Don’t ask me what he looked like; the place was three-quarters empty and they’d turned the lights low to keep the bills down, and there was still a lot of gin in me. I spoke to him but I didn’t really look at him, you know? Anyway, he didn’t seem a bad sort and he wasn’t pushy. When he finished his coffee and made to stand up, I asked him which way he was heading.
‘Where do you want to go?’ he said. His voice was soft, not unfriendly.
I told him where I lived and he said he knew it. ‘Your luck’s in,’ he told me. ‘I go past it on the motorway. About five miles from here? There’s a flyoff where I can drop you. A couple of hundred yards and you’ll be at your door. Can’t take you any closer than that, I’m afraid, because my miles and fuel are monitored. Anyway, it’s up to you. Maybe you’d feel safer calling a taxi?’
But I wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth.
We left the cafeteria and went out into the lorry park. He was cool and calm, in no hurry. I felt perfectly safe with him. In fact I didn’t give it a thought. His vehicle was one of these big articulated jobs, which we approached from the side and the rear. The headlights of a passing car as it flashed by on the motorway lit it up in a swath of light. The lorry had ice-blue panels with white lettering saying: frigis express. I remember it well because the white paint had peeled off one leg of the ‘X’ making it look like eypress.
But at the back of the lorry my driver paused and looked at me, and said: ‘I just have to make sure this door is secure.’
I stood beside him as he unlocked and slid up this roller door across the full width of the truck. A blast of ice-cold air came out, which made me shiver as it turned to a cloud of mist. Inside . . . there seemed to be rows of things hanging in there, but it was dark and I couldn’t see what they were. He reached inside with both hands and did something, then looked over his shoulder and said, ‘It’s OK.’ And I think it was then I realized that I hadn’t seen him smile. Not once.
He indicated we should go to the cab, and as he started to pull the door down again I turned away from him. That was when he grabbed me from behind. One arm went round my neck and the other hand held something over my face. Of course I gasped for air – and got chloroform!
I kicked and struggled, but that only makes you gasp all the more! And then I passed out . . .
When I came to I was lying – or slithering about – on a patch of ice: that’s what it felt like, anyway. There was a smell but I couldn’t quite make out what it was. I was much too cold; all my senses were numb from the cold. And I felt dizzy and nauseous from the chloroform.
Then I remembered everything and knew I was in the back of the truck, slipping and slithering when he applied his brakes or accelerated. And of course I also knew I was in trouble, in fact dead trouble. Whatever my driver wanted, he was going to get it. And then there was a fair chance that he’d kill me. I’d seen his truck; I could more or less describe him, if not now, certainly later; it was odds on I was a goner.
I propped myself in one corner of the dark refrigerator (I suppose that’s what it was: a large mobile fridge, a freezer truck) and tried to get some warmth back into my body. I hugged myself, blew on my hands, beat my arms about. But I was weak from the cold and the after-effect of the chloroform. I didn’t have the strength of a kitten.
Then, after – oh, I don’t know how long, maybe fifteen minutes – there was a bumpy patch and I heard his airbrakes go on. To this day I don’t know where we were, for I never did see the outside again. The truck stopped; in a little while the door rolled up and it was dark outside; a dark figure clambered up panting into the rear of the trailer. He pulled the door shut again and put on a dim interior light, just a single bulb under a grille in the ceiling. And then he came for me.