He placed the tools back on the table and then held up the pair of pliers.

‘When it comes to your head, I’ll use these to pull out all your teeth so they can’t do that dental records identification thing.’ He gave her a grin. ‘Don’t worry though, I’ll make sure to do that after you’re dead. I know how some people hate having their teeth interfered with. I for one detest the dentist.’

She guessed that explained the poor condition of his teeth.

He began to screw a vice onto the edge of the table. ‘This will hold your severed head whilst I extract your teeth,’ he explained.

She watched him in disbelief, finding it hard to understand how someone could treat horrific acts like these in such a workaday manner. But then he was clearly a psychopath, plain and simple. Pleading for your life with someone like this would be a total waste of time, so she wasn’t even going to bother.

He finished screwing the vice onto the table and turned to face her. ‘It’s nothing personal, you know. I hope you understand. This is just business.’

‘Sure,’ she said reasonably. ‘You’re just doing your job.’

He nodded with a contented smile. Then, for the first time ever, he took off his sunglasses to reveal a pair of pale blue eyes so light in colour that they almost seemed albino. An icy shiver went down Bailey’s spine as she saw the complete absence of empathy in them and beyond that, dancing behind the black pupils, a tiny spark of insanity.

‘But first,’ he said, ‘I believe you have some information that Mrs Molloy wants.’

70

With her hair hanging down messily over her face, Bailey sat there furiously wringing her brains for a way to resolve her predicament, but she wasn’t having much luck and it looked like time was running out fast.

‘Now, we can make this as long or as short as you want,’ said Archie. ‘It’s really up to you and how soon you decide to give up what you know.’

‘I told you I don’t have any information about Mister Snigiss,’ she said.

‘You should really know better,’ he chided. ‘Because, by the looks of those scars, it appears that you’ve already been tortured at least once before.’ He frowned curiously. ‘Did you tell them what they wanted to know? Or were they just doing it for fun?’

The hideous memories of that experience started to resurge. She tried to push them from her mind. Her head had to remain clear. The priority was to think of an escape.

He assessed her disfigurement with the dispassionate eye of a professional, his bleached blue gaze running down over her face, neck, shoulders and cleavage.

‘Hmm. A tad crude perhaps. A cigarette and a straight razor, I’d guess. Am I right?’

Images and sensations flashed unbidden through her mind. That deadly sliver of metal slicing into her flesh. The glowing tip of the clove cigarette. That sickly sweet smell… the lascivious grin on her torturer’s face…