Tony Hill u Carol Jordan 08 - Cross and Burn

than that?

13

    B ev felt as if she was swimming upwards through something thick and heavy. Not heavy like mud. More like milkshake or emulsion paint. Her limbs felt weighted down, the world impenetrably black. It slowly dawned on her that her eyes were closed. But when she opened them, nothing changed. Her head throbbed when she moved it, but she forced herself to turn it back and forth, yet still there was absolutely nothing to be seen. The thought drifted through her muzzy brain that this must be what a black hole was like. Black, black and more black beyond that.
    Slowly the wooziness lifted, enough for her to understand that this darkness was something to fear, not simply wonder at. As the fog of unconsciousness dispersed Bev tried to make sense of where she was and what had happened to her. Her head hurt and there was a sickly sweet taste at the back of her throat. The last thing she remembered was opening the boot of her hatchback to stow a couple of bags of groceries she’d picked up on the way home. After that, nothing. A blank. A terrifying blank.
    She had no way of knowing how long she’d been unconscious. Minutes? No, surely more than minutes. Wherever she was, it wasn’t the car park at Freshco. Hours, then? How many hours? What was Torin thinking? Was he afraid? Was he angry with her? Did he think she’d abandoned him and gone off to have fun without letting him know? What would he do without her? Would he raise the alarm or would he be too scared of what might happen to him without her? The thoughts scampered in her head like a hamster on a wheel. Christ, she had to get a grip.
    ‘OK. Don’t think about Torin. Put it behind you and move on.’ She said the words aloud then wished she hadn’t. Wherever she was, the acoustic was dead, her voice flat and muffled. Still determined to keep her fear at arm’s length, Bev decided it would make sense to discover the limits of her location. She was sitting down, on a smooth surface. That realisation led to another. She wasn’t wearing her trousers, socks or shoes any more. Her hand crept down her body. She was wearing her own bra, but the lower underwear definitely wasn’t hers. Skimpy lacy panties were not her style. Lace made her itch, and she liked loose-fitting cotton against her skin. She refused to think about what that meant.
    It was just flesh, when you got right down to it. She’d had no knowledge, no emotional engagement with anything that had happened while she was unconscious. In a sense, she told herself, it was no more a violation than any surgical procedure carried out under general anaesthetic. Most people would freak out if they had to witness what was done to their bodies on the operating table. Ignorance wasn’t only bliss, it was what allowed them to be grateful for the surgeon’s knife. Bev could manage ignorance, she was pretty sure of that.
    She explored the surface she was sitting on. Smooth, cool but not cold. When she moved her leg, it was warm from where her flesh had been resting. She extended her arms slowly, but couldn’t straighten them. Then she slid down till her feet hit the far end of her prison. She moved one foot around and realised there was a sort of step there. Finally, she returned to a sitting position. There were a few inches between her head and the immovable top of what she had to admit to herself was a box. A metre wide, a metre and a half long and a little over a metre high. Plastic lined. A softer plastic seam round the top that made it light-tight, and presumably airtight too. With what felt like a step at one end. The only thing she could think of that fitted the description was a chest freezer.
    She was locked inside a chest freezer.
    Bev wasn’t someone who panicked easily, but realising where she was set her heart pounding in terror. If the person who had put her here wanted to kill her, all they had to do was flick a switch and let hypothermia do the job for them.
    Or just wait till the air ran out.

14

    T he middle of the afternoon wasn’t the best time to get the undivided attention of anyone in the pharmacy at Bradfield Cross Hospital. Especially on a day when they were short a member of staff. But then, from what Paula had gathered from Dr Elinor Blessing and from Bev herself, there wasn’t a spell during the working day when the pharmacists and their assistants weren’t run off their feet. The accurate filling of hospital prescriptions was a process that never let up. Sometimes Paula