9

Katie thinks that somewhere in the house above she can hear the doorbell ring. It’s a deep sonorous chiming, and it plays in several rooms at once, through some kind of intercom system. She presses her throbbing, bruised ear against the drainage pipe, where it stands proud from the cool stone, and listens. Her walls are lined with decaying soundproofing material, but the exposed pipes carry vibrations and voices down to her, here in her prison.

As she recognizes the doorbell, tinny and faint, for what it is, alarm, confusion and a dart of incredulous hope pass through her, each in quick succession.

In all the time she has been here, she has never heard anybody come to the door before.

She listens intently. He must answer it, surely; she knows he is up there, as she heard him walking over the trapdoor just a few minutes earlier, his heavy tread smothered by the covering rug.

Within her breast she feels a tightening dread, a profound nausea. She faces a choice, one with possibly terrible consequences. She has to take a risk. Who knows if she’ll live long enough for another such opportunity?

The chimes sound out again, and the cold rusty metal scratches at her sore ear.

But there is only a perfect silence in reply, like a held breath.

Perhaps about sixty seconds later, the phone rings. It’s the house phone, as it is louder than any mobile would be and, like the doorbell, it carries through several rooms and down the pipes, down to her – it’s the ghost of a phone call.

She has only ever seen a couple of rooms in the house other than the big living room, and those in snatches, when she was first brought here, kicking and biting against her gag, her leggings soaked where she had wet herself in terror, the hood over her head having fallen askew. He had stunk of stale cooking and sweat, the house of mould and dust. The rooms were big, wood-panelled, with gigantic stone fireplaces and antique ornaments. This and the intercom make her think that it’s a big house, the sort of place that should have servants, but for all of his talk of gangs, she has only ever seen him here.

The phone rings and rings, and then stops. Then it rings again.

Katie has been trying, not very successfully, to manage her hope. You need hope to survive – she knows this, instinctively, but she also knows that to allow yourself hope is to invite her twin, despair. For instance, she could believe, if she let herself, that this determined assault by the outside world on the house after so many weeks of silence was a sign that they had tracked her down, thought to look for her here. Police and scientists and clever, driven detectives in long coats had been pounding beats, questioning suspects and viewing CCTV until they found something that had led them to the door of this house.

Her freedom could be minutes away.

Or maybe it is nothing and she is going nowhere. It is unbearable to contemplate.

The phone ceases, leaving a ringing stillness in its wake.

There is nothing more, but she cannot bear to stop listening.

But now it’s the doorbell again, and because she is tuned in, focused, it seems much louder than earlier. And someone is banging on the door at the same time, with their fist. They must have been calling on a mobile, from outside.

They really want to get in.

After an age, while the world and Katie hold their breath, she hears his clumpy tread, the creak of heavy wood opening, murmured voices. She can’t hear words, not at first, but after a few moments of pressing her ears against the pipes, she realizes that whoever they are, they are coming inside, into the living room with its blue rug and square stone fireplace.

‘Yes,’ says the stranger’s voice. ‘You’ve been quite difficult to get hold of.’ The newcomer is male, and his accent has a cross, posh edge. Not a local.

‘If you had made an appointment—’

‘I don’t have to make appointments to see you.’ The newcomer sounds annoyed. ‘You report to me now, as I explained. I told you I was coming up from London today. As a courtesy you were offered the chance to set a date and time at your convenience, and you’ve done nothing but put me off.’

Katie holds her breath. Is this another member of the gang he keeps talking about?

‘I’ve been busy here,’ snaps back her kidnapper.

‘I’m sure you have,’ says the newcomer, and she senses a mixture of impatience and pity in his tone. The floor creaks beneath his feet. ‘But I’m afraid that now Mr Broeder has died there will have to be changes. The family feel that his assets aren’t being managed as proactively as they would like. As their management company, we agree with them. It’s absurd that this huge house should sit empty in the current financial climate, as I’m sure you realize.’

‘I don’t—’

‘The surveyors are coming a week on Friday, sometime in the morning. If you could be on hand to let them in, please.’

‘But I have work to do on the garden . . .’

‘I wouldn’t worry about it, Mr Meeks. We expect the structural work to start very soon.’ There is a closing briskness in his tone. ‘In terms of your role, of course, there should be news later this week. Now, would you mind showing me round?’

With a little blast of shock, Katie realizes that whoever this person is, they are not part of what has happened to her.

Before the decision is consciously made, the handcuff tightens around her right wrist and she bangs it against the pipe, again and again, helplessly, and though she is gagged she screams anyway, through the wet sweaty barrier of the duct tape. She doesn’t stop; she doesn’t dare stop and listen to see if it’s having any effect, or think what will become of her if this attempt fails. She bangs on the pipes until her bruised wrist is cut and bleeding against the ring of steel, but it becomes apparent that nobody is coming, and when she finally lets her head rest against the pipes again, she hears the muffled sound of the giant front door closing.

Her exhaustion and despair are almost instantly replaced by freezing terror. What if Chris (‘Mr Meeks’) had heard her making this noise? His rage was terrible to contemplate.

She waits, in the darkness, but he does not come. She crushes down her disappointment and fear and allows herself to relax a little and think on what she has learned. Surveyors a week on Friday, whenever that was. She cannot tell the days apart, except that there is one day a week when the house is awash with classical music, and he sometimes lets her out, into the room above. She thinks this might be a Sunday. A day like that happened . . . Oh God, she can’t remember. It wasn’t yesterday, or the day before . . .

He seems to take a long time to turn up with her daily offering of food. Tonight it is soup, tomato, and microwaved to a blistering, volcanic heat.

He comes down the steps, carrying the bowl carefully in his hands, and her mouth waters at the smell despite herself. He switches the light on, and she blinks helplessly under the glare of the single light bulb swinging from the ceiling.

‘Hungry, are we?’

She nods.

He smiles, and then, just as carefully as he carried it down, pours the soup into the drain near the door, it leaving a sad little plume of steam as it vanishes.

‘Do you think I didn’t hear that racket you made earlier?’

Within moments her hair is gathered into his fist, yanking her forward, and the first blow lands.