‘I’m not sure which is worse, anyway,’ said Jane. ‘His wife thinking Nigel is sleeping with someone else or that he’s dead.’
‘Oh, God.’ The blood drained from Mark’s face. ‘When we were at the cider farm yesterday she was wittering on about this barn on the far side of the orchards. Wanted to check it out, she did, but it was about two miles away and I wasn’t going over there. There wasn’t time anyway; we weren’t there long enough and we didn’t have a warrant either. I reckon she went to check that barn and took Nigel with her. Looks like that’s where they went from here.’
Cole landed with a crash, the sound of breaking glass underneath him. He braced himself for the pain, but there was very little – some from his arms, but nothing from his wrists or hands. He waited, knowing only too well that wasn’t always a good sign when it came to cuts from glass; there’d been that twerp outside the Carousel with a broken bottle, and that window when he’d been breaking into a house in Edithmead for a welfare check.
There was definitely blood running down his left wrist, he could feel it now, but nothing from his right. Not yet, anyway.
Feeling with his fingers for a piece of broken glass.
‘Are you still there, Sarah?’ he asked. ‘Talk to me.’
No reply.
Then he found what he was looking for. A shard of glass, curved, going to a point. He had picked it up in his left hand before transferring it to his right.
Maybe four inches long, thick too, from the neck of a bottle.
Now to start the cutting. Not easy with his hands behind him, cable-tied to the chair at the wrist. It hardly mattered that it was dark, because he couldn’t see what he was doing anyway.
There was more blood now too, making the glass slippery.
Find the base of the cable tie. If he could do that, then he could cut it without hitting flesh.
A sawing motion at his wrists in the dark with a piece of glass. He kept telling himself he’d been in worse scrapes and had always got out, but actually that was bollocks, this was the worst by far. Not that he’d tell her that.
‘Sarah?’
Nothing.
Fumbling in the dark with the piece of glass between the fingers of his right hand, whatever it was he’d found with it felt solid, rather than soft like flesh, so he started cutting; no more pain than before either, so maybe he was cutting the cable tie rather than his own flesh.
He’d soon find out.
Somebody must be looking for us by now, for fuck’s sake.
The sawing motion was taking the point of the shard into his left wrist, right where his watch would have been, if he’d been wearing it. That surely meant that he was cutting the plastic of the cable tie? It didn’t feel like wood.
Then his left hand came free.
He flexed his fingers, despite the pain, relieved that all seemed to be in working order.
What now?
Feet next, then get yourself stood up.
He transferred the shard of glass to his left hand, then began sawing at the cable tie fastening his left ankle to the chair, quickly kicking out and straightening his leg, rubbing his thigh and calf muscles, the piece of glass between his teeth.
Fucking cramp now.
Reaching down to his right ankle was a bit more of a stretch, but he made it and was soon massaging his right thigh.
‘I’ve done it, Sarah. I’m free.’
A groan was all that came from her direction.
He rolled off the boxes and on to the floor, before standing up, the chair dangling from his right wrist by the remaining cable tie, which was soon cut.
Rubbing his wrists now, wiggling his fingers. Whatever he’d been hacking away at in the darkness, it hadn’t been tendons, at least; not that he’d ever been much of a pianist. There was a lot of blood though, he could feel it. Smell it.
He was holding the piece of glass between his teeth, only too aware of the need to keep it. Cutting tool no longer. It was now a weapon.
He crept forward in the darkness, feeling his way with his foot, moving towards where he knew Sarah was sitting. What little light had been coming in through the small window had gone when it had started to rain, but he had his bearings, after a fashion, from her detailed description of the cellar.
His toe hit something soft and he reached out, feeling for her.
She was slumped over, her hands tied behind her, just as his had been.
‘Sarah.’
Unresponsive. His hands on both shoulders now, shaking her gently. ‘Sarah.’
Then he heard an engine, the cellar illuminated just for a second as the car swung around and parked behind the barn.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Just before dawn on a Sunday morning. A wild ride on deserted roads, even in the middle of Taunton; Dixon in the passenger seat of a pursuit vehicle travelling at over one hundred miles an hour, Jane, Louise and Mark crammed in the back – they’d still have been out on the M5 in his Land Rover, so it was worth the rollercoaster ride.
