Shaun Hutson - Captives

She ran both hands through her hair and put her head back, closing her eyes, enjoying the feel of the water lapping around her neck. The flesh on her fingertips was already beginning to prune but she felt as if she needed to stay in the water to wash away more than just the grime of the day and the evening. If only it could wash away her problems as easily.

Before she left 'Loveshow' that night Scott had spoken to her, asked her if she was okay, told her how nice she looked.

Christ, his attempts at small-talk had been so clumsy she almost felt sorry for him. It had taken him a seemingly endless time and a barrage of aimless chatter before he finally asked her why he couldn't reach her the previous night when he'd called. She had the lie ready and told him she'd unplugged the phone from the wall because she didn't want to be disturbed. As if she was regularly pestered in the early hours of the morning by social calls.

But Scott had merely smiled, nodded and said he understood. He'd been worried about her. She'd felt like telling him not to worry about her, that she didn't want him to worry about her. But she had not been able to find the words.

Lies were simpler.

He'd asked her to come for a meal with him when the club shut, but she'd found that another lie had been preferable. She'd told him she had to get home. Her sister was going to call her from America. She hadn't spoken to her for months. She would see him another night.

Maybe.

Carol dipped her hands into the water again and rubbed her face, catching a distorted view of herself in the mist-shrouded bathroom mirror opposite. She wondered what had made her think of the excuse she had used to Scott. Her sister was going to ring her? They hadn't spoken for months. That part at least was true. Carol hadn't spoken to any of her family for some time. She wrote occasionally, when she could be bothered, and her mother sometimes replied.

Sometimes.

The last time she had spoken to her sister, Fiona, had been on her birthday. Fiona was five years younger and worked for a record company in the West End. It was a well-paid job and she had her own flat in Hammersmith. Carol had never even seen the place but she knew that it must be an improvement on her own humble dwelling in the basement flat of a large house in Dollis Hill. There were four other flats above her and she was on nodding terms with the other resident. She even spoke to one of the women who lived on the top floor.

Carol should have hated Fiona. She had often thought that. Fiona had everything she didn't: a good job, a nice place. More than that, she had a future.

There were times, many times, when Carol could see herself this same way in ten years' time, lying in the bath regretting her wasted life. And yet how was she to change itl She sighed, knowing that it was not in her own power to do so. Her fate lay, to a large degree, with men like Plummer. He had wealth, power and influence. He commanded respect. He was her escape route.

And then there was Scott.

She closed her eyes more tightly, as if trying to blot him out of her thoughts. If only it were so easy to remove him from her life. She knew deep down she was afraid to tell him their relationship was over, not because she couldn't bear to speak those words but because she genuinely feared how he would react.

Feared? A little melodramatic, wasn't it?

He'd be hurt for a while but he'd get over it.

Wouldn't he!

Perhaps Zena had been right. She was a bitch.

She pulled herself out of the water and reached for a towel, wrapping it around herself, using another to dry her hair. She padded through into the sitting room and switched on the television. There was a black and white film on one channel, a discussion programme on another. She switched the set off and started drying herself, standing close to the two-bar electric fire that was the only form of heating in the room. She had an electric fire in her bedroom but the radiators on each wall were merely eyesores; they didn't provide the central heating she craved on cold nights like this.

As she was drying her hands she looked at the gold ring Scott had given her, the metal black in places. She ought to clean it.

It could wait.

She finished drying herself and pulled on a long sweater to cover her nakedness, then wandered into the kitchen to make herself a warm drink before she went to bed.

At first she didn't hear the phone ring.

The water was gushing from the tap into the kettle, obliterating all other sounds.

Then she heard it and turned towards the sound coming from the sitting room.

Who the hell was calling her at 1.30 in the morning?

She sighed. Scott. Checking that she was okay.

Why can't you leave me alone?

She put down the kettle and walked back into the sitting room, picking up the receiver.

'Hello,' she said resignedly.

Silence.

'Hello.'

Still no sound.

She felt her heart beat faster.

'I'm watching you.'

The voice cut through her as surely as if it had been cold steel.

She gripped the receiver until her knuckles turned white.

'How did you get this number?' she said quietly, trying to control the fear in her voice.

Silence.

'I know your sort,' she said, her show of bravado fooling neither herself nor the caller.

Only silence greeted her remark.

Slam the phone down.

'I know all about you,' the caller said, and now Carol was certain that it was the same voice as the other night. Not that she'd had much doubt in the first place.

Now she did slam the phone down.

For long seconds she stood looking at it, her eyes fixed to it as if it were some kind of venomous reptile that was about to bite her.

Take it off the hook.

She actually had her hand on the receiver when the phone rang again.

She snatched it up and pressed it to her ear but this time she didn't speak.

She heard a sound at the other end. A wet sound. Like someone licking their lips.

'I'm still watching you,' said the caller. Then he hung up.

Carol stared at the receiver, but all she heard was the dull monotone of a disconnected line.

She didn't put it back on its cradle.

She simply dropped it.

TWENTY-SEVEN

10 MAY 1977

The explosion had been massive.

It had torn away the roof of the kitchen area, sending slates and lumps of stone hurtling skyward like shrapnel. The remains of the structure had simply collapsed in upon itself as if the walls had been made of paper. Tongues of flames thirty feet high had erupted from the wreckage, the pieces of burning debris showering down on the roof of the asylum like fragments of comet, some actually tearing through, others bursting again, causing more havoc, spreading the fire more rapidly than anyone could have imagined.

It took less than six minutes from the initial blast to transform Bishopsgate Institution into a blazing inferno.

The whisper was gas leak, the result was devastation.

The fire brigade had been called and ambulances were outside the building ready to ferry the dead and injured away. The air was alive with a cacophony of sirens and the roaring of flames. Firemen directed jets of water at the flames while their companions struggled to help the staff of the institution evacuate patients.

Smoke, belching from the burning building, hung like a thick black shroud over the blazing asylum. The air was filled with millions of tiny cinders, as if a plague of small flies had infested the air.

Inside his office Doctor Robert Dexter pulled on his jacket and ran out into the corridor. An intern hurtled past him, his white jacket smoke-stained, his hair singed. Dexter could hear screams of rage and fear as he started along the corridor, aware of the acrid stench of burning.