Many an hour seems to pass. Perhaps days. Titus can’t be sure. No, it can’t be a matter of days, he thinks. He hasn’t pissed his pants yet. But of course he hasn’t drunk anything since he ended up this darkness either.
How does it work? Do you only get the urge to piss if you drink? Or must you always piss? What do you piss out if you haven’t drunk anything? He only has a slight urge to go, so presumably it has been only a matter of hours. Yes, that must be the case.
Astra rings the doorbell for a long time. Titus doesn’t answer. She peeps in through the letterbox. Empty. No movement at all. She rings the neighbour’s doorbell to find out if he or she knows anything about Titus. Nobody answers there either. She peeps in through the neighbour’s letterbox too. There is a pile of advertising leaflets on the floor, the sort that comes with the post. Everyone gets it nowadays, it makes no difference if you have stuck up a sign: No advertising, please! The neighbour must be still at work, Astra thinks. If Titus got a similar pile of leaflets too, then it must mean that he left after the postman had been round. They usually come at about eleven, surely? So he must have left his flat just before lunch, which is round about the time he had phoned her on his mobile.
But where had he gone off to? Why doesn’t he answer?
Titus is worn out. None of his ideas lead him anywhere. Everything just goes round and round in his head. It is absolutely loathsome to sit tightly taped to a kitchen chair in the pitch dark. Now and then he falls asleep for a while, and it is almost a nice feeling when that happens. Body and brain must rest a while.
Titus dreams that Lenny tips his chair on to a trolley. He is wheeled out through a little door. It is dark, it is night. The place is surrounded by dark trees, an awful lot of trees. Forest. There is a dull rustling. He is in the countryside, what a nightmare.
Then Eddie comes up to him. He smiles at Titus. Puts his hands on Titus’ shoulders. Gives them a little pat.
And then he slaps Titus violently on his cheek.
Titus wakes with a start.
But he can still see Eddie before him wearing that friendly smile. What? Isn’t he dreaming? What is this? Uuuuummmmpf!
His cheek is stinging from the slap, and it doesn’t feel any better when Eddie rips off the silver tape from his mouth so that his beard stubble goes with it. Titus opens his mouth and takes some deep breaths.
They stare at each other.
Eddie looks almost as if tears are coming to his eyes when he starts to speak.
‘Hello, Titus.’
Titus stares at Eddie, and at Lenny, who is standing next to him. He lifts his head a little, as if to show that he still has a certain human dignity.
‘Titus, you have forced me into a difficult position,’ says Eddie with a strained voice.
‘What…?’
‘Yes, you have indeed. You can’t deny it.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I have read nearly the whole book.’
‘What? What is this?’
Titus gradually starts to realise his predicament. He has been kidnapped. He looks around him. He is in some sort of farmyard out in the country. There is some light coming from a window on a little cottage close to them. A typical old tithed cottage it looks like. Perhaps it’s red, you can’t really tell in the dark. It could be grey, too. It is surrounded by a solid mass of trees except for the yard in front of the house where they are now. He can see an earth cellar with the door open. His prison. He smells damp.
Eddie continues hoarsely.
‘You left the memory card on the coffee table at Astra’s to provoke me. That was how it started. You wanted to make me unbalanced. Show that I couldn’t produce anything any longer.’
‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,’ Titus mumbles, in despair.
Eddie paces back and forth in front of Titus.
‘I did what you wanted. I read the book. As much as you had written, that is. I read the manuscript the night after me and Astra had been out sailing. Fucking hell, Titus. I would never have believed this of you.’
‘What?’
Titus follows Eddie with his gaze as he paces back and forth in front of him. Lenny stands next to them to one side, completely still. He looks almost relaxed, not at all his usual self. He too follows Eddie with his gaze.
‘It’s such a dirty low trick, what you’ve done,’ Eddie goes on in a low voice. ‘To think of all those times I’ve given you a helping hand by arranging readings! Haven’t I given you love? Haven’t I? Answer me!’
‘Love? Do you call this love? Shutting me in a damned earth cellar?’ Titus protests.
‘I was forced to. There are limits to what even I can put up with!’
‘Oh really, so we should feel sorry for you now?’ Titus shouts in resignation.
Eddie comes to a halt in front of Titus and crosses his arms.
‘What you have done is a deadly sin. You have stolen my ideas and drained me of energy. I don’t know how it has happened but you have written almost word-for-word what I was going to write in my manuscript.’
‘You what…?’
Titus can’t believe his ears. This is simply too much, he can hardly take it in. Eddie is claiming that he has stolen his ideas! While in actual fact it is the opposite – that Eddie and Lenny all summer long have tried to spy on him. Just a few seconds ago, Eddie even admitted that he had nicked the memory card at Astra’s. And besides, they have kidnapped him and tied him to a fucking kitchen chair in a pitch black earth cellar in the country!
‘I have read nearly all of it now, even the ending which you had with you today. Sentence for sentence, word for word, letter for letter, you have stolen my text. You have done it skilfully, I’ll give you that. It is an extremely good book, Titus. Incredibly good. You must be clear about one thing: I am the one who has written it. Not you. You have simply stolen everything. Like I said, don’t ask me how you’ve gone about it. But that is what you’ve done. We have to agree on that.’
‘Like hell we do! I’d rather die than go along with something like that! You’re crazy. You have completely lost your grip!’
Eddie puts his hands on Titus’ shoulders and smiles sadly.
‘We’re going to come to an agreement, Titus. We certainly are. That’s what we’re going to do. All in good time, all in good time.’
He strokes Titus’ shoulders.
Then he pushes lightly with his thumbs into the hollow between Titus’ shoulders and collar bone. Applies pressure. Harder and harder. As hard as he can, for a long time.
‘Owwww! Stop!’
As soon as Astra wakes up, she tries to phone Titus. No answer.
She phones the locksmith that she arranged when he had a break-in during the summer and had to get a new lock. Even though ‘things are pretty busy right now, you know’ she manages to get him to agree to a special turn-out charge and they arrange to meet at Titus’ flat in half an hour.
She only has to wait there ten minutes before he turns up. Although the guy is just a mountain of muscles, she can’t help wondering how he can carry such a big toolbox in just one hand.
‘Hi there, lady! Yeah, this is it. And this, this is a really good door. I installed this lock myself, I remember that distinctly, you know.’
‘Yeah, right,’ says Astra. ‘It was me who phoned from Greece if you remember. Then you sent a rather padded bill to Winchester Publishing. Perhaps you remember that?’