Requiem Mass (5 page)

He heard her first real shriek of terror as he pulled the Balaclava under his chin. It was quickly followed by short, panting cries which made him shudder. Without warning the sounds reminded him of a vixen he had once found caught in a trap on a friend’s farm; the animal’s agony and fear had produced pathetic, urgent yelps that had sent him running, so fast, to find help. He had thought in his childish innocence that his friend’s father would know what to do to save the maimed animal. He could still remember running back with the man, pleased with himself for playing the rescuer and eager to see how he would save the fox. And he could still remember standing with a frozen ‘No!’ in his throat as he had watched him raise his gun and shoot her where she lay, helpless in the gin. He had seen many worse deaths since but none with the same power to shake him with its recollection.

It was an unlucky twist that the woman’s screams should vividly recall those of the injured fox when he had been impervious to previous human cries. Hardening himself to her unexpected appeal he abruptly unlocked the door to the little room.

‘Shaddap!’ He deliberately coarsened his voice, eliminating the middle-class vowels she had found so comforting earlier. Deborah screamed even more at the sight of the menacing, dark stranger on the threshold.

‘Shut the fuck up now, or I’ll come over and sew your fucking lips together.’

The threat was real and her cries subsided into pathetic whimpers, terror robbing her of all coherent protest. She had been struggling against the cords that bound her to the bed. The knots had been designed to tighten with resistance and the ties had bitten into the soft flesh of her wrists, deeply scoring the
skin and drawing blood with every test of their strength.

He took a few short steps towards the bed and stared down at her. She tried to shrink into the mattress and draw away from him but there was nowhere to go. His proximity threw her into further paroxysms of terror as she flung her head away from him. In a final desperate attempt to shut him out she screwed her eyes up tight like a child pretending that the monster does not exist if it can’t be seen.

His quiet, dead tone cut through her denials and compelled her to complete silence.

‘Listen to me very carefully. Be quiet, be a good girl and no harm will come to you. I don’t want to hurt such a pretty girl now, do I?’ He ran a gloved finger lightly over her cheek, stroking her eyelids and brows gently as he passed. ‘No. I’m sure that you can be a good girl, if you want to be. Because if not,’ his hand moved like a viper to cup her jaw in a dreadful, constant pressure, ‘if not, then I’ll have to kill you, won’t I – but not before I’ve had me some fun first.’ He tightened his grip even further until he could feel her jawbone creak and tears of pain ran down her contorted face. Abruptly he let go.

‘Now look at me.’ He waited with his fingers loosely on her neck to see if she would obey but her eyelids remained tightly shut, her face angled away as far as he would allow. With no warning, he raised his hand and brought it down with a hard crack against her cheek. Her whole head jarred with the force of the blow and she moaned as a slow trickle of blood dribbled from the corner of her mouth. He clenched his hand tightly around her jaw again and jerked her face roughly towards his own. His voice was oily and cold.

‘Debbie, dear, I said look at me. Open your eyes now! Do it!’

He squeezed tighter, feeling her teeth grate. ‘Do it,’ he whispered.

Deborah opened her eyes and looked up into his. He could read no resistance now, just abject terror. She was close to the very thin line dividing reason from escape into imbecility; he would have to coax her away from it or risk losing too much
time in order to learn what he needed to know.

‘Debbie,’ he crooned, ‘dear Debbie. You don’t need to be so frightened of me. I don’t want to hurt you – in fact I would much rather not.’

He let the truth of those words enter his eyes and was rewarded with a look of bafflement. ‘Listen to me very carefully. The reason you’re here is because you know something that I need to know. It’s a secret you’re going to have to share with me if you want to get out of here alive.’

Again, he could see the confusion in her face and for the first time, a glimmer of spirit. He had deliberately given her hope as a line to pull her back from the edge of terror-induced madness.

‘What … what is it you want from me?’ Her voice was rusty and dry, cracking around the edges at her attempts to hold on to reason. ‘
Tell me
! I want to know. I don’t know anything important; you’ve got the wrong person. Please let me go. It’s not me, it must be someone else, you—’ Her voice was cut off as he clamped his hand once again tightly around her jaw.

‘Just be patient, luv. It’ll come to you soon enough. And I know it’s you, see, because I’ve done my homework and I’m
very
sure that you’re the one I want.’

‘But I told you, I don’t know anything. I’m just an ordinary woman. Please, let me go. I can’t tell you something I don’t know.’ Her voice was growing stronger as she became more certain that she was the victim of a frightening case of mistaken identity, and with that conviction came a defiant sense of outrage. ‘You just can’t hold me here!’ She saw the darkness beyond the curtain. ‘My children. They’ll be home from school. They’ll be worried! You must let me go. I’m not the one you want!’

The man simply ignored her protests, released the last of his grip and turned to leave.

‘Listen to me,’ she shrieked. ‘
Listen to me, why don’t you?
Damn you, come back.’ The last words were shouted in angry desperation. With a catlike swiftness, he was back on the bed, kneeling over her and hitting her hard with the flat of his hand,
again and again on both cheeks, with enough force to knock her head from side to side with each blow.

‘Shaddup! I’ve told you, you’re the one I need. Any more noise and I really will sew your lips together. I’ve warned you once. You’ll be able to write the answers I need as ready as speak them.’

She stared up at him dully, beaten into obedience once more. In an instant he was gone, slipping softly off the bed and leaving the room in darkness.

Deborah lay shivering with cold and fear, tears of pain rolling down bruised and swollen cheeks. She was utterly frightened and close to complete panic but deep inside her a small voice reasoned that her only chance of survival was to keep thinking clearly. For long moments she just stared blankly into the grey, silent room. Then slowly, as the minutes passed, she forced herself to think about what was happening to her.

Her memory of the day was vague and confused. She could recall the train journey and the charming chauffeur who had collected her. Her last memory of the drive was of the car moving slowly in heavy traffic and her heart leapt within her chest as she wondered whether he had been killed during her kidnap. Then, more chillingly, was he in on it, the two of them together? She could not bring herself to believe he was dead, but it was equally impossible that he would associate with her tormentor. Deborah’s mind shut down again. It would not let her think about
him
yet, nor what he might do to her. The first objects she had set eyes on as she regained consciousness had been knives and scalpels and the precise shape of them was burnt into her memory. She could imagine him picking them up, holding them delicately and flaying small pieces of skin from her. Or would he stab and gouge? She had such knives in her kitchen – razor sharp, capable of dicing steak, filleting fish, slicing hard raw vegetables into tiny thin strips. She knew what knives could do.

There was a strange whining noise in the room and she strained to work out what it was. Then she realised it was her own moaning and, with a desperate sob, she gave in to hard
exhausting tears that tore through her throat leaving it even more bruised and sore. Eventually the fit subsided. There were no more tears, no more energy. Always, though, pictures of the scalpel and the knife remained in her mind.

To divert her thoughts Deborah tried to work out what the secret was that he wanted from her so badly. There had been that brief affair between the births of her first and second children. Derek had known nothing about it; it had been over virtually as soon as it had begun, a classic tennis club dalliance that culminated in a momentarily exciting, and subsequently embarrassing, sticky mess. But that was nothing. Nobody could seriously be interested in that.

Her mind drifted back further, to her job that had been relinquished willingly as soon as she had become pregnant. Try as she might she could think of nothing in those four years as a dental nurse that was in the least clandestine or tragic; nobody had died under anaesthetic, no bodies had been named because of their dental records.

She pushed her thoughts back further until they passed university and reached school. At the first touch of memory she froze. No. It could not be that. It was too long ago, so long ago she had almost forgotten it and half persuaded herself that it had nothing to do with her. It had taken a long time to forget. For years she had suffered nightmares, lived in dread of going to sleep. Then with time, and with Derek, the dreams had grown infrequent, stirred only now and again when the children wanted to go on school trips.

Her mind picked around the edges of that most sensitive memory, gradually working towards the heart of it. She went back over that day, forced herself to relive all of its terrible detail, ending with the frightening climb back, then waiting at home for news of the body. Fresh tears rolled down her chin and dripped on to the plastic sheet. Never again, until today, had she been so frightened, so helpless, and so desperate to rewrite history.

It had started out as such a beautiful day – 15 June. They had finished their exams and the Upper Fifth geography class was
going on a celebratory school trip. They had set out for the Dorset coast early in the morning with no cares, relaxed and happy. The party was made up of thirteen girls plus the geography master and the gym mistress in the school’s minibus. Much of the early talk had been about how terribly everyone had done in this or that exam, with everyone agreeing that the Physics papers had been compiled by an evil genius from hell.

The five of them had sat on the bench seat at the back – well, four really, but Leslie always tagged along however lukewarm the welcome. Small for her age, with glasses and permanent braces, she was not the person to be seen with and had no close friends in the class. The other four, in the same netball team, the same choir, the same form, were inseparable friends – confident, boisterous Kate; stunning Octavia who was sure she would become a professional musician: quiet, athletic Carol, who sang like an angel and was fast rivalling Octavia for the lead soprano parts; and Deborah, the prettiest and least venturesome – not as clever but whose looks and surprisingly sharp sense of humour earned her a place in the select group.

They had arrived at Durdle Door at eleven o’clock, in time for the first walk along the cliffs before a picnic lunch. The weather was glorious and they were soon stripped down to T-shirts and jeans. The sun burnt into spring-white skin and they relished the feel of its power reaching beneath the surface and starting the tanning that would occupy most of the long, idle weeks of the summer vacation.

After lunch they set out on their second walk. As always, it had been Kate who had taken the lead, deciding which footpath to follow and striding out at a pace that soon left the shorter-legged Deborah far behind. At the top of one cliff, they flopped on to springy, cropped, coarse grass, flat on their backs, hypnotised by the gulls that wheeled above them against the cloudless sky. A light breeze whipped wisps of hair about their faces, tickling eyes and noses. For once, no one talked as they absorbed the atmosphere.

Into the pure silence, Carol’s voice floated on the first notes of the Barcarole from the
Tales of Hoffman
. Instinctively Octavia
picked up the harmony, as her hand reached out to hold Carol’s, and perfect crystal drops of sound rose up into the limitless sky like larks’ song. When they finished, the silence returned. All of them realised they had shared a moment that would become a life-long memory. It did not need to be remarked upon.

A gull’s raucous cry shattered the silence and they laughed, embarrassed as people are when emotions are shared unexpectedly. Deborah, always the first to venture words into silence, turned on her side to face Carol.

‘You know, with a voice like that you should be thinking of taking up music as a career too.’

‘D’you think so? As a matter of fact, I’ve been wondering about that and I think I’ve finally decided that I’m going to.’

They all looked at her, surprised. Until that moment, Carol had seemed hellbent on becoming a doctor.

‘What?’ It was Octavia who seemed most amazed, though she and Carol were the closest of the four, always together, so close, Deborah thought, that were Carol more physically mature, she would have questioned the nature of their relationship. ‘You’ve never mentioned it before. Where did that idea come from, for heaven’s sake?’

‘I don’t know. It’s been growing on me this term. And, well, it just seems right. I’ve suddenly realised that music is probably the most important thing in my life and I have to do something about it.’

Carol looked embarrassed. She was naturally modest and found it hard to discuss her musical ambitions when she already excelled at sports and was expected to get straight top grades in her exams. Seeing that her closest friend still stared at her mutely, she tried to explain further.

‘I think what finally did it was singing Verdi’s
Requiem
with the County Youth Choir before Easter. Suddenly, during the ‘Offertorio’ when the soprano comes in above the other voices, so sweetly, so quietly, I knew
that’s what I’ve got to do
. I looked above me to the roof of the cathedral and I just
knew
I had to go on singing and performing as far as my voice would let me.’

The four of them had been in the Youth Choir that year. The
performance had received excellent reviews. Deborah started to understand why Carol had changed her mind so dramatically and firmly. Not only did she have a beautiful voice, but when she sang she sang from her soul. More than once, Deborah had been moved to tears as she listened. It was a glorious gift, which they’d all somehow just accepted; Carol was such a special person. Octavia, though, was still struggling to understand.