Dark Corners: A Novel by Rendell Ruth

Author:Rendell, Ruth [Rendell, Ruth]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: Fiction - Crime
ISBN: 9781501119422
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2015-10-27T05:00:00+00:00

South of the river, Redhead and the squat little man who had been the driver came into the garage, switched a light on and opened the nearside rear door of the car. Lizzie heard Redhead call the other man Scotty, and thought how stupid he must be to reveal his name to her. Then, with a sob, she understood that he might do this if he didn’t care if she knew his name. He didn’t care because he meant to kill her.

Redhead got in the driving seat while Scotty got in the back with her. When he undid the gag, Lizzie had a strange feeling in her mouth and throat. It was like a block on her voice so that all she could do, no matter how she tried, was grunt and gasp like an animal.

‘Gone loco,’ said Scotty.

‘Good. Don’t want her screaming the fucking place down.’

The clock on the dashboard had showed Lizzie that it was a quarter past three in the morning. Redhead reversed the car out of the garage and into Abbotswood Road. In silence, Lizzie laid her head back against the upholstery.

Fear of urinating was keeping her silent and tense. She contracted her muscles as if they were fists closing tightly. It was called a sphincter, she thought; this was what kept her bladder holding it in. If her urine leaked out of her in front of them, she thought she would die. Tears trickled from her eyes. If only the water from her eyes would take some of the water that wanted to pour out of her bladder. Was that the way it worked? Redhead was turning the car into a row of marked-out parking places at the foot of a squalid-looking block of social housing. She had no idea where they were. She didn’t care, concentrating only on holding her sphincter tight shut.

No one was about. Redhead and Scotty took her inside and up a flight of stone stairs, holding her between them. If someone had followed them, he or she would have seen the handcuffs still on Lizzie’s wrists. No one was there to see.

Let into a flat by Scotty, she said, ‘Toilet,’ and Redhead pushed her through a door, slamming it behind her. The relief was so great, the joy, that for a moment she was almost happy, taking great breaths, indifferent to her cuffed hands, leaning her upper body forward to press on to her knees.

Scotty was outside the door, but even so she couldn’t have gone anywhere. If your hands were tied behind your back, it was as bad as tying your feet, worse maybe. Scotty walked her into a living room, holding her shoulders. Redhead was in there, talking on his phone. He put it down when he saw her. Had he been talking to her parents?

‘They haven’t got any money,’ Lizzie said.

‘What you on about?’ Scotty pushed her down on to a battered and ragged couch. ‘He was talking to his husband.’

So they were gay. Or Redhead was. And very likely Scotty too.

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