Seconds later, the hope died: they wouldn’t have time. He half-pushed, half-dragged her the few steps to the van and pulled the back door open. With one neat move, he knocked her legs out from under her and shoved her forward. She fell face first, knocking the top of her head against the floor. Behind her, the van door slammed shut.
Chapter Twenty-five
The back of the van was windowless and, from the position she was tied in, Hannah couldn’t move her head far enough to see anything further forward. When he’d pushed her inside, she’d caught a brief view of the back of the seats and the heavy wire grille that separated them from the body of the van. Now all she could see was the van’s blank pressed-steel side and the patch of ceiling directly above her head, the patterns cast across it by the streetlights.
Where was he taking her?
She felt her gorge rising again and tried to swallow. If she threw up with the gag in her mouth, she’d choke. She couldn’t make a noise loud enough for him to hear in the front and she’d choke on her own vomit and suffocate. And what if he did hear her? said the voice in her head. Did she think Nick was going to help her? She thought of Hermione, dead in the yard at the back of the pub, her head smashed in, blood and bone and brain.
She pushed back, trying to lift her face away from the sacking that lay piled on the van floor. It was rough and reeked of earth and grass cuttings rotted to compost with an under-note of petrol that caught the back of her throat.
In the front section of the van, three feet away but hopelessly out of reach, she heard her phone start to ring. It rang five times then stopped as voicemail clicked in. Twenty seconds passed and then it rang again. ‘Christ’s sake,’ he muttered, and she heard him rummaging through her bag. A couple of seconds later, the ringing stopped for a second time and she heard the long tone the phone made when it was turned off.
Her forehead was throbbing where she’d hit it. He’d pushed her inside and climbed in after her, pulling the door shut behind him. The bang to the head had stunned her for a moment but then she’d started fighting, kicking and shouting, trying to make as much noise as possible. At one point she’d managed to bite his hand and he’d sworn and snatched it away level with his shoulder. She’d thought he was going to bring it back and hit her across the face but instead he’d launched himself at her again, pushing her back down and straddling her chest, pinning her arms with his knees while he tied the cloth across her face. She’d writhed and kicked, trying to bring her legs up behind him to knee him in the small of the back, but he was too strong and in a few seconds he had forced her on to her front, pulled her hands behind her back and bound them together with something hard and sharp-edged: perhaps a plant-tie. He’d done the same with her feet.
He’d checked both sets of ties twice and, when he was satisfied, he’d crawled to the door and got out, taking her bag with him. Seconds later, she heard him get back in at the front of the van and the engine had started. He’d made a four- or five-point turn – the street was narrow with cars parked on both sides – and headed back towards Studdridge Street.
In her panic, she’d quickly lost track of where they were going – any number of streets led off Studdridge; had he turned left then or just swerved? – but now, from outside, she heard a distinctive high-pitched beeping. She knew it; she’d heard it countless times: the pedestrian crossing on Parsons Green Lane, just outside the Tube station. They’d stopped – he was waiting for the light. She thought she heard the click of buttons – was he texting? – and then there was a thunderous clatter overhead: a train on the bridge, slowing, coming into the station. She felt a burst of elation – she knew where they were – but as quickly as it came, it was gone. What good was knowing where she was? She was bound and gagged, lying helpless in the semi-darkness in a van driven by a man who’d killed a woman. Two women.
Trying to concentrate seemed to quell the panic, though, at least to some extent. It was something to focus on, a straw to clutch at. They started moving again and she pictured Parson’s Green Lane, the little café, the fish-and-chip shop, the doctor’s surgery. At the top, he turned left on to Fulham Road.
She traced the route in her head as he took them up Fulham Palace Road to the roundabout at Hammersmith and then – two sets of traffic lights followed by a sudden acceleration – on to the A40. The lights on the van ceiling changed, the orange streetlamp glow giving way to the strobing white of headlights passing quickly on the other side of the road. Her heart started beating faster, the panic rising again: unless he turned off soon, they were heading for the motorway. They were leaving London.