Tony Hill u Carol Jordan 08 - Cross and Burn

and the plastic bottle in the door shelf was solid with spoiled milk. ‘Well, that’s one question answered. I don’t believe she ever went to Poland. She’d never have left all this food to go off in the fridge. She certainly didn’t come home at the weekend just in time to be abducted. At the very least she’d have binned this rotten stuff.’
    Tony turned his attention back to the corkboard. A postcard from Ibiza. He unpinned it. ‘Sun shining, booze cheap, plenty guys!!! You should have come. Ashley xxx’ He replaced it. Business cards from a computer repair shop, a Polish deli in Harriestown, a dressmaker specialising in alterations and a taxi firm. The police would check them all, he knew. Chances were high that they would lead nowhere. Although Ashley might be able to colour in some of the background to Nadia’s life.
    There were a couple of flyers for upcoming pub gigs by local bands, a bus timetable for the 183 from Harriestown to Bellwether Square and a cartoon about Polish builders. Finally, he turned his attention to the photographs. A dog-eared and faded colour snap of a wedding party – bride and groom and two presumed sets of parents. ‘Her mum and dad?’
    ‘No reason to think otherwise.’
    Next, three women, arms around each other, in a nightclub or a fun pub, all mugging drunkenly at the camera. The kind of photograph half the women in Britain under thirty had on display, commemorating some celebratory night out with the girls. Tony was about to pass on, but something nagged at him. He took the photo off the board and studied it more closely. ‘The one in the middle,’ he said. ‘She looks familiar. I can’t place her. She’s not someone I know. But I’ve met her somewhere.’ He looked up at Paula, whose expression was unreadable. ‘Do we know who she is?’
    ‘Oh yeah, Tony. We know exactly who she is. She’s the victim.’
    His confusion was obvious. ‘That’s Nadia Wilkowa?’

19

    B ev had no way of measuring how long she’d been conscious inside the freezer. She’d started trying to count the minutes, going from one elephant to sixty then back again, but she couldn’t keep track. Her mind was too busy skittering from one awful possibility to another. And beneath them all, the constant thrum of anxiety about Torin. How would he be coping without her? How would he cope if she never got back to him? Would he go to the police? Would they find her in time? She tried to push the worst of her imaginings away from her, but there was no escaping it. This wasn’t the kind of predicament that generally had a positive ending.
    As well as losing all sense of time, Bev had also given up on dignity. She’d grown uncomfortably conscious of her full bladder but she’d held it in for as long as she could. Then she’d asked herself why she was bothering. She was locked in a chest freezer wearing nothing but a pair of pants that didn’t belong to her. There was nothing dignified in any of that. How could it be worse to be sitting in a puddle of her own piss? If it – literally – pissed off the person who’d put her in here, then score one to her.
    When the light came it was a physical shock. Without warning, the lid of the freezer suddenly lifted and a blaze of brilliant white light stunned her optic nerve. All she had time for was to cross her forearms across her face in a timeless gesture of self-defence and supplication before excruciating pain shot through her body and reduced her muscles to jelly. Completely disorientated, Bev felt herself lifted through the air then dumped face down on the floor. As her senses gradually returned, she was aware of rough cement against her skin. There was some kind of cold cuff round her left ankle and she felt her hands being secured behind her. She opened her mouth to scream but before she could make a sound, a terrible blow to the ribs knocked the air out of her. Strong hands turned her on her back and punched her in the side of the head. Colours flashed behind her eyes and thick pain throbbed through her head. ‘Shut the fuck up, bitch,’ a man’s voice said. It was all the more terrifying for being matter-of-fact.
    And then there was some kind of wide sticky tape smacked into place across her mouth. Bev had no choice but to shut up. She looked up at the man who was doing this to her. Blue overalls, scuffed black work boots. Quite tall, brown hair, blue eyes, bulbous nose, long straight mouth, square chin. Her first thought was to