Come Back to Me (14 page)

Time slowed right down.

To almost a pause.

To a fractured sequence of movements.

To the split second when all things would change.

Alex turned around to look for the source of the noise, and as he did so he went to grab Amy's hand, although she was not in the path of the vehicle bearing down. It was just a reflex, to grab on, but she had turned to look as well, and he missed her, by which time the van was right next to them, screeching to a halt.

A side door was flung open, metal grating as it sped along its runners, and a chubby, unshaven man jumped out. Alex had the vague impression of another man inside the van.

He didn't understand. He didn't get it until it was too late. Until Amy was locked in the other man's meaty arms as
he lifted her and flung her into the van's maw as though she were an inanimate parcel.

But when he got it, he moved, lightning fast. He rushed towards the van, towards Amy, who was screaming, her terrified eyes finding Alex's, her look beseeching him to save her from whatever this was. He reached out at the same time as she lunged forward, and their fingertips missed one another by millimetres, and then the chubby man sent a knee into Alex's groin so that he instinctively doubled-up, eyes watering, wanting to retch as pain shot through him, and in the time he had to recover before he could react again, the other man had leapt into the shadows of the van's interior, from which Alex could hear Amy screaming in terror, and the vehicle sped off before they had even closed the door.

There was a pause, like a missed heartbeat, when the world seemed to be frozen in an ethereal silence.

Then people converged on Alex. Hands helped him up and over to a chair. There was shouting. Someone was dialling triple 0 and relaying what had just happened in a breathless, excited voice.

Even if they had been able to crawl under Alex's skin right then, no one could have touched him. He was somewhere else, far beyond them, stupefied, watching Amy's small discarded flower-patterned bag lying on the pavement, unnoticed.

Then the urge to move came over him as fast as a reflex. He shrugged off his comforters and ran along the road in the direction the van had gone only seconds before, roaring. A man tried to hang on to him, but Alex swatted him off easily.
It took two of them to bring him down, and he fought all the way, crying out in his impotent fury.

A woman came up, her face white with shock, and knelt down to talk to him. All his energy seemed to have been consumed by that one pointless charge. ‘The police will be here any second,' she said. ‘They will get her back, I'm sure they will.' But she looked stricken and her expression belied her words.

She put Amy's small bag into his hands, and he gripped it tightly. ‘Just hang on,' she urged him as he stared at her uncomprehendingly. ‘Hang on.'

Amy's leg throbbed from the pain. It was all she was aware of for a while after she stopped screaming. Her shoulder hurt too, she realised, as she tried to move her arm to steady herself. She cried out when she leaned on it to stop herself rocking violently.

She could hear frantic voices issuing directions, but they were muted as though there were a wall between them and where she lay. She registered breathing close to her before she felt his presence, but once she had she couldn't escape it. A bulky form next to her, crouching, leaning into her as if it were looking at her, but not touching.

Her eyes travelled upwards across the slats of light that streamed in from badly covered windows until she reached a face. It was chubby and creased, rising above a thickness of tattooed shoulders. When she stared at it she saw glassy, drug-disorientated eyes looking back at her.

She began to scream again and he fell on her, immediately covering her mouth with a meaty hand. She tried to bite down but he gave no sign of feeling it, and she quickly opened her mouth to gasp in pain as they rolled around on the metal surface of the floor, her shoulder jarring into the unforgiving surface.

There was a sudden noise and light poured in above her as some kind of divide was pulled back. She tried to look up, but could only make out a hand with dirt-blackened nails resting on the seat-back.

‘What yer doin back thir?' said another reedier voice. ‘Ey, Dregs, wait for us.'

A deeper voice near her face grunted back, ‘Just hurry up.' His breath reeked of spicy meat. ‘Where we goin'?' he shouted towards his buddy.

‘The falls,' the man answered, then the window slammed shut again and the darkness was back.

Amy tried to blank out their words, but she couldn't. Each time the monster holding her removed his hand from her mouth she screamed as loud and hard as she could.

Suddenly the man moved and she was freer still to roll and scream. She felt a surge of triumph at this victory, but it was short-lived. Hands tried to grab her wrists and she flailed madly, her nails finding flesh, until a stinging slap across her face knocked her breathless for a second. While she was still stunned, her wrists were held tightly together above her head, and heavy knees pressed painfully into her thighs. Her mouth was pulled open by probing fingers and a cloth stuffed in. She could smell petrol fumes emanating from it and it tasted vile. Thick black tape was wound roughly
around her head, catching and pulling her hair. She kept on screaming, but the noise now stuck in the back of her throat and became an unearthly guttural moan. After a while she couldn't bear the sound she was making any longer and fell silent, concentrating on the effort of breathing enough oxygen through her nose.

She tried to think clearly, but waves of panic washed over the coherent strands of thought, breaking them down into fractured phrases – ‘
away
', ‘
hurt
', ‘
die
'. She thought of all the things she still wanted to do with her life, then of Alex – it was beyond surreal that only seconds ago he had been there smiling at her – and her mum and dad. Great tears found their way through her closed eyelids and rolled down her face. Her breath came more jerkily and she tried to breathe through her mouth, but gagged on the cloth again and for a moment she thought she was going to vomit and choke, until her body took over and forced the breath back through her nose.

Finally, the motion stopped and a whole new realm of panic swept through her as the back doors were wrenched open.

She was pulled out roughly by the legs from the blackness of the van's interior, and her head hit a platform as she fell a few feet onto dry spiky grass below. She moaned as she landed hard on her wounded leg.

Two men stood over her, their eyes dilated and vacant, their movements twitchy like demented dogs. The fat one she had seen in the back and another man she recognised as the man who'd opened the window. It was this man who spoke.

‘I'll go first,' he said.

The chubby man moved around behind her, and she felt her clothes begin to be yanked off. She tried to scream again, and thrashed and struggled. Her T-shirt came up over her face, and she found her hands free, so fought to grab it and pull it down, twisting and writhing to get away.

‘Hold her,' she heard someone say, and her top was left alone, pulled up to the neck. Hands instead found her own and yanked them both behind her head once more, crushing her wrists. More hands then grabbed and pinched at her skin, her breasts, worked their way along her thighs. The pain in her shoulder was unbearable.

Something cold was at her throat. She could feel it slicing into her skin.

She knew she was beaten.

Then there was a weight on top of her. A moment later, rhythmic grunting.

Pain everywhere.

She closed her eyes against it all, tears still pushing their way through. Her body went limp, just waiting for the end, whatever it might be. She could hear the constant rush of water somewhere near, a gentle
shussssssh
that never stopped. The fight deserted her and a part of her mind flew away, higher and higher into the cloudless sky. It left her behind as it reached the vast blue void, up and up it went, searching for what lay beyond. Vowing never to come back down.

When the weight lifted she automatically opened her eyes a fraction. Another man was striding over. This one wore a sleeveless lumberjack's shirt, his arms muscular and strong
and patched with tattoos, his face grim and determined, his eyes black holes like the others', but his right cheek scythed vertically with a puckering scar.

She quickly closed her eyes again as he fell on to her roughly, the rancid stench of alcohol mixed with sweat washing over her. She didn't make a sound; pain annihilated any thought she tried to form. She still had her eyes closed when she heard a spitting noise and felt something wet land on her cheek. As the weight lifted off her, the man uttered the word ‘Bitch' in a rasping whisper as he moved away.

She heard sounds of movement coming closer once more, but there was another noise now, a whirring getting louder.

‘Shit,' a voice said close to her ear. ‘What do we do now?'

‘Back in the fucking van,' shouted another voice. ‘Get rid of her, quickly.'

Cold metal was back against her throat, pressing hard. Her eyes closed in preparation for the end, and she dipped into an endless black void.

Alex didn't know how long he'd been sitting there, but at least three cups of tea were in front of him, all now cold. The room was bright and freshly painted, bare except for a chair and a beech-coloured table.

His mind was a blurry carousel of thoughts.

She was next to me.

She was taken right out of my arms.

And I didn't stop it.

I was too slow.

I just let them take her.

What if I never see her again?

What if …

What if …

His throat felt constricted. His stomach burned. His chest was on fire.

He looked up each time someone walked past the small
window set into the door, willing them to come in and tell him something. Faces had peered in when he had first arrived, but now he had finished his witness statement they obviously had other things to attend to. He felt so impotent, sitting on his hands, waiting. He was ashamed of his inaction.

He rocked on the chair, looking down at his clenched fists, his tight knuckles. He still didn't understand it. How could he have just let them take her like that? He banged one fist on the table, feeling the tears threaten to unman him again. If only she'd been on the other side of him. If only he had caught hold of her hand for just that one moment he would have stood more of a chance.

He could still hear the thud and scrape of her body against the van as she was pulled inside. He could see the thick hand grasping her arm, the face with vacant eyes. Passers-by had provided pieces of the number plate but when the police had looked it up nothing had registered. Number plates were easy to disguise, the sergeant had told Alex. Apart from that, all the witnesses could describe was a white van and a scruffy man inside. Hardly a great starting point for a lead to follow.

He debated whether to call his parents for some support; but was stopped by the thought of how worried they would be. He still remembered the unbearable atmosphere in his home when Jamie had gone missing – his dad retreating into a stoic silence belied only by fingers that fumbled over every thing, while his mother repeatedly collapsed in tears. He couldn't bear the thought of putting them through anything like that again. He knew he should call Amy's parents, but he kept picturing her father's expression at the airport as he entrusted Amy into Alex's care, and he couldn't face
the conversation. In the first hour he had been hoping there would quickly be news; that they would find Amy fast. Then he could call once the crisis had passed, and relay the story in the past tense, assuring them that she was just shaken, but other wise fine. That they'd be home soon. But now, with each minute that ticked by, he lost a little bit more self-possession, and a little bit more hope.

Amy heard screaming as she came to. It sounded dislocated. She could feel the grass, wet and slimy, against her back, cool air on her face, and her tongue bone-dry and swollen against the oily cloth in her mouth.

‘Chris,' a voice was shrieking above her head. ‘Chris, quickly. Oh my god, QUICKLY.'

Then there was another voice, a deeper one. ‘Oh Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,' it said over and over.

Amy tried to turn onto her side to curl up, but she couldn't move. It felt as though there were a slab of concrete on top of her, pinning her down.

‘Fuck, she's moving. She's alive.' It was the deep voice.

‘Chris, give me the picnic blanket now. NOW!' the female one shouted shakily. ‘AND GO AND PHONE THE FUCKING POLICE.'

Amy felt coarse material covering her, rubbing painfully
against her leg. The woman's voice kept repeating words: ‘You're all right, love, you're all right, you'll be all right now, you're all right.' Amy could hear the woman crying over her as she spoke. A warm hand stroked her brow and hair, and she tried to pull away but couldn't move. She felt some tugs as the woman attempted to break the thick black tape wound around her head, pulling her hair, and then she stopped and left it alone.

Amy kept her eyes closed.

 

More voices.

‘Grab the stretcher, Brett,' someone said.

A radio crackled.

‘Caucasian female, young,' someone else said.

The radio crackled again.

‘Could well be,' the voice replied.

‘Hello there, hello?' A finger pressed against Amy's eyelid and lifted it up, shining a bright light into it. She winced involuntarily. ‘We've got you, you're safe now.'

‘She's conscious,' someone called, and it seemed as though more people crowded around her.

Something soft was pressed gently against her neck. Then she heard the snip snip of scissors next to each ear, and the cloth was pulled from her mouth. She gasped one, two great lungfuls of air, her whole body contorting upwards at the sudden freedom, vomit coming from her mouth and running over her chin, and then she heard an almighty wailing begin. This time she knew it came from her own body, because she felt the quaking tremor of it as it filled her ears.

Her eyes flicked open and there was a snapshot of shocked and stricken faces. A uniformed policeman gaping at her with his mouth a slack O. A middle-aged woman's back heaving as she sobbed into the chest of a man in shorts and T-shirt, who had his arms round the lady and was looking away from the scene and into the distance, his face grim. And then a green uniform, a face close to Amy's, leaning in, saying ‘for the pain', which she heard, although it sounded like one of the records her dad used to play where he would slow the speed right down to make her laugh at the sound of deep, treacly voices. She stared upwards, beyond the few trees that peered over the scene, up into the clear void that still beckoned her, where a part of her already lurked, looking down. She felt the inconsequential stab of a needle and her mind moved off again and up into the air towards the endless blue of the sky.