don’t know the time I left to-the-minute, but if the CCTV footage shows it…’
‘It does, Mrs Holbrook…’
‘It’s Ms, if you don’t mind.’
Moss shook her head and twirled her finger in the air. Erika nodded.
‘Ms Holbrook, you left via the main entrance at 8.13 p.m. and you turned right into Latimer Road… Did you see a young white girl with long brown hair waiting by the kerb?’
There was a pause.
‘No… I don’t think so.’
‘You don’t think so? Or you’re sure you didn’t see a young white girl with long brown hair? She was wearing a long brown coat and black high heels’
‘No,’ she said, more certain. ‘No, there definitely wasn’t a girl waiting on either side of the road. It was almost empty.’
Erika sat back in her chair and ran her hands through her hair.
‘What do you mean it was almost empty?’
‘There was a chap, fiddling at the boot of his car…’
Moss’s head snapped up, and Erika sat forward. ‘What did he look like?’
Moss scribbled on a piece of paper and held it up:
WHAT COLOUR WAS THE CAR?
Erika nodded.
‘Funny-looking; I suppose I’d say geeky. Climbed into his car and drove off.’
Erika scrabbled through the papers on her desk and found the photo of the blue Ford.
‘What colour was the car, Ms Holbrook?’
‘Erm, blue. It was blue…’
Moss punched the air and started to jump up and down.
‘Can you remember what kind of car it was?’ asked Erika.
‘I don’t own a car. I don’t tend to think about the make…’
‘Could it have been a Ford?’
‘Yes. It could have been, it was a little old and grimy …’
Moss was doing a funny shrugging little dance, and Erika waved at her to sit down.
‘Thank you, Ms Holbrook, I think you may be the only witness I have right now who could identify the man who has been abducting women in South London.’
‘Good lord,’ she said. ‘Really?’