Obsession (77 page)

As despondency crept through the room, Cristos’s frown deepened.

‘So what do you say to this press conference?’ Jeannie said, once again trying to inject hope. ‘It’ll be sure to be broadcast all over the States, and if she’s still living there … ’

But Cristos was shaking his head. ‘I don’t need a press conference to find her,’ he said, his eyes suddenly glittering with urgency. ‘In fact I don’t need to find her at all,’ and grabbing his car keys he ran out of the room.

Luke was standing over them, brandishing the knife he had used to sever their bonds. As the blood eased into their stiffened muscles the pain was unbearable and neither of them could move. Then suddenly Luke grabbed Annalise’s arm and with a howl of manic laughter made to throw her from the bed.

‘Corrie! Corrie!’ Annalise cried, as Corrie scrambled to get a hold on her. But as her hands closed around Corrie’s the knife sliced through her forearm. Annalise’s cry was followed by another and another as he threw her to the floor, the knife slashing randomly at her defenceless body.

‘
Nooo
!’ Corrie screamed, but as she made to leap from the bed Luke slammed his fist into her face and she fell back, stunned and blinded by the agony.

The sounds babbling from Luke’s lips were an incoherent
stream
of mania, as cackling and growling and salivating grotesquely he threw aside the knife and snatched Annalise up by the hair.

‘No, no, no,’ she sobbed as he dragged her to her feet. Then suddenly he punched her face so hard her whole body left the floor and she crashed against the wall behind her.

She crumpled, like a broken doll and Corrie, dulled and disoriented, tried to force herself up as he bent over Annalise again.

‘Luke! No!’ she croaked, dragging herself to the edge of the bed, but Luke had already ripped off Annalise’s panties.

A torrent of overpowering dizziness swept through Corrie’s head. From an immeasurable distance she saw Luke’s hands mauling Annalise’s lifeless body. Gathering what little strength she had Corrie threw herself against him. He staggered against the wall. She grabbed his hair, yanking his head back. He screamed with pain and she jerked so hard his back arched. Obscenities spewed from his mouth as his hands clamped around her wrists. Corrie wouldn’t let go. He screamed again, and sniggered and growled with demonic rage.

Then suddenly he twisted out from under her. He was facing her. Corrie drew her knee back, but as she did he drove his head into her chest. The blow spun her round and sent her crashing against the dressing table. He kicked her feet from under her and she hit the floor hard. Winded and near senseless, she fought for her breath, then his foot slammed into her head, her ribs, her back and as the unbelievable pain consumed her her body went limp.

He turned back to Annalise, panting and snarling. Sweat was dripping from his face, his saliva was stained with blood and a powerful erection protruded from his groin. Annalise was so drugged by pain she could barely see him. She grunted as he seized her by the arms and wrenching her to him he pushed his tongue deep into her mouth.

Curled in a cocoon of agony Corrie’s eyes were struggling
to
focus on the knife. It was only a few feet away. She tried to move, gasped as a searing pain shot through her, but as Luke threw Annalise onto the bed she made herself try again.

A stream of foul invective coursed from his bloodied lips. He had Annalise by the hair, was trying to force his penis into her mouth. Annalise was gagging and spluttering and using what little strength she had to turn her head away. Her fingers were reaching for his testacies.

Corrie had the knife now. She staggered to her feet, gripping the dressing table as she started to swoon. Her vision was blurred, a blinding pain sliced through her head. She took a step forward, stumbled and fell to her knees.

Suddenly Luke howled. His head swung back, his teeth bared in agony as like giant vices his hands clenched around Annalise’s wrists, tearing her away from him.

‘Cunt! Filthy, dirty, cunt!’ he screamed and drove his fist into her gut.

As he raised his arm again, Corrie lunged. The knife sank into his shoulder, glancing off a bone. He spun round, his sunken eyes blazing like fire, his nostrils quivering with outrage.

Corrie made to thrust again. He caught her arm, twisted it, brought her hand to his mouth and dug in his teeth. As Corrie yelped with pain the knife dropped to the floor.

‘Bitch!’ he seethed, her blood dripping from his lips. ‘Fucking bitch!’ And curling his fingers around her throat he charged her back across the room, dashing her head against the wall. He jerked her forward and slammed her back again – again and again. As she started to lose consciousness he clutched her arm and propelled her back to the bed.

She fell awkwardly against Annalise, knocking her to the floor, then dimly she was aware of him rolling her over, pressing her face into the mattress and tearing off her underwear.

‘No, no,’ she moaned, trying to twist herself free. But she was too weak to fight him now. She felt him gripping her hips, pulling her to her knees. She saw the knife glinting in his hand as he swept it in front of her face. She heard him giggling and bellowing, smelt his putrid breath as he knelt over her – and then she felt the pain.

It was like nothing she had ever felt in her life. It cleaved through her with such brutality it was as though her whole body was being ripped in two. She collapsed beneath him and his entire weight came down on her, and down and down. It was the knife, he was plunging the knife into her! But no! It was there, in his hand, right in front of her. She was so dazed, so ravaged by the agony, her brain was turning numb. It wasn’t until he wrenched her arms behind her and started to drive himself frenziedly into her that she realized he was sodomizing her.

Beside her, on the floor, Annalise was trying to drag herself up. Through a haze of indescribable torture Corrie watched her. She could feel the blood trickling over her thighs and his face pressing hard into her neck. His free hand was trying to raise her as he sought an even deeper penetration.

‘No,’ she mumbled as Annalise’s eyes fixed on the knife in his outstretched hand. ‘Get help!’ Her words were pushed from her mouth by the wild hammering of his body. ‘Get help,’ she muttered again as Annalise hesitated.

A moment or two later she heard the door open and close. Then suddenly Luke reared up, turned her onto her back and shoved her knees up to her shoulders.

Corrie thought it was never going to end. She had never known such pain or degradation.

Cristos was tearing along the autoroute, his hands clenched on the wheel, his face as taut and white as his knuckles. Beside him Phillip, who had caught up with him in the lift, was every bit as tense.

‘I hope to God you’re right,’ Phillip said, then sucked in his breath sharply as Cristos roared across the three lanes to take the
Nice-Est
exit.

‘So do I,’ Cristos muttered.

He knew now why Geraldine Lassiter’s name had been bothering him. If he’d known her by that name then it would have come to him sooner, but Geraldine Duffel and her husband, Patrick, he did know. And so too did Luke, for it was at one of their parties, right here in the South of France, that Cristos and Luke had first met.

That Fitzpatrick might be there now was a long shot, so long that Cristos was already losing hope. But if Fitzpatrick had kept up with Geraldine over the years then there was a chance she had given him free use of the villa on Cap Ferrat.

‘Do you remember where it is?’ Phillip asked some fifteen minutes later as Cristos spun the car off the main road and headed onto the Cap.

‘More or less,’ Cristos answered. ‘I’ll recognize it when I see it.’

The sea spanned out to their right, acres of tree-studded gardens swept the sloping hillside to their left. Most of the villas weren’t visible from the road, but though Cristos slowed at each set of gates he was fairly certain that the one he was looking for was much closer to the apex of the Cap.

At last they reached it, though Cristos thanked God for the name on the mail box, for he knew as he and Phillip got out of the car and stood in front of the vast iron gates that he’d never have recognized it. All they could see of the villa through the forest of trees was the highest windows – every one of them was shuttered and looked as though they’d not been opened for months.

As a deluge of despondency and frustration surged through him, unseen by either him or Phillip, Annalise was wrenching open the front door.

‘It was worth a try,’ Phillip said, putting a hand on Cristos’s shoulder.

‘Yeah, I guess so,’ Cristos said, averting his head so that Phillip wouldn’t see the tears of defeat in his eyes. ‘But we gotta get in there. We gotta make sure.’

‘Of course,’ Phillip said. ‘Let’s go and see Radcliffe.’

As they walked back to the car Annalise was dragging herself as fast as her injuries would allow across the lawn. She heard a car start and as her heart leapt with hope she pushed herself harder. The sheet she had draped around her caught on a branch. She let it go, floundering down through the undergrowth towards the gates. She had no idea who was in the car, but she could see it now and began to shout.

To her horror it began to pull away.

‘No! Wait!’ she screamed, stumbling to her knees as her foot hit a root. ‘Wait! Please! Wait!’ she sobbed, clutching the tree to pull herself up.

She reached the gates just in time to see Cristos’s car vanish around the bend. ‘No, no, no,’ she choked, falling against the gates as despair engulfed her. ‘Please God, no.’

It was Corrie who came to pick up her crumpled, defeated body, just as the sun was setting. As she lifted Annalise gently to her feet her own body was still quaking from the trauma it had suffered. Luke stood over them, watching and blinking, the gun in his hand. In the bushes, tucked in behind the wall next to the gates, Corrie could see the front of the taxi. She looked away quickly, sickened by the swarm of hungry flies buzzing around it.

When Luke took them back into the villa he put them in separate rooms. For a while as Corrie lay quietly on the bed, numbed by the shame of what had happened to her, she could hear Annalise next door mumbling incoherently as she talked to the rabbits he had locked in with her. Then she heard Luke enter the room and Annalise started to scream.

Corrie tensed as she heard him slap her. But there was nothing she could do to help Annalise now. Nothing at all.

‘No, Luke! Don’t! Please, don’t kill them!’ Annalise’s voice carried to her on a current of despair. Then the door opened and closed again, and Corrie heard Luke’s heavy tread slowly descending the stairs. After that there was only silence.

It was dark outside when Corrie heard the car. For a fleeting moment a timid hope flared, but there were no voices, only footsteps crunching around the gravel. A few minutes later she heard Luke coming up the stairs.

‘Get up,’ he said, as he opened the door. ‘I’m needing your help.’

‘What for?’ she asked, and groaned as a savage pain jarred her insides when she tried to move.

‘To help me get rid of the body from the taxi,’ he answered.

Corrie felt her stomach churn and knew that no matter what, she wouldn’t be able to touch the taxi-driver’s body. But she was too afraid of Luke to argue, and wincing piteously she gingerly pulled herself from the bed.

‘What are you going to do with it?’ she asked dully, as she walked ahead of him down the stairs.

‘I’ll be dumping it over the veranda into the sea,’ he answered, and his prosaic tone made Corrie’s head swim.

The night was pitch black. The only sound was the distant sough of the waves and the urgent metallic hum of cicadas. Corrie stood at the foot of the steps watching Luke in the dim light from the hall as he moved around the taxi.

‘Come here now,’ he said, springing the boot open. ‘I’ll be needing a hand to get it out.’

As Corrie walked forward it was as though her mind had become locked in a timeless vacuum of paralysis. All she knew was that her legs were moving and that her eyes were riveted sightlessly to the amorphous mass of the night.

‘Take the legs,’ Luke ordered.

A jolt of revulsion leapt through her gut, but with her head averted she reached out in front of her feeling for the legs. She could hear Luke raising the torso and the instant her hands closed over the legs she started to retch. She drew back, staring down at her hands. They were covered in blood. Her face froze with terror as she brought her head up. Then a bloodcurdling scream erupted from her. It wasn’t the taxi-driver’s body he was holding – it was Annalise’s.

‘I understand what you’re saying,’ Radcliffe interrupted Cristos, ‘but it’s not my territory. If the French-plod say we have to contact the owners first, then that’s what we have to do.’

‘And if they’re in there?’ Cristos seethed. ‘If this fucking bureaucracy … ’ He broke off as the door opened to admit the burly, Gitane-puffing French inspector.

‘
Messieurs
,’ Thibault began. ‘
On a un probléme. Il n’y a pas de réponse
…’

Being the only one present who understood French Cristos waited, with mounting fury, for the inspector to finish, then translated.

‘He’s saying there’s no answer from the Duffels’ place in New York,’ he snapped. ‘So they’re now trying to locate someone to open up the local
Mairie
to check that the Duffels are still the owners.’

‘And if they are, and we still can’t get through to them?’ Phillip asked testily.

Cristos communicated this to Thibault. ‘Then we have to see if we can find someone nearby who might have the keys,’ Cristos answered bitterly when Thibault had finished.

‘And meanwhile?’ Phillip cried. ‘What are we supposed to do? Sit around here …’

‘Hold it! Hold it!’ Radcliffe interrupted. ‘We don’t even
know
if they’re in there. You said yourself the place looks like it’s been deserted for months.’

‘Well he sure as hell isn’t going to put up a flag of fucking residence, is he?’ Cristos shouted.