by

Brian Sands

Whatever Happened to Solange? Claudia Butenuth, Knotbusters

Chapter Five One-Way Ride

As she felt the vehicle jerk into life, Lisette sought to regain her focus on its movements. The boot in which she lay enclosed was almost sound proof, the motor a distant murmur. It made guessing their route a lot more difficult. She could only register the movements by the swaying as they negotiated corners. She succeeded in identifying the left hand turn from the entrance gates and the two speed bumps in the side road before entering the main concourse. After that, everything became vague as the tight confinement and the smothering effect of the gag pushed her into semi-consciousness. When the body goes into shock, it is nature’s way of minimising stress. Lisette’s loss of awareness meant that the burning stabs of pain in her arms and shoulders no longer distressed her. Her limbs gradually numbed out as the van sped through the city, but this no longer meant anything to her.

Lisette was still barely conscious when the vehicle finally ground to a halt, but the rush of cooler air as she was lifted from the boot began to revive her. She was being carried again, almost at a run. The minion transporting her was in a hurry. A door clanged shut and the atmosphere once again became still and muggy. The quickening footsteps on a cement floor suggested that they were in another corridor, another building in a different part of the city. Lisette had no idea where she was.

She blacked out again, but it must have been for only a few seconds because she was next aware of being laid on her side, on a blanket it seemed, with a cement floor beneath. There was no feeling in her arms and legs, so at first she did not realise that the ropes were being cut away. She sprawled on her side and her body began to twitch and shiver uncontrollably as the circulation returned. It was agonising. She screamed through the tape that swathed her face, a sound that escaped as only a faint mewing. A door clanged shut. She lay quietly now. Her arms and legs felt like jelly. Lisette was still blindfolded and her mouth remained thoroughly wrapped in tape. She tried to raise her hands to her face, but there was no strength in her arms to remove the gag. She fought desperately to breathe. The world receded from her again as she slipped back into unconsciousness.

When Lisette again came-to she was still lying on the thin blanket. The cold of the cement floor beneath had seeped into her bones and she was shivering. The room where she lay was silent and felt tomb-like: a storeroom of some kind, she guessed. She found that she could now use her hands and, with an effort that brought searing pain to her arms and shoulders, she managed to reach her fingers to the blindfold and pull it off over her head. The silky cloth came away reluctantly, taking a few hairs with it from the back of her neck where they had become entangled in the knot.

The sight of the narrow cement walls that hemmed her within what was a very small storage space did nothing to raise her spirits. She sat up – at least now her body was no longer in contact with the cold floor – and with trembling fingers searched the tape that was so smooth and tight around her mouth.

It must have taken her ten minutes, she decided later, to find the point where the end of the tape was – attached almost seamlessly to the layer beneath at the back of her ear – and to pick frantically at the edge before she succeeded in prising off a corner. She forced herself to work slowly as the tape was unwrapped layer by layer. It pulled the hairs at the back of her neck painfully, bringing tears to her eyes, and when at last it was stripped slowly from her mouth her whole face that had been sealed under it stung fiercely. She tried to be careful, but the panic in which she pulled at the skin-adhering layer caused the sticky stuff to tear a corner of her lip. She tasted the sweet salty blood and shook her head wearily.

She was exhausted. With shaking hands, Lisette gathered the thin blanket around her and sat with her back resting gingerly against one of the walls of her cell. If she did not press too fully against the wall, the cold that felt as though it was seeping into all parts of her body was minimised. The thin leather of her cat suit provided a little insulation, but not as much as she hoped. Lisette gazed around her. The room was lit by a 40-watt globe set in the high ceiling. She had to guess where the door might be. There was no handle on the inside and it was set flush with the wall. Only the fractionally different shade of grey and the dull metallic sound it made when she kicked at it told her where it was.

With her teeth chattering, Lisette drew her knees up to her chin and made herself as small as possible in order to retain body heat. Somehow she managed to drift into a restless sleep. She was a captive. They would be questioning her. It was only a matter of time before something happened. In the meantime there was the monotony of her grey cell and the aching cold.

Lisette was uncertain how long she lay drifting in and out of fitful sleep – perhaps an hour – when the scratching sound of a key being inserted into the lock of the invisible door brought her to wakefulness. The person who entered was a large woman dressed in the uniform of a security guard. Lisette guessed that she was her original captor. As the woman pulled her to her feet, Lisette saw the circular logo of the security company for which she worked: Cuff Security. It made sense, if the security service was not in-house, for there to be some sort of criminal organization nested in the bosom of an unsuspecting legitimate vehicle hire firm. It was a good cover. But her former kidnappers, Big Bear and Stringy, had given her every indication that they were freelance. This had to mean that she was in the hands of a second group, the people who commissioned the kidnapping of the heiress Cosette MacCronigal. The poor girl was no doubt in their hands by now, perhaps languishing in a cell like the one she was standing in.

Her thoughts came to an abrupt end when the security woman drew Lisette’s arms behind her back and bound her wrists together with what felt like a strip of broad, soft leather. Lisette’s fingers began to tingle the moment the knot was pulled tight and doubled. She was still dazed and cold and allowed her hands to hang loosely behind her back, her fingers fluttering uselessly.

Without a word, the grim guard escorted Lisette from the room into the bleak corridor. There were too many corridors, or perhaps she was not paying attention enough. Lisette felt alone, lost. The fear swelled in her throat, threatening to choke her. A door opened. She was propelled into a furnished room where she stood, swaying unsteadily in the middle of a carpeted floor. She tried to concentrate on what was taking place around her. There was a desk. A tall woman in a figure-flattering business suit stood beside it, a sheaf of papers in her hand. Lisette recognised her shoulder bag and overcoat where they lay on the desk. Not only that: her handbag with its incriminating contents identifying her occupation also stood on the desktop. Clearly it had been handed over by the kidnap pair, Stringy and Big Bear.

“Here’s the girl, Madame.”

“Ah,” the woman approached Lisette, her left leg and thigh flickering into view and out again through the long slit in her skirt. “You really are a nuisance. How did you get into the building?”

Lisa closed her mouth obstinately.

“Not talking eh? So, you shan’t need to! … You will be given time, instead, to decide whether you will cooperate.”

Madame picked up Lisette’s scarf from the desk, bunched it up, and came to her. She held the grey silk to the girl’s lips.

“Open wide.”

There was no choice but to obey. The silk was crammed between her teeth and then pushed deeper into her mouth. Lisette fought back a gagging reflex.

“Resist the temptation to spit out the gag,” Madame advised. “I am not at all pleased with your prying and shall not hesitate to allow my minions to have their ways with you. Your investigations come to a stop right here.”

“What will we do with her?” asked the guard, her question echoing Lisette’s thought.

“We’re much too busy to concern ourselves over the private snoop at present. Take her upstairs to one of the garrets and truss her up. I’ll deal with her in the morning.”

Lisette was taken roughly by an arm and hussled out of the room. The security woman pushed her ahead down the hallway. At the foot of the stairs she paused and opened a cupboard, from which she took several coils of hempen rope. These she slung over her shoulder, all the while keeping a tight grip on Lisette. They continued up the stairs, past the first landing, past the second landing, and along a narrow corridor at the end of which stood two doors facing each other. Lisette’s guard chose the one on the left, unlocked and opened it, and pushed Lisette through. She stumbled upon the threshold into a small cramped room with a sloping ceiling. It contained a narrow bed consisting of a mattress upon a spring and iron frame, and a small bedside table. Lisette was pushed unceremoniously onto the bed.

The guard began with Lisette’s ankles and worked upwards. By the time she reached her upper thighs, Lisette’s legs were bound very tightly together at the ankles, below and above the knees and at mid-thigh. The rough, scratchy rope was cinched between her legs at each point so that the bonds were anchored and could not slip. Using separate lengths of rope, the woman then bound Lisette’s arms to her body, first tying her elbows back with the end of one piece before winding it several times below her breasts. When the other end of the rope was reached, the woman cinched it between the Lisette’s arms and body and made it fast. She repeated the process, next for Lisa’s shoulders above the breasts, then around her waist, each time cinching the rope between her arms and body and drawing it tight.

Lisette looked up over her shoulder and tugged experimentally at the bonds. There was virtually no give in the ropes at all. Her arms felt as thought hey were welded to her body, though she hoped that with some struggling when her captor had left she might be able to loosen them.

Her captor chuckled discouragingly. “Struggle as much as you like, dear. I make tight knots.” The woman ended on a sinister note that made Lisette’s blood ran cold. “There may be no need to untie them. We’ll drop you off in a convenient lake on our way to the hostage collection point, if Madame has no use for you … A little one-way journey!”

Over the preceding minutes, Lisette had held the bunched up silk scarf in her mouth, too intimidated to try to spit it out. The next step in trussing her up ensured that she was unable to expel the gag. There was the sound of tape being stripped from its dispenser. Lisette was rolled onto her back. “Close your mouth and press your lips together.” When she obeyed, a wide piece of the tape was strapped over her lips and mouth and partly around her cheeks. The tape chosen was a sort of medical sticking plaster, brown in colour and with a very strong adhesive backing. The stuff clung immediately to Lisette’s face and, when she tested it by moving her jaw, she found that her lips were sealed together firmly. There was no way she would pull them apart but, to make sure, the woman added two more overlapping layers, each a little longer than the one before it.

In the penultimate step, a black cloth was bound tightly over Lisette’s eyes. It was a long strip of silk that passed twice around her head and pressed her eyelids shut. Finally, she was rolled onto her side. With a short length of rope, her ankles were tied together, the ties cinched, and her legs pulled back. The other end of the rope was looped through her bound wrists and tied off again at her ankles, the knot well out of reach of her fingers. She was hog tied once more, but the bonds were not as cruel as they had been during the transit from the city in the boot of the car to … wherever she was. The hog tie then had brought her feet closer to her hands. This time her knees were bent back sufficiently to make it difficult to roll over without aid, no more than that. However, lying on a bed with a drop of a couple of feet to the floor made the idea of struggling to that extent out of the question.

Lisette sighed. She was the very secure prisoner of the strange Madame. It was wearyingly familiar. She had no idea where she was being held. Her bonds were escape proof. She could not speak or call for help … much good would it do her if she were able to. The disorientation due to the blindfold encouraged her to lie still. As well, she had no idea whether she was being watched.

I’m in their hands, she mused, and they’re not professionals like Stringy and Big Bear, and a lot more dangerous! And, oh my! They’ve sure done a good job of tying me up! She wriggled on the bedspread, made herself as comfortable as possible under the circumstances, and lay still: resting, listening, breathing quietly, not wasting energy unnecessarily by fruitless struggles against her bonds and the gag. They wanted to question her further. The time would come quickly enough when she would once again be the focus of the gang’s attentions. That would be a real matter of life and death … hers!

Until then, she was better off quiet and out of the way, unhurt as yet and relatively comfortable. She tried to ignore the panic that sent her heart working overtime. Instead, Lisette squeezed her eyes shut behind the blindfold and tried to relax.

She must have fallen asleep despite the clinging seal around her face, numbing her mouth and jaw, and the cramping of the bonds that held her wrists together tightly behind her back, her arms stretched against their bindings by the hog tie. Something was different. There was a sound. Lisette raised her head and listened. There it was again, muffled and indistinct because of the layers of silk that covered her ears. Doves, she decided … Doves in the eaves just outside the narrow garret in which she lay. It was morning.

How long have I been like this? Lisette considered … It was after midnight when they brought me to this place, probably some time between one and two o’clock, so if it’s coming up dawn about now – she could not tell because of the blindfold - I must have been lying tied up like this for at least four or five hours. It sure feels like it anyway!

Lisette tugged experimentally at her wrist bonds. Her efforts produced almost no movement. Her arms and shoulders ached indescribably, and her hands felt puffy and swollen, but circulation was not cut off entirely. There was still feeling in her hands and arms. The pain brought by her experiment made her lie very still again.

What are they going to do with me? Oh yes, drop me off into the nearest convenient lake! She would have bitten her lip if she had been able to do so; her mouth remained glued tightly shut. Lisette consoled herself with the thought that she had been in tight scrapes before … been dreadfully frightened … and had come through it all miraculously. She needed another miracle now. Her natural flexibility of body was of no avail when she was tied up as thoroughly as this!

There was another sound; the door was being unlocked. Lisette lay very still and held her breath, her heart pounding. Someone was in the small room with her. Hands took her by a shoulder and turned her almost onto her back, a very uncomfortable position to be in considering that her legs were fastened in the hog tie. Her shoulder was released and she rolled back onto her side as though she was boneless. The hog tie was cut through so suddenly that she cried out involuntarily through her taped lips as her legs straightened out. All that came from her throat was a faint squeak. The ropes holding her arms to her body, and the ties between her elbows, were cut and released just as expeditiously; the same for the bonds that kept her legs welded together. Her captor had no cause to fear that her charge would leap up and escape. Lisette rested limp on the bunk, bereft of strength.

She scarcely had strength to whimper as all the tape was peeled off, stinging her mouth, pulling at her dry lips. She heard the sound of more tape being stripped from a dispenser. At the same time, the woman’s voice advised her to close her mouth tight shut once more. Lisette obeyed in a trance and her lips were sealed together again, this time under a single strip of sticking plaster. She was hauled to the edge of the bunk and her feet planted onto the floor.

“The boss-lady will speak to you now. You’re a very lucky young woman. Can you stand?”

Someone else told me that I was very lucky, thought Lisette dazedly as she sought to find her feet and stand. It had been Stringy, the professional kidnapper. Was she due for a reprieve from icy lake waters? Lisette shuffled out into the corridor under the guidance of the security woman. She was still blindfolded, and still frightened … although her exhaustion from having been tied up for so many hours blunted the fear, changing it almost, though not quite, to apathy.

They came to a room. Lisette was allowed to sink down into an armchair and the blindfold was freed and unwound from her eyes. The prisoner blinked and found herself looking up into the hard unforgiving eyes of the Boss Lady, the woman they called Madame.

“Now, child, you will answer my questions. Any further refusal to do so will bring about one end only, that of your life. Do you understand?”

Lisette gulped and nodded seriously.

To be Continued …