Fatal Witness （Detective Erika Foster #7）
Robert Bryndza
PROLOGUE
MONDAY 22ND OCTOBER 2018
The knock on the front door was soft, almost timid, so she didn’t think to leave on the chain. When she opened the door, the man was standing very close and he looked filled with pent-up rage. Before she had time to react, he reached in through the gap with his gloved hands, and in one lightning-fast move, he gripped her head, clamping one hand over her mouth and the other on the back of her head. Lifting her off the ground, he propelled himself across the threshold and inside.
The gloves were black, and made of soft, supple leather, but his hands inside felt like iron. He tipped her head back as he dragged her across the room, and all she could see was the ceiling. His body jerked as he kicked the door shut. The hand on the back of her head held a clump of her hair, the other pushed her nose flat, covering her mouth. The shock made her limp, like a rag doll, and he threw her onto the small sofa bed.
She lay there dazed, staring up at him. It had taken no more than three seconds.
‘Scream and I’ll kill you. Understand?’ he said. She had no time to understand. He loomed above her, smelling of sweat and bad aftershave, and then he punched her in the face. Her head snapped back, and the whole left side of her head felt numb, hot, and cold. The bed creaked in the silence and he climbed onto it, crawling up her body, the smell of him stronger… Overwhelming. His fist came towards her again, and this time everything burst into stars and bright black.
When she came around, she didn’t know how much time had passed. She was lying on her front, and her hands were tied so tightly behind her back it felt that her shoulders were being pulled out of their sockets. There was thick tape over her mouth and one of her nostrils. Her mouth was filled with fabric which had been packed in deep, and it was resting right against the back of her throat. She gagged and tried to swallow.
The curtains were closed, and the living room was gloomy. The door leading off the living room to the bedroom was ajar, and she could see him through the gap in the door, loading a stack of notebooks into a backpack. He’d been wearing that small, blue sporty backpack when he opened the door. It looked odd, with the blue straps over his smart pin-striped suit jacket. She tried to swallow again, but the material in her mouth pressed against the back of her throat. It was going to make her throw up and she was going to choke. She shifted on the bed. She experienced a moment of euphoria when she found he hadn’t tied her legs.
She shifted around on the bed and her eyes scanned around the living room and kitchen. A knife. She had to get a knife. She looked back at the gap in the door. He was trying to find something… pulling out books from the shelf, rifling through drawers. He found her USB keys and dropped them into the backpack. She was the one tied up, but he looked scared. She had to move fast while he was distracted.
As she moved her head, and the material packed into her mouth shifted, pressing against her tonsils, she gagged. The blood pounded through her body and made the bruise on her face burn. As she inched down the bed to the edge, the thin mattress of the sofa bed tipped forward and she lost balance, rolling off the bed and hitting the floor with a thud, landing on the swollen side of her head.
The sound echoed through the floorboards, but he didn’t notice. He was possessed with something, by something, still concentrating on the computer on the desk, typing something.
It took a great effort to get up, and she scooted over to the wall, leant into it and managed to pull herself up to her knees, all the time trying to control the lurching urge to throw up as the gag filled her throat. It was hard to breathe, and twice she had to stop.
Finally, when she got to her feet and stood swaying in the centre of the room, it felt like a triumph. She hurried around the bed, unsteady on her feet. There was a box of Scrabble close to the edge of the low table against the wall with the television, and she felt her leg bump into it. The box teetered on the edge, but she couldn’t reach down to push it back. It fell onto the floor with a clatter, scattering the Scrabble tiles over the carpet.
He was still there at the desk, typing something. The kitchen was just a few feet away. She saw the block of knives next to the oven.
There were eight knives, but the counter was set at a height above her waist, and with her hands tied tight behind her back, she couldn’t reach.
To get the knife, she had to lean over and hook the knife block under her armpit, like a lasso. Twisting her body to the side, she leant up and over the counter. Her arms screamed out in pain as she lifted them behind her back. She had a small amount of movement in her bound arms; she shifted them to the left, and using the gap between her body on the left side and her arm, she tried to grab at the block of knives, but she couldn’t get a grip on it.