man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully."
Somewhere, he knew there was a clue in what had happened that might just allow him to escape what seemed inevitable. All he had to do was to find it.
Had he been completely wrong in his profile? Was the woman who had kidnapped him Handy Andy? Was she the one? Or was she just the decoy, the willing accomplice who got off on her master's vice? Again, he replayed what his memory would allow him to snatch back. He summoned up the woman's image again.
Clothes first. Beige mac, cut continental style, just like Carol's, swinging open to reveal a white shirt, enough buttons undone to reveal the swell of full breasts and a deep cleavage. Jeans, trainers. Trainers. They were the same make and model as his own.
But none of this was significant. Tony told himself. They were only outward symbols of the care Handy Andy took not to be caught. The woman's garb had been chosen so that if she did leave any stray fib res they wouldn't show up as having any significance, being identifiable as having come from either Carol's clothes or his. And Carol had been in his house often enough now for her to have left stray fib res
The woman's face didn't really ring any bells either. She was tall for a woman, at least five feet ten, with chunky bone structure to match. Not even her mother could have called her attractive, with her heavy jaw, slightly bulbous nose, wide mouth and eyes set curiously far apart. Even though she was skilfully, if heavily, made up, there wasn't a lot she could do with the basic building materials. He was sure they'd never been in a room together, though he couldn't rule out having passed her in the street, at the tram station or on campus.
The trainers. For some reason he kept coming back to the trainers. If only the pain would stop long enough for him to focus properly. Tony locked his legs straight, trying to relieve the agonizing strain on his shoulders. The fraction of an inch he gained wasn't nearly enough. Again, visceral fear gripped him and he blinked away a tear.
What was it about the trainers? Tony summoned every ounce of concentration he could master, and called up the image of the woman again. With a slow gasp of understanding, he realized what it was. The feet were too big.
Even for a woman of that height, the feet were too big. As soon as he grasped that, he remembered the hands too. First, black leather, later thin latex gloves covering big hands, fingers thick and strong.
The person who had brought him here had not always been a woman.
Carol pressed the doorbell again. Where the hell was he? The lights were on, the curtains drawn. Maybe he'd nipped out to pick up a pizza, post a letter, buy a bottle of wine, rent a video? With a frustrated sigh, she turned away and walked down to the end of the street, turning into the ginnel that ran between Tony's street and the houses behind. She walked down to his back yard, where a previous owner had demolished the wall and concreted half the area to provide the hard standing where Tony had told her he always kept his car.
The car was in place, exactly where it should have been. "Oh, bloody hell," Carol complained. Edging past the car, she walked up to the house and peered through the kitchen window. The light from the open door into the hall cast a pale glow over the room. No sign of life.
No dirty dishes, no empty bottles.
On the off chance, Carol tried the back door. No joy. "Bloody men,"
she grumbled as she strode back to her car. "Five minutes, pal, then I'm off," she said, throwing herself into the driver's seat. Ten minutes crawled by, but no one appeared.
Carol started the engine and drove off. At the end of the street, she glanced across at the pub on the other side of the main road. It was worth a try, she supposed. It took less than three minutes to check the smoky, crowded rooms and discover that wherever Tony Hill was, it wasn't in the Farewell to Arms.
Where else could he be within walking distance at nine o'clock on a Sunday night?
"Anywhere," she told herself. "You can't be his only friend in the world. He wasn't expecting you; you