The Keeper (33 page)

Oblivious to her terror, he unlocked the cage door, swinging it open carefully so as not to alarm her. His face reddened slightly with excitement and anticipation, his lips swelling plump and purple as his eyes moved over the shape under the duvet, the familiar tightness returning to his groin as he remembered her shape and warmth – the soft skin of the woman under the bedding. Without thinking he found himself moving into the cage, his eyes growing larger and larger as the tightening in his trousers grew more and more uncomfortable, suddenly snapping out of his trance as instinct kicked in, warning him he was being reckless, putting himself in danger. He checked his hands and realized he was unarmed.

In a panic he stumbled backwards out of the cage, tugging at the stun-gun that was tangled in the pocket of his tracksuit, ripping the material as he finally pulled it free, panting and smiling with relief, looking back into the cage, seeing the recognition of what he was holding in her eyes. The feeling in his groin had faded away and again he felt in control of the woman and himself. He looked down at the stun-gun and back to her. ‘Don’t be afraid of this,’ he said. ‘It’s not to hurt you, it’s to keep you safe.’

‘I don’t want you to keep me safe. I want you to let me go.’

He hadn’t been expecting her to speak and her words momentarily shocked him into silence, the smile still fixed on his face like a painted doll’s. ‘You shouldn’t say things like that, Sam. I’m here to look after you.’

‘I don’t need anyone to look after me,’ she answered, the aggression and bitterness in her voice obvious. ‘All I need is for you to let me out of here and stop calling me Sam – my name is Deborah, Deborah Thomson.’

‘No,’ he insisted, trying to restrain his anger, ‘that’s what they want you to believe, but it’s all lies. Your name is Sam. Don’t you remember? It’s me, Tommy. I told you I’d come back for you. So that we could be together, like we’re supposed to be.’

‘I don’t know you,’ she yelled, tears of anger and fear bursting through her frustration. ‘My name is Deborah Thomson and I want to go home.’

‘Shut up!’ Face twisted in rage, he advanced towards her holding the stun-gun in front of him. ‘Shut the fuck up! That’s just their lies. You have to clean yourself of their lies and then you’ll remember.’

Louise Russell watched from her cage, eyes darting between the two unevenly matched combatants, praying that Deborah would do as she had asked, knowing that his anger would be redirected to her, the way it had been when Karen Green was occupying the other cage. She remembered unwittingly playing a dangerous game with Karen’s safety, and now Deborah was doing the same thing, pushing him ever closer to venting his anger on Louise. She prayed for Deborah to stop, her eyes never leaving him while her heart punched against her ribs, the sound echoing deafeningly loud in her head. ‘Please stop, please be quiet,’ she silently pleaded with Deborah, unaware that she was mouthing the words as she said them over and over again, waiting for Deborah to respond to his accusations. After a few seconds she realized Deborah had fallen silent, the relief causing her body to slump as she drew in a long, staggered breath. She listened to the silence, her eyes once again darting between the two of them, as something like calm spread through the cellar.

Finally he spoke. ‘I’m sorry,’ he told Deborah. ‘I forgot: you’ve been through a lot. You must be tired.’ He walked to the screen, his eyes never leaving her, and picked up the tray in his free hand, taking it back to the cage and sliding it in through the open door, then returning to the screen and, as carefully as he could, pulling her clothes from the metal frame, carrying them back across the room and placing them on the floor just inside the entrance to her wire prison before closing and locking the door. ‘It’s probably better if you get cleaned up a bit later, but you can wear the clothes – they’re yours, after all. Your real clothes, not the ones they made you wear.’ He searched her face for some sign of approval, but she merely stared back at him with unblinking bright green eyes. ‘I’ll leave you to get some rest.’

He hesitated at the entrance to her cage, expecting her to thank him or tell him she looked forward to seeing him again, but to his disappointment she said nothing.

‘OK, well …’ he said, to cover his embarrassment, ‘I’ll see you later.’

Turning the main light off, he scampered up the stairs, slamming and locking the door behind him.

Neither woman said anything. They waited, listening to the quiet sounds of the cellar, praying he wouldn’t return. Louise knew his habits well by now – if he didn’t come back immediately, he would be gone for hours. When she felt it was safe she exhaled a long slow breath, stale air she’d been holding in her lungs for what seemed like hours finally escaping.

‘Deborah … Deborah you need to listen to me.’

‘He’s a fucking lunatic,’ Deborah whispered.

‘Yes, he is,’ Louise agreed. ‘He’s a lunatic who’s going to kill us both if we don’t help each other escape.’

‘You’ve said all this already. You want me to attack him when he lets me out of his fucking cage and grab his key and let you out. Overpower him together, right?’

‘Yes. It’s our only chance. You have to believe me.’

‘It won’t work. And then it’ll be worse for me.’

Louise fell silent, thinking of a way to cut through Deborah’s self-preservation instincts.

‘I was you,’ she said. ‘Just a day or so ago – I was you. He gave me a mattress and a duvet, he let me clean myself and gave me food and drink. He gave me those clothes, Deborah. Those same clothes he’s given you – he made me wear them.’

Deborah looked at the clothes on the floor of her cage. ‘These?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’

Deborah picked up the pile of laundered items and threw them against the wire, kicking them away with her feet. ‘I won’t be part of this sick fucker’s fantasy,’ she said loudly, unconcerned who heard her, her South London accent as thick as her anger.

‘No!’ Louise tried to calm her. ‘No, don’t do that. We need the clothes, you have to wear them.’

‘No fucking way.’

‘We have to play along with him, make him think everything is exactly how he wants it to be. That’s the only way he’ll relax, so we can catch him by surprise.’

‘You mean long enough for
me
to catch him by surprise and risk
my
neck.’

‘We have no choice.’

‘Yes, we do,’ said Deborah, and looked away, signifying an end to the discussion.

There was another silence, then Louise spoke again.

‘Soon he’s going to start coming down here, Deborah, he’s going to start coming down here and he’ll come into my cage and he’ll beat me and rape me – and you’re going to have to watch, you’re going to have to listen to me scream while he holds me down and … Soon after that he’ll come and take me away, and you’ll have to listen to me beg him not to take me, beg him not to kill me. And when I don’t come back, you’ll know what’s happened. Then, soon after I disappear, he’ll come down here and he’ll come to you, Deb—’

‘Stop it!’ Deborah pleaded. ‘I don’t want to—’

‘He’ll come to you and he’ll take those clothes off you and he’ll take your duvet and your mattress. And then, when he brings another woman down here and puts her in this cage, you will become me, Deborah. You will become me.’

Louise could hear sobbing coming from the other cage. Knowing that the next words had to come from Deborah, she waited.

‘All right,’ Deborah finally said. ‘What do we do?’

Louise felt a flutter of nervous excitement for the first time since he’d taken her, the chance to regain control of her own destiny suddenly thrilling, giving her hope that she would escape the darkness and find her way back to the light that was home and her husband and their plans for an unremarkable, happy life with each other and the children they were yet to have. ‘Next time he comes, he’ll let you out to have a wash. You’ll need to wear the clothes or he could get angry and not allow you out. He’ll bring you a tray of food and drink that he’ll leave behind the screen. After you’ve washed he’ll tell you to carry the tray yourself and that’s when you have to do it.’

‘Do what?’ Deborah asked.

‘Throw whatever’s on the tray in his face, in his eyes. Then, as many times as you can, as hard as you can, hit him with the tray, scratch his eyes – if he has the stun-gun, grab it and use it on him. While he’s disorientated, get the key. He always seems to keep it in his trouser pocket – the left one, I think. If he starts to fight back before you have the key, kick and punch him, keep kicking him, keep punching. You can do this, I know you can.’

‘I went to school in New Cross,’ said Deborah. ‘I know how to kick and punch, believe me.’

‘Good,’ said Louise. ‘Once you’ve got the key, slide it along the floor towards my cage and I’ll let myself out – I can get my hand through the wire and reach the lock, I’ve already tried it. Once I’m out, I’ll join you and we’ll kick the bastard to till he’s almost dead, agreed?’

‘Agreed.’

‘Then we drag him into one of these stinking cages and lock him in.’

‘As easy as that,’ Deborah mocked.

‘No,’ Louise answered. ‘But if I’m going to die, if I’m never going to see my husband again, when the truth of what’s happened here comes out, I want him to know that I tried, I fought back, I wasn’t meekly slaughtered like some farmyard animal. I want him to be proud of me. I want him to know.’

‘OK,’ Deborah agreed. ‘So once we’ve got him locked in a cage, then what?’

‘We leave him,’ said Louise. ‘We leave him there. For ever. Let the bastard starve to death.’

‘But the police – what about the police?’

‘We tell them nothing about this place. We tell them he kept us in a dark place somewhere we didn’t know. Then he blindfolded us and drove us back to our homes and let us go. We can’t help them find him, we don’t know anything about him. And all the while he’s down here, rotting in this cellar, screaming for help that never comes.’

‘I’m not sure,’ said Deborah. ‘We should tell the police.’

‘So he can be locked up in some cushy prison for a few years and then they let him go? No, he deserves more than that.’

‘Then we’d be murderers.’

‘No. We’re not going to kill him, we’re just not going to keep him alive.’

‘It won’t work. Someone will miss him, his work – his family. They’ll find him before he dies and no one will know what he’s done. He’ll be free. He knows where I live. He’ll come after me – and you too.’

Louise thought for a while, refusing to abandon her revenge. ‘No, you’re right. We can’t leave it to chance.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘When he took your clothes, soon after I could smell fire.’

‘Huh?’

‘I think he burned your clothes, somewhere close by.’

‘So?’

‘So he must have petrol or something.’

Neither woman spoke for a while, each alone in their own thoughts of fire and screaming, the smell of burning flesh and acrid smoke swirling around in their dark dreaming.

‘I can’t do that,’ Deborah shuddered.

‘You won’t have to,’ said Louise. ‘I’ll do it. I want to do it. I want to hear him scream. I’ll make sure the fire’s burning well and then I’ll close the door. If the fire doesn’t kill him, the smoke will.’

‘And when they find him?’

‘We tell the police he said he was going to kill himself. When he let us go, he told us he was going to punish himself, take his own life. That’s why he was locked in the cage, to punish himself. He was looking for redemption.’

‘They won’t believe it.’

‘He’s a rapist and a murderer. D’you think they’ll give a damn what happened, what really happened?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘They won’t. And we’ll never have to think about him again; never have to worry about him waiting for us every time we step outside. We won’t wake up every night thinking about him, seeing his face every time we close our eyes. We’ll be able to move on, live our lives the way we wanted to before this fucking bastard decided it was up to him how we lived and how and when we died.’

‘There’ll be so many questions though,’ Deborah argued. ‘Maybe we should just tell the police?’

‘No!’ Louise barked at her. ‘I won’t be a victim. I’ve been stuck down here for God knows how many days and I’ve had plenty of time to think and I know one thing – I won’t be a victim, I won’t have people feeling sorry for me, patronizing me, always checking on me, asking me if I’m all right, cops and journalists hanging around my home, having to stand up in court and tell the whole world what happened while he sits smugly in the dock reliving his sick fantasies through my testimony. And what if he gets off? What do we do then? No, I can’t let that happen. I’d rather watch him burn. I want to see him burn.’

Silence hung in the room. Louise’s fingers curled around the wire of the cage, her head cocked to one side as she listened for Deborah’s answer.

‘OK. OK, I’ll do it. I’ll try. It’ll be like fighting my brothers when we were growing up … But I won’t help you burn him. If things work, if somehow they work, I’ll help you get him into the cage. I’ll even help you lock him in. But I can’t help you start the fire. I can’t do that.’

‘You don’t have to,’ Louise assured her.

‘And once we’re out of here, we go our separate ways. We never see each other again and we never speak about what happened. We stick to the story and never change it, no matter what anyone says or tells us they know, we stick to the story – he killed himself, just like he told us he was going to. Agreed?’

‘Agreed,’ said Louise, releasing her grip on the wire of her cage and sitting on the stone floor. After a while she began to laugh quietly to herself, the alien noise disrupting the bleak atmosphere of the cellar, disturbing Deborah, making her feel uneasy and suspicious.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’ Louise struggled to suppress the laughter. ‘I’m sorry, I was just thinking, I’ve just had the most important conversation of my life with a total stranger in a lightless cellar, sitting in a bloody locked cage. It seemed so ridiculous, it made me laugh.’

A new sense of fear gripped Deborah; not the rush of terror and panic that he brought with him every time he pulled open the metal door, but a trickle of anxiety and concern that the only other person in the world who could help her was slowly sinking into a form of temporary insanity that would render her useless to both of them. ‘Are you sure you’re OK, Louise?’ She waited longer than she’d hoped for an answer.