STEVE LEE

Prologue.

 

‘Well I don't know why I came here tonight,

I've got the feeling that something ain't right.’

 

Stealers Wheel – Stuck In The Middle With You.

 

As Madeline Brookes slowly regained consciousness she gradually became aware of her surroundings. Her head was thumping in time to her rapidly beating heart, and her ears were filled with the sound of her own rushing blood. She could feel the icy hand of fear as it caressed her wildly beating heart, and panic flew around the fringes of her mind on black, papery wings.  She knew that she was lying on her back with her arms and legs in the air; she could smell leather conditioner and the sweet smoky odour of cannabis, but the overriding harsh, astringent odour of human sweat caused her nose to wrinkle in disgust. She slowly opened her right eye (the other one did not seem to be functioning properly), and in the darkness of the night she could just make out that she was lying across the back seat of a car; she could see the blurred outline of the front seats, (where are my glasses?), and headrests to her left, and above and to her right the rear window was misted over with condensation, only allowing the diffused orange glow of a street light to penetrate the rank interior. From the angle of her head she could make out the rear door, which appeared to be ajar, just beyond her feet. She tried to move her arms but they were pinned behind her head. The wings of panic beat closer as she twisted her body in an attempt to free her hands, and then paused and gasped as waves of pain washed over her bruised and beaten body. As the blood flowed back into her trapped limbs she felt the myriad bright pinpricks of pain in her fingers as feeling returned, and they became once again a functioning part of her body.

 

As the dark, sticky edges of unconsciousness finally fell away, Maddie became more aware of the aches and pains that wracked her body; the whole of her face hurt and it felt as if it had been used as a punch-bag, she had a horrible chemical taste in her mouth, there was a sharp cutting pain in the pit of her stomach, her headache continued to pound like the bass line from a heavy metal track. She felt bruised all over and her joints ached as though all of her limbs had been dislocated. In short, she felt as if she had been run over. Freezing cold and shaking like a leaf in the chill interior of the car, she tried to move her arms to push herself up, but her head jerked forward and her vision blurred as a fresh wave of pain washed over her. The whispers of fear sussurated louder inside her skull as she struggled to sit up, but her arms were still slow to answer her commands. She managed to turn her head and realised why her arms had refused to obey her, her blouse had been pulled up over her head and tucked behind it, and the trapped garment was pushing her head forward every time she tried to bring her arms down. After some struggling she managed to free her blouse from behind her head, and with hands still on fire from pins and needles, she quickly pulled her top back down over her body.

 

The sensation of the cold clothing on her skin wracked her body with a violent shiver, and Maddie realised she was chilled to the bone. Looking down, she saw that her denim skirt had been pulled up above her waist and her panties were nowhere to be seen. She tried to rise to a sitting position, but the skin across her buttocks felt as if it had been superglued to the leather seat. She pushed down harder, and with a squeaky – balloon type sound which may have been amusing in different circumstances, she was able to slide herself round to face the front of the vehicle. She raised herself up and smoothed her skirt down underneath her raw bottom, grimacing at the soreness she felt down there. Raising one hand to her face, she winced as she felt the bruise around her closed left eye; it felt the size of a football to her gently probing fingers. Continuing her examination she slowly found a tender lump on her right cheek just below her eye, she pushed gently with one finger, and then screamed in pain as broken bones grated together and the vision in her good eye blurred. She froze in shock as the pain gradually subsided, and then slowly lowered her hand back to the seat.

 

Gingerly she used her tongue to check out her mouth, and this told her that her bottom lip had been split and she discovered a bleeding hole where one of her eye-teeth had been, but no sign of the missing tooth. Next to the new gap a number of teeth seemed to be loose. Another shiver of cold rippled through Maddie and she hugged herself to keep warm. She winced as her breasts hurt with the pressure, and quickly lifted up her blouse. There was a circular cigarette burn on each of her breasts just above the nipple, they burnt angry and red. She winced as she touched each of them with the tip of her finger, but there was nothing she could do to ease the pain, so she pulled the blouse back down, glad for its meagre warmth.

 

She continued to slowly gather and process information that her senses fed her, her confusion slowly giving way to a feeling of true terror. She could no longer deny a small voice inside her head that was telling her exactly what had happened, she had been beaten up pretty badly, and, judging by her state of undress that was probably the least of her worries. She tried to recall how she had arrived in this precarious state, but her memories shattered into streams of smoke like half-remembered thoughts on awakening, the harder she tried to recall what had happened, the more gossamer the fragments became. A fragment of memory coalesced in her mind; it was a snippet of a Pharmacology lecture she had attended recently, covering the symptoms of gamma-Hydroxybutyric acid, or GHB, the date – rape drug. She recalled the monotonous tone of the lecturer as he listed the litany of side-effects on the wipe-board; bad headache – check; nasty taste in mouth – check; pain in stomach – check; feelings of disorientation – check.

 

Oh God, surely not!  But the facts were hard to run away from.

 

Maddie felt tears spring up in her eyes, partly from the physical battering that her body had taken, but mainly from the feeling of helplessness and of being abused that was overwhelming her. You can pack that in straight away! She admonished herself sternly. Gritting her aching teeth, Maddie pulled herself up so that she was now sitting on the back seat of the car, looking forward through the gap between the empty high-backed front seats.       Forcing herself upright she felt along the seat for her glasses with no success. She pushed herself forward on shaking arms and peered down into the darkness between the front and rear seats. Her feet bumped against empty glass bottles that clinked together in the foot-well. As her eyes adjusted to the gloom she struggled to focus on what looked like a handful of white balloons lying discarded and deflated on the coarse carpet of the foot-well, like the aftermath of a cheap conjurer’s trick at a child’s birthday party. Her imagination started to fill in the blanks, thoughts too terrible to contemplate, so she forced herself to look past the detritus of the attack and breathed a sigh of relief as her eyes fell on the blurred outline of the black heavy spectacle frames tucked in the corner of the rear foot-well under the front passenger seat. She grunted in pain as she reached down past the used condoms and quickly retrieved her glasses, jerking her hand back as if there was a poisonous snake in the darkness under the front seat. One lens was cracked and the frames seemed to be sitting out of line across her nose, one arm over her ear, the other up by her temple, but at least she could see better than before.

She gasped as she glimpsed a reflection of her face in the rear-view mirror, the white of one eye stared back in horror through the mask of dried blood covering her face, her other eye was closed in an angry purple swelling, her hair stuck out from her head where the dried blood had matted it into a tangled bird’s nest. She raised both of her shaking hands to her swollen face and breathed slowly and deeply, trying to regain control. Eventually a semblance of calm returned and she stopped shaking; again she tried to recall the events that had led her to this time and place, but the last thing she could remember was finishing her course dissertation earlier in the day, after that everything was a blank.

 

She looked down at her wrist to find the time, but her watch, an expensive Gucci model, was missing. On top of everything else this pushed Maddie over the edge. The watch had been a twenty-first birthday present from her parents, who, if truth be known, could barely afford such extravagance, and the loss hurt deeply. Tears rolled down her bruised cheeks and fell silently onto the front of her creased blouse.

Her bowed head rose as she heard the sound of running footsteps approaching along the street, and her first thought was to attract some attention and get help, but the shout died in her throat when she made out snatches of a hurried conversation.

 

“… Have to get out of here sharpish before the cops turn up.”

 

There was a pause and then another voice replied in a slurred, thick-tongued response. “Gotta burn the car first, like he said we've got to destroy the edi… edi… evidence.”

 

“What about him over there, we were supposed to throw him in the car as well?”

 

“Bollocks! I'm not getting meself all messed up – he's dead anyway.”

 

Maddie slid down into the shadowy depths of the foot-well behind the rear seat and held her breath. She heard the driver's door open and a gust of cold air raised goose bumps on her forearms.

 

“Can't get the bloody top off, ah, that's got it. Got the matches ready?” The first voice drifted into the open car, and at the same time the pungent smell of petrol filled the interior of the car. She could hear a sloshing sound as the front seats were doused in petrol, and occasional splashes landed on her exposed flesh.

 

“What about the bitch who was…hic…who we left in the back?”

 

“Billy said it'd be better if she was torched with the wheels, but it looks like she's split.”

 

The petrol can flew over the front seats, bounced off the back of the rear seat spraying petrol in all directions, and hit Maddie hard on the back of her head; she swallowed a cry of pain.

 

“O.K, chuck the match in and let's get outa here!!”

 

There was a whoosh from the front of the car, underlined with the staccato sound of hurried footsteps diminishing into the distance. At the same time a wall of heat hit her body, and the interior of the car turned into a smoke-blackened, airless inferno.

 

Maddie climbed slowly out of the foot-well and pushed her body along the back seat, gasping in the agony that the movements caused. She could already feel the waves of heat rolling across her exposed skin, and the dry crackles as the temperature climbed and the interior of the car started to catch. She kicked the rear door fully open and slid her legs out of the car, her feet hit the pavement and she gave a final shove with her arms to propel her out into the cold clean air of the night. Her body popped out of the car and she tumbled to the ground, her spectacles flying off her head and into the darkness. Gouts of flame poured out of the rear door as the fresh oxygen galvanised the inferno into fiery destruction.

 

The rough concrete pavement grazed the soft young skin on her elbows and knees as she rolled away from the car, which was now engulfed in flame from end to end. She remembered watching films on television where cars always exploded after being set on fire – something to do with the mixture of air and petrol in the fuel tank, she thought. She could hear the tinkling of broken glass as the dashboard dials exploded, the intense heat was starting to burn her skin, and she could now smell burning hair. With a deep breath, Maddie pulled herself to her feet and staggered away from the roaring flames, unconsciously smoothing her skirt back down where it had ridden up during her exit from the car. She made twenty feet before her legs gave out and she crashed in a heap to the pavement. A wave of nausea swept through her and she retched onto the hard concrete slabs; the sweet, sickly taste of fruit-flavoured alcohol filled her mouth and her body convulsed as her stomach violently unloaded its contents. Maddie remained on all fours, her head drooping as she waited for the nausea to pass.

 

Eventually she felt as if her stomach was back under her control, and she became aware of the rough pavement beneath her hands and knees. She slowly raised her head to look up and down the dark street. To her left the empty pavement rolled away out of sight, the flames from the burning car dancing on the facades of the darkened Victorian villas set back from the road. She slowly turned to her right and took in the empty pavement leading off in the opposite direction, spot-lit from above by the line of orange street-lamps. She noticed what looked like a pile of clothes lying against the wall on the pavement about ten yards up from her to her right; it was difficult to make out exactly what it was without her specs. They looked dark and shiny as if they had been soaked in tar, as they reflected the streetlights and the dancing flames. She could see something liquid pooling around the clothes, staining the pavement black, running over the edge of the kerb and into the gutter. She thought she recognised her denim jacket on top of the clothes pile from the reflection of embroidered sequins, and her heart leapt as she remembered that she had put her mobile phone in one of the button-down pockets and then fastened the button – it should still be there.

 

On grazed hands and knees she slowly made her way towards the pile of clothing. Reaching out, she grabbed the sleeve of her jacket and tried to pull it towards her, but it appeared to be caught on something. She attempted to use both hands to retrieve her jacket but only succeeded in pulling herself forward into the sticky mound. She pushed herself into a sitting position and noticed that her hands appeared to be covered in black paint; in fact it looked as if it was on the sleeve of her jacket as well. Beyond caring she tugged hard at the jacket and it suddenly came free in her hands. The sudden change in her equilibrium threw Maddie off balance and she fell backwards onto the pavement. Careless of the pain racking her body and the crack of the pavement against her elbows, she fumbled at the buttoned pocket and eventually succeeded in removing her mobile phone. As she brushed the keypad the illuminated screen sprang to life, staring up at her like a single alien eye.  She quickly hit the correct sequence of keys to unlock the mobile. A message across the screen informed her that she had two new texts from the same mobile number, she recognised the number as Becky’s – one of the girls she had been due to meet earlier that evening. The first message told her that they were running late and would get to ‘Heroes’ by ten-thirty, and ended with a cheery ‘CUL8R’. The second message, sent just before eleven asked where she was, and asked ‘did u go b4 we got here?’ Ignoring the two texts she brought up the keypad on the screen and tried to dial the emergency number. Her numbed fingers felt as if they belonged to someone else and it took three goes before she heard the electronic chirps that indicated a ringing phone at the other end.

 

A woman's calm voice soon came on line with, “Nine, nine, nine; which service do you require?” Maddie cried with relief at hearing the voice and launched into an incoherent stream of panicky babble. The voice quickly cut across her in a calm, business-like tone.

 

“Are you in any danger?”

 

“No, I'm bleeding and there's a car on fire that burned me and I can’t remember how I got here and…”

“Do you know where you are?”

 

“No, it's dark and I don't recognise anything.”

 

“Look around and tell me what you see.”

 

Maddie looked up and her gaze focussed on the pile of clothes. Where her jacket had been, she could now make out the blurred outline of a man's face covered in a bloody mask staring straight at her, the yellow flames of the burning car dancing in his open, sightless eyes.

 

Maddie started screaming.