Woman Last Seen(20)
Clements takes a deep breath, a clear, logical head is paramount. She reminds herself something she was told in her training days. You can’t let it get to you, you can’t let it depress you or drive you mad. She coughs, “The devil is in the details, Tanner.”
Tanner shrugs. No matter what the superior officer says, his mind is made up to the way he wants this to go. Secretly, some part of him is hoping Leigh Fletcher is not only missing but chopped up and hidden under the floorboards somewhere. No, not really. He’s only messing. But sort of. Because he’s never investigated a murder and he’s dying to. Excuse the pun.
If Tanner had more experience, he wouldn’t be so keen. Murder cases are not glamorous, just sad. “Let’s hope this is something and nothing. That Leigh Fletcher is just cooling off after their argument. That she comes home before the end of the evening,” says Clements. But even as she says it, she can’t help but think the absence of a social media platform usually flags a problem. For a woman of Leigh’s age, it is unusual behavior. There were many people who had accounts but don’t show pictures, don’t share much of their lives and just used it as a way to nose about in friends’ and colleagues’ worlds. There were many people who had privacy settings turned up to the max. Forty-three-year-old women that had no presence at all, generally had secrets. They want to be invisible.
8
Leigh
Tuesday 17th March
I’m parched. My wrist aches. My head too. I massage my wrist to get the blood to flow back into it. The pain in my head is unbearable but of course I do bear it, because what choice have I? I touch my skull tentatively, wondering if there might be a sticky gash. There isn’t one but there is a tender bump at the back. Was I struck from behind? Or was I drugged? I think that’s most likely. I don’t know. I feel drugged, dense and opaque, yet at the same time my heart is hammering at a speed that will split me open from inside. Thinking is terrifying, horrifying. More painful than any physical discomfort. Thoughts of what might come next assault me. Dark and dreadful thoughts but I can’t push them away.
Am I going to survive this?
What is going to happen to me?
I do not know what to do. I am without choices and that is alien to me. I always have choices. I am always able to act. But now, at least for the time being, I have to submit. I am locked up by a madman. Of course it is a madman because what sane person locks up another human being? But how mad? What is he going to do to me? My body quivers with shock and fear. I move my left arm and the chain fastening me to the radiator rattles again. I can’t get used to the sound. I’m powerless.
“What do you want with me? Why have you brought me here?” My shaky voice sails out into nothing. Into the space which is at once endless and yet claustrophobic. No response. I’m pretty sure he is just on the other side of the door. I can feel him, sense his menace. He hasn’t said a word to me yet. His silence scares me. The light around the boarded window is fading. Can I have been here a full day? My fear is overpowering and debilitating. I crawl into a ball and cry. I must fall asleep and only realize as much when I wake with a jolt. I guess my body shut down as a defense mechanism but I’m furious at myself for losing any sense of time. Sleeping is careless. I should stay alert. I have to. I notice a bottle of sparkling water has been rolled into the room. Unsteadily I crawl toward it, snatch it up and glug too much of it down, too quickly. I don’t know when more might next be delivered, I should ration myself. So I stop drinking. Or at least try to but as there is nothing else to do in this room, I find I keep taking sips. I can’t stop myself. It seems like some level of control—doing something—even though it is probably the opposite thing to what I should be doing. Self-sabotage. My head is light and I can’t think clearly.
Something switches from flight to fight. Whatever it is seems to be out of my control. I’m nothing more than a quivering bag of fear and adrenalin. “I need some food!” I yell, suddenly furious. Furious more than afraid. “I’m no fucking use to you dead!” I kick the wall I can reach. I immediately regret my outburst. My foot aches. I’m an idiot to injure myself. I need to stay fit, in case an opportunity to escape presents itself. Besides, how do I know I am no use to him dead? I don’t know what this sick creep wants. Maybe starving me to death is his plan. I should be conciliatory. I should be trying to find a connection, that’s what happens on dramas on TV. That’s what locked-up women do. They try to talk to their captors, find something human and empathetic about him.
It’s such bullshit.
Be nice. Be good. Even when you have been abducted and chained. Especially then. I am sore and thirsty and afraid. Mostly that. So fucking afraid. I’m not able to behave as they do on TV. I yank at my chains again. Hard, so I hurt my shoulder. They clank and clash but don’t give at all. “Let me out, let me out!” Silence. I feel like a toddler that has thrown his biggest tantrum and the parent looks on unmoved, but simply—silently—points to the naughty step. I slump. The fight gone almost as fast as it arrived. “Someone will come for me. They will be looking for me,” I insist.
Then I hear the typewriter again. Rat-tat-tat. The rustling. Paper under the door.
Who will come for you? Your husband?
I read the note and freeze. It doesn’t feel like a question. It feels like a taunt.