Fuller was no threat to her. He was no threat to anyone. He had been cling-filmed round and round the pillar, so he looked like he’d been bound by some huge spider, as if he was a chrysalis.
More cling film had been wrapped over his face, giving him a Botoxed, face-lifted look. The skin was pulled tightly back, but she could see there was a tear in the plastic membrane around his nose, so he could breathe.
Then Hanlon felt the most tremendous blow to the side of her head and she was knocked sideways by the force of it, dropping her handbag. Her thick hair protected the skin of her scalp from splitting open with the impact of the strike, but she staggered and her left leg buckled underneath her. She was too dazed to feel any pain. As she knelt on her left knee on the kitchen floor, dark spots circled and exploded in her blurred vision.
Hanlon was very nearly unconscious. She had lost all rational thought and really didn’t know where she was at all. She shook her head and out of the periphery of her vision, she saw a highly polished, black steel-toecapped boot scything towards her stomach. There was a yellow-orange tab on the back of the boot and the legend Caterpillar.
The tip of the boot buried itself in Hanlon’s iron-hard stomach muscles and the impact lifted her body off the ground and upwards. It drove all the wind out of her and left her gasping and retching, in a series of shallow, agonized pants, for breath.
A powerful hand grabbed hold of her wrist and dragged her across the tiled floor of the kitchen, to where Fuller was bound. Dimly, before losing consciousness, she heard the familiar click of a handcuff lock and then a second one. She was now shackled to the pillar next to the philosophy lecturer.
Her head was exploding with pain and she felt as if she was going to throw up, but amazingly, she was able to breathe. And then the pain in her head and the screaming agony, from the nerve endings in her stomach, reached a crescendo and darkness took her.