ROBBERY AT THE SWANK BOUTIQUE
By Brian Sands
Detective Novel, Epson site, artist’s name can’t be deciphered
Chapter Three: Boxing Simone
Simone was roused from the swoon in which she lay as faint sounds filtered through to her. She felt the box move and she sensed the opening of the lid. The darkness became less intense though she was still packed tightly under layers of fine fabrics. These fabrics slowly came away until Simone was looking up into the face of the Woman in Black, who had an ironic smile on her lips.
The silks had been bound so tightly about Simone’s face and jaw that it took several minutes for Douglas to undo them. He had to wrestle with one knot in particular. That was when Simone realised that a tightly knotted silk scarf could be very difficult to pick open because of the nature of the material. When the last packing of small silk squares was delicately extracted from Simone’s mouth with thumb and forefinger by the Lady herself, the still bound woman shook her head and spoke haltingly through numb lips.
‘Oh my god. The gag was unbearable. Thank you.’
‘We had a sudden change of plans, Honey. That store window designer followed us and started to ask a lot of questions. Dougie had the presence of mind to act the dumb deliveryman and showed a bill of lading he’d picked up from the storeroom floor. Full marks to you Dougie! And our inside plant managed to divert them with a story of a mix-up. But we had to take the packing case back, complete with its cargo of a nicely bound and gagged manager if only they knew! Your assistant didn’t want to do anything without your say-so, conscientious wench. She said she had to wait till you came in to the office next Wednesday. Ha ha.’
‘Wh- what ...?’
‘ ... Are we going to do with you now? A good question my dear. And I must admit that I can’t make up my mind. And I’ve been giving you conflicting, ah ... hopes, shall we say?’
The woman sat on a low chair, selected a cigarette from a gold case, slipped the cigarette case back into her handbag, and inserted the cigarette into a long black holder. Dougie leaned over and lit it for her. She took a deep drag and blew a smoke ring in Simone’s direction. The young woman turned her head and held her breath. The smoke stung her eyes.
‘It’s a filthy habit I know,’ the woman went on conversationally, ‘One of my few vices really,’ she added in what Simone thought was an understatement.
Simone looked about her in the faint hope that help might come from some quarter, perhaps the police or an act of nature that would overturn her captor’s plans. But no such luck, she thought wearily. She was sitting on the floor of the main shop area, still trussed tightly in the silken wrappings of dress material.
The bound prisoner raised her head and looked up beseechingly at the Woman in Black. ‘Can’t you leave me here, take what you want and go? I’m of no further use to you.’
‘To answer your second question first, Dahling,’ the woman replied with a supercilious pout, ‘we will most certainly take what we want. The boxes can be removed via the back entrance just as easily.’
‘That’s how we came in,’ volunteered Douglas, who was lounging against one of the columns that displayed an assortment of bras, garter belts and stockings.
‘Quite so,’ continued the Lady. ‘But I remind you that leaving you here is out of the question. You’d be found too soon for my liking and the alarm will be raised. We require the additional days of your flex leave to get rid of the merchandise. No, you are our guest until the operation is complete. Then I promise that you will be returned to the bosom of whatever you call your family - the shop girls, a boyfriend? - no more the worse for your ordeal except for maybe a few rope burns.’
‘But - but that’s kidnapping!’
‘Is it? Possibly. But the stakes are high, and a little kidnapping added to robbery doesn’t seem to make a lot of difference. You’ll just have to bear it I’m afraid ... And, Dougie, by the way, load an armful of the lingerie items you’re leaning on.’
Simone bit her lip. Bound and helpless, she had no choice. She remembered a public lecture on philosophy that she had once attended where the guest speaker talked about free will. The speaker had posed a question that sent a ripple through the audience, mostly women. She had asked whether they would still have free will if they were bound and gagged. At that time Simone had felt a delicious frisson at the thought. Now she was experiencing the real thing and she hated it. The sense of helplessness was frightening and claustrophobic. She had already been silenced, wrapped up and packed into a box. She choked back a sob. What were they going to do with her now?
Somewhere, in another part of the city, a tower clock tolled relentlessly, signalling midnight. Simone looked yearningly towards the street outside, just visible through the display window that faced onto the arcade. It was beginning to rain.
*
‘I think we’d better be going,’ said the Woman in Black as she slipped her cigarette holder into her bag. ‘Dougie, the tape please. We’ll try a different means of silencing you my lovely. We have a long way to go, to the other side of the city. You will be in less danger of choking if we forego packing your pretty mouth. I think if you can only hum through closed lips there will be very little sound. Know any good humming tunes?’
Douglas approached with a huge roll of silver duct tape in his hands. He dropped down on one knee at her side, pulled out a strip of tape without tearing it from the roll, and began to raise it over Simone’s head. Instinctively, the young woman turned away.
‘Now now, none o’ that,’ hissed Douglas.
‘Be warned my dear,’ interjected Madam, ‘Dougie can be rough if he needs to be.’
Slowly Simone turned her head back and straightened up.
‘Tha’s better. Close yer mouth so yer lips are together.’
‘Purse your lips, Dahling,’ the woman added, ‘nice and tight together!’
Simone obeyed their instructions. A broad layer of tape was strapped neatly across her lips and mouth. Then Douglas carefully brought the tape around the back of her neck, over her hair, and tightened another layer over the first. This time the tape sealed her face immediately below her nose. The operation was repeated so that the third layer came to the end of her chin. Douglas continued to wind the tape until Simone’s face was sealed under a fourth layer. He then tore it from the roll and smoothed it out over one cheek.
‘That will be a nuisance to take off,’ observed Madam. ‘We’ll have to make sure your beautiful hair is not entangled in the sticky stuff. But we’re going to take good care of you so there’s nothing to worry about.’
Simone looked at her captors in astonishment. Nothing to worry about? She had already been trussed up for hours. Her arms were aching horribly and she was cramped, her body slick with sweat beneath the fabric in which she was all but mummified, and now her mouth and jaw were sealed under tight unyielding adhesive cloth. As an experiment she attempted to open her mouth, only to find that her lips were glued so tightly together that the effort did not even hurt them. There was no slack against which her lips or jaw could fight. The second experiment was an attempt to cry out. Simone could not believe that the thin reedy whimper came from her.
The Lady in Black clapped her hands. ‘Hum us a tune, Dear,’ she taunted. ‘No? More the better ... I think our little songbird will be as quiet as a mouse. No one will hear her squeak when we pack her away.’
Simone was carried into the stock room and left sitting disconsolately on the floor with her back against one wall while Douglas and his mistress completed their operation. The long box in which Simone had spent the evening was topped up with more dresses and gowns. Together with another crate, it was wheeled out through the back entrance. The Lady took one crate, Douglas took the long box. Simone noticed that they had found another trolley from somewhere.
While they were out, Simone fought against her bonds, frantically at first, hoping that she could work herself free now that she was not cramped up inside a box. But she soon ran out of strength. With her mouth sealed tight, she was forced to concentrate on breathing exclusively through her nose. And the silks bandaged tightly around her chest made breathing even more difficult. Simone realised that if she caved in to the panic that was swelling in her chest she might not make it. By the time the two thieves returned she was sitting quietly, trying to relax her limbs in their wrappings, though the beads of sweat on her forehead and her dark blood-suffused face testified to her earlier struggles.
Madam knelt beside Simone and inspected her carefully. ‘I see you had to learn the hard way, Dearie. Take it from me, you’re not getting away from us and it will be a lot better for you to just relax and, ahem, enjoy the ride.’ And, as if she had read Simone’s thoughts of an hour ago, she added, ‘You have no free will at all under these circumstances. You are fully reliant on us. We have total power over you. So be a good girl. Be quiet. Be still. When we reach our first stop you’ll be given a breather. Ah ha ha.’ And she ran her finger lightly over Simone’s taped mouth with the mixed emotions of irony and what looked very like erotic delight showing clearly in her face.
‘Look what I’ve found!’ Douglas appeared dragging a large square trunk. It had a shiny black japanned surface and exterior brass panels, its corners reinforced by the same metal.
‘Excellent, Dougie. Just what we need. I was wondering how safe it would be to carry her between us to the van. But there are too many stairs, and people are still around. One car left the parking bay on the floor below just before we came up.’
‘Yers. This will do a treat!’ Douglas opened the lid. ‘Padding too, and air holes, for the clothes to breathe, heh heh.’
Madam joined in with Douglas’s mirth, then turned to Simone who was shaking her head panic-stricken and grunting faintly, her eyes large and round. ‘You’d better get used to this, my girl. Whenever we have to move you, it will be necessary to crate you up in some way, to make absolutely certain that you can’t attract attention. All right, Dougie?’
‘Yers, Madam.’
‘Didn’t I once ask you to call me "Madame" Dougie?’ She pronounced it ‘Mard-arm.’ ‘You’ve slipped lately. It’s so much better. The other way, it sounds as though I was the owner of a "house of ill repute" as they say.’
‘Yers ... Madame,’ replied a crestfallen Douglas.
‘Good. Now let’s get our extra luggage stored and we’ll be on our way. She’s already packaged, ah ha ha.’
Simone’s renewed panic had already made her breathless again, and she did her best to relax and not to struggle as she was picked up and lowered into the trunk. There she lay on her side with her knees drawn up towards her chest. The white silk lining made her think of it as a square coffin. She raised her head - she lay well below the opening - and looked up fearfully at the gloating faces of her two captors. Then the lid was closed, there was the faint muffled sound of the lock snapping into place, and Simone was plunged into truly claustrophobic darkness and silence.
While there was movement, as she imagined Douglas loading the box in which she lay onto a trolley and guiding it down the stairwell to the car park, Simone felt some connection with the outside world that was otherwise denied to her. When for several minutes there was no movement and a dead, stifling stillness, she began to panic. Simone’s face grew hot and the rapid beating of her heart seemed loud in that enclosed and soundproofed space. Sweat broke out anew on her face and her silk blouse and satin skirt clung stickily to her body. The tight wrappings of fine dress material in which she was still enmeshed cramped against her folded legs. She was bathing in her own sweat.
Simone’s wrists and arms strained against their bindings, anything to help take her mind off the soft cotton wool feeling of floating and dissociation that was threatening to send her over the edge. If I get through this, she thought, I wonder whether it will cure me of the claustrophobia I’ve had since I was a child? She realised with a jolt that the whimpering, keening sounds she could hear were being made by herself through lips that were so tightly sealed that she could not even wet them with her tongue. The tape pressed her lips against her teeth and they felt thick and swollen.
When at last the box moved, Simone sobbed in relief. It was hard to tell the difference between up and down or right and left as she was wheeled along. And no sound whatsoever filtered through the box’s thick padded lining. Then there was a definite tilt and Simone guessed that she was being loaded into the van Douglas and Madame had mentioned.
There followed more nerve-racking minutes of stillness and silence. Simone began to throw her body against the soft yielding padding that surrounded her, just to feel something, but it was little consolation. She dug her fingernails into the palm of one hand and told herself: Hold onto the pain, pretend you’re asleep where the darkness can’t frighten you. They were scarcely effective measures, and Simone experienced another surge of relief when she felt the van’s movement communicated to her by an occasional gentle rocking of the box.
Her mind clung to every movement of the van as it affected the box in which she lay, clinging to sanity. When the movement ceased, preceded by a slight rocking, she held her breath and prayed that they had reached the end of their journey and that she would soon be released from her dark and silent confinement. The minutes of silence and stillness were making her panic again when she felt the box tilt. In fact it tilted far over and she was thrown onto her back where she lay on what had once been the side of the chest. It was padded. She found herself thinking, That’s Dougie being careless, and caught herself using Madame’s way of addressing the man.
More movement, this time she thought from the bumping that the chest was being hauled up stairs of some kind, then down stairs. She was not entirely disoriented, thank god. There was another agonising period of stillness and silence. Simone began to fear that she would be left this way, to spend the rest of Saturday morning occluded in the chest, when the lid opened - she scarcely heard the click of the lock - and she was blinking and shutting her eyes tight against the light that flooded in.
ã Brian Sands 2002