LITMIR.BIZ

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to continue running. Blenkinsop felt cool air as the door on his left-hand side was opened. Feet clumped on tarmac as one of the men climbed out.

      ‘Lean over this way, Mr Blenkinsop. And don’t even think about taking that blindfold off.’

      Blenkinsop wasn’t used to taking orders from anyone, but now he did exactly as instructed. The man on the right-hand side took hold of him by the collar of his coat, so that he wouldn’t fall out of the car completely.

      ‘Okay, let it go,’ the first man said.

      Blenkinsop felt a surge in his belly, as though everything inside him was about to explode out of his mouth in a torrent. But to his surprise, it was only a trickle, and it felt frothy, light. It didn’t even taste of vomit. Rather disgustingly, he realised, it was the champagne he’d drunk earlier; that was all he’d taken into his system in the last few hours. He retched again – another trickle, this one even thinner than the first. The next one was a dry-heave.

      ‘That it?’ the man asked. ‘Okay, back in with you.’

      Blenkinsop was pulled back into the vehicle. The man climbed in alongside him. The door was closed, and the car moved on.

      The journey seemed endless. It had been lengthy when he’d been coming the other way – somewhere between two and three hours by his reckoning; and on that occasion he’d been in a state of eager anticipation. Now that he was riddled with horror and fear, it seemed infinitely longer. They’d first picked him up in a rural lay-by near Tring. In the amount of time it had taken to reach their destination, they could have visited almost any part of southern or central England. Of course, by the same token, they may have taken him no more than a few miles, but had driven round and round in deliberate circles to throw him off the trail.

      He tried to put these thoughts from his mind. What did he think he was doing, for Christ’s sake: collating evidence? The best thing now was to keep his mouth shut. As soon as they released him, he’d head for home and not look back once. But that would be easier said than done. That horrendous thing …

      Blenkinsop was still shaking with disbelief at what he’d just participated in. At what – for Christ’s sake – he’d actually purchased. Oh, he was under no illusions about himself: he liked to think that he was a family man, but when it came to sex there were some real quirks in his character. He’d discovered that on umpteen trips overseas on behalf of the bank – to the Gulf and North Africa, to developing countries with unstable governments, where just about anything was available if you were prepared to pay for it. He’d often tried to reconcile these dark inner traits with the knowledge that this was the anything-goes twenty-first century, and that sexual experimentation was no longer frowned upon the way it once had been. But that didn’t mean he didn’t feel dirty and wretched whenever his lust had been sated – not that any previous experience, no matter how extreme, compared with this one.

      He wondered if he was going to be sick again, and struggled to fight it down. It seemed unlikely that the men in the car would tolerate another unscheduled stoppage.

      He had to put it all from his mind. That was the only solution. Time healed everything. Even the most dreadful things faded from importance eventually. Another few weeks and it wouldn’t matter to him a jot, he was sure. He could relax again, get on with his life. It was all behind him. But still he had to wrestle with himself, to silence the voice of his conscience that was calling shame upon him, to shut the image of Louise’s frightened, child-like face from his mind’s eye.

      If only they hadn’t made him stay behind afterwards.

      ‘Just a bit of extra insurance, Mr Blenkinsop,’ the one in the orange mask had said, as the one in purple had laid a body-length PVC bin-bag on the bed alongside Louise’s unconscious, naked form, and then produced a coil of what looked like piano wire. Blenkinsop knew he’d never forget the heart-stopping shock of that moment. As Purple unravelled the wire, he’d noticed that it was fitted with wooden grip-handles, one at either end.

      Orange had chuckled. ‘You being here – involved, if you like – means you’re even less likely to go telling tales, doesn’t it?’

      Blenkinsop had been half-dressed at the time and still coming down from the rapture of thoroughly enjoying the woman who had taunted him for so long. But he’d never expected to be made to witness the winding of that gleaming wire around her soft, white neck. He’d never imagined having to listen to the grunting efforts of the man in purple as he used the wooden handles to twist and twist and twist, exerting incredible pressure. Most of all, he’d never expected the inert body to start moving slightly, the leaden limbs jerking and twitching.

      ‘Amazing how they do that, isn’t it?’ Orange had remarked. ‘Out for the count, but there’s still something inside that’s aware she’s about to snuff it. Still, kinder than if she was fully conscious, eh?’

      The contents of Blenkinsop’s gut lurched into his mouth again, but again – thankfully – there was nothing there of note, and he was able to gulp it back.

      When she’d finally gone limp – had just flopped down lifeless – that was probably the most horrible part of it. Of course, he’d seen that a dozen times in the movies: a body fighting to survive for torturously long moments and then abruptly giving up the ghost; but in real life it was the most numbing, hair-raising thing he’d ever seen. Even then it had felt unreal – probably because at some subconscious level he couldn’t bring himself to accept what he was seeing – though now, in retrospect, it seemed naive to have expected the situation with Louise to be resolved any other way. They always undertook to ensure the crime would go unreported. That was their firm guarantee; they had dozens and dozens of satisfied customers who were still free men, who were at no risk of losing their liberty, and if he asked no questions about how this was brought about, he’d be told no lies – so he hadn’t asked. Of course he hadn’t. And even now, appalled again by the memory of Louise’s final, futile death struggles, he didn’t think he’d necessarily have wanted them to take a different course of action. He hadn’t known the girl well enough to like her, much less care about her, but he wouldn’t have wished such a fate upon her – that was never his intention, and he needed to keep reassuring himself of that; it had never been his plan to … murder (yes, like it or not, that was the word). And yet, loath to admit it though he was, it suited his purpose. Now there was absolutely no danger she would talk – you could never say that about someone you’d paid off or simply threatened.

      Oh, it was hideous; there was no denying it – her eyes frozen in a lovely face turned purple and disfigured; her body, once young and supple, now cold, broken, stiffening, being wrapped in soulless plastic, bound with fishing twine like some demonic Christmas package – but it was for the best. Louise Jennings was now gone. It was over for her. But for him, life must go on.

      Somewhere inside a distant voice berated him for attempting to rationalise it in this way, but he wanted to shout the voice down as if it wasn’t his own (good Christ, was he going mad?). He hadn’t sought this outcome, he reiterated to himself, but in all honesty how else could his freedom be guaranteed? Alright, there was no doubt it hadn’t been too clever getting himself into this mess in the first place, but you couldn’t roll back time … and Jesus you didn’t want to do or say anything that might antagonise men like this. No Sir, not in any shape or form. You had to approve of men like this. He almost cackled, he was so frightened, and again he wondered if shock had driven him mad.

      The car now slowed to another halt, disrupting his thoughts.

      A door opened and one of the men – by the sounds of it, the driver – climbed out. Blenkinsop knew what this meant, and at that moment it seemed like the greatest relief in his life. When they’d picked him up previously, black tape had been used to mask the vehicle’s registration mark. No doubt, once they’d blindfolded him and put him in the car, they’d stripped it away again. Now they were probably re-applying it. When the driver returned, Blenkinsop was told to climb out.

      The two other men went first, one of them lending him a hand.

      Initially, his legs were shaking

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