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“Okay, Mary,” said Robbie. “If you don’t tell me what I want to know today, it will be your last day.”
“According to you yesterday, you didn’t need me to find Manny.” Mary could have bitten off her tongue as she said that. She’d spent her life correcting people when they had made mistakes. Her mother always said it would be the death of her. Maybe she’d been right. She couldn’t help herself. Things had to be right.
He leaned in closer. “Today’s the day I’m going to make the pain go away.” Then he stepped back. “Or in your case, I’m going to make the whole fucking world disappear.”
Mary didn’t like the sound of that. Her stomach contracted, and she felt sick.
Robbie poked her with the umbrella. It was so quick she didn’t even see the movement. All she felt was a piercing pain on her right breast. She gasped, held the breast, rubbed it vigorously. A red mark appeared immediately. Determined not to show her fear of the man, Mary confronted him again. “Hardly what I’d call making the pain go away, is it? Stabbing me.”
Once again, her tongue had run free. Robbie poked the left breast equally as hard. “Pardon, Mary.”
The pain was even more severe in that one. Mary slumped, gritting her teeth, holding her breath. Coloured lights swam in front of her eyes.
Robbie dropped the umbrella, grabbed her ear, and yanked Mary to her feet. “Did you say something?”
“No,” she quickly replied.
Robbie let go, pushed her against the wall.
He strode over to the shelf, reached into his toolbox. She couldn’t see what he’d removed, but it had to be bullets because he started loading the chamber of the gun.
The speakers on the wall came to life. Another Slade song: Gudbye T’ Jane. She recognised it immediately. The level was acceptable but the implications heightened her tension, raised her blood pressure.
“I like this song, Mary. What about you?” Robbie asked as he returned to where she was shackled.
“Look, Mr Carter, whatever you’re going to do, you should think very seriously about it.”
“Why?”
“Pardon?”
“Why?”
“Because what you’re doing is wrong. Don’t you realise by now that I don’t know anything?”
“You must know something, Mary. Everybody knows something. What you really mean is, you don’t know the answer to the question I keep asking.”
Mary nodded, all the time keeping her eyes on the gun. All thoughts of itching had gone from her mind; even the room didn’t feel so cold.
“The problem with that, Mary,” said Robbie, “is I don’t believe you.”
“Don’t you think I’d have told you by now?”
“Depends how much you love the weasel. You’re a tough old bus, I’ll give you that.”
“I’ve told you, I don’t know where he is.”
“So you keep saying.”
The snapping of the chamber frightened Mary more than anything else since she’d been here. It was so final. “What are you going to do?”
“We’ re going to play a little game, Mary. Do you like games?”
“Depends which ones they are.”
“I believe they invented this one in Russia. Not sure when. But it’s a very good one. Focuses the mind brilliantly.”
“People will know I’m missing, you know.”
