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When Beth awoke, she was suffocating. Something was pressing against her eyes and nose, and when she tried to move her head clear of it, she felt the same pressure on the back of her skull forcing her face harder against a tensed skin of plastic. Its intense aroma filled her nostrils and she tried to lift her hands to push it away. But her arms were tight against her sides, and Beth couldn’t feel any sensation below her wrists. With a supreme effort, she managed to crack her eyelids only for her vision to be flooded white.
She focused on texture within the glare, tiny wrinkles in the plastic. There were white airbags closing in on her from all sides, creaking and inflating to the bursting point while her body was squeezed tighter between them. Beth couldn’t breathe, but still the weight on her ribs and lungs increased. She gulped air into her constricted chest and heard the crack of bone.
Suddenly, the airbags parted to reveal Luc upside down in the car. He turned to her as the blood started pouring from his nose and up into the ceiling. “Sorry.”
Turning to look through the windscreen, she saw the vehicle looming around the bend. The brown camper was only feet away.
Beth heard her teeth squeak as she gritted them in anticipation of the crash. Her chin was against her chest and her eyes were squeezed closed, but no sound came except for a low grumble. The plastic smell had gone and was replaced by a new one – timber and damp.
*
She lifted her eyelids and raised her head, immediately striking something solid behind her. The impact, a hundred times more agonizing than it should have been, unstuck her dry lips. Her cry ricocheted deafeningly around her cranium and her whole scalp throbbed, the swelling behind her skull pounding out of sync with her circulation.
Beth quickly gleaned she was sitting on a low, red-leather stool about six feet away from the foot of some bare narrow wooden stairs. Looking up and squinting against the low-energy bulb in the red tassel shade above her, she could make out a closed door through the darkness at the top of them.
Glancing right to the gas boiler churning away, she caught her reflection in a dress mirror that was leaning on its side against the peeling brickwork. Beth could see the bottom half of her body. She had been positioned against the black stained support pillar, and some yellow elasticated ropes bound her hands behind it. Her ankles were secured by white, plastic-coated curtain wire
The walls of the room in the large cellar area to the left of the stairs were rough concrete painted white. An air hockey table was set up on the threadbare blue carpet. Beyond that, a crippled tennis table, missing one leg and bowing precariously, looked just as neglected. At the far end, two orange canoes were mounted on the wall. The air was cool and stale. Her leather jacket had been removed to allow her to be restrained. Beth shivered.
She tried to lean forward but could instantly feel how tightly she’d been tied up. As she waggled her wrists, the exertion pressed her head harder against the support and a yellow kaleidoscope of pain momentarily blinded her. She felt like she was about to pass out again.
There was no leeway in her bonds, and the curtain wire cut into her ankles when she tried to move them. She tried to locate any tool nearby she could possibly use. On top of the gas boiler she could see a meat-tenderising hammer. Its spiked head was dark red, and she could see small traces of her skin on the points. Realising what she’d been struck with suddenly made her perspective of the cellar fluctuate. She couldn’t pass out again. There was no way she would be able to reach the hammer. Perhaps it had been left there as a threat.
Mrs O’Doole had invited her in without even hearing her story. Why hadn’t that rung any alarm bells? And how long had she been out? She opened her mouth to shout up the stairs. What would she say? “Mrs O’Doole!” The words reanimated the pain at the back of her head, but when there was no response, she shouted the name louder. “You don’t have to release me, but please... just listen to what I have to say!” Beth waited.
Footsteps on the floorboards above her. The handle at the top of the stairs rattled and daylight briefly bisected the wooden steps from above. The door slammed closed again. The person descended and entered the circle of light from the shade. It was the gunman.
