A Lesser Evil - Lesley Pearse [146]
It had to be bloody cold in that barn at night. She didn’t even have a coat, only a little jacket. What if she or the other one got ill?
‘I’m starving,’ Del announced a little later as they reached Barnet. ‘Let’s stop and go and get some fish and chips. They’ll all be closed later on.’
Martin wasn’t hungry, but he could do with a cup of tea. They’d been stuck in the office for ages and the snooty secretary didn’t offer them one.
They parked up, found a fish-and-chip shop with tables to eat at, and both ordered cod and chips. Martin ate the fish but didn’t want the chips, and when he felt in his pocket for cigarettes he found he had only one left.
‘I’m just going to get some fags,’ he said, getting up.
There was a newspaper shop just three doors down. Martin bought his cigarettes and a couple of bars of chocolate for later. He was just about to go back to the café when he saw the rack of birthday cards. It was his gran’s birthday in a week’s time, and he often forgot to buy a card in time to post it.
He was glancing through them, looking for the kind she liked with a soppy verse, when he saw a card that said ‘Missing You’.
It had a teddy bear on the front with a tear running down its cheek, and once again he was thinking of Fifi.
‘Come on, Fifi, do some exercises with me, that will make you warm again,’ Yvette pleaded. She stood over the younger woman, who was lying on the mattress, and held out her hand.
‘I haven’t got the energy,’ Fifi said weakly. ‘I feel giddy when I stand up.’
Yvette felt giddy too. She’d had her last meal on Monday evening, not long before the man came and took her away. It was now Friday afternoon and she couldn’t count half a pork pie and a bit of bun on Wednesday as a meal. There was only about two inches of water left in the bottle now and once they were forced to drink that she knew they would become really distressed.
In her heart Yvette believed they were going to be left to die. She had thought long and hard about it, and knowing what she did about the men behind all this, it made sense.
Why run the risk of being seen by someone coming out this way, of perhaps being outwitted as they attempted to kill them, when time alone would do it for them? It would be so much harder for the police to build a case against anyone when rain and wind had removed car tracks and any other evidence. She had no doubt that before using this barn, the men behind this had made certain that the owner wasn’t going to turn up here for some time. The chances were their bodies would be completely decomposed by the time that happened.
Of course, only the most evil and cold-blooded person could let two people die of thirst and starvation, and she doubted that all the top man’s henchmen and bully boys came under that category, but a powerful man would take that into consideration. Yvette had been taken by two different men to the ones that took Fifi. It would be easy enough to tell one set of men that the others were bringing them food. Yvette knew that when their bodies were finally found, none of the men involved were going to admit to any part of it, whatever their feelings. They would have to remain silent for fear of incurring a similar fate for themselves.
Yvette had often wished for death in the past, her life held nothing that she wanted to hold on to. She had no family to grieve, nothing to look forward to, and she’d gladly be released from her guilt. She didn’t fear death in itself, but she was afraid of a slow and agonizing one.
She looked up at the bars above her. It would be so simple to climb up there and use the belt on her skirt to make a noose to hang herself. She had seen a man hanged in France, and knew death came quickly.
But she couldn’t do that, not with Fifi with her. Fifi believed the best of people, and she would want to hang on, convinced