He started walking and so did she, minuscule steps against the duct tape. It was slow-moving, and Pip used the time to look around her, study her surroundings.
There were trees. Off to the right and behind her. Encircling them was a tall metal fence painted a dark green. A gate right behind them that Jason must have opened when he’d first left the car. It was still open now, wide open. Taunting her.
Jason was leading her towards an industrial-looking building – iron-sheeting sides – but there was a separate bricked building off to the left. Wait. Pip knew this place. She was sure of it. She took it all in again: the tall green metal fence, the trees, the buildings. And if that wasn’t clear enough, there were five vans parked over there, the logo emblazoned on their sides. Pip had been here before. No, she hadn’t. Not really. Only as a ghost, skulking up and down the road through a computer screen.
They were at Green Scene Ltd.
The complex off a tiny country road in the middle of nowhere in Knotty Green. Jason was right; no one would hear her scream.
That didn’t stop her trying, as they reached a metal door in the side of the building.
Jason smiled, flashed his teeth at her again.
‘None of that,’ he said, fiddling with his front pocket. He pulled something out, sharp and shiny. It was an overloaded ring of keys, different shapes and sizes. He flicked through them, selected a long, thin one with jagged teeth.
He muttered to himself, guiding the key towards the bulky silver lock in the middle of the door. His other arm loosened a little, the arm holding her there.
Pip took her chance.
She slammed her arm down against his and broke the hold.
Freedom. She was free.
But it didn’t get her far.
She couldn’t even take one step before the force of his hand pulled her back, holding her bound arms behind her like a leash.
‘It’s pointless,’ Jason said, turning his attention back to the lock. He didn’t look angry; the expression in the curve of his mouth was closer to amusement. ‘You know as well as I do that that’s pointless.’
Pip did. Less than one per cent.
The door unlocked with the sound of clanging metal and Jason pushed it inward. It screamed on its hinges.
‘Come on.’
He dragged Pip over the threshold. It was dark in here, full of tall, wiry shadows, just one small window high up on the right, barring most of the sunlight. Jason seemed to read her mind again, flicking a switch on the wall. The industrial lights blinked into life with a lazy buzzing. The room was long and thin and cold. It looked like some kind of storeroom: tall metal shelving units down both walls, huge plastic vats stacked up and along the shelves with small taps near the bottom. Pip’s eyes scanned across them; different types of weedkiller and fertilizer. There were two sunken channels in the concrete floor under the shelves, running the length of the room.
Jason pulled her along by her arms, the heels of her trainers dragging against the ground.
He dropped her.
Pip landed hard on the concrete, just in front of the righthand shelves. She struggled up into sitting, watching as he stood over her. The breath in and out of her nose too loud and too fast, the sound re-shaping in her mind into DT, DT, DT.
And here he was. Strange, really, that he looked just like a man. He’d been so much bigger in her nightmares.
Jason smiled to himself then, shaking his head at something funny.
He raised one finger at her, pacing towards a sign that read: Warning! Toxic Chemicals. ‘That security alarm,’ he said, stifling the laugh. ‘That security alarm you were so interested in?’ He paused. ‘It was Tara Yates who set it off. Yes,’ he added, studying her eyes. ‘You misread that one, didn’t you? It was Tara who set it off. She was tied up in here, in this very room.’ He glanced around the storeroom, filling it with dark memories that Pip couldn’t see. ‘This is where they all were. Where they died. But Tara, she somehow managed to break free of the tape on her wrists when I left her. Was moving around and set off the alarm. I’d forgotten to disable it properly, see.’
His face creased again, as though he were only talking about a small mistake, one that could be laughed off, shrugged off. The hairs rose up the back of Pip’s neck, watching him.
‘All turned out fine. I reached her in time,’ he said. ‘Had to rush the rest of it to get back to the dinner party, but it all turned out fine.’
Fine. The word that Pip used too. An empty word with all manner of dark things buried beneath it.
Pip tried to speak. She didn’t even know what she wanted to say, just that she wanted to try, before it was too late. She couldn’t get through the tape but the formless sound of her voice was enough, reminded her that she was still there. Ravi was still there too, he told her gently. He’d stay with her until the end.