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  A quick glance at Dale and she saw something in her expression that said her friend was doing her best to get the rope untied on her wrists. If she could get them free she was close enough to grab the knife again.

  ‘Come on, Howard,’ Lotte said teasingly. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve never dreamt about me sucking your cock?’

  She knew she was winning because he licked his lips and the look in his eyes was excited rather than vicious. She stepped closer to him and ran her hands over the front of his trousers. He was rock hard and she nudged him back towards the bed, silently willing Dale to undo her ties and come to her rescue.

  Howard sat on the edge of the bed. Unfortunately he had Dale right in his line of vision, but Lotte could only hope he might close his eyes before long.

  ‘What have we got here?’ she said as she slowly unzipped his trousers. She felt quite sick at the thought of what she had to do; all she could hope for was that Dale would get loose quickly.

  She reached into his trousers and rubbed his cock through his boxer shorts, but he stuck his hand in and pulled it out for her.

  At the sight of his long, thin penis with its purple helmet, the memory of that night with him and Fern came back sharply. A surge of anger at what he and his wife had done to her rushed through her and as she tentatively reached out her hand to hold it, she felt her stomach heave again.

  Taking a deep breath, she bent over to take it in her mouth, trying very hard not to think about what she was doing, but she gagged involuntarily just as her lips touched it.

  All at once his penis sagged and virtually disappeared. If she hadn’t been in such a perilous position she might have laughed.

  ‘I don’t want you touching me,’ he said, and before she could move away he’d got hold of her arm and was twisting it up behind her back, at the same time getting off the bed.

  She struggled to get free, but he had her in a vice-like grip. From his pocket came another piece of rope, and he was soon securing her wrists.

  Ten minutes later both she and Dale were tied up and gagged. He’d fixed their ankles with a short length of rope so they could still hobble along but not run away, presumably because he wanted them to walk to wherever he was taking them.

  Lotte felt too utterly demoralized and humiliated even to try to think of any further escape. She wished she hadn’t lowered herself by offering oral sex, even if she hadn’t intended to go through with it; somehow just touching him had made her feel dirty. Dale was looking at her strangely – she must have shocked her rigid too.

  ‘We’re going now,’ Howard said, grabbing Lotte by the arm and pushing her towards the stairs.

  She had no shoes and the prospect of being dragged across rough ground with bare feet was not inviting, but compared with his intention of killing them, that was nothing. And Lotte knew he would do it this time, he couldn’t afford to fail again.

  As the girls were bundled roughly into the back of the van waiting outside, Lotte recognized it as the same one they’d been abducted in by the faint smell of fish. In there too were the boxes Howard had been packing earlier. Lotte offered up a prayer that he wouldn’t kill them tonight, for the longer he took to deal with them, the more chance there was the police would find them.

  Lotte tried to work out where they were going by the right and left-hand turns. Before she had the baby she used to pore over a map of this area in an attempt to cement where everything was in her head, just in case she managed to escape. She knew they’d gone towards Selsey but veered off before they got there; sadly she couldn’t remember what lay in that direction.

  Dale was making funny noises, wriggling and thumping with her feet. It was obvious she wanted Lotte’s attention but she couldn’t work out what her friend was trying to tell her and it was too dark to read any facial expressions.

  The van turned on to a bumpy, rutted lane. It was very narrow as branches of trees were brushing against both sides of the van. Lotte was in a cold sweat now; this was fear beyond anything she’d ever experienced.

  The van continued along the lane for another five or ten minutes, then stopped and the lights were turned off. Lotte heard Howard get out of the van and walk away, but he had only gone some ten feet when she heard the clicking sound of a lock and the rattle of a chain.

  Dale wriggled closer to Lotte and pressed herself up hard against her. Lotte assumed this was a reminder they were in this together, and pressed back.

  The back doors opened and Howard reached in, caught hold of Lotte’s foot and dragged her out roughly. He had a torch in his hand but that was only illuminating the ground beneath them, and it was too dark all around to see anything. But as he caught hold of her arm and lifted the torch, she saw what looked like a garden shed in front of them. She thought they might be on an allotment.

  He shoved her into the shed with such force that she fell flat on her face on the floor. By the time she’d rolled over and got into a sitting position he was back at the door with Dale. He pushed her in equally brutally, but instead of falling over she bumped into the side wall and knocked over a huge stack of plastic flower pots.

  Then Howard came right into the shed, put his torch down on the floor and caught hold of the girls by their shoulders, swinging them together back to back. Pulling out yet another length of rope, which Lotte saw had been already made into a noose with a slip knot, he put it over both their shoulders, down to their waists, and pulled it tight, securing them together. He then tied the other end of it to what, in the darkness, looked like a heavy-duty workbench.

  He was breathing really heavily, and mumbling too. Lotte caught the words ‘Get it over with’, but nothing else. She got the impression he was every bit as frightened as they were, and the speed at which he was trying to do everything suggested he was terrified of getting caught.

  Once they were secured, he ran back to the van again. But as soon as Lotte heard a sloshing sound and his slower step as though carrying something heavy, she knew he was carrying a can of petrol.

  Dale must have heard it too for they both struggled and gave muffled shouts against their gags, but he was already pouring it all around outside for they could smell it. Suddenly, through her fear, Lotte felt a prick on her wrist, and Dale’s fingers snaking into hers behind their back. In a flash she realized her friend had managed to get the Stanley knife before they left the house and that was what she’d been trying to convey to her in the van. Dale’s hands were already free and now she was cutting through Lotte’s bonds. But there was the big rope round them both too and their ankles were tied, and the moment Howard struck the match the place would go up.

  Howard had come inside now, and his face looked fiendish in the light of the torch as he continued to slosh the petrol around. ‘Dry as a tinder box,’ he muttered gleefully. ‘Nothing left behind but a few bones.’

  The rope on Lotte’s hands fell away just as he came over and poured the last of the petrol over them. It stank and stung their eyes, but Lotte made herself resist the desire to rub them with her freed hands. She could feel Dale sawing on the bigger rope holding them together, but suddenly Howard walked out of the door and shut it behind him, and then they heard him putting the padlock on the chain and locking it.

  Dale wrenched off her gag. ‘Shit, I thought we’d have time. He was working so fast,’ she whispered. ‘What can we do now?’

  Lotte pulled her gag off too. ‘Just finish cutting the rope,’ she said, trying to think logically, but fear was making everything freeze up.

  Dale hacked through the last couple of strands, but she was crying in terror now. They could hear Howard striking matches outside and they were both braced for the whole place to suddenly go up.

  ‘His matches aren’t working,’ Lotte said, after hearing him swear softly. Her eyes swept in desperation around the dark shed. It stood to reason that if there were flower pots in here there had to be gardening tools too. ‘You take that side, I’ll take this,’ she whispered to her friend. ‘Find something to smash our w
ay out of here.’

  They heard him swear again and for a second or two a chink of light came on around the door which suggested he’d gone back to the van to look for more matches. Just that little bit of light let Lotte see a row of spades, forks, hoes and other tools hanging on a bracket. She lifted down the spade, and as the light went out, continued to feel with her hands. And they came upon the familiar shape of an axe.

  She grabbed Dale, put a spade in her hands, and still with their feet tied, they hobbled to the back of the shed.

  They were just lifting their tools to whack them against the wall when they heard the whoosh of the petrol catching fire. It acted like a spur to Lotte, and heaving the heavy axe behind her head she smashed it down on to the planks, splintering them immediately. Dale’s spade followed suit, and a small hole appeared.

  Lotte heaved again, using even more force now because the flames were already licking inside the shed. This time a whole plank split and she hacked away all around it as though possessed, with Dale using her spade to prise the loose pieces of wood away.

  ‘Out now,’ Lotte rasped, catching hold of Dale around the middle and thrusting her through the hole.

  The flames were licking across the floor towards Lotte now and as they reached her feet and ran up her legs, she leapt head-first into the hole after her friend. She felt Dale hauling her through, and as her feet came through the hole, she rolled Lotte on the wet grass to put out the flames on her jeans.

  ‘Is he still there?’ Lotte asked. She was shaken up, but aware enough to know they must have made a lot of noise getting out.

  ‘I thought I heard the van start up just after the shed caught fire,’ Dale said as she dragged her friend further back from the shed which was now completely ablaze. ‘But he may just have moved it back a few yards. Either way, we’d better stay here for a while just in case he’s somewhere near watching.’

  Dale had got her ankles untied and she gave the knife to Lotte to do hers. ‘I’ll just creep over a bit and see if the van’s gone,’ she said.

  Lotte’s heart was still racing from the very close shave. It was very hot so near to the blaze and her eyes stung from the petrol, but she still managed to smile as Dale slunk away on her belly and forearms like a Marine.

  She was only gone a few minutes. ‘The van’s gone,’ she said as she returned.

  ‘We can’t be certain he’s gone right away,’ Lotte reminded her. ‘Any sensible person would go, but he’s not exactly normal.’

  ‘Well, we can’t spend the night here,’ Dale said softly. ‘Your legs and feet need medical attention. I think we should find our way to the nearest house to ring the police.’

  It was only then that Lotte felt the pain of the burns. She was wearing cut-off jeans, and she had smelled the denim singeing, but now she saw there were not only burn holes in the material by her knees and on her thighs, but her lower legs and feet were burnt too. She hadn’t felt anything before, but now her attention had been drawn to them, they stung and throbbed.

  Dale stripped off her tee-shirt, leaving herself in just her bra. ‘I’ll use this to bind your feet up,’ she said, ripping it into two pieces. ‘We don’t want any dirt getting into those burns.’

  She knelt down and made a kind of rough bootee on either foot, securing them around Lotte’s ankles with the piece of rope Howard had used. Then she pulled Lotte to her feet. ‘I’ll keep the trusty Stanley knife as a souvenir,’ she said, putting it in her jeans pocket.

  ‘How did you get it?’ Lotte asked.

  ‘When he bundled you up the stairs I walked backwards and grabbed it. I managed to shove it in the waist of my jeans. I cut the rope while we were in the van, though I nicked my wrists a few times. I bet when we get to the light I’ll find I look like one of those self-harm people.’

  ‘We’ll dine out on this story for the rest of our lives,’ Lotte said with a hysterical giggle. Now the worst was over she felt very strange, all wobbly, tearful but giggly too.

  ‘Don’t speak about dining yet, just lean on me and hobble,’ Dale said.

  Lotte leaned over and picked up the axe.

  ‘You don’t need that now,’ Dale reproved her.

  ‘I do. Just in case. It pays to have insurance,’ Lotte insisted.

  They skirted round the still-burning shed, and paused for a moment to look back at it. All around them was velvety darkness, a mild night with a clear sky studded with stars, yet the fire was very bright orange, with a red core at the heart of it. Only the four corner posts of the shed remained whole now; the roof had caved in along with all four sides. But there must have been cans of paint or turpentine in there for every now and then there was a bang and another flare-up.

  ‘It would’ve been a horrible death,’ Dale said in a small, shaky voice. ‘I owe you my life, I was so busy panicking I didn’t think to look for tools to get out.’

  ‘You had the presence of mind to get the knife,’ Lotte reminded her. ‘If we’d still been tied we couldn’t have done anything.’

  They could see no lights anywhere. While they knew they couldn’t possibly be more than a mile or two from a house with a phone, it felt like being in a wilderness.

  ‘We’re free at last,’ Lotte said with a smile in her voice. ‘We can have fish and chips, or bacon and egg. I could even murder a McDonald’s or three.’

  ‘Then we’d better get moving,’ Dale said.

  ‘I doubt that place belonged to him,’ Lotte said as they walked on, Dale supporting her. ‘Just think, he must’ve driven around looking for somewhere to kill us. Fancy anyone being as wicked as that!’

  Dale chuckled. ‘Fancy you being wicked enough to offer him a blow job!’

  ‘I suppose that’s proof that we’d all do anything to save our own skin,’ Lotte said. ‘Mind you, I was banking on you walloping him or something. If I’d had to do it I might have bit it off.’

  They walked down the narrow lane for some fifteen minutes in silence, both locked in their own thoughts. Lotte was thinking about Simon and Adam and how worried they must be, and she wondered if David had been to see them throughout all this. She felt utterly exhausted now, for fear and hunger had kept her awake ever since they were first captured. Her burnt feet were hurting too, the thin material covering them no protection from the stones on the lane.

  There was a kind of dog-leg turn in the lane, and as they came out of it back on to a straight stretch, to their horror they saw Howard’s van parked up by a farm gate.

  Both girls froze, shrinking back into the bushes which lined the lane. It was unlikely he’d seen them as the van was turned in to face the gate. He’d clearly stopped there to watch the fire.

  ‘He could have seen us silhouetted against the flames,’ Dale whispered.

  ‘I don’t think he’d be sitting there so calmly if he had,’ Lotte said.

  ‘He might not be in there!’ Dale whispered back fearfully. ‘He could be anywhere. Even right behind us.’

  Lotte looked at Dale in shocked surprise, realizing that she was falling apart. She was shaking like a leaf, her eyes were full of terror, and when Lotte took her hand to comfort her, her pulse was racing far too fast.

  All at once Lotte felt a whole new surge of red-hot anger run through her. She’d been tormented, abused, starved and terrified by this man for far too long. He and his wife had already stripped her of everything, but to turn her brave and confident friend into a basket case was the last straw, and she knew she had to put a stop to him now, for good.

  ‘Stay here,’ she said to Dale, pushing her firmly further back into the bushes. ‘I’m going to check out the van.’

  Dale let out a kind of frightened mew, but Lotte was not going to allow herself to be sidetracked. Holding the axe in her right hand and supporting it with her left, she ran lightly towards the van, not even feeling her burnt foot or the rough ground digging into it. When she was nearly in view of the van mirrors, she ducked down so he wouldn’t see her and crawled the rest of the way.


  His head was lolling back against the seat head-rest. He had fallen asleep!

  For a few seconds Lotte crouched on the ground, just looking at him. To her it was outrageous that he could be so soothed by watching two people burn alive that he fell asleep. That was like adding petrol to the fire already burning inside her.

  With the axe in her right hand she lifted it high above her head. With her left hand she opened the van door. He stirred but she was already swinging the axe down on him, and as the blade sliced into his thighs he woke, and the look of utter disbelief on his face when he saw her was laughable.

  ‘My turn to terrify you now,’ she said, pulling the axe back and swinging it sideways so that it not only broke the windscreen but sliced into his chest. He screamed as though he was being burned alive, but she was fairly sure his waxed jacket had prevented the blade from doing him any serious damage.

  He screamed for mercy as she lifted the axe a third time and whacked it down with force across his lap. Blood came spurting out fiercely enough to splatter Lotte too.

  ‘You showed no mercy with me,’ she roared at him. ‘You and your wife treated me worse than some kind of farm animal, and what did I ever do to you? You stole my life, my baby, my everything. You sat here believing you were watching us die in those flames! You aren’t a man, you’re a monster!’

  She hit him again and again, tears streaming down her face until she finally backed away, too exhausted to hit him again. She was soaked in his blood, and she could hear no sound from him, yet in those moments as she stumbled back to find Dale, she understood why Indians used to take their enemies’ scalps, for his blood soaking into her clothes had finally released her from her hatred and anger.

  Chapter Eighteen

  ‘You’ve found them?’ David had been woken from a deep sleep by the telephone ringing, but the moment he was told it was the police and the girls were found, he was wide awake.