Captives

THIRTY

For a moment she thought he was going to fall over. Paula Wilson stood rigid as she watched Mark Eaton lurch from the doorway of the pub in Cambridge Circus. He shot out a hand and steadied himself, smiling stupidly at her.

The gesture only made her more angry.

'You never know when to stop, do you?' she snapped angrily, looking first at him then at the night sky. The first drops of rain were beginning to fall. Paula pulled up the collar of her suede jacket. A large droplet of rain fell onto it and she sighed. Grey suede. It would be ruined in the downpour.

'I'll be okay,' said Eaton, stumbling towards her, bumping into a dustbin. Some of its contents spilled out onto the pavement and he stooped to pick them up as if he were tidying his own house. Passers-by looked quickly at the young couple, particularly at the young woman in the grey suede suit who was shouting so vehemently.

'You probably can't even remember where you left the car, can you?' she rasped.

'I just need some fresh air, that's all,' he told her, none too convincingly. 'I'll be fine.' He sucked in several deep lungfuls of the night air. The odour of burning hot-dogs came wafting to him and he noticed a street vendor cooking the blackened frankfurters a few yards away. The smell made him want to vomit. He saw Paula turn away and made a grab for her arm. 'Where are you going?' he wanted to know.

'I'm going home,' she told him, shaking free of his grip and setting off towards Romilly Street.

Eaton followed her.

'I'll drive you,' he said.

'I'm not getting in a car with you in that state,' she said angrily. 'I'll get a taxi.' She continued walking, Eaton now almost running to keep up with her. Her high heels clicked on the pavement, beating out a furious tattoo.

As she reached the side of the Prince Charles Theatre he grabbed her again and pushed her into one of the sheltered doorways marked 'Exit'. The theatre had been closed for more than forty minutes now; they weren't likely to be disturbed.

'I'm not letting you go,' he told her, standing in front of her to block her way.

'Get out of my way, Mark,' she said, glaring at him. 'I told you, just let me clear my head and I'll drive you.'

'It's going to take more than fresh air to clear your head tonight. Maybe you should try dynamite.' She thought about pushing past him again, but as she saw the rain beginning to fall more swiftly she realised that perhaps, for the time being, sheltering in this doorway was more prudent. She looked up at him, her eyes still full of anger. 'Why did you have to spoil it, Mark?' she said, her voice quieter.

'I don't know what you're talking about,' he told her. 'Look, I had more to drink than I should have done. I'm sorry about that.'

'Well, it's too bloody late now, isn't it? You can't drive in your condition.'

He smiled that stupid grin again. It only served to make her more irritable.

'It's always the same when you get together with Dean and Richard, isn't it? They keep drinking and you have to keep up with them, don't you?'

'Don't speak to me as if I'm a child, Paula,' he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

'When you're with them you act like one,' she chided. 'Why did you tell them we were going to be in that pub tonight, anyway?'

'I didn't tell them,' he protested. 'That's where they usually go for a drink. It wasn't my fault they happened to come in while we were there. It's a free country, you know. What was I supposed to say? "Sorry, lads, but it's Paula's birthday, we're out celebrating, so would you mind pissing off and leaving us alone?" I work with them, for Christ's sake. They're mates.'

'Well, then, get one of them to drive you home,' she said bitterly.

'We were supposed to be spending the night together,' he said, touching her cheek with one hand. He grinned again.

'A celebratory fuck, is that what you mean?'

'I wouldn't have put it quite like that,' he chuckled, and the chuckle soon became a fully-fledged laugh.

Paula decided she'd rather get her grey suede suit wet than endure any more of his drunken ramblings. She pushed past him and out into the downpour. He tried to stop her but she pushed him away.

'I'm sorry, Paula,' he called after her.

'So am I!' she yelled back, pushing past a couple of young men who eyed her approvingly, one of them whistling as she swept along the road.

The bastard, she thought. The stupid, unfeeling, childish bastard. For a bloke of twenty-six he acted like a twelve-year-old sometimes, she thought, trying to ignore the rain. If his two idiot friends hadn't turned up then everything would have been all right. She would have gone back to his flat, she would have spent the night. A celebratory fuck had been high on her list of priorities to mark her twenty-third birthday. But now there would be none of that. Perhaps this was the excuse she had been looking for to stop seeing him. Over the past four months she had come to realise more and more that Mark Eaton wasn't the type of man she wanted a relationship with. She wasn't sure if she wanted a relationship with any man yet. Not a long term one, anyway. She was twenty-three, for Christ's sake. Her whole life was in front of her; the last thing she wanted was to be tied to one man.

The rain was easing up slightly, she noted with relief, but it had still fallen with sufficient ferocity to soak her jacket and skirt. She cursed to herself, looking up the street for a taxi. One was just dropping off at Wheeler's restaurant ahead of her. She hurried towards it but the driver pulled away, switching his light off as he did so.

She turned and watched him go then trudged on, passing a club called Maxims. There were two men standing in the doorway, both of them foreign, she guessed, from a quick glance at them.

'You want to come inside, darling?' asked one, smiling at her, revealing a mouthful of yellowed teeth.

She ignored him and walked on.

'You've got a nice arse,' the other one shouted after her and she heard their laughter. She felt her cheeks burning but she also afforded herself a brief smile.

Yes, you bastards, she told herself, I have got a nice arse. It's for sure you'll never see it.

You or Mark Eaton.

She'd ring him at work tomorrow, tell him she didn't want to see him again, she decided. Time to be decisive, she told herself. Ahead of her was Dean Street, the lights from the McDonald's at the Shaftesbury Avenue end bathing the street round about. She'd be able to get a taxi outside there without any trouble. They were often dropping off at the hotel round the corner.

Ahead of her some construction work was being done behind the Shaftesbury Hotel. Even in the darkness she could see the outline of a crane nudging upwards towards the rain-sodden sky. The yellow shape of a JCB was also unmistakeable, even in the gloom. Safety lights had been placed at the entrance to the small site as a warning to motorists. She passed by the high boards that separated the site from the pavement, muttering to herself as she stepped in something soft. She hoped it was mud.

Balancing on one foot she reached into her handbag and took out a tissue, wiping the mess from her shoe.

She noticed a taxi pass and saw, with relief, that it was dropping off at the end of the street. She slipped her shoe back on and prepared to sprint after the vehicle.

'Don't pull away,' she murmured to herself, almost slipping over in more of the mud, her eyes fixed on the cab.

From behind her, from the darkness of the site, one hand clamped around her mouth, another tugged at her hair.

She was pulled off her feet.

Swallowed by the blackness.

There wasn't even time to scream.