‘What’s that?’ Jason asked, still pacing back and forth. ‘Oh, no. No, you don’t have to worry. I’ve learned from my mistake last time. The security alarm is definitely disabled. So are the CCTV cameras, inside and out. All of them are off, so you have nothing to worry about now.’
Pip made a sound in her throat.
‘They’re off as long as I need them to be. All night. All weekend,’ he said. ‘And no one will be coming here, not until Monday morning, so you don’t need to worry about that either. Just you and me. Oh, but let me have a little look here.’
Jason approached her. Pip pushed back against the shelves. He knelt at her side and studied the tape wrapped around her wrists and her ankles.
He tutted to himself, fiddling with the binds. ‘No, that won’t do. Far too loose. Was in a bit of a hurry to get you in the car. Going to have to re-do them,’ he said, patting her lightly on the shoulder. ‘We don’t want you doing a Tara, do we?’
Pip sniffed, gagging at the smell of his sweat. Too close.
Jason straightened up, grunting as he leaned on his knees. He walked past her, down the row of shelves. Pip turned her head to follow him with her eyes, but he was already rounding back into view, something new in his hands.
A roll of grey duct tape.
‘Here we are,’ he said, bending to his knees again, pulling the end loose from the roll.
Pip couldn’t see what he was doing behind her back, but his fingers touched hers and a shiver gushed up her spine, sickening and cold. She thought she might be sick, and if she was, she would choke on it, the same way Andie Bell had gone.
Andie flashed into her mind, her ghost sitting beside her, holding Pip’s hand. Poor Andie. She’d known what her father was. Had to come back every day to a house where a monster lived. Died trying to get away from him, to protect her sister from him. And that’s when two separate memories jumped like static across Pip’s brain. Fusing, to become one. A hairbrush. But not just a hairbrush. The purple paddle hairbrush on Andie’s desk – the one in the corner of the photos Pip and Ravi took – it had belonged to Melissa Denny, Jason’s second victim. The trophy he took from her, to relive her death. He’d given it to his teenage daughter; probably got a dark thrill from watching her use it. Sick fuck.
The thought ended there, as a quick burst of pain shot up from her wrists. Jason had pulled off the tape, pulling hairs and skin with it. Freedom, again. Unbound. She should fight. Go for his neck. Dig her nails into his eyes. Pip grunted and she tried, but his grip was too tight.
‘What did I say to you?’ Jason said quietly, holding on to her squirming arms. He pulled them up, uncomfortably high behind her, and pulled them back, pressing the insides of her wrists against the front metal pole of the shelving unit.
The duct tape was sticky and cold as he wound it from one wrist, round the metal pole, and round the other wrist.
Pip concentrated, trying to push her hands as far out from each other as she could, so the tape wouldn’t be so tight, so constricting. But Jason was holding them fast, going over the duct tape with another layer. And another. And another.
‘There we go,’ he said, trying to shake her wrists, but they didn’t budge. ‘Nice and secure. Won’t be going anywhere now, will you?’
The tape at her mouth swallowed another scream.
‘Yes, I’m getting to those, don’t worry,’ Jason said, shuffling towards her feet. ‘Always worrying. Always nagging, all of you. So loud.’
He knelt on her legs to pin them down, and then wound a new length of duct tape around her ankles, over the first one. Tighter this time, going over it twice.
‘That will do.’ He pivoted to look back at her. His eyes narrowed. ‘I normally give you one chance to speak now. To apologize, before…’ He drew off, staring down at the roll of duct tape, running his finger tenderly around its edge. Jason leaned over and reached for her face. ‘Don’t let me regret it,’ he said, tugging sharply at the tape across her cheeks, pulling it free of her mouth.
Pip sucked at the air, and it felt different through her mouth. More space, less terror.
She could scream now, if she wanted. Cry out for help. But what would be the point? No one could hear, and no help was coming. It was just the two of them.
Part of her wanted to look up at him and ask him, ‘Why?’ But there was no why, Pip knew that. He wasn’t Elliot Ward, or Becca, or Charlie Green, where their whys pushed them out of the dark and into that confusing grey space. That human space of good intentions or bad choices or mistakes or accidents. She’d read the criminal profile and that told her all she needed to know. The DT Killer had no grey area and no why; that’s exactly why it had seemed so right before. The perfect case: save herself to save herself. She wouldn’t be saving anybody now, especially not herself. She’d lost, she was going to die and there was no why, not to Jason Bell. Only why not. Pip and the five who came before her, they were somehow intolerable to him. That was all. Not murder in his eyes, but an extermination. Pip wouldn’t get any more if she asked.