Dead Like You

of the van and the air filled with the scream of the siren. Then, in an instant, the blue lights were gone. Jessie heard the siren recede into the distance.
    No, you idiots, no, no no no, no. Please. Come back! Please come back!
    She slithered across the floor to her left, as the van made a sharp right. Two hard, jarring jolts and it pulled up. She heard the ratchet of the handbrake. Please come back! Then a torch beam flashed into her eyes, momentarily dazzling her.
    ‘Nearly there!’ he said.
    All she could see when he moved the beam away from her face were his eyes through the slits in the hood. She tried to speak to him. ‘Please, who are you? What do you want? Where have you taken me?’ But all that came out was the reverberating moan, like a muffled foghorn.
    She heard the driver’s door open. The engine ticked over with a steady clatter. Then she heard metal clanking – it sounded like a chain. It was followed by the creaking sound of rusty hinges. A gate being opened?
    Then she heard a familiar sound. A soft, rasping buzzing. Hope suddenly sprang up inside her. It was her mobile phone! She’d switched it to silent, vibrate, for her kick-boxing class. It sounded as if it was coming from somewhere up front. Was it on the passenger seat?
    Oh, God, who was it? Benedict? Wondering where she was? It stopped after four rings, going automatically to voicemail.
    Moments later he jumped back in, drove forward a short distance, then jumped out again, once more leaving the engine ticking over. She heard the same creaking sound, then the same metal clanking of a chain again. Wherever they were, they were now on the far side of locked gates, she realized, her terror deepening even more. Somewhere private. Somewhere that police patrols would not drive by. Her mouth was dry and she felt as if she was going to throw up, bile rising in her throat, sharp and bitter. She swallowed it.
    The van lurched, then lurched again – speed humps, she thought – dipped down an incline, sending her sliding forward, her shoulder bashing painfully into something, then rose up, so that she slid back again, helplessly. Then they were driving along a smooth surface, with a steady bump-bump every few moments, like joins in concrete. It was pitch dark in here and he seemed to be driving without lights on.
    For an instant her terror turned to anger, then to wild, feral fury. Let me out! Let me out! Untie me! You have no fucking right to do this! She struggled against her bonds, pulling her wrists, her arms, with all her strength, shaking, thrashing. But whatever was binding them did not budge.
    She lay limp and sniffing air, her eyes filled with tears. She should be at the dinner dance tonight. In her beautiful dress and her new shoes, holding Benedict’s arm as he chatted wittily to her parents, winning them over, as she was sure he would. Benedict had been nervous as hell. She had tried to reassure him that they would be charmed by him. Her mother would adore him and her father, well, he seemed a tough guy when you first met him, but underneath he was a big softie. They would adore him, she had promised him.
    Yeah, right, until they find out I’m not Jewish.
    The van continued its journey. They were turning left now. The headlights came on for a brief second and she saw what looked like the wall of a tall, derelict, slab-like structure with panes of broken glass. The sight sent a vortex of icy air corkscrewing through her. It was like one of the buildings the film Hostel was set in. The building where innocent people who had been captured were taken and tortured by wealthy sadists who paid for the privilege.
    Her imagination was in freefall. She’d always been a horror movie fan. Now she was thinking about all the deranged killers in movies she had seen, who kidnapped their victims, then tortured and killed them at their leisure. Like in Silence of the Lambs , The Texas Chainsaw Massacre , The Hills Have Eyes .
    Her brain was shorting out in terror. She was breathing in short, sharp, panicky bursts, her chest thudding, thudding, thudding, and she was so angry inside.
    The van stopped. He got out again. She heard the rumbling of a metal door, then a terrible grinding of metal against some other hard surface. He climbed back in, slammed his door shut and drove forward, putting his lights on again.
    Have to talk to him, somehow.
    Now she could see through the windscreen that they were inside some vast, disused industrial building, the