Pop Goes the Weasel | страница 6

A creaking floorboard. So he wasn’t alone. Hope flared through him – perhaps now he could find out what they wanted. He craned round to try and engage his attacker, but they were approaching from behind and remained out of view. It suddenly struck him that the bed he was tied to had been pushed out into the middle of the room, as if centre stage at a show. No one could possibly want to sleep with it like that, so why…?

A falling shadow. Before he could react something was passing over his eyes, his nose, his mouth. Some sort of hood. He could feel the soft fabric on his face, the drawstring being pulled taut. Already the man was struggling to breathe, the thick velvet resting over his protesting nostrils. He shook his head furiously this way and that, fighting to create some tiny pocket of breathing space. Any moment he expected the string to be pulled still tighter, but to his surprise nothing happened.

What now? All was silent again, apart from the man’s laboured breathing. It was getting hot inside the hood. Could oxygen get in here? He forced himself to breathe slowly. If he panicked now, he would hyperventilate and then…

Suddenly he flinched, his nerves pulsing wildly. Something cold had come to rest on his thigh. Something hard. Something metal? A knife? Now it was drifting up his leg, towards… The man bucked furiously, tearing his muscles as he wrenched at the cords that held him. He knew now that this was a fight to the death.

He shrieked for all he was worth. But the tape held firm. His bonds wouldn’t yield. And there was no one to hear his screams.

‘Business or pleasure?’

Helen spun round, her heart thumping. Climbing the darkened stairwell to her flat, she had assumed she was alone. Irritation at being surprised mingled with a brief burst of anxiety… but it was only James, framed in the doorway of his flat. He had moved into the flat below her three months ago and being a senior nurse at South Hants Hospital kept unsociable hours.

‘Business,’ Helen lied. ‘You?’

‘Business that I thought was going to become pleasure. But… she just left in a cab.’

‘Pity.’

James shrugged and smiled his crooked smile. He was late thirties, handsome in his scruffy way with a lazy charm that usually worked on junior nurses.

‘No accounting for taste,’ he continued. ‘I thought she liked me but I’ve always been crap at reading signals.’

‘Is that right?’ Helen responded, not believing a word.