Salt Page 15

  ‘Ok that’s great. Thankyou.’ Dan said.

  ‘The central heating controls are just here behind the door.’ James said pointing to the wall behind the front door. ‘Feel free to turn the heating to where you find comfortable but most couples prefer the log burners when it’s cool.’

  ‘Probably, I think Emma will like that.’ Dan said.

  ‘There is a folder in the living room with our contact details and some leaflets for surrounding attractions and restaurants, if you need anything give me a call and I will come right across. Check out is usually eleven but we have nobody booked in after you so if you need to stay a little bit longer that won’t be a problem.’ James said.

  ‘Thank you, I’m sure we’ll be fine.’ Dan said.

  James walked out of the front door and took a flat cap from his pocket as he stepped onto the steps, Dan followed and the two shook hands again before James said goodbye, tipped his hat to Emma and walked across the gravel around the side of the house. Dan walked down the steps to his car and opened the passenger door to Emma. She looked up at him as she unclipped her seat belt.

  ‘It’s all ours now’ Dan said.

  ‘All of it? Seriously?’ Emma said stepping out of the car.

  ‘Yes, and we don’t have any neighbours, none nearby anyway. I think the nearest is half a mile away.’

  ‘That’s crazy, it’s like our own little world.’ Emma said. ‘I love you.’

  ‘I know and I love you too and it means you can be as loud as you like too.’ Dan said, pressing a button on his key fob to open the boot.

  The crunch of tyres on gravel made Dan look up as he took the two pieces of luggage out of the boot. James drove past slowly in an old, white Land Rover Defender. He was still wearing his cap and his elbow poked out of the driver’s window, he tipped his hat to Emma as he headed towards the drive. Emma and Dan waved back and watched the old Land Rover disappear around the corner and into the tree tunnel.

  ‘I can see you in one of those.’ Emma said.

  ‘A Land Rover?’

  ‘Yes, like that bobbing around the country shooting pheasants.’ Emma said.

  ‘I don’t mind shooting pheasants but I’m not sure about the Defender, maybe a Range Rover.’

  ‘Why not?’ Emma asked.

  ‘Just not very fast.’ Dan said.

  ‘You don’t have to do everything fast you know, sometimes slow is fun too.’ Emma said smiling.

  ‘Oh really? I’ll remember that later.’ Dan said as he carried the luggage towards the door.

  # # #

  The fresh wood crackled as the heat from the embers warmed it, an orange glow from the stove was the only light in the room. Dan felt like he was in a cave, a warm cave with a comfortable Chesterfield sofa but a cave nonetheless. The world had gone from dark rooms lit and heated by fire through the wonders of gas and electricity with most people ripping out their old-fashioned fireplaces to replace them with modern electric ones that looked like the old ones and now people were clamouring to have wood burners or fireplaces alongside LED lighting and central heating you could control from your phone. There was something primeval about fire that made everything look better and more romantic, the harsh whiteness of electricity tended to have the same effect as turning the lights on in a nightclub during the last slow dance.

  Dan and Emma were entwined in their own slow dance now that even a spotlight couldn’t disrupt, a Police search light might but that was very unlikely. They were both partially dressed but the partial grew smaller and smaller with each kiss. Emma straddled Dan as he lay on his back, she sat up from him to unfasten her bra. The fire made the shadows of her breasts dance on the wall behind them which Dan would have seen if he had been able to focus on anything else as her hands wriggled behind her back.

  ‘You know they say that some of these rental properties are fitted with hidden cameras to capture things like this.’ Dan said immediately regretting saying something that might have the same effect as an ice bucket challenge right now.

  ‘Is that so?’ Her hands moving to the cups of her bra, holding them in place while the straps fell free from her shoulders.

  ‘It’s probably just nonsense rumours online to be honest.’ His hands gripped her waist urging her to forget what he said.

  ‘That’s a shame. I quite like the idea of being watched and was going to suggest we made sure it was worth watching.’ She lowered her hands exposing more of her breasts, stopping at her nipples.

  ‘Well maybe it does happen for real and we could be being watched right now, you shouldn’t cover up. Otherwise they might look for someone else to watch.’ Dan said.

  Emma smiled and moved her hands, her breasts barely moved as she tossed the bra onto the floor. Dan slid his hands higher, moving up her sides from her hips until he cupped her breasts. Her nipples were already hard as he brushed his thumbs across them. She groaned, her eyes closing as his hands massaged her. She gasped when he gripped her hair and pulled her down onto him, her softness pressed against his hard chest as their mouths met again.

  They stayed on the Chesterfield until the logs were nothing but embers and the room was almost black. They made their way upstairs but neither felt like spending the time to build a fire so they continued with the only light coming from the open curtains.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  His hands closed around her neck, brown fingers sinking into white flesh. Her face again turned red, then purple as her red nails failed to loosen his grip. Dan could see them clearly through the window, he could hear them perfectly but they couldn’t hear him. He beat against the window, the glass bending around his knuckles with the texture of hot toffee.

  Her mouth opened, like a fish hauled onto his boat. She tried desperately to fill her lungs. The pain in her body relegated to insignificance, air was all she could think of. At last his grip loosened, air rushed into her throat. Her need to breathe now satisfied the pain and humiliation flooded back. The fight was gone, she couldn’t win and the thought of losing air kept her still as he stabbed himself in and out of her.

  Dan could see her face clearly, her eyes met his and she used them to plead for his help. He saw her realise that he couldn’t and watched as her mind struggled to take her to another place. Somewhere with air and without pain. She closed her eyes as a single tear rolled down her face, the start of a stream that would soon become a river until her eyes had run themselves dry.

  He could see the man’s face now, an angry grin and screwed up black eyes. His features weren’t there but Dan could see him, a face behind a steamy glass shower cubicle, recognisable but indescribable. His grin widened as he saw her tears, Dan saw him spit, her face the target.

  The light in the room flickered, a strobe light to make the horrors of what he saw worse. Each black and white image struck his mind in a way a moving image couldn’t.

  The light flashed at Dan, his focus concentrated on Emma until the man sneered. His face twisted into sadistic indifference that taunted Dan like a shoulder shrug or ‘meh.’ The sneer spoke clearly to Dan through the toffee glass. ‘What now. What now. What now.’ With each thrust. Each flash of light brought a fresh sneer and a fresh taunt. ‘So what. What now? So what. What now? Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you.’

  Dan twisted beneath the quilt kicking it off, he felt trapped and instinct shed the bedding. He woke suddenly, a jolt of consciousness banishing the darkness of sleep. The face was fading now, his brain remembered it clearly but the details softened as his eyes adjusted to the room. The sneer remained like a warped Cheshire Cat mouthing the words ‘Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you.’

  The face would continue to taunt him relentlessly. It wouldn’t stop until it was stopped. Mr Sneer wouldn’t stop until he was stopped. Dan knew this. His face would always be there with that grin until Dan had a newer, image of him to replace it. It needed a look of fear and pain to replace the other look. The mouth continued. ‘What now? What now? What now?’ Dan sat upright in bed, his face wearing a
smile of his own, the answer to Mr Sneer’s question forming in his mind.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Emma slept. The quilt pulled high around her neck. Only her face was visible, everything else enveloped in a cocoon of soft white cotton. She smiled in her sleep, Dan looked at her lay there, her face looked like a kitten meme that always appeared on his Facebook wall. A smiling kitten having its belly rubbed with the phrase ‘when he says you look pretty first thing in the morning’ written underneath.

  Dan stood there in his boxers, he wouldn’t be going back to sleep now. He bent over and kissed her forehead, she squirmed as he did so but there was no chance of her disturbing. She was conscious enough to acknowledge the kiss, perhaps she had been kissed in her dream or perhaps she knew it was him.

  He smiled, wondering how anyone could hurt her and then he remembered someone had. His hands balled into fists and then relaxed before he turned and walked out of the room.

  The MacBook woke as soon as he opened the screen, the faithful servant to millions of people around the world had been with him since he started his business. His wallpaper, an image of the Eiffel Tower from the bridge where they stood reminded him of her every time he opened his computer. Dan wasn’t ready to go full softy and have a picture of her as his back drop but with this he had a secret reminder of her and the moment he knew she was going to be special.

  He clicked the Safari icon, the compass symbol bounced on its toolbar. He knew enough about computers to know that true privacy was almost impossible nowadays but he still opened a private browsing window. He hoped that this would give him an extra line of defence should anyone come snooping around. A new window appeared and he moved the cursor to the now dark search bar and began typing.

  In under a second Google returned over half a million results, Dan was unsure how this was possible but there was no way of checking. The first, as usual was Wikipedia but he knew what rape meant. Some men obviously didn’t know or didn’t care but he had no need to go and read definitions. Next came the news stories talking about rapes. He scrolled past them and the thought crossed his mind that there would probably never be a day that Google didn’t bring up several links to rape news reports. Below that he found what he was looking for. Help groups for victims of rape, sexual abuse and whatever else the sick people of the world did to others.

  He clicked the link and the first statistic stopped him from reading further. Approximately eighty-five thousand women and twelve thousand men were raped each year in England and Wales. A full football stadium each year could be filled with fresh rape victims. He remembered the last football game he went to and pictured the sea of faces surrounding him.

  Dan read the next statistic. Over half a million adults were sexually assaulted each year. He knew it happened but he never really thought about the scale before. He put his MacBook down on the coffee table in front of him and pictured a large UK city full of abuse victims. He covered his eyes with his hands and pressed his thumbs into his eye sockets, the blackness and pressure focused his mind by cutting everything else out. Bright phosphenes burst across his vision as his brain was tricked into sensing light by the pressure stimulating his retina. People often found it odd when he pressed his eyes like this but he had done it since childhood and it acted as his form of meditation, clearing his mind by watching a yellow circle form.

  He lay back on the sofa and opened his eyes, the lights still dancing in the darkness of the room. From time to time he worried that the phenomena might stick around ruining his vision forever but they never had. He blinked the colours away and stood. The rug felt warm beneath his feet but the wooden flooring felt cold and hard before he reached the icy flagstones of the kitchen. The fridge lit the room when he opened it to take out a Budweiser, he smiled when he remembered watching a video of a girl holding a bottle between her breasts and wondered if Emma could do the same. He drank straight from the bottle, the condensation dripped down his chin as he drank. He closed the fridge, then stopped, he would need another soon and the kitchen floor was too intimidating so he took another bottle from the fridge and closed the door.

  Safari had been replaced by HD pictures of swirling galaxies, he stroked the track pad and the rape statistics appeared again. He had seen enough from this page and thought another website might would tell him something a little less depressing. He clicked back to Google and picked a random page lower in the search results.

  The next page was filled with much of the same information, he assumed they got their data from the same reports. He read through the page and found another statistic saying that only ten percent of rapes were reported to the police, he took a long pull of Bud. That couldn’t be right, no way was it possible that so many women didn’t report being raped. He stopped drinking and remembered Emma, the girl upstairs, the reason he was even looking into this. She had been raped and hadn’t told anyone especially the police, as he put the bottle back on the coaster he remembered the news. There were gangs in across the UK, politicians, the BBC, social workers and even Hollywood stars and moguls who’d been getting away with rape for years. They either had influence, chose victims who wouldn’t speak out or had the advantage of a police force scared of looking racist for doing their job. He wondered how many young people had been raped repeatedly and had given up reporting it to the police because they were never believed. Nearly all of his childhood television heroes were now sex offenders or were under investigation in Operation Yewtree. If ever there was a time to trust the statistics it was now after everything had been dragged into daylight.

  Another mouthful of Bud, but the bitter taste remained. He usually enjoyed a lack of empathy, it made his life simple and his job easier. Someone having a bad day was easier to negotiate with, easier to win against and it was their problem not his. Now his first empathetic experience turned his mouth dry and his stomach upside down. He pictured the women, women like Emma. First defiled, hurt and humiliated then ignored by the very people who stood spouting pledges to protect them. The women left to carry the burden and sometimes the babies they had been left with forever while watching the tormentors knighted and worshipped, smiling back at them from television. The BBC had once been something to rely on, television that educated and entertained but it had become a pit of abuse and cover ups. It was the media equivalent of the Catholic Church putting reputation above children.

  Another trip to the cold flagstone for Bud before more Googling. He almost wished he could go back to not knowing any of this but again he thought of Emma, upstairs and comfortable in bed but still scarred from a few moments of someone else’s selfish pleasure.

  He closed the Mac and put it to rest on the table. He slouched back on the sofa and closed his eyes again, they ached from the bright screen. He had never raped a girl. He had never even been with a girl who was drunk, even as a teen it just didn’t appeal to him and by the time he had been drunk enough to be unaware of his own actions sex had become as impractical as lacing his shoes with wet spaghetti. Dan had just never given much thought to rape. It was something that happened to someone else in a dark alley at knife point or in some third world, war torn country. He never imagined that he could know both victims and rapists but if the statistics were true then he probably did.

  The reality of what he read had drained him. He’d learned that only six percent of rapists ever spend a day in prison. The ones who didn’t probably went on to rape again and again, he couldn’t imagine that someone raped someone for the first time and then decided they didn’t like it. Like the serial killers he watched on television they wouldn’t stop until they were stopped, they would either continue until they made a mistake or escalate in violence and become killers.

  Mr Sneer was back, his Scream mask face tattooed inside Dan’s eyelids.

  ‘What now?’ Repeating whenever his mind wandered. He haunted his daydreams, an unburned Freddy Kruger questioning him. He knew Mr Sneer would be one of the men who never served a day in prison. He was devious enough to choose vu
lnerable girls who wouldn’t go to the police, just like Emma.

  ‘Are you ok babe?’ Emma said from the doorway.

  Dan turned, she wore the shirt he had been wearing earlier and nothing else. ‘Sorry, yes I just couldn’t sleep so I thought I’d catch up on some emails.’

  ‘Oh ok. Are you finished? It’s cold in there and I need warming up.’ She smiled as she spoke.

  Dan stood. ‘I guess I could turn the heating up if you are want me to?’

  Emma smiled and unbuttoned his shirt revealing a little more of herself. ‘You could turn the heating up.’ She leant on the door frame, her legs crossed as her finger traced the placket between her breasts. ‘Or you could leave the heating and join me instead.’

  Dan smiled, he had forgotten how sexy she was while he was looking online. She looked small and vulnerable standing there with his sleeves hanging loose past her fingers. He joined her in the door way and bent to kiss her, she turned and led him by his hand towards the stairs. He closed the door behind him and forgot about turning up the heating.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  The television flickered light into the room, Dan lay on the bed in darkness with nothing to distract him from the images on the screen. He usually didn’t watch television in a hotel room, normally he worked late, showered and read before going to sleep. Sometimes he would watch YouTube or Netflix on his Mac but today he flicked through the hotel channels. The reality of business travel never matched people’s expectations. He visited countries but only saw hotels, airports and offices. He stopped channel hopping when he found a documentary on serial killers. Since childhood he’d always loved documentaries and as he had grown older he watched very little television that wasn’t factual. Sometimes he watched ‘Megafactories’ or ‘How It’s Made’ but often he just sat watching episodes about crime. Sky had three or four channels showing nothing but real-life crime so he knew he wasn’t alone in his macabre interest.