They stood now between the bed and a wardrobe. He pushed her towards the cupboard and for a moment, she imagined that he was going to try to stuff her inside it. She'd never fit. Instead, he reached in with his left hand, his eyes on her the whole time.
Chloe met his eyes once and her knees buckled. His hand whipped out of the wardrobe and caught her arm. He used his right hand to lift her chin with the knife.
'Open your eyes, now,' he said. 'You're not being any fun.'
She forced herself to open her eyes and stare at the floor. If she looked into his demented face again, she wouldn't be able to help screaming, and he would start stabbing her with that huge knife. She knew it.
His left hand held cable. Plastic ties. She'd seen them before in crime scene photos. The restraint of choice for today's killer: cable ties, unable to be broken by the victim without pulling their own hands off. Her thoughts cantered madly. She couldn't let this man bind her. She had to fight now! On the other hand, if he was going to restrain her, he wasn't going to kill her immediately. She might have time to reason with him.
Chloe found her voice, although to her ears it sounded fractured, hysterical. She forced herself not to focus on it, or she'd lose herself to those impulses.
'My b-boyfriend knows I'm here,' she managed. 'He's a cop.'
'Wrong. No. I don't think so.' Grinning, her captor capered a little on the spot, the machete still pointed at her throat. She froze, terrified of the swishing blade. The wound on her neck throbbed, but she sensed the blood had coagulated and she was not bleeding heavily. 'You said the police don't know I'm here. You said that, slut. Don't lie to me. Now turn around and give me your hands.'
She hesitated, and he jabbed the knife at her neck again. She whimpered and turned. This man had dismembered a person in Capitol Hill.
Pulling her arms behind her back, he wrapped one hand then the other with the unyielding ties, wrenching her shoulders backwards finally to tighten them.
'Now sit. Here. On the floor.'
Chloe squatted and then dropped to her bottom between the bed and the wardrobe. He'd have to put the knife down to bind her ankles. When he bent over her she'd headbutt – no, kick him – then run for the door.
He seemed to have seen her calculating.
'You can't get out,' he said. 'You have to use the key. And I have that. By the time you get to the door, I'll have filleted you. Did you know you can do that to a person? No, I didn't either, but I've found, recently, that the muscles come away quite cleanly.'
Chloe screamed and screamed.
He ripped his bedspread from his bed and shoved a fistful of the fabric into her mouth. Chloe gagged on the material and tried to dislodge the wad from her airway. She couldn't breathe. He jabbed the tip of the knife under her chin.
'I'm not going to hurt you unless you make me,' he said.
She tried desperately to rein in her blind panic. There were only two choices here. Live or die. This man would kill her now, or she could delay her death and possibly survive this.
'Good,' he said. 'No one can hear you anyway. There's a foot of concrete above us, and these double-brick walls are half buried into the earth. I love it here, don't you?'
He motioned her to lie on her side and he squatted to tie each ankle, and then cable-tied them together.
'Now,' he said. 'I promise not to hurt you, but you need to cooperate. This bit's tricky.'
He stood and reached back into the wardrobe. Chloe panted into the fabric, terrified with each move he made that he would bring forth some object of horror. His hands emerged and he now held a thick wire with a lock, a device resembling something used to secure a bike. He squatted again. He looped the cord through the restraints around her ankles and used it to pull her legs backwards. He then yanked her hands downwards, pulling at the restraints, handling her as though she were an inanimate object. Her shoulders burned and she moaned around the fabric. She heard him click the lock into place. She was shackled into a U-shape, the top half of her body facing the bed.
Immediately, Chloe was engulfed by waves of claustrophobic terror. She was completely immobilised. She tried to roll, but the movement wrenched at her shoulders and thighs. Her neck strained and she struggled to breathe.
'Hogtied,' he said, standing with his hands on his hips, beaming down at her. 'You look good. I've fastened the cable to a bolt in the wall. You'll be staying here for a while.'
He picked up his knife from the bed. 'Shut up,' he said, when Chloe made choking sounds through the fabric in her mouth. 'I'm going to fix a proper gag so you can breathe properly.' He took a scarf from the wardrobe and squatted next to her again. 'Don't scream, slut, or I'll cut you.'
He pulled the bedspread from her jaws, and Chloe spat out the taste, then screamed through sobs. He wrapped the scarf around her mouth. She could at least breathe around the fabric, but the pressure he applied compressed her tongue and chafed at the soft corners of her lips; the knot at the back of her neck cut her circulation.
He sat down on the side of the bed; took a deep breath.
'Now I'm going to show you how I relax,' he said.
Cutter reclined on the bed and lifted his shirt, tended to his wound. The smell filled the room.
Chloe gave into the hysteria that bulged behind her eyes.
30
JILL WAS AWAKE before the alarm sounded at five, but her eyelashes were glued shut. She prised them open carefully, groaned and rolled over. A sea of used tissues littered the ground; one was still crushed in her fist.
She pointed her face into the hot stream of water in the shower and thought again about what she'd ask Joss and Isobel. She figured these were good people caught up in some sort of bad situation, but this was no time for them to be stuffing around. It had been six days since the murder at Capitol Hill, and the taskforce had yet to bring in a person of interest. The media were slamming them on every news update. She knew that Last would want Henry Nguyen brought in today or tomorrow at the latest. They'd had constant covert surveillance on his last known address, and the superintendent had given orders to bring the other suspect, Dang Huynh, in on sight. Joss and his wife might have information that could close the net on these guys.
She pulled on knee-high socks and zipped skinny black jeans into calf-length boots. She tucked a long-sleeved black tee-shirt into her jeans and added a belt and a black jacket. The detectives dressed more casually out in Liverpool than they did at Maroubra and, sunshine or not, there was no way she was going to freeze her arse off out there today. She blow-dried her hair carefully and left it long, warm around her neck, dropped Visine into her red eyes and smeared Vaseline over her lips. She thought she was beginning to feel better.
She stuffed an apple, some industrial-strength cough lollies and a few more tissues into her bag and left.
Gabriel's car was there already, and he crossed the road when Jill parked, smiling at her. He's always so bloody cheerful, she thought, wiping her nose and checking her face in the rearview mirror before getting out of the car.
Joss opened the door before they knocked, his face a mask.
'Morning, Joss,' said Jill. 'Isobel here? We've got to have a talk.'
He stepped aside wordlessly and led them into the terrace house. Isobel stood by the glass doors next to the kitchen. She wore a terry dressing gown and her hair was still wet. She had an arm across her stomach and worry creased her brow. She glanced at Charlie, seated at the kitchen table, her little hand holding a spoon above a bowl of cornflakes.
'Hello,' said the little girl, scraping her chair away from the table. She walked over to Jill and held out her hand. 'I'm Charlie Rymill. What's your name?'