1979

I stop for a bit, just to let his mindless screaming die away. A pause won’t matter once I edit the tape down, and anyway it’s giving me a headache. I withdraw the electric baton from him and drop it onto the filthy little cork-topped table beside me. The screaming stops but the kicking continues.

I’m in a deserted unit in a deserted industrial estate in a deserted part of the country. It’s four in the morning. The nearest person apart from the two of us must be at least thirty miles away. I marveled at this when I first realised it; it means that there is no one between me and the horizon, in any direction. Complete isolation from all and everywhere.

In front of me, tied upside down by the ankles and covered in his own blood, urine, tears and faeces is a naked man. We’ve been here for three days and this session has been going on for six minutes. Three days ago I stopped my van in the street, walked up behind him, clubbed him down and brought him here. Silently I torture him with knives, electricity and psychology. Silently because I don’t want him to know who I am, although it’s been a while so he’d probably not know my voice anyway. I give him ten minutes upside down, recording his screams so I can play them back to him when I throw him in the cold silo, still blindfolded and bound at the wrists and ankles. It’s a tiring business and would maybe even break me, so I let the tape loops of his piteous squalling and suffering do a lot of the work for me. It also gives him time to remember.

All this would end right away if he’d just answer a simple question, but he won’t. Maybe he can’t think straight any more. Maybe he can but he doesn’t want to say. It occurs to me that he might not even know the answer. Maybe there is no answer. What then? How do I bring all this to a close? Decisions, decisions.

I pick up the baton once more and flick the switch. It crackles in my hand as I run it over the table top and already he writhes as though it is upon him. The smell coming off him is appalling. I start the other tape again. My synthesized voice comes out of it. It asks him once more what he meant by the words ‘frisky whisky’. He simply twitches and makes animal sounds of fear and pain. Good.