Deadly Secrets (Detective Erika Foster #6)(80)

Tears filled her eyes, and this gave her energy to fight. She took deep breaths and slowly inched herself up to a sitting position, trying to remember which side of her the blue flame had appeared. She put her head against the bars on the left, and inched herself up. The pain beat through her head, almost overwhelming her. She sucked in more air, deep breaths. He had taken off her jacket, and her hands were bound in front of her from above the wrist and forearm, down to her knuckles. She could feel it was duct tape, by the way it stuck to the fine hairs on her arms.

Something clicked in a far corner on the right, and the blue flame appeared again. Her vision was blurred, but she managed to adjust her eyes and see the outline of a few shapes. The box shape of the boiler high up on the wall. There were several shapes between it and her, and she could see that the cage was on the floor. The flame went out and she was plunged into darkness again.

She felt the nausea return and her back muscles started to cramp painfully, as well as the muscles in the back of her legs. Having her legs bound was bad enough, but the way her arms were bound in front of her, with her hands pointing forward, made it impossible to sit up straight. The cramp got worse and she winced in pain.

Breathe, breathe, breathe. The pain will pass. She gave a muffled cry as the cramps became unbearable. Her shoulders were hunched over, her elbows locked together. She remembered a video she had seen online, some American self-defence dude who had explained what to do if your hands were bound with duct tape. This was another of Celia’s hobbies, going to self-defence classes. She’d wanted Moss to go with her, but it always seemed to clash with work. Celia had shown her this YouTube video… A guy had raised his bound arms above his head, and brought them down so that they hit his stomach, snapping them apart. It was something to do with the tensile strength of duct tape; if you try and pull it one way it just stretches like the strongest chewing gum, but if you use force on it another way it will break cleanly along the ridges.

Moss took a deep breath and went to lift her arms up, but in the darkness, she misjudged the angle and her tightly bound wrists bashed her on the bridge of the nose. She gave a muffled sob, and then began to panic as her nose was flooded with blood. She bent forward, but her wrists were still tightly bound, and she couldn’t breathe. In the darkness, she started to choke on her own blood.





Sixty





T enjoyed the slow walk back through the houses. It gave him time to think. He thought of his life as light and dark. His work with the family portraits was so quaint and down to earth, that he thought of this as the light. Then when he closed the shop and he was alone, he would move through to the darkness.

He had been introduced to the darkness by a girl he’d met fifteen years ago – no, that wasn’t quite right. The darkness had always been there, but Tabitha had teased it out of him, brought it to the fore. He had always thought he was the only person in the world who had violent fantasies, but Tabitha, a young, precocious student had encouraged him to experiment with sex toys and role play. She had encouraged him to tell her his secrets in the darkness.

Tabitha loved being tied up, and they would act out a fantasy where he kidnapped and raped her. At the time, it had felt shocking and daring, but looking back now he knew it was kids’ stuff. Tabitha had been acting. It was only role play. And her acting wasn’t quite good enough. Her fear was wooden and hollow. She was a stepping stone to darker places.

One night, they’d gone to an underground bondage club in Soho. This was where he’d discovered hoods, and breath control, and it also saw the end of his relationship with Tabitha. That night, he’d almost suffocated her. He’d seen real fear in her eyes and he hadn’t been able to stop. He’d managed to dissuade her from going to the police.

Over the next few years, he’d indulged in visits to Amsterdam, where he would go to bondage clubs and buy extreme porn, but he’d quickly found that even the hardest type of porn wouldn’t satisfy him. Then he discovered gas masks, and in particular engaging in sex acts whilst wearing a gas mask, with the breathing drum closed for breath control, or packed with cotton wool soaked in amyl nitrate.

He couldn’t quite remember when the idea came to him to stalk the streets late at night. He’d got high with a guy who he’d invited round to the sex dungeon he had built in his basement. They had somehow ended up in the garden, and then he’d staggered out through the back gate and into the street, where he’d crouched in a dark corner, watching people, hidden from view. The power it had given him was bigger than anything that had come before. He’d got bolder, at first exposing himself to men and women, and then, his first attack.

T slowed as he approached Camera Obscura. He needed time to think. The fact it was a policewoman gave it an extra frisson. After all of the attacks over the years, he had never been caught. He had no police record, they didn’t have his DNA, and he had never even had a parking ticket or points on his licence.

She was there in the basement. She had seen him. If he let her go, it would all be over.

He was a risk-taker. He had already thrown them off the scent. He would have to think about how to dispose of her body. She was a big girl. He doubled back and decided to circle the block again. He needed to think and plan.





Sixty-One





Moss raised her arms in the darkness and brought them down, her wrists hitting her chest. She repeated it again. Her nose was pouring with blood and she was fighting to breathe. On the third attempt, her wrists snapped apart and her elbows slammed into the bars. She didn’t care about the pain and reached up with her numb fingers, ripping off the piece of duct tape covering her mouth. She gagged and spat and managed to pull huge gulps of air into her lungs.