Shaun Hutson - Captives

Christ, she was lovely.

He touched the photo with one index finger, as if to feel the smoothness of her skin. The warmth of that day seemed a million years ago as he stood listening to the rain hammering against the windows. He put the photo back and wandered through into the kitchen, where he retrieved a bottle of vodka from one of the kitchen cupboards. He took a glass from the draining board, then returned to the bedroom, sat on the edge of the bed and poured himself a large measure.

He used to give his father a drink. After the first stroke, a couple of shots seemed to put the old bastard in a better frame of mind. After the second one, dropping him in a vat of the stuff wouldn't have helped.

Fuck him. Forget about him.

He'd tried, but it had proved surprisingly difficult. When he remembered his father it wasn't as the wasted, comatose figure he'd watched over in hospital or the cantankerous sod he'd been forced to put up with for ten months. He remembered him as the sometimes abrupt, sometimes lonely but often funny man he'd shared his flat with for two years and eight months before the first stroke. Prior to that the old boy had lived in a flat of his own in Muswell Hill. He'd been forced to move out when it had been taken over by a new landlord.

Why the fuck had this particular spectre returned to haunt him, he wondered? Why was he thinking about his old man when the only person he truly cared for was Carol?

Perhaps it was the loneliness that made him think.

He felt lonely now, sitting on the edge of his bed, the drink cradled in his hand, listening to the rain. He thought how his father had once confided to him what he felt. And it was fear of that feeling which remained firmly embedded in his mind. Scott needed someone. No, not someone; he needed Carol.

He reached for the phone and jabbed out the digits of her number, just as he'd been doing for the past half-hour.

He just wanted to hear her voice.

The phone went on ringing.

Just let me hear her.

Perhaps she'd pulled the connection from the socket so she wouldn't be disturbed.

Pick it up.

Maybe she'd put the phone under a stack of pillows to muffle the ringing so it didn't wake her up.

Come on. Come on.

The ringing continued until he slammed the receiver down in frustration.

Perhaps she was ill.

Perhaps she wasn't there. She might have been hurt on her way home. She could be in hospital now.

What if…?

He downed what was left in the glass and poured himself another, gulping half of it down in one swallow.

She was not there. He knew it. Felt it.

Then where?

He gritted his teeth, his breath coming in short gasps.

Where was she?

He looked across at the photo on the dressing table. She smiled back at him.

Scott shouted and hurled the glass across the room. It hit the wall and shattered, spraying shards of crystal in all directions. Vodka dripped from the wet patch on the paper.

He wondered how long it took for loneliness to become despair.

TWENTY

16 APRIL 1977

The tumour was as large as a man's fist.

Dexter looked at it lying in the metal dish, a huge collection of dead cells, darkish brown in colour, tinged a rusty red from the congealed blood which coated it. It had been taken that morning, from the skull of the dead man they had found in Ward 5 the previous day.

Now Dexter observed the tumour and tapped a pen gently against his chin, his thoughts running pell-mell through his mind.

'What about the others?' he asked.

Colston sighed and shrugged his shoulders, pulling up a chair beside the desk.

'Four out of the five are exhibiting similar symptoms to those of Baker,' he said. 'I checked them over this morning before I did the autopsy.'

'Damn,' snapped Dexter, getting to his feet. He crossed to the window of his office and looked out over the well-manicured lawns and the tall trees that swayed in the wind.

'Is there anything we can do?' he asked, without looking at his companion.

'If the tumours are developing at the same rate then I could operate, try to remove them. We'd at least save their lives,' Colston told him.

Dexter watched as an intern led two patients across the, lawn, one of them kicking a football ahead of him like an excited child.

'You said four out of the five were exhibiting similar symptoms,' he said quietly. He turned to face Colston. 'What about…'

The other doctor shook his head, cutting him short. 'So far no change,' he said.

A slight smile creased Dexter's lips.

'Then we're doing something right,' he said, clutching this small piece of optimism as a drowning man clutches the proverbial straw.

Colston sucked in a deep breath.

'And we're also doing something very wrong,' he said. 'That's the third death in as many months. If the tumours in the other four continue to develop…' He allowed the sentence to trail off.

Dexter returned to his desk and tapped the five files stacked in front of him.

Each one bore the note: WARD 5 in its top right hand corner. Below that was the name of the patient.

'What do we do?' Colston wanted to know. 'Stop?'

'Certainly not,' said the other man indignantly. 'It will work, Andrew. I'm sure of it.'

'Then at least modify the process until we see the progress of the other five.'

Dexter shook his head again.

'The other four,' he interjected. 'You said one of them was still all right.'

'It might just be a matter of time before a tumour develops there too…'

Dexter interrupted again.

'No,' he said with conviction. 'It won't. I just believe it won't.'

'Because it's what you want to believe.'

'Do you blame me?' he snapped.

There was a long silence, finally broken by Colston. 'No, I don't blame you,' he murmured. 'And don't worry, I'm not going to back out on you. Not now.'

Dexter smiled appreciatively and picked up the files marked Ward 5.

He flicked through the first four relatively quickly.

It was the last of them that interested him.

TWENTY-ONE

The needle, almost six inches long, had been pushed through the girl's nipple, inserted with clinical efficiency through the fleshy bud.

George Kinsellar turned the page of the magazine and proudly displayed another double spread, this time of a young girl with several metal rings through her vaginal lips.

'What about that?' Kinsellar said. 'Be like shagging a scrap-metal yard, wouldn't it?' He chuckled his throaty laugh which ended as usual, with him hawking loudly, chewing thoughtfully on the mucus for a moment and then swallowing it again.

Kinsellar was a thick-set man in his early fifties, his face pitted, his hair thinning.

'How can anybody get their rocks off to something like that?' said Scott, shaking his head, taking the magazine from the older man and flipping through it. He finally dropped it into the supermarket trolley he was pushing and continued walking up the long aisle between the high shelves.

The warehouse was in Holloway and Kinsellar had owned it for the last six years. The bulk of his business was done with Ray Plummer's organisation, although he supplied a number of the other firms in the capital with videos, books, 8mm films and appliances. Fifty per cent of what he sold was illegal but business was booming. He followed Scott around, making notes on his pad of what the younger man was ordering.

The magazines were stacked up to three feet high on shelves that reached almost to the tall ceiling of the warehouse. Light struggled to penetrate a skylight which was so filthy it was nearly opaque. Inside, the place smelt of newsprint. As he pushed the trolley, Scott couldn't help but smile to himself. Whenever he visited this place (usually once a month to check up on new stock and place his order) he couldn't shake the feeling that, pushing his trolley around amidst shelves piled high with books featuring every kind of sexual perversion, he was like a shopper in some depraved branch of Sainsbury's.