She felt the bump through the old building. He was still here then, upstairs perhaps or in the kitchen. Footsteps across the ceiling answered the question. He was thumping and banging in the bedroom. Searching for things she didn’t have.
Her frame shook and juddered though she tried to ease the effect of the shivering on the damaged parts of her body. Her world was a flood of pain and despair swept in to overwhelm her. She didn’t think she wanted to live now. She wanted to be away from this, to fall back into the recent darkness and float away. Nobody could stand this, yet she shivered and breathed and cried salt tears which dribbled across her face and stung her ruined lips and the peace refused to take her back.
The thud of feet on the stairs told her he was coming back. She closed her eyes and tried to still the shivering. It was impossible, her body was crying out for ease and could find it nowhere.
He nudged her with the toe of his boot. “You awake now?” She screwed her eyes tight. “Aha, I see you are. Well now, we have a problem don’t we?” He crouched beside her and with the ball of his thumb prised open one eyelid. “Come on now, wakey wakey. You need to talk to me Pauline.
“Are you going to be sensible now and tell me where you’ve hidden them? Oh I do hope you haven’t sold them. That would be a very bad situation indeed. He grabbed her face and forced her to look at him. “You haven’t sold my pretty diamonds have you?”
She shook her head.
“Good, well that’s good. So all you need to do now is tell me where you’ve put them and where you have my memory stick and then we can all be on our way.”
She shook her head again, trying to make him believe her innocence, but he scowled at her and squeezed tightly with his fingers. She gasped with the fresh pain. “Oh now come on. You have to see this is really not going to work.” She shook her head desperately from side to side. He had to understand she couldn’t give him what she hadn’t got.
“Oh dear.” He straightened and then bent from the waist and in a moment of exquisite agony she was dragged to her feet and pulled to the sofa where he threw her into a slouch and then knelt before her.
“You will tell me. I can’t understand why you don’t see that. You have taken what was mine and I want it back. It’s simple and now you have made me very angry.” He snorted, great shoulders shrugging with the expiration of air.
An incongruous blackbird threw a song to the new morning. As the answering bird call tinkled in the garden he walked through to the hallway and came back with her coat and bag.
“Right, I have to go now.” A blessed relief swept her body. “But, I can’t leave you here can I? You do see that? I can’t have you talking to people and I need you to tell me where my property is. This is not over; I don’t want you to think this is over. I am not going to just walk away; I can’t. You think this is bad, Pauline? Well let me tell you that if my clients get their hands on you you’ll wish for me to come back.
“Now, I have told them I have this all under control, and I do. I do because one way or the other you are going to tell me what I need to know. So, what am I going to do with you now while I go and take care of business?
“Well I have a treat for you. You like to go and walk on the beach don’t you, Pauline? Yes you do, I’ve seen you. Well we’re going on the beach now. You and me are going down to the seaside before anyone else is up and about and we’re going to find a nice quiet place for you to spend the day. You’d like that wouldn’t you, a nice day on the beach? Well, I say on the beach! Ha.”
Her panicked eyes flicked from side to side as he collected her coat and phone and bag and then dragged her upright. He bent and snipped open the cable ties on her toes and the pain as circulation flooded the numbed digits with blood took the strength from her knees. He held her upright with an arm around her waist and forced her forward and out of the room. Through the back door they shuffled in an obscene waltz and then he dragged her across the little lawn and out onto the meadow. Staggering painfully across the wet grass she prayed for oblivion as the gulls wheeled and screamed and the sunrise painted golden sequins across the water.
Chapter 20
Cool sand under her feet; a precious bead of relief in the pool of pain.
He had dragged her beside him, scuttling and tripping over rough grass, down the grit of the dunes and now he marched in the damp hardness of the tide washed beach. Her hands were still fastened behind her and she leaned forward for balance, stumbling when he forced her onward too quickly.
Breath burned in her throat and a stitch caught at her side. Her jaw was a persistent ache and as she tried to swallow, her damaged tongue caught on the hard gag. Everywhere was pain and it melded until all there was in the whole world was agony and evil. No nightmare had ever been so vile; no imagined scenario under the hammer of George’s control had come close to this and she couldn’t see how she would ever bear it.
Now they reached the rocks. Surely he wouldn’t make her climb, not with her hands tied and her feet bare, but he did. He pushed her on before him and steadied her with two hands, one on each arm. Sometimes he missed his footing and dragged on her screaming limbs and she groaned into the early daylight as tears tracked across her wounded face.
When they had climbed six feet or maybe a little more above the beach he dragged her to a halt and leaned to hiss into her ear. “I’m taking the tie off. Don’t even think of trying to run.” White heat seared her hands and as her arms dropped to her sides the fire in her shoulders caused her eyes to flood with fresh tears and stole her breath away. He forced her to her knees on the wet rocks.
He stepped now to the front and dragged a piece of rope from his jacket. Ignoring her gasps and groans he pulled her wounded arms forward and tied them loosely by the wrists. Fisting his hands in her hair he dragged her back to her feet and drove her on and up. The cliff was steeper now. This was higher than she had been before, though she had clambered to the sheep field from the lower levels closer inland. As they climbed they headed southwards out onto the rocky promontory. Would he drown her then? Would she be dashed to a pulp on the Cornish coast and become another statistic in the annals of foolish walkers and irresponsible tourists? So be it; she would have peace at least. Her feet were soled with blood and grit where sharp stones had stabbed and torn. Stumbling and slithering they made their way until at the start of the descent he turned and pushed her to his left.
There was a fissure in the rock. How had he found this place? Of course the stranger in the garden, at the fete and on the beach had been him, watching and exploring and planning and it had come to this. The floor sloped downwards inside the cliff where a small cave had been formed by centuries of rushing tides. So then, this was where she would die. He pushed her onto a narrow ledge and she curled forward and hid her face in bleeding hands and sobbed.
“I didn’t want to do this Pauline. You have brought this on yourself. You do see that don’t you?” He dragged on a handful of hair forcing her to face him “I said, you do see don’t you that this is all your fault?”
She couldn’t speak but just stared up at him in the mild light and was subsumed by hopelessness.
“All you have to do is to tell me where you’ve put the stuff. That’s all.” In truth he seemed anguished and she realised then that fear had some part in what was driving his viciousness. If she could have given him anything at that moment, anything in the world to stop this, then she would. She could not though, for she had nothing he wanted.