Читать книгу Valley of Death - Scott Mariani, Scott Mariani - Страница 20

But Prajapati was wrong. Because Amal Ray was still very much alive. For the moment, at any rate – though for how much longer, he was too petrified to contemplate.

Amal could still see the last look on Brooke’s face as they ripped him away from her. Could still hear the echo of his own voice yelling, Run, Brooke, run! Then the van door slamming shut, and the start of the nightmare journey into the unknown. He remembered the van stopping. Sounds, footsteps, voices. Then a sudden flood of harsh light making him blink as the back door was wrenched open. A glimpse of brickwork in the background: had he been taken to a garage or a warehouse of some kind? Then the terrifying sight of one of his kidnappers, the one in charge, his face masked like a terrorist’s, coming up to him with a hypodermic needle in one gloved hand and an evil glint lighting up his eyes.

After that, there was a gaping hole in Amal’s memory. Whatever sedative they’d pumped into him could have rendered him unconscious for minutes, hours, he had no idea. The next thing he’d known was awakening in this place, head aching, feeling nauseous and utterly afraid.

And he’d been here ever since. Long enough to have examined every square inch of his strange new environment a hundred times over.

His prison was thirty feet square, a figure he’d paced out accurately over and over, back and forth and round and round like a zoo animal in a caged enclosure. It was lit by a single naked bulb in the middle of the ceiling that burned around the clock, so that it was impossible to tell night from daytime hours and hard to keep track of the days passing. His captors had taken away his watch, along with his wallet and shoes. Why the shoes, he’d wondered at first. Maybe to make it harder for him to run away, in the unlikely event that he managed to escape this place. Or maybe to prevent him from hanging himself with his laces.

Not that there was anywhere to hang himself from. The ceiling was more than six feet above his head, and the three silver duct pipes that ran across it from end to end were too far up to reach. The ducts looked industrial, making him wonder about the kind of building he was in, and what might be above the ceiling or beyond the four walls that surrounded him. The walls felt like solid concrete, and no matter where he tapped and thumped he could produce no hollow sounds. They could have been a mile thick.

The absence of any windows and the feeling of total insulation from the outside world had led him to conclude early on that he was below ground. Deeper down than a basement. More like a cellar, or some kind of underground bunker. The flight of metal steps that led steeply upwards to the only entrance tended to confirm that impression.

But the cellar wasn’t some dank, stinking hole full of rats and filth. Amal understood that his captors had gone to certain lengths to make his stay here reasonably comfortable. The walls had been painted white to reflect more light, obviously in a hurry, judging by the crude job that had been made of it, and obviously not long ago, judging by the smell of fresh paint. The bed they’d provided for him was narrow and basic, like an old-fashioned hospital bed with a creaky iron frame, but the mattress and pillow were new. He had a plastic chair to sit on, and a small table, which, likewise, he understood were luxuries not necessarily afforded to most people in his predicament.

The same was also true of his toilet arrangements. His kidnappers could have just given him a bucket. Instead, they’d provided him with his own little separate bathroom, albeit a makeshift affair set up in the corner opposite his bed and consisting of two plywood sheets for walls and one for a ceiling, with a doorway sawn out. Inside the bathroom was a chemical toilet, a plastic basin on a stand and a water pipe that was cemented into the wall and protruded a couple of feet with a tap attached to its end. He wouldn’t have drunk the water, but it seemed okay to wash with. He had a toothbrush and toothpaste and spare rolls of toilet paper. They’d even left him some pieces of cheap soap and a couple of towels.

All the comforts a man could wish for, apart from the basic freedom to walk out of here.

The cellar door was the one feature that kept reminding him of what this place truly was, a prison cell. It was solid timber, not ply. No visible hinges, no interior handle, no keyhole, no peephole or window. Only a small trapdoor hatch near its base, about eight inches square, which looked to Amal like a cat flap, except it opened only outwards. It was too small for him to poke his head out of, on the rare occasions when it wasn’t bolted shut, which was when his unseen captors brought him his meals and drinks.

His diet consisted mainly of tinned beans and stewed meat, warmed up and served on disposable paper plates with a plastic fork and spoon to eat with. Each meal came with a litre bottle of water, more than enough to keep him hydrated with a little left over for brushing his teeth. All of which seemed like an excess of consideration on the part of his kidnappers, who seemed oddly prepared to go the extra mile for his wellbeing. They’d even provided him with a fresh T-shirt and jogging bottoms the right size, enabling him to change out of the stale clothes he’d been wearing the night of the kidnap. They were evidently intent on keeping their prisoner adequately nourished, reasonably healthy and clean. For which he was thankful, under the circumstances. But why?

It was the coffee that perplexed him the most. It was served in paper cups along with his food and water. Instant decaf, lots of milk, lots of sugar. Exactly how he drank it at home.

How on earth could they possibly know that?

Amal couldn’t shut those bewildering questions out of his head. He’d sit for hours by the hatch, waiting for it to open so he could scream through the hole, ‘WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE? WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?’

But he never got the chance, because the trapdoor only ever seemed to open when he was sleeping. He’d awaken, look up the steps and there would be his next meal waiting for him by the locked hatch. He’d shuffle up the steps to collect it, then shuffle back down to his living quarters, slump in his chair at the table to go through the motions of refuelling his body, then carry the empty plate and cup back up to the hatch when he’d finished. Next time he awoke, they would be gone.

With no chance of escape and nothing else to do, Amal had had no choice but to settle into the mind-numbing routine of eat, sleep, pace his cell, wear himself out fretting, and then fall into his rumpled bed to try to lose himself once more in sleep. His mind felt so scrambled and befuddled that he feared he was losing his grip on reality. In the more lucid intervals between spells of anguish and dread, he had plenty to think about. And although he had no idea who was keeping him prisoner like this, from the moment he’d been kidnapped he’d had a strong feeling that he knew why this was happening to him.

It was all about the secret Kabir had told him. What else could it be? By its very nature, it was the kind of thing that could get people into terrible trouble. That much had already proved true for Kabir himself.

It was on the third day of his incarceration, as far as he could tell, that Amal’s suspicions had been confirmed. And from that moment, his nightmare had truly begun.