She sat up on the bed and shouted, ‘I’m hungry, you know! Fucking starving! I need a real meal. I need a bath. I need to use a proper toilet. Please let me use a proper toilet!’ She hated the whine in her voice, but she couldn’t help herself. ‘I’m bleeding, for fuck’s sake. My ankles are rubbed raw. At least give me something to ease the pain.’

She was crying now, even as she was determined not to show him any weakness. She didn’t want him to know that he had beaten her. But he had. No matter how much she tried to act tough, he had her shackled to a bed in a filthy basement. He had won from the moment she had woken up tied and bound and unable to free herself.

She was crying noisily now. She was hurting, bleeding and so frightened. Her resolve was breaking down by the second. Strong or weak, it made no difference to him. He just sat and watched as she screamed at him. Her fears and her worries had finally overwhelmed her; she was broken. Gut-wrenching sobs broke from her uncontrollably.

Her captor continued to watch her, only now she saw through her tears that he was smiling.

Chapter One Hundred and Sixteen

Chapter One Hundred
and Sixteen

Detective Inspector Timothy Branch was nervous. He had never been to Michael Flynn’s scrapyard before, but he knew that many people had gone there and never been seen again. That was the power of a crushing machine – an errant body placed in the boot of a car didn’t really stand much chance of being located. Once the car was put into the crusher, it was reduced to a two-foot-by-two-foot cube of metal.

He drove into the yard slowly. The gates were already open for him, and he saw the men who had waved him inside so cheerfully closing the gates behind him.

He regretted taking Flynn’s money for so many years. Now he was asking him for a favour and he couldn’t deliver, and that wasn’t sitting well with him. He had a feeling it wasn’t sitting well with Michael Flynn either.

He pulled up outside the Portakabins and, as he stepped out of his car, he noticed that there were a few men scattered around. They were all watching him as he walked up the rickety stairs that led into the offices.

He looked at Michael and, nodding politely towards him, he said quietly and respectfully, ‘I’m sorry, Michael. Still nothing. I’ve had my blokes out there again. They’ve pulled in everyone who knows Jessie, and they all say the same thing. They haven’t seen her, she hadn’t fallen out with anyone, and she isn’t holed up anywhere. It’s a fucking mystery. No one can just disappear overnight.’

Michael Flynn could see that Branch was genuinely disappointed.