Page 41

FORTY

RUTH

Ruth reached up in the darkness, her fingers feeling through her damp scalp, sticky and hot. She tried to call out, but her mouth was covered. Her heart began pounding and her breaths quickened. She’d never been in such a dark room in her life. Her house was in the country and she could see the stars normally, not like when you enter a town or city. She’d never seen a darkness so black, though. Maybe her eyes hadn’t adjusted to it. She widened them and blinked a few times, but still she couldn’t see even the tiniest fleck of light.

Bringing her hands to her mouth, she tried to pull the rag that was tied around her head, but it was too tight. She flinched as her fingers explored the egg-like lump on her skull. With shaking hands, she felt for a knot to untie and she soon found it. She pulled and prodded until her index finger found a loop.

After a little persistence, she managed to loosen the rag enough to bring the whole thing over her head. She spat the ball of material out and shouted, ‘Let me out.’

Not that pleading with her kidnapper would do any good.

She screamed out in rage, but her voice broke into silence as the hoarseness won. She needed water and she needed to clean her bloodied knee. Pain flashed through her head.

Where was she? She had to feel her way around. Maybe there was some water in the room.

She jiggled a little, her joints creaking on the softness underneath. She must have stiffened up while unconscious, but then again, after being grabbed and hit hard, she thought she’d died.

Reaching out, she couldn’t feel anything. She wondered if she’d be able to stand.

What if she was in a box? She began to hyperventilate. Or a coffin? Or a tiny hidden cupboard in a cellar that was hidden by shelves and a pretend wall?

She’d watched a lot of films.

She scrambled out of the bed, warming her muscles a little more and she managed to turn onto her sore knees, with her hands pressed into the softness. She bounced slightly, and a spring that poked through narrowly missed stabbing her in the wrist. It was definitely a mattress.

As she moved more, a musty smell started to waft up: sweat, metallic like blood, a hit of urine – it dawned on her. Her kidnapper had told her they knew where Elissa was. They had seemed distressed and she had so desperately wanted to see her daughter again.

It had all been a lie. She stood on her knees, reaching upward. There was nothing above, at least no box top. She grabbed what felt like a stone wall beside her and used it to steady herself as she stood on the mattress. Another spring popped through, stabbing her bare foot. Letting out a cry, she stepped to the side, feeling the wall as she reached the end of the softness.

That’s when she felt the stone wall change to a cold, smooth, surface.

It was a door.

She kneeled back down, letting out a little cry as her open flesh pressed against the rough material, then she went to put a leg over the end of the bed to get off, but there was no bed, it was just a mattress.

Standing, she felt for the door handle, and as soon as she reached it, she pulled it down, but the door was locked. Following the walls with her hands, she kicked something and it clattered along the floor. With exploring fingers, she managed to grab the item by its cold rim and a knot formed in her throat.

It was a bucket.

She carefully navigated around the bucket, and as she started feeling along the next wall, she came across a wide bar sticking out of the wall. Pulling it, she wondered if she could use it as a weapon, but it was firmly fixed to the wall. About a foot above it was another one, and there was another below.

It was a ladder built into the wall.

She gripped the rung above and began climbing until her head almost hit the ceiling. With one hand, she began to feel whatever the ladders led to: it was some sort of hatch that she couldn’t push up.

She was underground.

‘Help, help,’ she began to scream, her whole body now trembling. ‘I can’t breathe,’ she yelled as she struggled to take a breath.

Tears began to form in her eyes and in her mind – she was really high up, even though she’d only climbed about six rungs. She’d also never known how a person could feel so dizzy in pitch-darkness.

Her loud sobs filled the air. ‘Get me out. I just want to see Elissa. You promised you’d tell me what happened. Please .’

Slipping down the rungs, she fell to the ground, winded by the hard, cold floor. On all fours, she headed back towards the metal door and began pounding until she had no energy – or tears – left.

Was her kidnapper ever coming back?

Panic began to build. Not again.

She took a few deep breaths. The one thing she couldn’t allow to happen was for her to lose her mind, because right now her sanity was all she had. ‘Elissa!’ she called out.

A buzzing sound caught her attention. She tried and failed to hold her breath so she could listen out for whatever was happening. Something was changing or moving. Was the room moving? Disorientation was her enemy in the absence of her kidnapper.

Standing with her feet freezing on the floor and her back cold against the door, all she could hear now was the hammering of her heart. The boom, boom, boom filled her ears and she needed it to stop. No, she didn’t need her heart to stop. That was a bad thought. What if her thoughts mattered and controlled what happened next? Take it back. She didn’t want her heart to stop. Her rambling thoughts were becoming erratic. She couldn’t die from thoughts. Was it the beginning of the end for her sanity?

Who had taken her? It was definitely a man. A blur of a thought hit her: he had taken her in a van and she had been struck on the head. That’s where everything went blank. Then she woke up in the hellhole she was stuck in now.

She screamed another hoarse scream and banged the door again.

What could she recall? She’d been to Eric’s and she’d seen from afar that he had a wife and a beautiful house. Would he even notice that she was missing if she didn’t answer his calls? She hated him so much but now she hoped he’d turn up at the house to talk. Then he might realise something was wrong and alert the police.

Would he even call the police? That would mean giving a statement and might risk his wife discovering his cheating. She wondered if she’d ever meant anything to him. Had she been nothing more than a challenge? Now that she thought about it, he proposed when she was having doubts about being with him. It was just a tool to keep her as his other woman. He was never going to marry her. She had to resign herself to the fact that Eric wasn’t going to be the one to tell the police she was missing and she wasn’t due in work for two days. Her colleagues wouldn’t even notice her absence.

She recalled an argument with Gary, something about a chess piece. No, the argument was about Eric and then he mentioned a chess piece on her doorstep. Then there was Gary’s house. She went over and his chess set was on the table.

It was his chess piece all along. He did this.

She must be at the farm that Gary worked at. They had an old bunker that had been there since the war. She had to be in that bunker.

Gary had told her in the past that he often went down there to hide when he wanted to shirk off his duties at the farm.

If only they knew.

‘Gary, don’t do this, please!’ she yelled.

Exhaling, she gasped. She didn’t tell anyone that Gary had been a bad husband. She remembered when Elissa was a baby and they rented a holiday cottage in the middle of nowhere. Mobile phones were expensive and neither of them had one and there wasn’t a house phone. He had taken the car and left her for a whole night on her own, locked in that cottage and not saying a word about where he’d gone. He’d been angry as she’d smiled at the man who served them at the petrol station. It was all making sense now. He used Elissa to lure her into his trap. He was so jealous of Eric – Ruth knew he’d locked her up, just like back then in the cottage.

She screamed again, knowing she was nothing more than a pawn in the sick game Gary was playing. As soon as she escaped her situation, she was going to kill Gary with her bare hands. She couldn’t think of another person on earth who she hated as much, not even the lying, cheating scumbag, Eric.

What if Gary had taken their daughter? No, that was stupid.

Or was it?

Her heart began to ramp up again. She had called the police because she recognised the scarf that she saw on the news. They would call her back. They knew who she was and they’d be able to locate her or trace her phone.

Patting her clothes down, she realised she no longer had her phone. Her kidnapper had taken it. She gasped and held a hand to her heart.

That noise again.

She glanced in the direction it came from and a red light came on. It had to be a camera.

The crackling sound made her flinch and the sound of a child’s voice filled the air.

‘Don’t be scared, silly. It’s just a game.’

The child’s giggles echoed through the room.