Peter James - Dead Like You

The sort of people who could afford nice shoes.

He hit the acknowledge button, confirming that he would make the pick-up, then continued to sip his tea and read the newspaper that had been left in his taxi.

They’d be finishing their meal still. When people ordered a taxi in a restaurant, they expected to wait a while, certainly a quarter of an hour or so on a Saturday night in downtown Brighton. And besides, he could not stop reading and then re-reading the story about the rape of the woman in the Metropole on New Year’s Eve. He was riveted.

In his mirrors he could see the twinkly lights of the pier. He knew all about those lights. He used to work on the pier as an electrical engineer, part of the team maintaining and repairing the rides. But he got the sack. It was for the same reason he usually got the sack, because he lost his temper with someone. He hadn’t yet lost his temper with anyone in his taxi, but he had once got out and shouted at another driver who’d pulled on to a rank in front of him.

He finished his tea, reluctantly folded the newspaper and put the mug back in the plastic bag alongside his Thermos, then placed the bag on the front seat.

‘Vocabulary!’ he said aloud. Then he began his checks.

First check the tyres. Next start the engine, then switch on the lights. Never the other way around, because if the battery was low, the lights might drain the energy that the starter motor needed. The owner of the taxi had taught him that. Especially in winter, when there were heavy loads on the battery. It was winter now.

As the engine idled, he checked the fuel gauge. Three-quarters of a tank. Then the oil pressure. Then the temperature gauge. The interior temperature was set to twenty degrees, as he had been instructed. Outside, a digital display told him, it was two degrees Celsius. Cold night.

Uh-huh.

He looked in his mirror, checked his seat belt was on, indicated, pulled out into the road and drove up to the junction, where the lights were red. When they changed to green he turned right into Preston Street and almost immediately pulled over to the kerb, halting outside the front door of the restaurant.

Two very drunk yobs staggered down the hill towards him, then knocked on his window and asked if he was free to take them to Coldean. He wasn’t free, he was waiting for passengers, he told them. As they walked away he wondered whether they had high-flush or low-flush toilets in their homes. It suddenly became very important to him to know. He was about to get out and hurry after them, to ask them, when finally the restaurant door opened.

Two people emerged. A slim man in a dark coat, with a scarf wound around his neck, and a woman who was clinging to him, teetering on her heels; she looked like she’d fall over if she let go. And from the height of the stilettos she was wearing, that would be a long fall.

They were nice heels. Nice shoes.

And he had their address! He always liked to know where women who had nice shoes lived.

Uh-huh.

Yac lowered his window. He didn’t want the man knocking on it. He didn’t like people knocking on his window.

‘Taxi for Starling?’ the man said.

‘Roedean Crescent?’ Yac replied.

‘That’s us!’

They climbed in the back.

‘Sixty-seven Roedean Crescent,’ the man said.

‘Sixty-seven Roedean Crescent,’ Yac repeated. He had been told always to repeat the address clearly.

The car filled with smells of alcohol and perfume. Shalimar, he recognized instantly. The perfume of his childhood. The one his mother always wore. Then he turned to the woman.

‘Nice shoes,’ he said. ‘Bruno Magli.’

‘Yesh,’ she slurred.

‘Size four,’ he added.

‘An expert on shoes, are you?’ the woman asked him sourly.

Yac looked at the woman’s face in the mirror. She was all uptight. She did not have the face of a woman who had had a good time. Or who was very nice. The man’s eyes were closed.

‘Shoes,’ Yac said. ‘Uh-huh.’

Saturday 27 December

Rachael woke with a start. Her head was throbbing. Disoriented, for a cruel, fleeting instant she thought she was at home in bed with a mighty hangover. Then she felt the hard metal floor. The hessian matting. Breathed in the stink of diesel oil. And reality gate-crashed her consciousness, kicking her wide awake, sending dark dread spiralling through her.

Her right eye hurt like hell. God, it was agony. How long had she been lying there? He could come back at any moment, and if he did he would see that she’d freed her wrists. He would tape them up again and probably punish her. She had to free her legs and run, now, while she had the chance.

Oh, God. Please help me.

Her lips were so parched they cracked painfully when she tried to move them. Her tongue felt like a ball of fur in her mouth. She listened for an instant, to make sure she was still alone in here. All she could hear was a distant siren and again she wondered, with the faintest uplift of hope, whether that might be the police out looking for her.

But how would they find her in here?

She rolled over until she felt the side of the van, then hauled herself upright and began picking at the tape binding her ankles with her fingernails. Trying to find a join on the slippery, diesel-coated PVC where she could get a grip.

Finally she found one and slowly, carefully, worked it free, until she had a whole wide strip of it. She began to unwind it, jerking it free with a series of sharp ripping noises. Then she winced in pain as the last of it came away from the skin of her ankles.

Grabbing the sodden hessian matting, she got to her feet, stretched and rubbed her legs to get feeling back into them, and stumbled her way, weakly, to the back of the van, crying out in pain, suddenly, as she stood on something sharp in her bare feet – a nut or a bolt. Then she felt her way across the rear doors for the handle. She found a vertical metal rod and ran her hands up it until she reached the handle. She tried to pull it down. Nothing happened. She tried to move it upwards and it would not budge.

It was locked, she realized, her heart sinking.

No. Please, no. Please, no.

She turned and made her way down to the front, her fast, rasping breaths echoing in the metallic cavern of the van’s interior. She found the back of the passenger seat, climbed over clumsily, then ran her finger along the sill of the passenger window until she found the lock pin. She gripped it as hard as she could with her slippery fingers and pulled.

To her relief, it popped up easily.

Then she groped for the handle, pulled it and shoved as hard as she could on the door, almost tumbling out on to the concrete floor as it opened, and simultaneously the interior light in the van came on.

Now, in its dim glow, she could see the inside of her prison. But there wasn’t much. Just some tools hanging on hooks on the bare wall. A tyre. Grabbing the matting, she hurried along the side of the van towards the garage door, her heart thudding with fear. Suddenly the matting snagged on something and, when she tugged it, there was a loud metallic crash as several objects fell to the floor. She winced but carried on, until she reached the up-and-over door.

There was a two-sided handle in the centre, attached to wires to the mechanism at the top of the door. She tried to turn the handle, first to the right, then to the left, but it would not move. It must be locked from the outside, she realized. With panic increasing inside her, she grabbed the wire and pulled. But her fingers slipped on it, not getting any purchase.

In desperation, Rachael bashed the door with her shoulder, oblivious to the pain. But nothing happened. Whimpering in fear and increasing desperation, she tried again. There was a loud, echoing, metallic booommmmm.