Peter May - Cast Iron

Bertrand looked terrible. She had done her best to clean the blood from his face, but smears of it had dried brown on his stubbled cheek and around his mouth. His shirt was covered in it. Yet more of it had dried solid in his nasal passages, making it hard for him to talk, and he was convinced that his nose was broken. His pain had morphed to a dull ache and then to numbness, and he had spent much of today sleeping.

He lay with his head in her lap, as she sat with her back to the wall, listening to him slow-steady breathing through his mouth.

At least their captors had relented and started bringing them food once more. Yoghurt, bread, coffee. Sophie had already decided that if she ever got out of here she would never consume any of these three things ever again.

While Bertrand dozed, and in between spells of self-pity and tears, Sophie had thought a lot about their situation. Bertrand had acted impulsively and alone in attacking the bringer of the food yesterday, driven by anger and frustration. Sophie had been taken as much by surprise as the man he attacked. Frozen by shock and fear and unable to help. If only they had discussed it in advance, thought it through, had a plan, the outcome might have been different.

And now, it seemed to her, it was no longer possible for them simply to sit and await the unfolding of events which appeared less and less likely to end well. It was time to become proactive. To do something before they both lost the will to resist.

She looked down into her lap and saw that Bertrand was looking up at her. She had no idea how long he had been awake.

‘What time is it?’ he said.

She shrugged. How could she know? They had taken their watches. ‘Late,’ she said. ‘It’ll be dark soon.’ She paused, and lowered her voice. ‘We’ve got to try and get out of here.’

He nodded. ‘I know.’ Stiffly, he pulled himself up into a sitting position. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘What for?’

‘For not doing a better job of protecting you.’

She felt the temptation to weep again, but instead wrapped her arms around him and held him close. ‘We’ll do it together this time,’ she whispered. ‘I feel like doing these fucking people some damage.’

‘Me, too.’ He untangled himself from Sophie and got to his feet, stretching sore muscles and aching joints. It was important that he was both physically and mentally alert. ‘I can take either of them, one on one,’ he said. ‘But not both at the same time.’

‘What about your face?’

He grimaced painfully in a grotesque parody of a smile. ‘They can’t do much more damage to it than they already have.’

‘No, I mean... are you fit for it?’

He flexed his fingers and balled them into fists at his side. ‘Oh, yes.’

‘And what are we going to do if we get out? We’ve no idea where we are.’

‘Well, let’s get a look at the lie of the land, then.’

Sophie pulled herself to her feet, frowning. ‘How?’

‘If I lace my fingers together into a stirrup, you can step into it and I’ll hoist you up to take a look out of the window. But we’d better do it quick, before it gets dark.’ He crouched, making his stirrup, and she put one foot carefully into it, pushing up as he straightened his legs, and sliding up the wall to clutch the window frame and peer outside.

The glass was very nearly opaque with dirt and mud spatter, but Sophie could see enough through the external bars to realise that the window was only just above ground level. There was a gravel path beyond it, then an overgrown grassy bank rising into deciduous woods that seemed to stretch away into darkness. She could see a very tall pine tree on the edge of the woods, reaching high above the other trees, almost opposite the window.

When Bertrand lowered her to the floor she told him what she had seen, but in truth it gave them very little idea of where they actually were, and how far beyond the trees they might have to go to reach safety. If they got out.

‘This is some kind of big house,’ Bertrand said. ‘Did you notice how cold it was when we arrived? Didn’t feel like anyone lived here.’

Sophie nodded. ‘And we’re in the basement.’ Then she lowered her head, shaking it, and felt tears welling up again. ‘But what’s the point? We know all this. We’ve been through it a hundred times. None of it means anything if we can’t get past those two men at the door.’

‘We can do that,’ Bertrand said, his voice gently insistent. ‘If we work together. But we have to be fast. I can grab the first guy. But I can only hold him for a moment. You’ll have to disable him and free me up to go for the second guy. They won’t be expecting it, so we should have surprise on our side.’

Sophie took a deep breath and lifted her head. ‘You’re right. My papa always says you’ll never achieve anything if you can’t visualise it.’ She forced a laugh. Then, with her strongest Scottish accent, in parody of her papa, she said, ‘If you can’t see yourself sitting at the head of the table in the boardroom you’ll never be chairman of the company.’

Bertrand managed a smile. ‘If that’s what you want to be.’

‘No, but he’s right. How can we be free if we can’t picture it happening?’ She looked at him. ‘How do I disable him?’

Bertrand shrugged. ‘Fingers in his eyes.’

But she shook her head. ‘He’ll be bucking and fighting against you. No way I can guarantee to get his eyes. Better a swift, hard kick in the balls. I hear that men don’t much care for that.’

Bertrand grinned now. This was more like the old Sophie. ‘Okay. So, I’ll bang on the door and ask to go to the toilet. When they open the door I’ll grab the first guy, back into the wall in the corridor and turn him towards you. You’ll have one chance before the other guy’s on us.’

The full enormity of what they were planning struck her suddenly, and she experienced a sharp, stabbing fear. It was madness. They could never do it. But she made herself close her eyes and visualise the alternative. Do nothing and meekly accept whatever fate these people have in store for them. Not an option. She opened her eyes again and nodded. ‘What happens if only one of us gets away?’

‘If you get away,’ Bertrand said, ‘keep running and don’t look back. I can look after myself. Just bear in mind that these guys are working in shifts. There’s at least four of them, so there’ll probably be others somewhere else in the house.’

Sophie couldn’t imagine a single scenario where she would leave Bertrand here on his own. ‘And if you’re the one who gets away?’

‘I’ll come back for you.’

‘No, you won’t,’ she said, raising her voice. ‘You’ll go and you’ll get help. And then you’ll come back for me.’ Although the very idea of being left here on her own without him was almost unthinkable. It was one more scenario she absolutely wasn’t going to visualise. And the hopelessness of it all descended on her again like a black mist.

‘We should wait till it’s dark,’ Bertrand said. ‘Then, if we get out, we have a better chance of getting away.’

She nodded and they sat down on the floor, backs to the wall below the window, to watch as the last light of the day slowly faded on the wall opposite.

After a long silence Bertrand said, ‘You know we have to do this, right? We have to try. Even if we fail.’

She nodded. ‘I know.’ Though she couldn’t help wishing there was some other way. She turned to look at him. His bloody face and broken nose — and she saw the determination in his eyes. ‘I love you, Bertrand,’ she said. His dark eyes grew moist, even as she looked into them, and she knew that apart from her papa, there was no one else in this world that she would trust with her life like she trusted Bertrand.