I look in the footwell for anything I can use as a weapon. An empty coke can, a bottle opener, a thick AA map book. Underneath the book is a glimpse of white. Slowly, carefully, I reach down and push the map book out of the way. Beneath it is a white phone charging cable. I stretch out my hand towards it and manage to grasp the end in my fingers. If I could somehow loop that around his headrest, around his neck, and pull tight enough he would have to stop the car and if I can keep the pressure on—
‘Keep your hands where I can see them,’ he says over his shoulder. ‘And keep your eyes shut, like I told you.’
I drop the cable onto the floor and return my hand to the back of the sling.
I count sets of sixty in my head as we drive; I’ve counted fifteen minutes when I feel the car slowing to a stop. I hear Dominic’s door open, the creaking of metal on metal, then the slam as he gets back in. The car moving off, more slowly this time, taking a series of turns close together and then a long slow loop. From my position, flat on the back seat, I can see the top of a roof, a large building, industrial grey, streaked with dirt and green stains reaching down from the roof line.
Finally, Dominic kills the engine and gestures at me to sit up. We’re in a large car park but there isn’t a single other vehicle: hundreds of spaces, all empty, just drifts of leaves and plastic bags and other rubbish stirred gently by the early evening breeze. We’re parked close to the back door of a large high-sided building with no windows, some kind of warehouse, three or four storeys high. It looks abandoned.
‘What is this place?’
As soon as I shuffle out of my seat and climb out of the car, he reaches up and puts some kind of hood over my head. My world goes dark, the cool afternoon air replaced with a reek of dirt and body odour. Something else too, coppery and sharp. His strong grip encircles my upper arm and pulls me forward, Mia’s head still just visible through a gap at the bottom of the hood, glimpses of cracked concrete and paving slabs beneath my shuffling feet. The squeal of rusted hinges as a door opens, closes, a change in the atmosphere. A smell of neglect, of wet carpet and rot, stale air and decay, dark carpet tiles under my feet as we move into the building. Sounds are muffled because of the hood but I can hear the soft padding of our footsteps echoing back to us in the silence. Dominic leads me straight on before pulling me into a left turn, then a right, until I feel him pause.
‘Stairs,’ he says.
I take them slowly, one hand groping for a banister rail and the other around Mia’s back in case I stumble, the echo of our shoes tapping back to us against a roof some way above. We turn left at the top of the stairs, another long corridor that smells strongly of damp and mouldering carpet. The flat tapping sound of dripping water. There is another left turn and then he pulls me through a door and slams it shut, the solid click of a lock turning.
He pulls me forward again, turns me until my legs are backed up against something.
‘Sit.’
I sit back slowly onto something spongy and uneven. I can hear him moving around, putting things down, the click of a light switch. Through the bottom of the hood I can see Mia’s peaceful face as she dozes, her head lolling against the baby harness. Then, without warning, Dominic rips the hood from my head and I blink in the sudden brightness. I’m on a stained orange sofa in a large room, the opposite wall made up entirely of glass. The place is – or was – a meeting room of some kind, with a long table in the centre surrounded by orange chairs. Orange fabric sofas against three walls. Above us, circling the room, are poster-sized caricatures of men and women, orange tans and shoulder pads and huge exaggerated grins. Some tattered and ripped, others merely faded with time. A few of the faces look vaguely familiar. Actors? Game show hosts? The whole place has a 1980s faded showbiz feel to it, a sense of former glories long past. It’s a mess, strewn with belongings: clothes, plastic bags, sheets of paper. There’s an old sofa in the corner with a sleeping bag on it, a small camping stove on the floor beside it with tins of food. Dominic is clearing a space at the end of the long meeting table.
‘Put the baby on the sofa over there,’ he says without looking at me.
I stay where I am, both hands around Mia’s back. I have to keep her close, to make sure we don’t get separated.
‘She’s still sleeping,’ I say quietly. ‘I can keep her in the sling for a bit longer.’
He pulls the black pistol from his waistband and holds it casually down by his side, staring at me with red-rimmed eyes.
‘I’m not going to tell you again.’
I stand and lift Mia gently out of the sling, laying her down against the back edge of the sofa so she doesn’t roll off, putting the toy octopus on a muslin cloth next to her. She snuffles and frowns but doesn’t wake.
‘Now take off your jacket, your shoes and your watch,’ he says. ‘Empty your handbag on the table and take everything out of the rucksack.’
‘Whatever’s happened between you and Kathryn, there must be a way to make it right,’ I say. ‘But you can’t take it out on Mia. Please.’
He goes to the sofa and holds the pistol over the baby’s sleeping form, the black muzzle barely a foot from her little chest.
My heart rises up into my mouth.
‘OK, OK, please, I’ll do it.’
‘This is going to get boring really quickly if you want to have a discussion every time I ask you to do something. And sooner or later, I don’t know, my finger might slip.’ He mimes the recoil of the pistol going off. ‘Boom.’
‘Don’t,’ I say quickly. ‘Please don’t do that. Please.’
I do as he asks, placing everything on the table.
‘Now put your arms out just like you’re at the airport.’
He leans in close and pats me down, rough but thorough, running his hands down my front and back, arms and legs, the smell of stale cigarettes strong on his breath. He tells me to sit down again, duct taping my wrists together behind me. He takes off his baseball cap, dark ginger hair flattened against his head. He runs a hand through it, back and forth, raking his fingers across his scalp, then starts to go through my handbag, examining each item as if it might hold some hidden secret. Opening the lipsticks, flicking through the diary, emptying everything out of my purse and feeling inside the bag’s fabric lining.
I study him while he works. He is heavy with muscle, thick knots of it around his shoulders and arms. His beard is too long to be smart, but not long enough to be an actual full beard. Ragged and uneven, more like he has simply stopped shaving and hasn’t bathed in a while. There are deep, dark shadows beneath his eyes.
‘What are you looking for?’ I say. ‘Because whatever it is, I haven’t got it.’
‘You’re not carrying ID?’
‘I’m not at work today.’
‘And where do you work?’
‘I told you, I’m a project manager for an aerospace and defence company.’
He grunts.
‘If you say so.’
Mia gurgles, awake now, and I instinctively try to stand to check on her.
‘Sit.’ He stares at me, his eyes hard.
Slowly I sit back down as he takes a knife from his jacket pocket. It has a short, wide blade and he goes to work with it on my shoes, a pair of soft brown loafers, prising at the heel and the leather inner. As I watch, he works the blade into a gap and saws back and forth until the whole heel comes free with a snap. He studies it, turning it over in his hand, before throwing it towards an overflowing rubbish bag in the corner.