guards would be tempted to take their frustration out on him, but none did. They were too afraid of the South African to risk that.
No one spoke to Ruari, not a word, unless it was to complain about the bucket that the guards were forced to empty. Having already failed with both English and French, Ruari tried swearing at them to force some sort of reaction, but he got nothing more than a painful kick in the leg for his troubles. That was from Cosmin, whose face was swollen and blotchy and had turned vivid shades of yellow and blue. That gave Ruari a little satisfaction, even though he guessed his own face looked far worse.
His mind ran back to a film he’d once watched on his laptop, after lights out when he was supposed to be asleep, about a young girl named Patty Hearst. She was a Californian newspaper heiress who’d been kidnapped and had her mind filled with so much gunk by the pigs who snatched her that she’d flipped and gone over to their cause, even helped them rob a bank. That sort of behaviour had a name – the Stockholm syndrome. To Ruari it seemed like a form of madness. Identifying with your abductors was supposed to be a common affliction but that wouldn’t happen to him, he vowed, no, never to him. Looking across the room at Cosmin, with his scraped knuckles, Ruari concluded there were many, many things he’d like to do for the bastard, but helping him wasn’t anywhere on the list.
During the endless hours he spent lying tethered on a soiled mattress beside that stinking bucket, Ruari tried to fathom the meaning of what they were doing to him. He had an analytical mind that wandered across the landscape inspecting many possibilities, but at the end of these journeys he arrived back at the same point. They wanted to keep him alive, at least for the moment. The one thought that jarred against this was the fact that none of his captors used a facemask or disguised their features in any way; he could identify every one of them down to that bastard Cosmin’s last pockmark and crooked tooth. If a day of reckoning ever came, they wouldn’t want him picking them out and providing testimony, and perhaps from the start they never intended he should see that day, planned to do away with him before this was all over. He hoped there was another explanation. Perhaps they were simply arrogant, calculating that the world was more than big enough to swallow them without trace.
His life depended on all this, on the inner thoughts of these men. Ruari had lost his innocence, no longer assumed he was indestructible. Any lingering sense of his own immortality had been wrenched from him along with Casey and Mattias. He knew his plight was desperate. Then came the moment when Sandu arrived to relieve Cosmin and started swearing – Ruari had just used the latrine bucket and the atmosphere in the room was vile. Sandu moved his chair closer to the window and flung it wide open, lit one of his throat-searing cigarettes, staring into – what? Ruari realized he had no idea what lay beyond that window, had no idea where in the world he was.
Slowly the cool air of early winter began to reach into the room, even as far as Ruari’s prison bed, bringing with it new aromas. He could smell something sweet-sour, and remembered the aroma from the pastures above Villars. It was rotting cow shit. And on top of that there was a tang of something sharper. Fermenting cheese, perhaps? During the day the window was usually tightly closed and muffled the sounds from outside, but during the stillness of the previous night he had heard strange animal cries and the screech of hunting birds. The picture came together. He was deep in the countryside. There was still a world outside his cell.
That knowledge made Ruari determined to escape. Whether they were planning to kill him eventually, or to keep him alive, it seemed to him he had nothing to lose by trying to break out. He couldn’t be much worse off than he was now. So that’s what he
No one spoke to Ruari, not a word, unless it was to complain about the bucket that the guards were forced to empty. Having already failed with both English and French, Ruari tried swearing at them to force some sort of reaction, but he got nothing more than a painful kick in the leg for his troubles. That was from Cosmin, whose face was swollen and blotchy and had turned vivid shades of yellow and blue. That gave Ruari a little satisfaction, even though he guessed his own face looked far worse.
His mind ran back to a film he’d once watched on his laptop, after lights out when he was supposed to be asleep, about a young girl named Patty Hearst. She was a Californian newspaper heiress who’d been kidnapped and had her mind filled with so much gunk by the pigs who snatched her that she’d flipped and gone over to their cause, even helped them rob a bank. That sort of behaviour had a name – the Stockholm syndrome. To Ruari it seemed like a form of madness. Identifying with your abductors was supposed to be a common affliction but that wouldn’t happen to him, he vowed, no, never to him. Looking across the room at Cosmin, with his scraped knuckles, Ruari concluded there were many, many things he’d like to do for the bastard, but helping him wasn’t anywhere on the list.
During the endless hours he spent lying tethered on a soiled mattress beside that stinking bucket, Ruari tried to fathom the meaning of what they were doing to him. He had an analytical mind that wandered across the landscape inspecting many possibilities, but at the end of these journeys he arrived back at the same point. They wanted to keep him alive, at least for the moment. The one thought that jarred against this was the fact that none of his captors used a facemask or disguised their features in any way; he could identify every one of them down to that bastard Cosmin’s last pockmark and crooked tooth. If a day of reckoning ever came, they wouldn’t want him picking them out and providing testimony, and perhaps from the start they never intended he should see that day, planned to do away with him before this was all over. He hoped there was another explanation. Perhaps they were simply arrogant, calculating that the world was more than big enough to swallow them without trace.
His life depended on all this, on the inner thoughts of these men. Ruari had lost his innocence, no longer assumed he was indestructible. Any lingering sense of his own immortality had been wrenched from him along with Casey and Mattias. He knew his plight was desperate. Then came the moment when Sandu arrived to relieve Cosmin and started swearing – Ruari had just used the latrine bucket and the atmosphere in the room was vile. Sandu moved his chair closer to the window and flung it wide open, lit one of his throat-searing cigarettes, staring into – what? Ruari realized he had no idea what lay beyond that window, had no idea where in the world he was.
Slowly the cool air of early winter began to reach into the room, even as far as Ruari’s prison bed, bringing with it new aromas. He could smell something sweet-sour, and remembered the aroma from the pastures above Villars. It was rotting cow shit. And on top of that there was a tang of something sharper. Fermenting cheese, perhaps? During the day the window was usually tightly closed and muffled the sounds from outside, but during the stillness of the previous night he had heard strange animal cries and the screech of hunting birds. The picture came together. He was deep in the countryside. There was still a world outside his cell.
That knowledge made Ruari determined to escape. Whether they were planning to kill him eventually, or to keep him alive, it seemed to him he had nothing to lose by trying to break out. He couldn’t be much worse off than he was now. So that’s what he
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