Free Cold Death by S. Y. Robins

heightening; she did not feel safe.
    “In here,” he snarled, pointing to a cupboard.
    “You must be joking!” Hannah mocked, “You first.”
    He led the way into the cupboard. Quick as a flash, Hannah closed the door, turning the key she found on the outside. Running away, she hoped nobody would recognise her for the second time that day.
    When she got back to the shop, Hannah sobbed. Not from grief, but from frustration. Why did she think she could do this? Why did she think she was better than the police? She thought of all the crime novels she had ever read. What did the detectives all have in common? They looked at the situation from different angles.
    “Think! Think Hannah, what do you know about the situation?” She muttered to herself.
    She thought back over the details of Jay’s murder. He was dealing drugs to young guys desperate to bulk up. She’d been approaching this all wrong; she’d been going for the people taking the drugs. What if it wasn’t the user… but the dealer? Excited once more, Hannah ran into the office, tearing it apart for details of someone above Jay. Hannah got lucky. She found an address on one of the invoices for one of the Victorian manors in the nicer area of Newark. Looking at the address with a twinge, Hannah noticed the address was the same street as Alfie’s, although she couldn’t remember the number of his house.
    Quickly leaving the shop, invoice clutched in her hand, Hannah practically ran the two miles to the address. Head fixed on her phone, looking at a map, Hannah did not notice footsteps echoing near her. Looking up, she saw a shiny number 72 on a door. This was it. Hannah walked up the front steps, and knocked on the door. Waiting for a response, the world went black.

Chapter Four
    Hannah woke up, screaming. She had no idea where she was or what had happened. The last thing she remembered was knocking on the door of number 72. Now, here she was in a pitch-black room; she could feel her arms and legs tightly bound. There was no way of escaping.
    Still, she reasoned with herself. There was always a bright side; it seemed she was on the right track looking for the supplier rather than the users. In doing so, she had probably found Jay’s killer. The dark side was; she was probably going to die herself, unable to share her triumph with another soul.
    Hearing footsteps, Hannah tried to look around. She wanted to face her kidnapper, her resolve growing stronger with the oncoming footsteps.
    “Hello?” She called. “Is someone there? Why am I here? Why have you kidnapped me? If you let me go now, I promise I won’t say anything.”
    “Oh yes, a likely story,” came a male voice from the darkness. “Do you really think I’d believe that?”
    Hannah paused, momentarily distracted. The voice she heard was familiar; she associated it with playgrounds and her childhood, not being attacked and kidnapped. What was going on? Was she losing the plot? A light came on, dazzling Hannah, rendering her vision impaired for a short while. As the figure merged into focus, Hannah let out a whimper.
    “No. It can’t be you. Anyone but you. I would never have thought…” Hannah broke off, voice wavering and tears spilling from her bright blue eyes. “Why have you kept me here? You know I wouldn’t have said anything, there’s still time to set me free,” she encouraged.
    “Come on, Span. You’ve been running around trying to find out what happened to your boyfriend. So keen to clear his name from the filthy muck he was involved in. Of course you’d have said something,” the voice snarled.
    The use of her nickname affected Hannah more than anything else he’d said so far. “Alfie used to call me that, Mr. Chamberlain,” she said, her voice strengthening with every word. “He was such a wonderful person; I always thought he must have been raised incredibly well. Maybe his good genes came from his mother, as his father appears to have abducted me. Where am I? Some