Peter James - You Are Dead

Plock... plock... plock... Each drip echoing as loudly as if the ground it struck was a drum skin. For something to do, something to concentrate on, Logan counted in her head the gaps between each drip, shivering constantly from cold and terror. One hundred and one... one hundred and two... one hundred and three...

Plock.

Fifteen seconds.

She was parched, desperate for water, and she felt clammy and jittery, the deep, destabilizing sense of unease that always spread out through her stomach and up through her body when she was low on sugar. She was very low now. And she was still very badly in need of a pee.

Her eyes felt swollen and all she could see was a green haze. It was as if she was wearing someone else’s glasses, someone who had very poor vision; but she wasn’t wearing any glasses, so far as she could tell. Her nose was itching like hell, and she was desperate to scratch it, but her hands were pinned either side of her, there was nothing she could do. She was close to passing out, she knew. It was her anger that was keeping her going.

Her anger and her terrible fear.

‘Hello?’ she called out.

Her voice sounded deadened, as if absorbed straight into cotton wool. ‘Hello?’ she called again, louder. She must be asleep. Having a nightmare, a lucid dream? Yes, a lucid dream. She’d read stuff about lucid dreaming. Where you could become aware, in a dream, that you were dreaming.

She willed herself to wake up.

But nothing changed.

Then suddenly the light brightened. The green flared into brilliant white, hurting, burning, as searing as a blowtorch. ‘Hello?’ she said. ‘Jamie? Is that you, Jamie? Please let’s talk this through. Please. I know you’re upset with me for breaking it off — but please, this is enough. Please. Please.’

There was a long silence. She heard a sliding sound. Felt cold air on her face.

Someone was standing over her. Her skin was pricked with goosebumps.

‘Jamie?’ she cried out. ‘What do you want? What the hell are you doing? Let me go! For God’s sake get me some sugar, chocolate, I’m going into a hypo. Jamie. Jamie. Jamie. Is it you, Jamie? You know what happens if I get too low. Get me some sugar, urgently, please. Please! Jamiiiieeeeeeeeeee!’

The sliding sound again. The cool breeze stopped.

Could it possibly be Jamie? Angry at her for calling off the wedding? Had she missed something in his character? Had he set this up?

The bright light moved away, accompanied by the faint shuffle of footsteps. She heard a door close. Then a click nearby. Moments later she heard the sudden, tortured cry of a female voice.

‘Help me!’

A slick of terror slid through every cell in Logan’s body.

‘Help me!’ she heard again. Then an even deeper cry of anguish. ‘No! No, please noooo! Noooooooo!’

It was followed by the most pitiful scream.

And suddenly she could not contain her need to pee any longer. Embarrassed, she let go, fully expecting to feel the warm stream between her legs. But as she emptied her bladder, something seemed to be absorbing the urine.

Now she knew for sure this wasn’t a dream.

Thursday 11 December

At twenty past ten, Jamie Ball’s entryphone buzzer rang. He ran over to the front door, realizing he was a little drunk, and saw on the fuzzy black and white screen a man’s face above a turned-up collar.

‘Hello?’ he said.

‘Mr Ball?’

‘Yes,’ he blurted, anxiously.

‘Detective Superintendent Grace. May I have a word with you?’

‘Please come up. Ninth floor.’

Two minutes later Jamie opened the front door to see a pleasant-looking man of about forty, with a rugged face beneath short, gelled fair hair, a nose that looked like it had been busted, possibly more than once, and sharp, alert, blue eyes. He held up a police warrant card.

‘Detective Superintendent Roy Grace, Surrey and Sussex Major Crime Team. Have you heard from your fiancée?’

‘No — not — not anything, not a word. Please come in — thank you for coming. Can I offer you a glass of wine?’

‘No, thank you, I’m fine.’ Grace could smell alcohol on the man’s breath and he looked a little unsteady. He was a burly, bearded man with a rugby player’s build, and with a stacked-up modern hairstyle, dressed in jeans and a V-neck cardigan over a white T-shirt, shoeless in red socks.

He led the detective through into a living room, with a kitchen area partitioned off by a bar, on which stood a beer glass and several empty cans of lager. He ushered him to one of two small sofas either side of a glass coffee table, where copies of Sussex Life and Latest magazine lay.

Susi Holliday, on the other sofa, stood up and greeted Grace with a respectful, ‘Good evening, sir.’

Roy Grace removed his coat, folded it and laid it beside him. Then he studied the man carefully. ‘Can you give me your full name, Mr Ball?’

‘Yes, Jamie Gordon Ball.’

Still watching the man intently, he asked, ‘When did you last see Logan?’

‘This morning, about seven o’clock. She tripped getting out of bed and gashed her toe open on the bathroom door. I would have driven her to the hospital on any other day, but I had a very important early meeting at work.’

Grace noted his reply but made no comment. ‘She gave you no indication that she was going anywhere tonight?’

‘No, none. We’d made plans to have a Chinese tonight — there’s a place nearby that delivers — we have it regularly — and we were going to watch a couple of episodes of Breaking Bad — we’re working our way through it.’

‘Great show,’ Grace said.

‘It is, we’re totally hooked.’

‘Where does Logan work?’

‘In Hove, she’s a chiropractor — she works in a clinic on Portland Road.’

So far, the man’s body language indicated he was telling the truth. ‘How would you describe your relationship?’

Ball was quiet for a moment, then he said, ‘We love each other.’

For the first time the man’s demeanour indicated that he might be lying.

‘Have you set a date for your wedding?’ Grace pressed.

He looked even more uncomfortable now. ‘Yes — well, not exactly.’

‘Not exactly?’

‘We’re sort of — discussing it.’

‘Sort of?’

‘Yes.’ He shrugged, awkwardly.

Grace looked at him even more intently. ‘Has Logan ever done this before — not come home?’

‘Never. Look — I heard her scream. I don’t know if you’ve been down there, but the car park here is really creepy. There’s been a raft of car break-ins and thefts. The management of this place don’t give a toss. She phoned me to say she had seen someone as she drove in. Then she screamed. Then I — ’

He covered his face with his hands.

Grace watched him. His distress seemed genuine. Yet at the same time, he was uncomfortable about the way Ball was describing his relationship with his fiancée — something was not ringing true.

‘Something’s happened to her, Detective — Superintendent — something’s happened to her. This is just not like her. Something’s happened. She’s a strong person, I’ve never heard her sound afraid before. The fear — the fear in her voice.’

‘Tell me what you think has happened to her?’

Jamie Ball shook his head, wildly. ‘I don’t know. But I think she’s been abducted. Kidnapped. Taken.’

‘You’re watching Breaking Bad ?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you watch a lot of cop programmes? Crime series?’

‘Quite a lot, yes.’

‘Are you sure you are not being influenced here? Are you one hundred per cent convinced that Logan has been abducted — and not gone somewhere of her own free will?’