Booze smeared his words into each other: ‘Where’s my favourite girl?’
Oh Christ, not this.
Nah, she’d rather die than have his disgusting body on top of her.
‘My favourite,dirtygirl.’
Wasn’t easy, but she croaked out a bit of defiance. ‘Go fuck yourself.’
‘Hey, look: you’re famous!’ He hurled his rustling handful at her head.
Halfway there, it turned into three rolled-up newspapers that bounced off her raised arms, one bursting open on its way to the ground, the sheets fluttering as it sloughed apart.
Davis’s head torch swivelled down, pinning it to the floor.
‘NEWSPAPER OWNER ABDUCTED BY SICK WEIRDO’
Natasha’s face smiled back at her from theAberdeen Examiner’s front page. A stupid PR shot, taken years ago at some trade dinner thing she never wanted to go to.
Davis lurched over and nudged the other two with his foot, unfurling them.
It was a copy of theEvening Expressand theGlasgow Times. One had gone for, ‘WAS MEDIA MOGUL KIDNAPPED BY TERRORISTS?’ the other, ‘EX-HUSBAND’S EMOTIONAL PLEA: “BRING BACK MY NATASHA”’. Because there wasn’t a single story Adrian couldn’t make about himself.
Davis took a swig of whisky. ‘Course the pictures don’t do youjustice. Don’t capture howuglyyou are inside. How twisted and hateful andugly.’ The head torch’s beam swept across the three front pages, then up Natasha’s battered body to her face.
And stopped.
Could almost hear the bastard’s mouth fall open. ‘What...But...Where’s your mask?’ Air hissed in through his nostrils, to be bellowed out again: ‘WHERE’S YOUR FUCKING MASK, BITCH?’
Time to tell the most important lie of her life.
Because if it didn’t work, it would be her last.
She kept her wrists at her throat, but turned her fingers into claws. Doing her best to snarl, even if it came out thin and papery instead. ‘Itore it off. I ripped it to shreds and fed it to the rats.’
With slow, deliberate movements, DS Davis hunkered down and placed his bottle on the floor, by the door. Safe and out of the way. Then stood – taking a lurching step to the side, like the ground had shifted unexpectedly beneath his feet. Straightened himself up....And lunged forward, lashing outwith a stinging slap that crashed into Natasha’s right cheek and hurled her off the anchor, into the dust and eviscerated newspapers.
‘HAVE YOU GOT ANY IDEA HOW MUCH THAT COST? YOU UNGRATEFUL BITCH!’
He grabbed her by the shoulders and yanked her around to face him. Not that she could see anything, with his head torch blazing in her eyes, but the hate and booze radiating off the bastard could’ve lit Melbourne for a year.
Something else glowed with rage, and the hard cold fur of old metal.
Davis coiled a fist. ‘I’M GOING TO FUCKING KILL YOU!’
But before he could let it fly, Natasha’s right hand slashed out and up, thumb shoving the button on the Stanley knife forward. Not really aiming, just going for anything she could hit.
The jagged blade dug through the bastard’s filthy T-shirt, ripping its way up his chest to sever ‘BLODHØST’ from ‘DØDSULV’, then out again – soaring free until it slashed into his jaw and across the bastard’s cheek.
He shrieked.
Letting go of her, Davis scrabbled backwards, tripping and falling flat on his back, arms flailing.
A sharp glassclinkandrattleas the whisky bottle went flying.
Natasha growled and leapt – as far as the chain would let her – grabbing his leg with her free hand and stabbing the rusty blade into the inside of his thigh over and over again as he screamed and howled.
With any luck she’d sever the bastard’s femoral artery.
