The Hostage

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Spinks lay in darkness in the boot of a car eating a cheese sandwich, his chewing and swallowing amplified in the confined, metallic space. He was scruffy, long-haired, unshaven and malodorous. He paused to pick his nose, an enjoyable habit he did not necessarily reserve for private moments such as this, and rolled it until it was dry enough to flick off. He took another bite of the sandwich and continued to chew thoughtfully, blinking in the darkness.

This was the second time he had spent the day in the boot of a car and it was, so far at least, nowhere near as memorable as the first. That was four months earlier, in the middle of summer, and one of the most horrifying days in his twenty-nine years. He was not a particularly large man but whoever had chosen the car that day had given scant thought to his size altogether; they had concentrated solely on the objective and not at all on Spinks’s comfort. They could be forgiven to some extent since the whole affair was a hitherto untried experiment and all too hurriedly executed, and Spinks had absolutely no idea what he was getting himself into. He had felt claustrophobic the second the boot was slammed shut and everything went pitch black. It was only when the car trundled through the security chicane and over the sleeping policemen at the main gate to the camp that it occurred to him he should have put something spongy on the bare metal floor to lie on.

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