Believing the Lie - Elizabeth George [270]
At the far end where the light was brightest, they saw the crude film set. Manette took it all in in an instant— beds, window, Big Ben in the distance, dog at the foot of a bed— before she saw him. He was a figure lying on his side in what looked like a nightshirt. But the nightshirt was pulled above his head, green tights were tied round the top of it like a sack, and the boy himself lay on his side with his hands bound in front of him and his genitals on display. He was fully erect. An X on the floor not far from the bed on which he lay indicated where the camera had been positioned and what its primary focus had been.
Manette said, “Oh God.”
Freddie turned to her. She read his lips because there was no way to hear him, not while the alarm kept shrieking like a banshee come to claim a soul. You stay here. You stay here.
Because she was frightened at that point, she remained where she was. If Tim was dead, the truth of the matter was that she simply did not want to see.
Freddie went to the bed. Manette saw his lips form he’s bleeding and then Tim old man I say old man as he reached for the tights that bound the nightshirt closed above Tim’s head.
Tim’s body jerked. Freddie’s lips said Easy there. It’s Freddie my man let me get you out you’re all right old man and then he had the nightshirt released from its binding and he was lowering it gently to cover Tim’s body and Manette saw from the boy’s eyes and his face that he was drugged which in that moment she thanked God for because if he was drugged there was a small chance that he would not remember what had happened to him here.
Phone the police, Freddie said.
But she knew there was no need for that. Even as she approached Ian’s son where he lay on the bed, even as she reached to untie his hands, the alarm ceased howling and she heard the voices.
“Bloody damn mess,” someone called out from the shop itself.
How true, she thought.
MORECAMBE BAY
CUMBRIA
Everything you do in quicksand is counterintuitive, Nicky had told her. When you hit it, your inclination is to freeze in place. It seems that struggling will make you sink faster. Any movement at all will presage more danger and an inconceivable end. But you must remember several things, darling. The first is that you have no idea how deep the sand really is. You’re only in a scour and while it might be deep enough to swallow a horse or a tractor or an entire tour coach, it’s more likely that you’re in one of the shallower scours, which will suck you in only to your knees or, at worst, your thighs, leaving you otherwise free until rescue comes. But you don’t want to discover that— especially if you’re going to go in up to your chest— because if you sink that far there’s no getting out because of the suction involved. At that point only more water can get you out, water from a fire hose blasting into the sand to free you or water from the incoming tide driving sand from the scour again. So you must move quickly once you’re in the sand. If you’re very lucky, it’s not deep and before it can suck upon your boots and entrap them, you can move across it or back away from it. If you can’t do that, then you must lie on the surface of the quicksand. Lie down upon it as soon as you’re able. You’ll see that you’ll sink no deeper and you’ll be able to roll away from it.
But no matter the words of her husband, who had lived his life in this strange part of the world, to Alatea the thought was madness. She was in the sand up to her thighs, so no quick movement out of the scour was possible. This meant lying on the top of the sand. And she could not bring herself to do it. She told herself to. She said aloud, “You must, you must,” but all she could think of as she settled more slowly downward was the insidious movement of the sand inching up her supine body, crawling into her ears, touching her cheeks, slithering like menace incarnate towards her