Free Dead Like You by Peter James Page B

outside.
    Had he left her here to die or was he coming back? She had to get away. Somehow.
    She strained her ears for traffic noise that might give her a clue as to whether it was day or night, or for the caw of a gull that might tell her if she was still near the sea. But all she could hear was the occasional, very faint wail of a siren. Each time her hopes rose. Were the police out looking for her?
    They were, weren’t they?
    Surely her parents would have reported her missing? They would have told the police that she hadn’t turned up for Christmas lunch. They’d be worried. She knew them, knew they would have gone to her flat to find her. She wasn’t even sure what day it was now. Boxing Day? The day after?
    Her shivering was getting worse, the cold seeping deep inside her bones. It was all right, though, she thought, so long as she was shivering. Four years ago, when she had left school, she’d worked for a season as a washer-upper in a ski resort in France. A Japanese skier had taken the last chairlift up one afternoon in a snowstorm. There was a mistake by the lift attendants, who thought the last person had already gone up and been counted at the top, so they turned the lift off. In the morning, when they switched it back on, he arrived at the top, covered in ice, dead, stark naked, with a big smile on his face.
    No one could understand why he was naked or smiling. Then a local ski instructor she’d had a brief fling with explained to her that during the last stages of hypothermia people hallucinated that they were too hot and would start removing their clothes.
    She knew that somehow she had to keep warm, had to ward off hypothermia. So she did the only movements she could, rolling, left and then right on the hessian matting. Rolling. Rolling. Totally disoriented by the darkness, there were moments when she lay on her side and toppled on to her face and others when she fell on to her back.
    She had to get out. Somehow. Had to. How? Oh, God, how?
    She couldn’t move her hands or her feet. She couldn’t shout. Her naked body was covered in goose pimples so sharp they felt like millions of needle points piercing her flesh.
    Oh, please God, help me.
    She rolled again and crashed into the side of the van. Something fell over with a loud, echoing clangggggg.
    Then she heard a gurgling noise.
    Smelt something foul, rancid. Diesel oil, she realized. Gurgling. Glug … glug … glug.
    She rolled again. And again. Then her face pressed into it, the sticky, stinking stuff, stinging her eyes, making her cry even more.
    But, she figured, it must be coming from a can!
    If it was pouring out, then the top had come off. The neck of the can would be round and thin! She rolled again and something moved through the stinking wet slimy stuff, clattering, scraping.
    Clatter … clatter … clangggg.
    She trapped it against the side of the van. Wriggled around it, felt it move, made it turn, forced it to turn until it was square on, spout outwards. Then she pressed against the sharpness of the neck. Felt its rough edge cutting into her. She wormed her body against it, jigging, slowly, forcefully, then felt it spin away from her.
    Don’t do this to me!
    She wriggled and twisted until the can moved again, until she felt the rough neck of the spout again, then she pressed against it, gently at first, then applying more pressure, until she had it wedged firmly. Now she moved slowly, rubbing right, left, right, left, for an eternity at whatever was binding her wrists. Suddenly, the grip around them slackened, just a fraction.
    But enough to give her hope.
    She kept on rubbing, twisting, rubbing. Breathing in and out through her nose. Breathing in the noxious, dizzying stink of the diesel oil. Her face, her hair, her whole body soaked in the stuff.
    The grip on her wrists slackened a tiny bit further.
    Then she heard a sudden loud metallic clang and she froze. No, please no. It sounded like the garage door opening. She rolled on to her