John Carr

‘Who was that?’ she said.

‘Your granny,’ he said.

‘For fuck’s sake, Dad,’ said Alice, shaking her head. ‘Why’s everything got to be secret squirrel with you?’

He chuckled.

‘I’m a leopard, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘I cannae change my spots.’

40. (#ulink_40853c4a-0f2d-5dc3-8637-e300404551d5)

CHARLOTTE MORGAN, MARTHA Percival and their captors had arrived at a compound on the outskirts of Saïdia not long after midnight.

There the first part of the two women’s ordeal had ended, with their removal from the stinking, sweating hiding places under the floors of the two Land Cruisers.

They were half-carried, half-dragged quickly in through the open door of a stone house.

There they were split up, Martha being taken through a further door on the left, Charlotte through a door on the right.

The two men carrying her stood her upright, and then a third – and the man with the dark eyes and the livid red hole in his leg, the man who had filmed the murder of Emily Souster – began the process of stripping off the duct tape.

She was dripping with sweat, and it came easily enough off her wet skin, but it pulled strands of her hair out where it was wrapped around her head.

She did not cry out, and when it was finally all ripped away, she stood there defiantly: she was damned if she was going to show these men her fear.

Almost four hours she had spent in the 4x4, being bounced around the cramped interior on the rough roads, and fighting to keep her sanity. Several times she had almost lost control, her mind and heart racing, the panic rising as she imagined she was suffocating, dying in this tiny, claustrophobic box.

If she could survive that, she could survive this.

Dark Eyes looked her up and down, and grinned lasciviously, a bucket of brackish water in one hand.

‘You are a filthy whore,’ he said, in gutturally-accented English. ‘You must be cleansed.’

He stepped forward and tipped the bucket over her head.

Charlotte stood stock still, looking him defiantly in the eye, until he looked away.

A small victory.

He left the room, and returned a few moments with a sheet, which he threw at her. She wrapped it around her dripping body, and then followed his pointing finger to a shabby Persian carpet against the far wall on the dirt floor.

She sat cross-legged on the rug, and looked around her. The rough-plastered room was lit only by a single, bare, low-wattage bulb in an inspection lamp on the floor in one corner, but it smelt curiously pleasant, of bread and coffee.

Sure enough, a moment or two later, the man disappeared, and then he limped back in, holding a flat bread and a steaming glass.

‘Eat,’ he said. ‘And drink.’

Charlotte took the bread and the glass, which was so hot it hurt her fingers.

Slowly, deliberately, and staring into the depths of his black eyes, she tipped the coffee onto the floor beside herself.

Then she spat on the flatbread, and held it out to him.

‘Piss off,’ she said.

He leaned forward, smiling.

‘Maybe I fuck you later,’ he whispered.

Then he turned on his heel and left.

Charlotte hurled the bread after him, and immediately realised that she’d made a mistake. She needed to eat and drink; without that, her strength would fail, and her ability to prepare mentally and remain focused would be inhibited, and she would never get beyond this ordeal.

Against the far wall, the two men who had carried her inside now sat, unsmiling and silent, AK47s across their laps. They stared at her unwaveringly, but appeared completely detached from her situation, as if having an Englishwoman seated on the floor in the dirt in this place was the most natural thing in the world.