Simon Kernick - Wrong Time, Wrong Place

It had been two nights since she had heard Eva’s screams as they took her away. Now there was only silence, which meant her friend was dead.

Tara knew they’d be coming for her next. It was that simple. That was why she was here. To die. She had no idea what she was meant to have done to deserve this fate. It was all like some strange nightmare.

One night — a week, two weeks ago? — Tara had gone to sleep in the filthy little room she called home, with the constant drone of the buses going past outside the window. Then, when she’d woken up, she was here in this tiny, windowless cell. She was naked, with only a blanket for warmth, and chained to the wall by her ankle, like some kind of beaten animal.

At first she’d thought she was completely alone in the stony silence, and she’d started crying with despair. But then she’d heard a voice speaking her language — Albanian — from beyond the wall, asking her name. It was her friend Eva, and she was being held in the cell next door.

Eva had told her that the same thing had happened to both of them, and not just the kidnapping. Like Tara, she’d been talked into coming to England by a man who’d promised her a good job and a release from the poverty she knew at home, only to force her to work in a brothel as a virtual slave. They even both came from the same area of Kosovo.

In their cells, Tara and Eva had talked every day for hours and hours at a time. About home and family, about their hopes and dreams, about what they’d do if they ever got out of there (Eva wanted to go to Paris and climb the Eiffel Tower, Tara wanted to learn to ride a horse).

But now Tara was alone with only the constant, dead silence for company.

That didn’t mean she’d given up, though. No, if anything, what had happened to Eva had filled her with a new energy. Tara was going to escape. And she had a plan.

There was a piece of loose brick in the wall behind where she sat. She’d found it on her first day here. Ever since then she’d been working to get it free, wearing her nails down as she dug out the mortar on either side of it, until finally she was able to twist and pull at it, slowly loosening it.

Now she was holding a solid half-brick in her hand. It would be a useful weapon, if only she had the physical strength, and the chance, to use it properly.

Tara had never seen the man who held her prisoner. She was always made to turn round and face the wall on those few times when he came in to change the bucket she used as a toilet. He gave the order in Albanian but in a thick accent she didn’t recognise, and it sounded like they were the only words in Albanian he knew.

Twice a day, he pushed a plate of food and a plastic bottle of water through a flap in the cell door. He always wore black gloves, but sometimes his sleeve rode up and she could see the thick hair on his arms, and the swirling shape of a tattoo on his skin.

She could hear him now, moving about outside the door. She tucked the brick behind her, scared but hopeful too that he’d come in, knowing this was probably the best chance she was going to get.

But then she saw the flap opening. He wasn’t going to come inside.

Usually she put the blanket over herself when she heard him coming, but this time she threw it off, letting out a low, painful moan, trying to sound as if she was sick. At the same time she rubbed her stomach and pulled a face. There was a spyhole in the cell door, and she knew he’d be looking through it, checking her out.

He probably wouldn’t care at all if she was ill, but if he saw her naked, it might be enough to get him interested. Her naked body had certainly interested all the other men she’d been forced to entertain these past few months.

She moaned again, louder and longer this time. The flap closed without the food being pushed through.

The key turned in the lock and he stepped inside. He was tall and dressed in black. A hood covered his head, like some kind of hangman from the history books Tara had read as a child. The man frightened her. God, how he frightened her. His arms were thick and she could imagine him using them to throttle the life out of his victims.

‘Be strong,’ she told herself as she writhed around on the floor, acting like she was dying. All the time she could hear her heart beating in her chest, as the fear pumped through her.

He was coming over. Bending down, saying something she didn’t understand. Looking at her with suspicion in his eyes.

She could feel the brick in the small of her back. She rolled over, still moaning, her arm dropping out of sight, knowing this was it. Her chance.

He grabbed her by the hair and pulled her round so she was facing him. ‘Bitch,’ he said. It was a word she recognised, because it was used so often by the men in the brothel.

Then something changed in his eyes. Anger was replaced by lust, and she felt him roughly pulling her legs apart with a gloved hand, making weird moaning noises beneath his mask.

That was the moment she grabbed the brick, sat up suddenly, and hit him on the side of the head.

‘Bitch!’ he howled a second time, his voice echoing around the tiny cell. He grabbed the hand holding the brick by the wrist, yanking it back painfully, his eyes burning with fury.

Knowing she couldn’t afford to stop now, Tara kept up her attack, jabbing her forefinger into his left eye like a knife, feeling its soft fleshiness give way.

This time he screamed in real pain, trying to twist his head away. At the same time, he relaxed his grip on her wrist.

She pulled her arm free and struggled out from under him. The chain securing her ankle to the wall rattled angrily as she jumped to her feet. She hit him for a second time as he swayed on his knees, yelping in pain.

The brick shattered into a dozen pieces, and for a moment Tara thought she’d failed. Her heart sank, but then the man grunted and fell on to his side, barely moving.

Feeling a rush of excitement, she crouched down beside him and pulled the set of keys from his belt, praying that one would unlock the chain around her ankle.

There must have been a dozen keys of various shapes and sizes, and the first one didn’t fit. Nor did the second.

The guard was beginning to come round. He let out a moan, and one arm moved.

Tara tried a third key, her hands shaking so much she could barely put it into the slot. Another wrong one.

He was turning round now, one hand still over his injured eye, but the other one staring at her.

Come on, come on .

She tried a fourth key. It didn’t work.

The man reached round behind his back. When his hand came back into view, Tara gasped and panic swept through her. He was holding a huge knife with a jagged blade. She’d seen hunters using knives like that to gut deer back in Kosovo.

Willing herself to stay calm, trying desperately to forget that in the next few seconds she could die, Tara tried another key. She slipped it into the lock with shaking hands. The lock clicked, and the metal clamp that had been painfully attached to her from the moment she’d first woken up in this place opened. Just at that moment, the guard lunged towards her with the knife. She jumped backwards, hitting the wall behind her. The tip of the blade came so close to her belly that she could almost feel it touching her.

But with the chain removed from her, she suddenly felt a new surge of energy. Taking advantage of the fact that her attacker was still on his knees, she darted around him and leaped at the cell door. She flung it open and ran into the narrow, dimly-lit corridor outside.

Tara had no idea where she was going but she could tell she was in some kind of basement area. The walls and floors were the same cold stone as the cell, the only light provided by a single bulb hanging down from the ceiling.