Chapter 12

As Keats threw her to the floor, Kim caught sight of the tied and gagged Molly across the other side of the barge. Despite her current state she felt enormous relief to know that she was still alive at the very least.

"Welcome to my humble abode," said Keats, "well… your humble abode. You won't be leaving so you might as well enjoy the view."

"What the hell are you bringing me here for?" cried Kim.

"Layton seemed to think this was a good place," Keats informed her. He knelt down beside her. "you know, I really preferred the natural look."

Kim felt taken aback by his comment.

"What?"

"Too much make-up," Keats told her. He reached out and touched her eyelid which caused her to shudder and turn her head away, "you never wear make up back home."

"That wasn't my home," Kim spat.

"And why did you grow your hair?" his critique of her appearance continued, "you have such character with your short hair. The dark hair doesn't suit you."

"Trying to pitch your own makeover show doesn't suit you," Kim hissed. She was constantly trying to work on her binds but to no avail. It seemed she would never loosen them.

"You've lost your curves," he said.

Kim just wished he would take his eyes and his hands off her.

"What?"

"You're curvier back there."

"Fatter you mean," Kim snapped. She stared at him, his expression was strange and she didn't like what he was hiding behind his eyes. "What the hell are you talking about anyway?" she demanded, "why do you want me to put on weight when you tried to put Alex on a bloody diet?"

She froze for a moment as she realised Molly was across the other side of the barge and wondered what the poor girl would be thinking if she'd heard that comment. She would probably have to come up with some kind of excuse at a later date – for now she would have to work at not dropping her mother's name.

"I'm not talking about Alex, I'm talking about you," Keats told her. He reached out and began to run a hand down her side which caused her to scream and try to shuffle away.

"What is your problem?" she cried, "just trying to make people stay exactly as you remembered them? When you –" she trailed off. She didn't want to finish that sentence.

Keats raised an eyebrow at her hesitation.

"When I what, Kimberley?" he asked.

Kim stared at him. On the outside he was Layton, but the skin he lived within was a world apart from the way he conducted himself.

"What are you going to do now you've got me here?" she demanded.

"Use your imagination," Keats told her.

"And what about Molly?"

"Should be good for a few quid," Keats explained, "little bit of blackmail material. See the bearded one squirm for a while." He glared over at Molly. "Besides, the family resemblance is really quite uncanny, isn't it? Like having a little mini pet Alex all of my own." He turned back to Kim and leaned in close. "Where's Robin?" he asked pleasantly.

Kim frowned. She couldn't keep up with the conversation.

"What?"

"Where can I find him?" Keats asked, "I would like to offer him an invite to this particular party."

"I don't know, probably out looking for you," cried Kim.

"Come on, Kimberley, you can do better than that," Keats told her, "narrow this down a bit for me." He lifted his knife and examined the point. "Is he at the station? Round at Evan's? On the streets?"

"I wasn't working with him today, I have no idea," Kim hissed.

Keats looked at her face.

"You really shouldn't go so overboard with the make up," he told her again, "you look like some sort of goth."

"I am a goth," Kim narrowed her eyes at him.

Keats gave a deep sigh, got to his feet and wandered away for a moment, returning with a packet of baby wipes.

"Here," he said as he pulled one out and began to lean toward her, wiping the make up from her eyes. Kim immediately went into a state of shock, not from his actions but the fact the happened to have a packet of baby wipes lying around.

"What the hell are you doing with something like that?" she demanded.

"I found them in a car," sighed Keats, scrubbing awkwardly at her make-up.

"Whose car?"

"Evan's," said Keats, "he must use them to wipe stains from his beard."

That made Kim shudder more than anything else Keats had said or done from the moment he grabbed her in the alleyway.

"Urgh!" She screamed, "Evan's beard wipers! Get them away from me! Get them off my face!"

Keats held her face firmly while he removed the make-up and slowly peeled back her outer image to reveal more of the Kim he knew from the nineties. The woman he couldn't even acknowledge his feelings for. The woman who'd found a way beneath layer upon layer of malevolence. He stared upon her angry expression and sighed.

"Come on, I'm trying to do you a favour," he told her, "don't want you mistaken for a member of The Addams Family."

"Get off me," Kim hissed. When he continued to wipe at her makeup she grew so angry that she knew she had to get him away through any means possible, no matter how stupid. She couldn't push him away, couldn't kick him, and as much as she tried he was too fast to let her bite him. Besides, she didn't really fancy the thought of sinking her teeth into Layton. She'd probably contract rabies that way. Finally, an idea came to her. Childish and puerile but it just might work.

She let one go. Silent but deadly. It took a moment for the stink to hit Keats's nostrils but the moment it did he retreated to a safe distance with a splutter and a look of abject horror across his face.

"Disgusting!" he cried.

"Looking in a mirror again are you?" mocked Kim.

Keats flapped his hand around his nose for a moment and turned to glare at Molly who, despite her predicament, was clearly giggling beneath the gag.

"See how you like it trapped in here with her stinking up the air!" he cried as he made to leave the barge. He glanced behind him just before he left and spat, "You wait, Kimberley. When the air clears I'll be back."

"Plenty more where that came from," Kim cried childishly but her bravado was fading and she didn't know how she was going to stave him off forever. She knew he'd be back soon enough - and angrier than before.

~xXx~

Robin shook his head as he watched his team returning with the dogs. They'd found three shoes, a large abandoned trout, a tramp pickling himself with vodka and a young couple getting it on in the bushes but no sign of Molly, or of Layton.

"No sign," he said as he approached March, "not even a hint. I'm calling off the search here for now, at least until we get some kind of sighting in the area."

"Can you get the dogs down to the park?" asked March, "someone thought they saw a suspicious figure hanging around the –"

"I'm supposed to be waiting for Kim," Robin interrupted. His mind had been on her all morning, "she was going to rejoin me here. Any sign of her?"

"She's with Fullerton," said March, "they're probably finishing up down there soon."

Robin sighed. He didn't want to head off elsewhere if Kim was going to be on her way.

"Radio in and check," he said.

"I'm not checking up on my DS."

"I'm not asking you to check up on your DS!" Robin cried, "you were the one worried about Kim coming on board without bloody insurance! I feel responsible for her being on the case and I want to make sure I know where she is."

"Alright, alright," March frowned, "not like you're her big brother or something."

"Closest thing I've got to a sister," Robin told him, folding his arms.

March sighed.

"Fine," he mumbled, "not like I haven't got anything better to do."

Robin sighed as he watched him walk away. He knew he'd pissed him off good and proper but he didn't care, partly because he really didn't seem to like DI March for some reason and partly because he couldn't shake his fears about Kim. Something just didn't feel right, it hadn't done all day. He just needed to know if she was alright and then he could relax and get on with the job. Until then, his head felt as foggy as the woodland.

~xXx~

Kim turned her head as far as she was able and tried to look at the bound girl across the barge,

"Molly," she hissed, "Molly?" she could see the girl's eyes upon her, "are you alright? Has he hurt you?" She watched Molly shaking her head the best that she could. "Can you get your binds loosened?" Molly shook her head again. "Can you shuffle backwards?" she tried, "If you can get to the wall maybe you can untie the knot holding you to the boat."

Molly tried as hard as she could to shuffle backwards but the rate she was travelling at equated to about a centimetre a minute. She looked at Kim with her eyes narrowing in sadness.

"It's alright," Kim said quickly, "I know, it's hard." She drew in her breath and began working on shuffling across to Molly, trying to worm across with her knees bent and stretching alternately but she was making about as much progress as Molly herself. She gave a sign and a gasp of frustration. "OK, Molly, listen to me," she said in as calm a voice as she was able, "this man, the one who has brought us here," she couldn't bring herself to say Layton, she knew that wasn't true, but she couldn't exactly tell Molly the truth, "he's a very deeply disturbed man and he talks a lot of shit. I mean, nonsense," she cringed, unsure whether she was allowed to use language like that in front of a teenager or not. She supposed Molly probably used that word all the time behind Evan's back and decided it didn't really matter. "You mustn't take any notice of anything he says. Now, someone will know I'm missing and they'll be on my trail very soon. So someone will find us – we'll be fine. OK? You'll be fine."

Molly stared back but she didn't nod. Kim wished that she could offer something more than hollow words that didn't even make herself feel better, let alone Molly. Before she had the chance to even think of another way to comfort her the sound of footsteps approaching brought her more fear and caused her heart to race. She saw Keats's feet before the rest of him, his leisurely walk in her direction like a slow, elongated form of torture. When he finally arrived beside her he knelt down and held out to her a pair of scissors.

"Shall we see what we can do about that hair?" he whispered.

An absolute feeling of panic struck Kim. It hit her deep in the chest and brought a scream of unprecedented volume from her lungs.

He'd been serious. He'd been totally fucking serious. He wanted to turn her into the version of her he knew in the nineties. The version of her he'd lured into bed. The version of her he'd put through seven shades of hell. That was one of the reason she'd grown her hair in the first placed. The long dark hair and goth image had both been a big departure from her boyish, ladette look in Gene's world. To think of him taking that difference away from her, returning her to the woman he'd manipulated so cruelly, was to take away from her all the hard work she'd put into undoing the mental and emotional scars he'd left her with.

She wasn't afraid of getting hurt, but she was afraid of going back to those dark places in her head.

As he grasped her hair tightly in his hand she cried and screamed her way through cut after cut. He hacked away at her locks, stealing from her piece by piece the image she had created for herself over many years. Since awakening in 2003 aside from an occasional trim she'd never cut her hair. The longer it grew, the further she ran from 1995. Now here he was, the reason for hiding, taking that very same mask away from her.

Her sobs and anguished cries rang out through the barge with every chunk of hair that fell to the floor. His tight grasp on her hair began to loosen as there was less and less for him to hold onto until he snipped at the final chunk and let her cropped head fall to the ground.

She wailed and cried for mercy as he swept the hair from around her with his foot, then scooped down and held a clump in his hand. He held it close to his face and breathed in deeply, the scent of Kim on the cut locks sending his pulse rate soaring.

"I'll get some dye later."

Those 5 words felt as much of a threat as his knife as he got to his feet and left the barge, hair in hand. Kim could do nothing but lay and cry, desperately hoping for a way out.

It couldn't end like this. She'd fought too hard and for too many years for Keats to step in and take her life away from her. She had to have faith that someone would find them or she would find a way free, or even that Keats would mess up because, frankly, she wouldn't allow any other possibility to exist. Even at her most desperate, her lowest, the end of her hope she was still too bloody minded to let him win.