“Right. That’s better. Now listen to me. I will go away and you’ll never see me again. I will leave you alone and I won’t hurt you. All you have to do is give me them.”
Pauline shook her head. “I don’t know what you mean. I haven’t got anything. I left everything. He can have it all I don’t want anything more than I have here. I didn’t take anything. I’m going to France…” The feeble final, desperate sentence died on her lips.
He held out his hand palm upward as if to receive some gift. “Give me them now and I will go. This can be over very quickly. Now I know you’re a clever girl. Very clever. In fact, I’m impressed.” He gave a short nod. “I am very impressed you covered your tracks so well and you didn’t have a lot of time. A quick thinker, I like that and because I am so impressed I’m willing to finish this quickly. Now stop snivelling and just give me what’s mine.”
“I… what’s yours? I don’t know what you mean!” She was shaking her head, tears streamed down her face. She wiped her nose on the back of her hand and choked on a sob. She was terrified and out of her depth.
He crouched in front of her. One hand on the arm of the settee and the other on the seat close to her leg. She could feel his breath on her face and see the glimmer of moisture in his eyes. He leaned even closer as she pushed herself back into the cushions.
“I am trying to make this easy for you girl. I’ve had quite a time finding you. Giving the police a fake phone number and a duff address was all very clever. Thinking on your feet, but it didn’t work. Oh they gave them to me alright when I begged.” He adopted a high pitched whining tone. “Oh officer you must tell me who she is. She’s my guardian angel! You must let me talk to her, I have to thank her. I want to send flowers and give her back her jacket. But then in the end it didn’t matter because you had left me that nice little note in your pocket hadn’t you?” Pauline drew in a gasp of air.
“George didn’t send you?” The frown that ran across his forehead answered the question as clearly as any words. “Who are you?” Of course she knew who he was but none of it made any sense. If he was the motor cyclist, then why was he angry? “You’re the man from the road aren’t you? the accident. I thought you were in hospital?”
“Oh I was for a few days. A nasty concussion and some knocks and bangs but they soon threw me out.”
“The newspaper said you were seriously ill. I thought you might die.”
“Yes, well sorry but here I am large as life and twice as ugly so now you need to just do as I say.”
“But, I don’t understand you.”
“Oh yes, I think you understand me very well indeed. You thought you could hide away didn’t you? But you’re an amateur. I’m one of the best and if we don’t settle this soon you’ll rue the day you decided to try and fool me.” He leaned and gripped her face in his big fingers squeezing till she felt warm blood in her mouth from where teeth punctured the inside of her cheeks.
“Now, okay, you made a good run for it – well done but it’s over. I need my stuff back and I need it now. There are people waiting for the delivery and believe me they are not people you want to meet. Now it’s up to you; easy or hard.” With a rough gesture he flung her head away from him and stretched again to his full height towering over where she curled whimpering in the dark.
“I haven’t got anything! Truly I haven’t!”
“You went through my pockets. I know you did.”
“Well I did, yes. I needed your phone, to call for help. I didn’t have mine.”
“Yes, but my other pockets; you went through my other pockets and you lifted what you found there didn’t you? I bet you thought it was Christmas. Oh you thought, I can have a little trip to Cornwall, and then what? Oh yes, France! You thought you’d just pop across the channel. Well, I don’t think so Pauline. I don’t think so at all.”
“Well, yes. I’m going to France, I am. But it was all planned already, before I left home. I was leaving home.”
“Oh right, you were leaving home and going to France and just on the way having a stroll through The Dales and a trip to Cornwall.”
“No, no, it isn’t like that… well yes, I suppose it is, but...” She drew in a shuddering breath. “I was leaving my husband and I found you. I tried to help you. I didn’t take anything.”
“Right let’s just give him a call.”
“What?”
“Your husband. Let’s you and me give him a little call, see if he’s missed you. Do you think he has, this mystery husband? Do you think he’s missed his Pauline?”
“No, no you can’t you mustn’t! He can’t know where I am! He’ll come and find me! Oh please don’t do this.”
“Give me the bag you took from my pocket and I’ll leave you. I have to tell you though I am feeling a bit impatient now. You’re pushing me and you don’t want to do that.”
“I haven’t got anything. I didn’t take anything.”
“Oh dear. I see you don’t really understand what you’ve got yourself into here. Those diamonds didn’t belong to me. That memory stick is important to my clients. They don’t want it falling into the wrong hands and you – well I’m afraid you are the wrong hands.”
“Diamonds? memory stick? I haven’t got any diamonds.”
“Oh come on now, that won’t wash. This is not going to end well for you if you insist on playing the innocent.”
Then with an alarming burst of speed he leaned down and grabbed Pauline and hoisted her to her feet. He pulled both arms up behind her back and she screamed as hot flashes of pain seared her muscles.
“Don’t! please! please don’t...”
“You can stop this right now but I’m warning you I am not a patient man.” With the words of threat ringing in her ears the darkness came and took her as she sagged forward in his grasp.
Chapter 19
Someone was crying. As she fought her way to the surface Pauline clamped down on the pitiful sobs.
Panic overwhelmed her, she couldn’t move, couldn’t see and she hurt, badly, everywhere. As reality dragged her back from the dark, each and every pain became more acute.
Inside her mouth was raw, her arms screamed, her legs were a deep ache. Her thumbs were searing ice. Her stomach roiled and acid burned in her throat. She retched but managed to hold back the nausea. A hard edged leather strap gagged her mouth and made swallowing almost impossible. Drool slipped sickeningly across her cheek. Every movement was torment. She had suffered pain before, often, but this was on a different level to that which she had become accustomed to at the hands of her husband.
It puzzled her that she was still in the little cottage. On the floor in the living room, in the dark. Her hands were awkward lumps beneath her and it was impossible to separate them. Her thumbs screamed their objection when she tried.
She tried to swivel her head around to see him, to find where he was but even this small movement caused such agony that she soon gave up. She couldn’t sense his presence in the room. Hope bloomed; maybe he had gone? He had immobilised her in the most cruel way. Though she wasn’t actually fastened down something was around her thumbs and her big toes were tied together with a stiff narrow band cutting off the circulation and preventing any attempt to stand. Her legs were pulled into an unnatural bow, her ankles twisted. Every movement shot lightning bolts through her entire body. The music still played, the gentle sound of jazz, smooth and liquid, mocked this nightmare she had woken to.