I thought of my dreams of bringing up Roisin’s children beside the water. “No, it wasn’t meant to be that way.” And I thought of Johnny Riordan and knew that there was at least one happy person among my friends, then I remembered I had to telephone Johnny, though not from the telephone in my house, and I wondered if Kathleen would give me a lift up the road to the public phone booth in the small shopping complex. But first I had to make coffee. “I’ve only got caffeinated,” I said as we walked about the side of the house, “and it isn’t even my coffee. It belongs to someone who was squatting in the house.”
“Maybe I won’t have any then.” She stopped at the corner of the house and gave me a very nervous smile. “Maybe I’d just better be going.”
“That’s fine by me.” I hid my disappointment. “But can you give me a ride up to the main road?”
She nodded. “Sure.”
“I’ll just get some small change for the phone,” I told her, and I pushed open the kitchen door which I had left unlocked because Sarah Sing Tennyson had not thought to leave me a new key when she changed the locks, and there she was. Sarah Sing Tennyson was standing in my kitchen with a squeegee bottle in her right hand.
I began to twist away. I had the Colt .45 hidden in my oilskin pocket, but she was much faster than me. She squeezed, and my hands flew to my burning face and I half heard Kathleen scream with fear, then a figure ran out of the kitchen, past Sarah Tennyson, and told Kathleen not to worry, that I wasn’t being hurt, then something hit me viciously hard across the skull. My knees began to give way, a man’s voice grunted as he hit me again, then all went dark.
PART THREE
I RECOVERED CONSCIOUSNESS IN A MOVING VEHICLE. THAT IT was moving was about all I could tell for my head had been shrouded in a sack or bag and I had been thrust down into a fetal position on the carpeted floor of the van or car. My eyes were in terrible pain, my face was smarting and my nostrils filled with the stink of ammonia. I tried to stretch out, but discovered that I had been trussed into immobility. For some reason, though, I had not been gagged. “Who the hell—”
I had begun the question before I screamed. A terrible pain stabbed up from my kidneys. The pain was fearful; a sobbing, aching, dreadful lance of horror that seared through my abdomen. It seemed to take minutes for the pain to subside. I gasped for breath, half gagging on the bilelike taste of vomit in my mouth. I kept my eyes screwed shut for to open them was to invite a visitation of the stinging pain left by the ammonia. Then I remembered Kathleen and had a sudden terror that she would be hurt just because she had been visiting my house when these bastards ambushed me. “Please…” I spoke with a deliberate humility, but no sooner had I opened my mouth than the pain sliced into my back again and my screams sounded like the terror of a wounded animal.
The car, if it was a car, swerved round a corner, throwing me sideways against a pair of legs. Once the subsiding pain allowed me to think half clearly I decided I had to be in the back of a car, rather than in a van, and hard down on the car’s floor where I was wedged between the front and back seats. The sound of the transmission told me the car was an automatic. I knew one person was on the seat to my right, so now I edged to my left to discover whether a second person hedged me in, but as soon as I moved a hand slapped me hard round the head. They wanted me to be still and they wanted me to be quiet, and the pain already inflicted on me persuaded me that their wishes were best respected. I stayed very still and very quiet.
I was also very scared, if that word could do justice to the bowel-loosening terror that trembled in me. Whoever these people were, they were experts. They had taken me with a skill and efficiency that spoke of long practice. I had suspected nothing, but had simply walked into their ambush like a child. They had immobilized me in seconds and now they were carrying me away and I was helpless. If I moved, I was hurt. If I made a noise, I was hurt. They were training me like a dog, making me subject to their control, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Not one thing. And if these people decided to kill me, then I would die like a dog, because these people were good.
The car pulled off the road. I felt the vehicle sway as it crossed a curb-cut, then I heard the tires scrunch on gravel. I had no idea how long we had been driving. I had no idea if we were even on the Cape still.
The car seemed to drive into an enclosed space. I could hear its exhaust echoing loud, then the engine was switched off and I heard the doors open. Four doors.
A hand reached down, grabbed one of the ropes that pinioned me, and yanked me with extraordinary force out of the car and on to a cold hard floor.
I sensed someone kneeling beside me. Something cold touched my ankle, a knife blade I imagined, and I whimpered with fear, but the blade merely cut the bonds that trussed my legs.
A hand yanked me upright. I swayed, but managed to stand. My wrists were still bound and the thick sack was still over my head, but otherwise I had been freed of the ropes.
A hand pushed me forward. I stumbled, hardly able to walk. My feet were bare on the concrete floor. I had been wearing boots and socks when I had been ambushed, but they, like my oilskin jacket, had been stripped off me and, as far as I could tell, I was dressed only in jeans, underwear, a shirt and a sweater. My gun was gone, everything but those few items of clothing was gone. I was pushed again and I dutifully tried to hurry, but succeeded only in stubbing my bare toe against a stone step. I cried out, fell, then scrambled up before they could hit me again. I seemed to have entered a thickly carpeted passageway. It was warm suddenly.
A hand checked me. I heard a door open. The hand turned me to the right, pushed me slowly forward, very slowly, and I sensed I must use caution, and sure enough I found my foot stepping into thin air, and I gasped, thinking I was going to pitch forward into a terrible void, but a hand steadied me, and I realized they had simply steered me on to a flight of wooden steps.
I went down the steps into what had to be a cellar. The footsteps of my captors were loud on the wooden stairs, then echoed from the bare concrete floor. At the foot of the steps I was pushed a few paces forward, then checked again. They wanted me to stand still.
I obeyed. I was shivering. The cellar was cold. I could hear nothing.
Then, suddenly, a knife sawed at my wrists and the ropes fell away. I gasped, half expecting the knife to swing up at my belly, but nothing happened. I rubbed my wrists, then raised my hands toward the bag tied around my head.
A club or cosh hit my kidneys.
I screamed and half fell, but hands held me upright. I wanted to be sick again. The pain swelled in me, receded, swelled again; a pain that came in red waves. The pain reminded me that they wanted me to stand still.
So I stood still.
Hands gripped my sweater and jerked it upward. Without thinking I stepped back and immediately the pain whipped at me as I was hit again, expertly hit so that the agony slammed up my back. I half crouched to escape the pain, but the hands on my sweater pulled me upright.
They wanted my sweater off. Weeping, unable to resist, I raised my arms and they tugged the woollen sea-jersey off. The bag over my head had been tied at my throat and so stayed in place.
Fingers touched my throat. The touch of the fingers was warm, light and fluttering. The very lightness of the touch terrified me, then I realized that the fingers were merely undoing the buttons of my shirt. I was shaking with fear as the fingers slid down my chest and belly, then as they tugged the shirt-tails clear of my jeans and pulled the flannel sleeves off my arms.