He looked across at Jeanie, who was at another desk checking the information about the cases in Australia. He couldn’t breathe; he was about to enter into a panic attack. He wanted to scream with the fear of it. He wanted to run from the room but he was too scared to move. His eyes stayed on the screen. There was a photo from Yan’s Facebook. It was Yan on a sunny beach in Australia looking like every other gap year kid – around his neck was a chain.
‘You all right, Robbo?’ Jeanie looked up.
He shook his head. He stood up and then sat back down and tapped again on his keyboard. His lungs were wheezing. His face was scarlet. His peripheral vision was gone; now he was running down an ever-narrowing tunnel. But somewhere behind him something was pulling him backwards. It was holding him fast in the real world where he was needed.
‘Ebony’s in trouble, Jeanie. Her signal’s gone. Something’s wrong. Tell Carter.’
Ebony was dreaming of pain, of someone hitting her head with a hammer. She felt her body being jolted, felt it turning around in the air. All the time she heard laughter and then silence, darkness. Her hands shot upwards instinctively before she realized they were tied together at the wrist; they banged against a solid surface just a few inches above her. She passed out.
Carter looked up as the door opened and Jeanie entered. He could see by her face that something was very wrong.
‘Detective Inspector Dan Carter leaving the room.’ Carter signed himself off and left Christian with his lawyer whilst he stepped outside with Jeanie.
‘It’s Ebony. Her camera’s not working and neither is her phone. GPS signal is lost,’ said Jeanie.
‘Where was she headed?’
‘The last thing we know is that she was going to see Yan and meet some other members of the group after Goddard was brought in. Robbo says there’s a photo of Yan on Facebook wearing the chain from Emily Styles’ body.’
‘Have you got a phone number for him, or an address?’
‘We have a phone number but it’s dead and it’s not registered, it’s a pay-as-you-go phone. We’ve tried college records and council tax, utilities. Either the address isn’t the right one or the name of the person is wrong. The college have several addresses for him but his wages are paid in through a bank account that is proving impossible to trace. He seems to have covered all the angles. We need an address from Christian.’
Carter stepped back inside the interview room and sat back down across from Christian.
‘What do you know about Yan Stevenson?’
‘I’ve known him for a few years. I first met him in Australia when I was travelling. He was living out there.’
‘We need to find him. Do you know where he lives?’
Christian Goddard shook his head.
‘I helped him get some animals – spiders, snakes – he wanted once but he was insistent that I never came to his house with them. He collected them from me.’
Chapter 50
As Ebony opened her eyes the pain shot across the side of her head. She shut them fast and tried to breathe through the pain and nausea. She couldn’t risk vomiting; she had a gag across her mouth. She opened her eyes again slowly and could see nothing but darkness.
She lay there trying hard to remember how she got wherever she was. She could smelclass="underline" wood, urine and sweat. She listened hard. Against her back and buttocks she felt rough wood. She knew she was inside a coffin. Her fingers stretched upwards and her fingertips ran along the grooves that other nails had dug. Waves of nausea surged upward. Pain shot across her skull. She tried to calm herself. She could breathe – air must be coming from somewhere. She must try and come out of the pain and fog – try and think – it was her only chance.
She stopped as she heard movement above her. She heard him unlatch the first of the three locks on her box.
Ebony opened her eyes as she heard the box being opened. Three locks, to her left. The sound of music again. She held her breath, waited. As he opened the box, she was temporarily blinded by the light. He shone a torch in her face. She saw Yan’s face loom close to hers as he pulled up her eyelids and examined her. He pulled her to a sitting position by her wrists. Her eyes squinted as he directed the light straight at her. A hot bulb shining on her swollen face. He pulled down her gag.
‘Welcome to my world.’
His voice chilled her. It was a voice she knew well but she had never heard it in those tones. Now she realized she didn’t know him at all. He was bare-chested, had on a pair of combat trousers and was wearing black leather gloves on his hands. He lifted her from the box by her wrists, pulled her over his shoulder and carried her out of the room.
She grimaced in pain as he squashed her bruised ribs and almost ran along the corridor. Try as she might, Ebony could not clear her head and was dipping in and out of consciousness. She tried to focus on where she could be in the house. She looked at the floor and the edges of doors: four, five. He carried her along a low-ceilinged corridor. It felt like they were underground. Suddenly, Yan stopped at a door on their right.
‘Welcome to your new home. I’ve been waiting for you. I’ve been busy spinning my webs and you walked straight into them, my little fly.’
‘Let me talk to you, Yan.’
He didn’t answer as he opened a door. Inside she felt the temperature drop. It was completely black and there was the rank smell of something rotting. She felt the air flow over her body as he tipped her from his shoulder. She landed on a mat covered with grit and dirt.
When Ebony opened her eyes she shuffled forward in the dark. She had no sense of time or place. She didn’t know where she was. The floor was crunching beneath her palms, something was sticking to her hands and knees. Her shoulder brushed against something that moved back and forth, banging, tapping her lightly. She recoiled quickly as she thought it was him, then in the silence that followed she inched forward again and reached out with her hand to touch the hanging object; her fingers touched a woman’s feet covered in silken thread.
At the same time as she recoiled the lights went on and she saw that all around her on the floor, the crunchy paper particles were dead insects and above her, hanging from the ceiling, was a woman’s body embalmed in spiders’ webs. In the corner of the room she saw a woman she recognized as Danielle, suspended by her wrists from a hook in the ceiling; she was gagged, staring at Ebony. Her eyes were glaring at her, willing her to understand something that she couldn’t say.
Ebony couldn’t focus, she tried to keep her head very still as she crawled towards Danielle. Danielle began whimpering. Her eyes were fixed on Ebony; the nearer she got to her the louder the sounds she made. Ebony stopped where she was. She kept her head very still as she focused on Danielle and saw why she was crying. Yan was watching them. He had slipped into the room.
‘What’s this? A party? We need some music.’
Classical music started blasting out from a speaker on the wall. Yan moved to the middle of the room and held onto the hanging corpse as he pretended to waltz in a small circle. He lay on the floor breathing hard and laughing as he looked across at Ebony, who was retching now as the pain in her head distorted her vision and took away her balance. She couldn’t stand; she swayed on her knees.
‘Ebony, Ebony, Ebony.’ She watched him as he circled her. She realized that she only had underwear on and it wasn’t hers. It was a red metallic bikini. Her pendant was gone. She glared up at him.
‘Yes, you’re angry, I know. You fell for the oldest trick in the book, didn’t you? Oh Ebony, I can be your boyfriend.’ He simpered then laughed loudly. ‘You’re all the same. You’re all pretenders: selfish liars, mercenary cheats, uncaring, ruthless in your pursuit of selfish dreams. And you, Ebony, are the lowest of the low. I intend to put all my skills to use on you. You are my pièce de résistance.’ he said flamboyantly, waving his arms in the air as he struck a dancer’s pose.