"I've never been to his flat before. I don't know him. I don't want to know him. I don't want to ever see him and his grubby mind again. You can have that for nothing - not that I owe you even that". Her head was beginning to clear now but it still ached.

Decisively she dashed round him to the door, pulled it open and came face to face with the man on the train. He grinned cheerfully at her. In one swift motion, man handled her by the shoulders with a grip of iron that pushed her reeling back into the room. The door slammed closed again behind him as he followed her in.

Skirting carefully again around the man on the desk, she darted to the window. There was a fire escape just outside. A long way down below was an empty car park. The building was in an industrial estate. In the distance the lights of residential houses lit up as ordinary, more fortunate, home coming commuters relaxed safely into the evening.

The location could be any suburb of any large town. She didn't think that she'd been unconscious for long. They couldn't have travelled far. Possibly it was the outskirts of London.

It worried her they didn't seem concerned that she was could see their faces. Either they weren't going to let her go - not a thought she wanted to consider - or they were confident she was unlikely to complain to any authorities - more likely since they knew where she had come from.

Despite the obvious seriousness of her situation, her mind briefly turned to her family. She needed to telephone home. The children would need feeding and David would be frantic. But even if they allowed her to make the call, it could easily be traced and her address matched with the number. Anybody could do that these days, it just took a simple program running down a National Telephone Directory on CD-ROM, she thought anxiously. For characters such as these such techniques were probably learned in kindergarten. Ferret Face checked his watch.

"Right, I'm getting bored with this. I want to go and get some dinner. Tell me who you are, where you live and where you are coming from."


"I've told you already", said Sarah through gritted teeth. He's just somebody I used to work with. Anyway, it's got nothing to do with you, and you are probably aware kidnapping is a very serious offence."

Her hands gripped an ashtray behind her on the window ledge. It was solid glass, heavy - perhaps some means of defence. He jumped to the floor from his position on the desk and stabbed his finger at her aggressively.

"Look", he said, "down to brass tacks, you want me to spell it out. You are in a secluded place. You are in the company of two extremely unpleasant and nasty men."

He pulled back and smirked, clearly enjoying his description of himself. He continued viciously.

"We earn money by getting results. We earn lots of money from getting results and we're not choosy about how we get them. So it follows that have lots of scope to be very good at what we do. We have loads of extremely unpleasant methods of getting what we want. Now, we want some information from you. We have drugged you. Remember that prick in you thigh - a tiny injection but very effective. We've brought you here. You could get some idea from this how serious we are".

Then Pasty Face spoke. He had a London accent. He sounded bored and impatient.

"Get on with it. Why waste time with her. Give her a good slapping now – she'll talk, she's too posh to be tough. Then we can dump her – I'm hungry."

Ferret Face turned, stared at him briefly then disdainfully ignored him. In the dim recesses of her mind, Sarah wondered whether this was all part of some good guy / bad guy routine. She didn't think either of them were good guys.

Ferret Face resumed.