Chapter Four

To say that she went quietly would have been a lie. She tried as hard as she could to fight them off, but the fact of the matter was she was but one woman and there were too many attackers for her too handle. It would come as no relief to her as she did not even know the woman, but Alice Cuthbert would have lost a fight with these odds too and she was David’s best warrior.

As she tried, in vain, to fight the men off, she managed to knock on of their heads back with such force that she was convinced for a moment that she had killed him. But his head came back up from the almost impossible angle that it had been placed in, now minus the hood that he had worn moments before.

He was completely bald but Isabelle did not even notice this. The things that struck her were his eyes. Even now she would have trouble describing them to anyone, despite the fact that she had thought of not much else, but at that point so many thoughts had come into her head to describe those eyes, all of them now gone.

The unmasked man licked his lips and sneered at her horribly as he pushed a wet handkerchief into her face. For a brief moment she could concentrate on nothing more than a very strong smell, which was almost like bleach.

Her nose got used to the smell in a matter of seconds, although to her it felt like a lot longer. Her mind swiftly returned to the bald man. He’s on drugs, she thought. He has to be.

There was no other rational explanation for it.

Rational explanation.

But then the chloroform took effect and she knew no more.

And when she came back round the sight of the man and his cloaked companions was nothing but a distant memory. She has been awake for a little while now and is still in the exact same situation, tied up too tightly to ever hope to escape on her own.

But she is a very determined woman and this little factoid does not stop her from trying. There is no way that she is going to give up. Gary will be worried sick. She wonders if he has called the Police yet.

The thought of Gary is the one thing that keeps her trying to escape. But deep in her mind she is already thinking that she has seen one of her kidnappers faces. There is a very good (if good is an appropriate word to be using in such a situation) chance that she might never get out of here alive. She might never see Gary’s face again.

CHAPTER FOUR

1.

Tuesday 27th April 2010

00:43

David Oswald does not wear a big badge telling the world what he does for a living. But he doesn’t have to. The grey suit that he wears has come to symbolise something amongst the… enemies that he fights that seems to strike more fear than similar suits of different colours.

He is sipping on a glass of water that he has just taken from the main office water cooler when he turns round and sees a man wearing one of these different coloured suits – a black one – staring at him.

There is a look of recognition on David’s face and he smiles, putting the glass down on a desk. This is a much warmer smile than the one he used to greet his previous visitor with.

Still his question is a strange one. Not “How are you, old friend”, but, instead, “What do you want?”

The man puts on a good show of faking shock. “Is that any way to talk to an old friend?”

“Would you like a glass of water?”

The newcomer finds this amusing for some reason. “You’re funny do you know that?”

David picks up his glass and took a sip. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“You don’t trust Kevin is going to let this lie are you?” The man asks.

Now it is David’s turn to fake shock. “You were listening into my conversation?”

“Naturally. Things are slow right now and it is always entertaining hanging around here.”

“You haven’t been around for a while. Things been busy?”

“It’s been so-so!”

He walks round David’s office; as if this is the first time he has taken the tour. He pays particular interest to the painting. The man in it has an identical black suit to the one the visitor is wearing.

“It is a fantastic likeness of him.”

He turns round and raises his arm, sticking a thumb at the picture behind him.

“I’m very surprised that Kevin doesn’t bring him up in your conversations. Surely that would sway you?”

“No it wouldn’t and he wouldn’t dare.”

“Anyway, I was just calling to warn you that I’ll have business around here soon. A lot of it.”

David’s smile disappears at the implication. “Is it anyone I know?”

The man shrugs. “You know I can’t tell you that.”

Just then, the phone starts to ring. The man turns to walk out of the room.

“You really should get that. It’s important.”

And then he is gone.

2.

Tuesday 27th April 2010

00:45

For some strange reason, Alice Cuthbert wakes up with the smell of bacon in her nostrils. Maybe it is from a dream that she was having. She can think of no other rational explanation. Whatever her dream was, it is gone now and she will never remember it. They occasionally come back to her through the course of the day when there is some sort of memory brought on by a sight or a sound… or a smell.

She has not been asleep for long. It has been another late night at work so maybe she hadn’t even gone deep enough to dream yet. She had read somewhere that the average person takes four hours to go into deep sleep but that sounds wrong. She cannot remember the last time she even slept for four hours straight but the memories she has of dreams that do return to her prove the theory wrong. Now she is even wondering if it was four hours… She will have to check that out.

She has become so used to the phone ringing in the dead of the night that she is usually running out of the room to answer it before she is even fully awake.

This thoroughly annoys her boyfriend. He cannot understand why she has such devotion to work. When the phone rings it is always work related.

Alice, like Gary, has never told her partner about what kind of work she is involved in. There is just no easy way to do it.

She was the first person to join David’s group. This has caused her to be one of his more trusted employees. She is almost the second in command (although she would never claim such a thing). Everyone reckons that she knows what David is thinking, but the fact of the matter is that she has just about as much clue as everyone else.