LITMIR.BIZ

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by bomb or bullet, but by a mouthful of protein.

      Perhaps Bart was ill, Maggie thought. Or maybe she’d taken too many sleeping tablets and not heard him leave the house. That had happened before. Distracted after a long shift at the call centre, she’d returned home and taken a SleepSaver, eaten dinner, then swallowed another pill without thinking. Such were the perils of tiredness. Living on a military widow’s pension and her wages was too tight for comfort, even with Bart earning a few extra pounds waiting tables on a Saturday.

      ‘Bart, you all right, love?’ she called, pulling her tatty pink dressing gown over bare shoulders. Bart had bought her a new one for Christmas. It was exquisite. Cream, and so soft it was like one of the really posh cuddly toys you seemed always to find in bookshops, for some inexplicable reason. It was hanging on the back of her bedroom door, and she stroked it every time she entered or exited. But it was too nice to wear. She’d only spill coffee down it, or splash it with the remnants of the previous night’s pasta sauce. The thought of spoiling something so luxurious and thoughtful was enough to keep her in her threadbare robe, at least for another six months or so. She’d start wearing it before Christmas came around, she told herself.

      Bart hadn’t replied by the time she’d reached his bedroom door, knocking politely, always mindful that her boy needed his privacy. He’d never brought a girl back for the night, not that Maggie would have minded if they’d been discreet, but Bart conducted his relationships elsewhere. He obviously had girlfriends. He was a good-looking lad, and that wasn’t just the blur of seeing him through mummy-goggles. At six foot he was big enough to stand out but not so tall that he attracted silly comments on the street. His father had been six foot four and once threatened to deck a man who had somehow imagined that no one had ever asked her husband what the weather was like up there. Maggie’s husband – God rest his soul – had been a decent man, but not blessed with looks, all sharp features and eyes closer together than suited the average face. She was the exact opposite. Broad, flat face, wide eyes (wide hips too, and getting wider by the year, she reminded herself). Perhaps their differences had endowed Bart with the sort of symmetrical, well-balanced face that wasn’t exactly attention-grabbing, but with which no one could find a single fault. Great skin, even teeth, good bone structure, and a fair brain. He was in his final year of a business studies college course that he was hoping would offer a career in London. Plenty of work in Edinburgh, Maggie always told him. Or Glasgow, if he wanted to leave home. Anywhere in Scotland. But London was his dream. Always had been. Even that was too distant for her liking, but she knew that letting go was all part of the painful parenting experience.

      In the absence of a reply to her knocking, Maggie opened the door slowly, calling his name softly as she put a foot inside. The curtains were open and the bed was made. Nothing surprising there, his lectures started at 9 a.m. every day. He’d have left an hour ago to make sure he was in good time. Bart wasn’t the sort of student who ever turned up late. But he hadn’t woken her up. His normal routine was to wake, shower, have breakfast, clear up the kitchen, and to take her a cup of tea before leaving the house. She in turn would rise later, do the washing, shop and leave something tasty in the slow cooker before going off for her shift, which started at lunchtime and went on until 8 p.m. Telesales was thankless but they hadn’t missed a mortgage payment yet.

      It wasn’t the lack of a cup of tea that bothered Maggie. Her son was entitled to forget doing that for her. She counted her blessings on a daily basis for him, with or without his little kindnesses. What she couldn’t understand was why his mobile was still sitting on his bed, charging, exactly where he’d left it the night before when he’d dashed out to grab an extra shift at the restaurant. Another waiter had called in sick. Bart had been offered the hours, and the thought of boosting his savings account was too tempting to refuse. The pay wasn’t great but the tips were, and he always attracted enough customer goodwill to make a night’s work worthwhile. His phone had been running on empty so he’d left it on his bed charging ready for the next morning. Maggie had watched him plug it in as she’d delivered a pile of freshly ironed clothes for him to put away. Those, too, were sitting patiently on the bed for his return.

      She squashed the stupid maternal panic that made the stable bedroom floor feel suddenly like quicksand. So her boy hadn’t come home. Perhaps he’d met up with friends and gone for a drink, or had a better offer from a pretty girl. Only normally he’d have called her, however late. Let her know to put the chain on the door. Tell her not to worry. Bart was thoughtful like that. His father had taught him well. Maggie took the stairs carefully, and checked the answerphone on the landline. No message. She didn’t have a mobile. It was just one more bill that she didn’t need. Plastering an optimistic smile on her face, she popped her head through the door of the lounge, all ready to have a good laugh in case he’d had a few too many and slept on the couch. She was fooling no one with the false jollity, least of all herself. Bart wasn’t an excessive drinker. He’d never reached a point where the couch looked like a better option than his own bed. Before she could stop it, her mind began conjuring the ghosts of accidents. Somewhere in there, a misadventure with a steak loomed large. Like father like son. Wouldn’t that be the ultimate irony? Both of them gone, cause of death unchewed meat.

      ‘Stop it, you silly woman,’ she scolded herself, wandering into the kitchen to make her own cup of breakfast tea. ‘Your boy’ll be back any minute.’

      But the truth that Maggie had felt, in that secret, vile part of the brain no parent ever wanted to hear pipe up, was that her boy wouldn’t be back in a minute. Not by any stretch of the imagination. Because by then, Bartholomew Campbell was already two hundred miles away.

      It was the stench that woke him. Something acrid with a heavy undertone of sulphur had filled his sinuses and was threatening to make him gag.

      ‘Mum?’ His first thought was that she must be ill. That she’d gone down with food poisoning or a virus overnight and been too embarrassed or too thoughtful to have disturbed him. Only he couldn’t remember getting home. And now that he registered the pain in his body, Bart realised he wasn’t in his bed. Or any bed at all.

      He sat bolt upright, head swimming, before collapsing back down to the floor. Everything was dark. Not the dark of Scottish nights away from the city camping by a loch. Not even the dark of the private rooms at the back of the night club he occasionally attended with his friends. True dark. Not one star. No bloom of pollution. No crack or spill from beneath a door or the edge of a blind.

      ‘Hello?’ Bart shouted, braving movement again, sitting up more slowly. That was when he felt a tugging on his leg.

      He froze. Something had hold of his left ankle. He breathed hard, twice, three times, tried to get to grips with his fear, then he lost it.

      ‘Get off me!’ he yelled, wrenching his foot upwards, trying to scrabble away. He hit a wall with his head shortly before his foot locked solid and his hip popped from its socket. The scream he let out was loud enough to wake the entire terrace where he lived. He rolled right, instinct kicking in, and the displaced hip shifted again back into the socket, easing the dreadful pain and allowing him to lean forward to take hold of whatever had his foot.

      He didn’t want to extend his hand. There was something about reaching his fingers out into the black void that seemed to be inviting a bite. Like slipping your hand into a murky river in the sort of place where, when animals attacked, the general reaction to the news was: What the hell did the idiot tourist expect? What Bart found was both less and more terrifying. His ankle was bound by a leather strap. There was no bogeyman occupying the darkness with him. Not one that had hold of his leg, anyway. The strap was thick and sturdy, with a chunky metal link sewn through it. At the end of that, he realised miserably, was a chain. What was at the end of the chain, Bart wasn’t sure he was ready to discover yet. So he did what all cautious people would do in a foul pitch-black room, finding themselves inexplicably chained up. He began calling out for help.

      His cries went in an arc. He called for help. Stopped, listened. Called out again, this time louder. Stopped, listened. Bart could feel the rumbling below the floor more readily than he could hear the engine, but an engine it unmistakably was. He put his hand down flat. The surface was rough but not cold. Neither wood nor metal. More like the sort of industrial liner that was used

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