Bitter Pill, page 28
In an act of desperation, she tried to leverage the glass against the hard bone of her leg, pushed the neck of the bottle with the palm of her hand as hard as she could.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” she cried, as the bottle slipped and she felt the glass slice her flesh. She clutched her leg, felt the warmth of her blood running down her leg as a new pain took hold, fell back on the cold floor, hands to her face as the sobs came.
But one cable tie was gone!
As the realization hit her, she clenched her fists with elation, felt a new rush of adrenaline. With more room to maneuver, she stood up and wrenched the chair around her leg as hard as she could, turning and opening a gap between her skin and the unbroken cable tie. Gritting her teeth, she slid the glass in the space and cracked off her bond.
She was free.
She righted the chair and listened. No noise.
CLUELESS
Captain Vermaak returned to the Wynberg Police Station, her ears ringing from an uitkak session delivered by her superior, Joseph Zoli, commander of the Peninsula Narcotics and Sexual Offences Squad. On a Saturday, nogal.
A UCT student, Jacqui Simpson, had disappeared somewhere between Thursday night and Friday morning after an argument with her boyfriend at a Rondebosch establishment called Panthers. The girl’s mother had reported her daughter missing on the Friday afternoon after her housemate had called her. The worried woman had been palmed off with the usual “Give it twenty-four hours and I’m sure she’ll appear” one-two, but she hadn’t been deterred. By that evening, she’d stirred up a nest of university warders and counselors.
Simpson was a star student, on the Dean’s list. The press caught wind of the story and the Saturday Argus ran a story headlined: STUDENT FEARED MISSING IN RONDEBOSCH.
A chronological diary of recent drink-spiking allegations appeared in a sidebar to the article. In an interview, Mrs. Elizabeth Euchus, the warden of Tugwell Hall, stated that drink spiking had become an unchecked crisis on campus yet the SA police refused to take their concerns seriously.
“Fokken spike this, spike that,” Vermaak muttered.
Typical. It couldn’t have happened at a worse time. On the same night as Simpson’s disappearance, detectives from her unit had staked out the Blue Venus Nightclub and Bar, caught a barman in the act of adding an illicit substance to a patron’s drink. The barman was in custody.
Also typical was Zoli’s outburst after picking up flack in the press. He hadn’t reacted positively to one single announcement of the unit’s successes in the last year, but on the first whiff of a bad smell in a headline, he had the baseball bat out and was looking for heads.
Another weekend ruined.
Vermaak balled her fist, looked malevolently across her desk at a young man at the other end of the table: Jacqui Simpson’s boyfriend, the bugger who had let his girlfriend walk home on her own in the middle of the night. Hadn’t even known she was missing until the cops came knocking. Vermaak couldn’t decide what she detested more: the piercing in his nose or the black T-shirt with skulls and crossbones that he wore.
“She wasn’t pissed,” the boyfriend told Vermaak. When they’d picked him up at his house, they’d searched his house.
“So you just let her walk home, then? Alleen. What kind of man behaves like this?” she accused. She’d almost said poes—by the tone of her voice may as well have.
He glared back at her defensively, feeling her contempt.
“It wasn’t, like, far. And I didn’t make her to go, hey. When Jacqui wants to do something, you can’t stop her, you know.”
“What was the argument about?”
Vermaak had a meeting at the university scheduled for 3 pm. During the flipping rugby. She was dreading it. She’d already spoken to the barmen on duty at Panthers, but there didn’t seem to be a connection. She had no intelligence to suggest that the Panthers barmen were linked to the activities at the Blue Venus in any way, and the CCTV camera footage that recorded Jacqui Simpson arguing with her boyfriend outside the entrance to the pub a little after midnight seemed to show her angry, determined, and fully functional; not the actions of someone under the influence of roofies or GHB.
“Go after that fucking boyfriend,” Joseph Zoli had advised Vermaak. “Whatever it takes. Nine times out of ten, the boyfriend knows.”
The boyfriend didn’t have a car, drove a Vuka scooter. Quite difficult to cart a reluctant victim or a body around on one of those, Vermaak mused sourly while considering Zoli’s advice.
She had dealt with enough kidnappings in her time. First thing to establish was whether it was a genuine kidnapping, not just someone wanting to disappear for a while. Maybe the girl was trying to give the boyfriend a scare? Maybe she got hit by a car and was in hospital somewhere, a Jane Doe?
Unlikely. Vermaak’s officers had made enough calls to rule out both options. The big policewoman knew this was the real deal.
Next was to establish whether the victim was alive or dead. Harder to work out with the facts at hand, so Vermaak listened for that little voice from somewhere, perhaps the victim’s, whispering in her ear. From what she could work out, the girl was smart, had her head screwed on—the boyfriend was obviously just a phase—and her cop’s intuition was telling her Jacqui Simpson was alive.
Somewhere deep inside her, the passion of the job was stirring. She had to find her. Zoli may be a first-class asshole, but Vermaak knew he’d been right to call her in.
“She was fucking acting up,” the boyfriend hissed.
He had a sneering face; Vermaak wanted to stick her fist in it. She wanted to ask Mrs. Simpson what type of mother lets her daughter go out with a sniveling shit like this.
Earlier, after Vermaak had left the other officers at Panthers and traced the missing girl’s likely route toward Tugwell residence, she’d spotted three security cameras along the way that should have filmed her. Turned out, one was non-operational—just for show—and they couldn’t yet access the premises of the shop guarded by another; the manager was out of town for the weekend. But they’d got lucky at the third, outside the Baxter Theatre.
“You know anyone with a red BMW?” Vermaak asked the boyfriend.
His mouth curled. “Fucking maybe,” he replied defiantly, stared back at her.
“We think she got picked up by a red BMW.”
Baxter security had reacted swiftly to locate the relevant backup, and Vermaak had been able to view footage from a camera covering the intersection of Main and Burg roads. Twenty-five minutes after midnight on Thursday night, a red BMW had slowed and turned that corner. A couple of minutes later, a girl matching Jacqui Simpson’s description followed the same path. The BMW’s plates were not immediately distinguishable, but they got a reasonable impression of one. Vermaak was hoping for immediate feedback from the digital lab in Pretoria. Zoli had pulled some strings to get them moving.
She’d faxed the impression to a motor-head at the Bellville office, who’d identified the model as a mid-nineties 525i.
“I don’t know anyone with a red BMW,” said the boyfriend.
“Would she have hitched a ride?”
“No way,” the boyfriend replied. Emphatic. “Sides, she was almost at her place anyway.”
Vermaak looked at her watch. It was more than thirty-six hours since the abduction. The voice in Vermaak’s head was getting softer.
AMBUSH
Julian Lynch returned from Cavendish Square. He’d bought three days’ worth of provisions: ready-made cottage pie—Terri loved it—milk, cheese, eggs, bread, tea and washing powder. In the clothing section, he’d bought a red silk nightie. He would ask Terri to wear the nightie while he washed her clothes.
He unpacked the groceries, made a sandwich with cheese, and settled into his study, kicking off his loafers and thumping on the trap door with his bare foot.
“I’m home,” he said, but he knew she couldn’t hear.
He sat down at his desk and opened his journal. He’d wanted to listen to the original version of the Nirvana track Polly off Bleach, but his zone controller was on the blink. Either way, he couldn’t pipe the music into the cellar, which was something of a disappointment.
Staring at the first page of his journal, a picture of his sister Estelle framed in the center, he considered that it was time he moved on from it. He tore out the page and then screwed it up.
I’m with Terri now.
Next was Holly. Beloved Holly—the picture an official school photo from a couple of years before. When had he last been allowed to speak to her? he wondered. It seemed like years. Of course he followed her progress so closely, still went to her recitals and her netball games when he could, watching from a distance, but as he stared at her beautiful face, he acknowledged within himself that his bitch of an ex-wife had managed to cut her off from him completely. Would she even recognize him if she saw him?
He wrenched the page and crumpled it furiously into a ball. Then another page, and another, until no written pages remained in his journal. All his favorite girls cleansed. He gathered the balls of screwed-up paper and dumped them into the fireplace, lifted a fire starter from the mantelpiece and lit the remnants of his journal.
Watching the orange flames, he felt satisfied. He had eradicated his past in one swift motion. There was only the future to look forward to.
Jacqui tensed as she heard the trap door unlock and a thin shaft of light enter the cellar. Lynch looked down on her.
“Sorry to have kept you waiting so long,” he said. “Is everything OK?”
He didn’t turn on the light.
Jacqui remained motionless, mentally charging herself, the jagged bottleneck gripped tightly behind her back. She’d left the broken cable ties around her ankles and loosened the straps on her high-heeled shoes, ready to kick them off in a hurry.
“I’m taking orders for dinner,” he said.
She stared straight ahead. Prayed she was aligned in the exact spot he’d left her, prayed he wouldn’t notice anything amiss. Her heart was pounding so loudly she was scared he could hear it.
“Would you like some more cottage pie?”
“That would be nice, Julian,” she replied. She glanced up briefly. His black eyes stared down at her.
“It smells like you used the bowl,” he said.
“I couldn’t. I had to just go. I’m tied up, remember?”
“Of course. Would you like me to…help you clean up?”
“Yes. Please.”
She heard the trap door slide across, the creak of the ladder. The flick of the switch as the naked bulb illuminated the cellar. Jacqui sucked in her breath.
You can’t see anything unusual, you can’t see anything unusual.
Six steps. She heard each creaking footfall on the ladder, then his bare feet appeared on the concrete. She kept her eyes on the floor.
He paused. What’s he doing?
“How did the bowl get over here?” he asked.
Fuck! The bowl.
In the darkness, she’d tried to rearrange the room as best she could; had forgotten about the damned bowl.
She looked up and flicked her fringe out of her eyes.
“I must have kicked it,” she said.
Lynch took a step forward, bent to pick up the bowl.
“I’ll need to take off your—”
Gripping the broken bottle as tightly as she could in her right hand, she lunged at him, aiming at his eye. He reacted late, taken aback, and the glass gorged into the flesh of his cheek. Lynch cried out, dropping the bowl with a clatter and staggering backwards in shock.
“What the fuck!” he bellowed, holding a hand to his face. The sharp spear of glass had pierced into his gum, dislodging two teeth; blood filled his mouth and seeped down his chin.
Summoning all her aggression, Jacqui kicked out of her shoes and rushed at him, feinting with the broken bottle. Lynch stepped back smartly, one hand on his cheek, the other palm forward, open and defensive.
“Move back,” she commanded, her voice shrill. She wanted him away from the steps. Lynch stepped back, face aghast, glancing from the girl to his bloodied hands and back.
“Terri, how could you?”
“Move! Away from the steps!” she screamed, thrusting back and forth with the bottle neck.
Lynch took another step backwards, skidded on the glass shards from the broken bottles, bellowed again as the sole of his foot was sliced open.
Jacqui dashed for the ladder. One step, two steps, three steps.
Lynch lunged at her through the slats of the ladder, grabbed the stockings on her inner thigh. She jabbed down with the bottleneck as he ripped through the gauzy fabric. He had a grip on her leg, his heavy weight too much for her; she felt herself being pulled downwards. A second wild thrust of the bottle caught him in the fleshy side of his arm, breaking his grip.
Four steps, five steps, six steps—she lifted herself through the trap door and into the study.
“Help me!” she screamed. “Someone please help me!”
Lynch came clattering up behind her, too late to shut the trap door. She bolted, slipped on the wooden floor as she raced through the study and into the lounge.
“Help me!”
Lynch hauled himself through the trap door.
She sprinted to the front door, her injured leg crying out in agony. Tried to open it.
Locked. No key.
“Shit, shit, shit!”
She rattled at the door as hard as she could.
Lynch moved surprisingly quickly for his size. As she turned, he was on her, leading with his right fist; he turned it away at the last moment and knocked the girl clean off her feet with the edge of his elbow.
HANGOVER
Robbie Cullen opened one gummed eye, then the other. For several seconds he didn’t know where he was. A dim grey light filtered through the curtains of his room.
“Whoa,” he moaned. “My head.”
He was fully clothed. When he tried to sit up, the room spun uncontrollably; he thought he would vomit. He closed his eyes and fell back on the pillow, tried to ignore the nausea.
His radio clock blinked the time at him: 8:15 am. What the hell? The last thing he recalled was being with Fallon in his room the previous afternoon. Shit! He must have been asleep for fourteen or fifteen hours.
Fallon. Through the haze of hangover, he could smell her vanilla perfume in his room. He slipped back into unconsciousness, wondering what had happened.
He woke a moment later—except the clock now said 9:40 am—with pins and needles in his left arm, head still throbbing. The bed sheets were on the floor. Never again, he swore, reaching for his pack of KGB hangover pills; the pain would take more than a greasy breakfast to resolve.
Before he could pop the pills, though, he felt the wave of clammy nausea return. He scrambled out of bed in a rush to get to the communal bathroom, fumbled with the key to his door, realized it was unlocked, sprinted down the corridor and made it into an empty stall just as the vomit spilled from his mouth.
A minute later, as he sat on the stall floor, leaning on the toilet seat and spitting yellow oysters of bile into the cistern, it occurred to Robbie that he hadn’t puked since first year. He’d never really been that guy.
What the hell happened to me yesterday?
The question ran through his mind as he cleaned up as best he could, then as he undressed and as he sat forlornly under the good shower head, water gushing down. Returning wet and naked to his room, clothes under his arm, he still couldn’t work it out.
He scanned his desk for an explanatory note, spotted the cause of his cranial damage: the empty bottle of Single Barrel.
Got to be kidding!
He couldn’t believe he’d blown his evening with Fallon by getting pissed. Or that he’d managed to get so drunk on half a bottle of whiskey.
And yet Robbie couldn’t even remember Fallon leaving. Jesus, he must have passed out right in front of her. She must think him a complete child.
After dumping his clothes into the wash bag behind the door, Robbie’s phone rang: his mother. She launched into a monologue of news from the Albany district. Robbie half listened, still trying to work out what had happened the night before. With his mother prattling on, he noticed his elephant-hair bracelet was missing.
“Uh, mom,” Robbie tried to temper the download of information.
“Darling?”
“How’s Dad?” he asked. He lifted the sheets that had fallen onto the floor.
“Oh. He’s fine. You know your father. But how are you, Robbie? You doing well?”
Well?
Robbie could still taste the bile in the back of his throat. Besides the nausea, there was another creeping feeling nagging at him. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it.
“You’re not still missing Melanie, are you?”
Robbie rubbed his wrist, the sunless stripe a reminder of the bracelet’s absence.
“It’s important to enjoy your student years,” his mother went on. “I love Melanie, of course, you know. But I think it is good for you to experience life. To have fun.”
Fun? Let me see.
Robbie shook out the sheets, looking for his missing bracelet.
I got paid five grand for saving some CIA-type chick in a bar. That was fun. But the barmen want to break my head with baseball bats.
And I got a surprise blow job in the shower. Which was sure fun at the time, but I didn’t know the lips belonged to a stripper. Oh, and that it was filmed and posted on YouTube for all my friends to laugh at.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Robbie replied.
“Are you, Robbie. Really?” His mother was always the amateur psychologist.
I’m so fine I can barely stand up. I don’t really want to share this, Mom, but my body feels strange and I have no idea whether I had sex with the CIA-type chick last night or not. Good enough?
“Yes, mother. I’m good. No problems.”
