Lisette Rivers & the Crumbling Mansion Affair
by
Brian Sands
Ein Starkes team, Maja Maranow, Panty DVD #13
Chapter Eight: The Suitcase
Lisette lay still and looked up at the two men standing above her. She was gratified to see that Brick Simenov had a strip of brown sticking plaster over his left temple. The man’s face was pale and he was sweating from the recent chase and recapture of their prize. Lisette looked at the other man. His appearance evoked all the images of fat men from the movies. But there was muscle beneath the flesh, and he had controlled her effortlessly as he bound her.
“She’s seen us both, now,” Simenov stated flatly.
The fat man sighed. “We’ll take care of that, but not now, much later, and not here. Number Four can deal with her for a day or two, as planned.” He looked at his watch. “Just after eight. It’s too early to risk either of us being seen leaving this place. The guests will be arriving for dinner, some of them to their rooms. We’ll have to wait until the death hour, a precaution we usually take anyway.”
“See how she must have got to that table and cut her bonds?” said Simenov, poking the pieces of broken coffee cup with the toe of his shoe.
“We’d make sure it doesn’t happen again. Give me more of that rope. A good thing you left it here. You should have used it all on her, then we wouldn’t be going to all this trouble.”
With ruthless efficiency the fat man secured Lisette once more into a hogtie, drawing her feet closer to her hands than they had been before. This time it felt as though the knots were being tied on the opposite side of her ankles where her fingers could not reach. A long piece of cord was knotted around Lisette’s legs below her knees, drawing them together, and one end thrown across her legs and fastened to a metal castor beneath the foot of the bed. The other end of the cord was passed to the castor on the opposite side and made fast. The last length of cord was tied and cinched around Lisette’s shoulders, its two ends lashed down to the separate castors at the head of the bed.
Lisette was unable to move in any direction. Through the unpleasant process, she kept still and relaxed as best she could. The pain in her hands and arms was growing worse with every minute. She bit down on her gag and fought back a sob. She would not get out of these ties and, when they got around to it, the men were going to kill her.
Brick Simenov walked around the bed and inspected the captive. “Her hands – “
The fat man looked, then bent forward and began to untie the knots that held Lisette’s wrists. He adjusted the bonds so that they were not as tight as before, allowing blood to return to the young woman’s fingers.
“Is that better?” he asked.
Lisette nodded her head wearily.
“Good. I do not believe in unnecessary pain, only pain that is necessary – which you will discover when we have greater leisure to interrogate you. In the meantime I strongly advise you not to struggle in your bonds. You will only hurt yourself. We will return for you at three.”
Lisette nodded again. The two men moved away.
“There’s one more thing you can do,” said the fat man to Simenov. “Go and search the cottage. Try to find out as much as you can about this woman. She’ll have a wallet, credit cards, driver’s licence, letters. They will give us a name at least, if they do not tell us more about her identity. I’ll be in my room until it is time to leave.”
“She calls herself Poole – “
“Your search will confirm or deny … Lock the door this time,” continued the fat man. “We don’t want anyone stumbling upon her. At all costs she must not be allowed to escape again.”
They left. The key turned in the lock. Lisette fought back tears. She was bound and gagged as securely as she had been on the horrible night of the murder, the only difference being that she was lying on her side, which gave a small amount of physical comfort, but not much. Seven hours from now they would come for her and she was to be transported to an unknown destination, there to meet another member of the gang, a person cryptically named Number Four.
She lay in the darkness and silence. A few brief moments of flexing her hands and trying to turn her wrists about in the cords confirmed the fat man’s advice. Any movement, no matter how slight, caused agony to her limbs and shoulders. The circulation to her hands had not been cut off completely, but the bonds were tight enough to cause numbing and pins and needles in her fingers and cramping in her arms. Lisette relaxed her body as much as she could and found that it eased the pain.
Very little sound reached her from other parts of the old mansion. There was a moment when shouts of laughter from a small group of guests filtered through from the main hallway somewhere on the floor below. Lisette tried to call for help but could barely make a sound through the thick gag. What sound did get through was nothing more than a thin mewing. No one heard her, and no further guests’ voices reached her in the isolated wing. There was no way to tell the time. The room did not have a bedside clock. A faint glow came through a narrow gap in the window curtains, possible moonlight. The minutes passed with agonising slowness, or were they hours?
Lisette was too uncomfortable to fall asleep. She rested quietly, her mind in a daze. When a scratching sound began from somewhere in the room she paid it no attention, so it was with complete surprise that she became aware of a dark figure crossing towards the door, nothing more than a darker shadow against the faint illumination from the window. There was a click and the light came on. Standing beside the light switch was Sunny Virtue, her hand to her mouth in shock.
“Oh my God,” said Sunny. “What are you doing here?”
“Mmmmmph!” Lisette shook her in the universal gesture of heroines.
“Oh my. I’ll have that off as fast as I can.”
Sunny found the tightly knotted silk at the back of Lisette’s neck and worked at it slowly. The soft material of the knot had become hard and unyielding and it took several minutes before the girl was able to release Lisette’s mouth. Sunny’s fingers gently extracted the gag. Lisette coughed. Her mouth and throat were dry and her jaw ached. She tried to speak but nothing came out. Sunny ran to the small refrigerator that stood against one wall and returned with a glass of cold spring water. She held it to Lisette’s lips and she drank gratefully.
When she had found her voice, Lisette asked: “How on earth did you get here, and where have you been?”
“It’s a long story. But first let’s get you untied before the people who put you here come back.”
“Not yet. They won’t be back to move me until morning. Go on, tell me what happened.”
“Well, about ten minutes after you’d gone – I was listening in on the mobile but couldn’t hear you clearly when you were talking to the artist - ”
“I had to leave the phone in my bag. Go on.”
“I was hunkered down in the hide when I heard someone walking along the lane. Something told me they might be coming to the little hut, so I slipped out again and hid behind it, not too soon either. It was a man. He went into the hide and I could hear him digging in the dirt floor. When he came out again he was carrying a large plastic bag under his arm. He went on up the lane and on an impulse I followed him.”
“You forgot about me?” asked Lisette aggrievedly.
“No. I thought that in the end you would be all right. What little I could hear of the artist’s voice, he sounded nice, friendlier than when we met him at the party. Anyway, guess what? I followed the man to your cottage! But he didn’t go to the house. He disappeared down the side, close to the wall between the cottage and this old crumbling mansion. I thought of following him into the bushes but decided it was too risky. When I was trying to think what to do, he came back. So it was lucky I stayed hidden on the other side of the road. He went back the way he came. The way he moved, looking around all the time to make sure no one was watching him, it’s what I’d call suspicious.”
“Me too,” agreed Lisette. “What did you do then?”
“Well, I started to walk back, to meet up with you, but there was a rain squall from the sea and I detoured into my room here instead, to put on a raincoat. I was poking about in my wardrobe – it’s built-in to the wall in my room – and I jiggered something, some hook or other, and a narrow space opened up. It led into a passage between the walls. So I started exploring it, and it became so interesting that I kept on. In some places I could hear people talking. The housekeeper from the village, Mrs Schlüssel, was complaining about the price of ham. Then I found myself listening-in to those two men, the ones who must have kidnapped you. I didn’t know it was you of course. So I decided to get back into the house and look in the empty rooms. But I got lost. There are a lot of dead-ends in those passageways, and it was just a fluke that I came out here, in the very room where you were being held.”
Sunny Virtue paused for breath. Lisette started to say something but her friend prattled on.
“This old place is amazing.” Sunny brushed a cobweb from her golden hair and dusted off a shoulder. “When I heard those two men talking, I recognised one of them, that science fiction writer Brick Simenov. The other man’s voice was familiar. I’ve heard it before but I can’t remember where. Lisa, they know you’re not Lizzie Poole … Come on, I’ll untie you and we’ll get out of here.”
“No. No, wait. I have an idea. It’s risky and I have to trust that you’ll manage.”
“What do you mean? We have to get away from here and you have to be untied. Those ropes look awfully tight!”
“I’ve managed so far to put up with it … Sunny, listen: those two men are part of a drug-running gang. Drugs are hidden near the mansion. Simenov picked them up from a satchel hanging on the wall. I followed him and was caught. But what you’ve done is to discover the delivery part of their operation. That man you followed must have put the drugs in the plastic bag he was carrying into the empty satchel that I found.”
“Well, okay! I rescue you and we go straight to that nice Detective Inspector Fysshe and his constable. Fish and chips,” Sunny giggled.
“Yes, we could do that,” said Lisette. The idea was attractive to her. Stubbornly, she added: “Sunny, it’s a unique opportunity to get right inside the gang.”
“But you’ll be their hostage.”
“All right, inside the gang a bit too literally I suppose. But if they’re holding me captive they might let something slip about how their organization operates. They call the man who delivered the stuff Number Five, and the person they’re going to take me to is Number Four. I don’t know who numbers two and three are, possibly the big man and Simenov. But there’s obviously a Number One in their organization.”
“Lisa, you can tell the police and let them do the investigating.”
“No, that won’t do. They’ll go into hiding as soon as I escape. When I’m taken to this other place, you can follow. Use my car. The keys are on the kitchen table in the cottage. Only be careful when you go there because Simenov was going to search it. He’ll have done that by now, and they’ll know who I am, that I’m a private investigator. That might make them think twice about killing m.”
“K-killing you?”
“I’m sorry I told you. It’s a risk, but with you as backup. Follow them when they take me, find out where they take me, wait for six hours, then go to the police.”
“I- I don’t like it.”
“Please do it, Sunny. This way we’ll crack the gang wide open, otherwise Number One might never be found.”
“Well, all right, but I still don’t like it.” Sunny Virtue looked apprehensively towards the door, then at her wristwatch. “It’s nearly ten thirty. When did you say they would be coming for you?”
“Some time in the early morning. That gives you plenty of time to get my car and position yourself to follow them. I guess they’ll use a car too, and there’s only one entrance to this mansion I think.”
“There are two, a gate to a lane on the opposite side from your cottage, and the main entrance.”
“Then they’re more likely to take that side laneway so as not to disturb the guests. You’d better wait for them there.”
“All right, I guess – “
“Good. Now, Sunny, clean that glass and put it away. We don’t want to leave any signs that you’ve been here.”
Sunny did as Lisette asked and returned to the bedside where she stood awkwardly. “Is - Is there anything else?” she asked in a voice that was barely audible. Sunny’s eyes were round and she was very frightened. She clearly did not want to leave Lisette.
“There’s one more thing before you go,” said Lisette with a determined air. “You have to gag me again.”
“I don’t like to,” said Sunny, tears starting in her eyes. “You said it would be hours before they come. You know how uncomfortable it was when we were tied up by Jeremy, only for a couple of hours too.”
“You have to do it, and exactly as it was before, so they don’t get suspicious.”
With a grimace, Sunny picked up the small serviette from the bed in front of Lisette. It was still crumpled into a ball. The silk scarf lay where it had fallen loose around Lisette’s neck when it was untied. Sunny reached the packing towards Lisette’s lips.
“Tie the gag in my mouth as tightly as you can,” Lisette admonished her. “Make it so it holds my mouth open. Can you remember how it was tied before?”
“I think so,” replied Sunny hesitantly.
“Then go ahead, and be careful when you leave the building. The guests may be getting ready to sleep but those two men will be wide-awake. Simenov might even be patrolling the place.”
“I’ll be careful. Are you sure you’ll be all right?”
“As right as I can be under the circumstances. A lot depends on you Sunny. Now, gag me, and remember to make it tight.”
Sunny tied the gag in place. It was not as tight as it had been, but it was effective enough to prevent Lisette from saying anything about it. Sunny Virtue switched off the light and disappeared through a doorway somewhere in a corner of the room. Lisette settled down to wait out the hours.
At first, after Sunny had gone, Lisette heard isolated and very distant footsteps in the entrance hall, and once she heard a door slam, but apart from those sounds the old mansion was silent except for the faint creaking and settling of timber as the coolness of the night set in. The old crumbling mansion was a lonely place, cold and tomb-like inside just as it looked like a forbidding sepulchre from outside. Bound and helpless, unable to more or call for help, Lisette almost felt that she was entombed already. They were going to kill her, that’s what they said. It was a promise, not a threat, a premeditated action to take her life, to prevent her from going to the police.
Lisette’s whole body was stiff and cramped from lying folded onto her side for so long. Her arms and shoulders especially ached abominably. Her hands, though not entirely robbed of blood, were by now numb and useless. Even the gag, more lightly tied than it was before – Sunny, bless her! – bulked heavy and stale on her tongue and half choked her. After what must have been two slow hours – or was it less, or more? – she was beginning to regret her clever plan for learning more about the gang. Tears stung her eyes. Oh God, if this doesn’t work … But if it does, I’ll never put myself into this kind of situation again. I’ve learned my lesson!
Crying was a relief of a kind, and Lisette had almost fallen asleep when she was roused by the sound of the key turning in the lock and the door opening. The fat man walked in first, switching on the light, followed by Brick Simenov. The latter carried a large old-fashioned suitcase which he placed on the floor beside the bed where Lisette lay.
The two men inspected their captive. Simenov bent down and tested the silk tied in Lisette’s mouth. “She’s worked her gag loose,” he announced.
The fat man grunted and moved forward, his huge hands reaching for Lisette’s head.
“I’ll untie these ropes from the bed,” continued Simenov.
As Simenov worked, the fat man undid the second knot in the overhand tie, without ceremony jerked the gag viciously tight so that it became deeply embedded in Lisette’s mouth, and tied it off again. “That will keep her quiet, but just to make sure …”
The man went to the ledge where glasses and electric kettle stood and returned with a blue patterned dishcloth. He folded in into a triangle then to a broad band and tied it over Lisette’s mouth, covering the gag that already stretched her jaws.
The fat man stood back and eyed his captive as Simenov coiled the ropes. “Well, Miss Lisa Rivers, you surprise us, a private investigator. There will be one less of your kind by the time we have finished with this business. But in the meantime you have a reprieve. Number One, when notified, will no doubt authorise your disposal. It will not take long, and in the meantime we continue with our original plan. Brick, we truss this young woman up so that she cannot move. Use all of the spare rope.”
Working between them, the two men in a short time had Lisette packaged up in layers of rope around her upper body from her elbows to her shoulders. A thick cloth with a satiny feel was tied over her eyes. The suitcase was thrown open and she was laid in it upon her side. She heard the lid close upon her. The latches snicked into place. She was immured in darkness.
Almost immediately Lisette felt the case tilt onto its side so that she was lying folded upon her back. There was a strange sensation as it was lifted and she felt herself swinging to and fro with the gait of the man carrying it. When there was a sensation that suggested they were descending the stairs she tried to call for help as loudly as possible, but the cry was choked into a faint whimper by the gag. There was continued movement, making Lisette feel nauseated. There came an abrupt shift in reality as the suitcase was swung into the car and laid flat on the back seat, jolting her from her back to her side. A faint rocking communicated to the captive as the men stepped into the car. The car started with a jerk and leapt forward. The men they were transporting their captive to a more secure holding place. To Lisette it was the next move in a very dangerous game of chess with her captors.
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