Normal: The Most Original Thriller Of The Year. Graeme Cameron

watched her grab her bags and sail out of the house, leaving me alone with my porridge, I’d known this exit was different from all the others. This one felt final.

      I did the only thing I knew how. I gorged myself on shoo-fly pie and waited for someone to find me. Funny thing is, they never really did.

      * * *

      Preheat the oven to 260 degrees centigrade.

      Juice six oranges; zest two of the rinds and roughly chop the rest. Take two medium-size fillets from the bird of your choosing and make an incision in each. Insert equal measures of the chopped rind and place the whole ensemble in a baking tray with half an inch of water. Bake in the oven until the skin is golden brown and lightly crisped, then turn it down to 150. It’s going to take about an hour.

      While that’s cooking, take your zest and the freshly squeezed juice and pop them in a pan along with two-thirds of a cup of sugar. Place the mixture over a medium-to-high heat and reduce it until you’re left with about a quarter of the volume. Throw in a tablespoon of bitters, and set the pan aside.

      Boil two cups of chicken stock in a separate pan, then add the orange mixture and simmer it for ten more minutes.

      When the meat is done, drain the fat from the baking tray and place the tray on the stove. Pour a cup of Grand Marnier into the tray and cook off the alcohol. Make sure you’ve got a wooden spoon to hand as you will need to scrape the bottom of the tray almost continuously. Next, pour a cup of the orange sauce you made earlier into the tray and cook it for a minute or so.

      Finally, remove the orange rinds from the steaks and combine the orange sauce with the remaining juices from the baking tray. Serve with a simple accompaniment of new potatoes and runner beans, et voilà. Sarà l’orange.

      I built my garage large enough to comfortably accommodate a full-size van and three cars. An automatic climate-control system maintains a constant temperature of sixty degrees Fahrenheit and minimizes humidity. Twin reinforced canopy doors are operated by remote control, which utilizes a double rolling-code system to ensure maximum peace of mind. I have three transmitters; I keep one on my keychain, and the spares are in a locked box in one of the kitchen cupboards, along with a collection of souvenir door keys amassed over time. The key to the box is on my keychain. Note to self.

      The stairs leading down to the basement are accessed via a cupboard, or more specifically the false back thereof, which is lined with lipped shelves containing half-empty paint cans and other objects disinclined to topple when disturbed, and which opens at the flick of a concealed catch into the void between the outer and false inner walls to the rear of the garage. The steps are covered with a heavy-duty nylon cut-pile carpet, mulberry in color with a crisp multipoint stipple-effect pattern, perfect for camouflaging a vast range of dark stains. It’s certificated to all European flammability and antistatic standards for office applications, and is Scotchgard-protected to prevent ingraining. There isn’t an awful lot you can’t drag across a carpet like that.

      Twenty-two feet down at the foot of the stairs is a door; galvanized steel featuring twin-cylinder mortise locks with drill-resistant casings and a seventeen-bolt backup. The internal bracings are separated by layers of sound-deadening thermal insulation, and the door is finished with attractive natural beech panels.

      Beyond this door is what I described to my builder as a games room. Forty-five feet by thirty and of concrete construction, it’s lit by an octet of spotlights, one pair at each corner of the ceiling, and furnished with an integrated antenna loop connected to a cellular repeater for reliable mobile phone reception. The walls are plastered and painted a delicate eggshell-blue. The floor is covered with three-inch-thick rubber matting. The builder, sadly, was confused by my explanation and now resides four feet above the ceiling, under eight feet of earth.

      In the center of the room is a twenty-by-twenty security cage, built from ten-gauge steel wire with a two-and-a-half-inch diamond mesh and one-and-a-quarter-inch channel frame. The cage has a five-by-seven door with twin cylinder locks and a reinforced titanium padlock.

      Inside the cage is an iron-framed single bed, anchored to the floor with seven-inch bolts. It has a pocket sprung mattress, white cotton sheets and a cozy lambswool blanket. At each corner of the bed, bolted to the floor through the rubber mat, is a steel ring, six inches in diameter. In the far corner of the cage are a toilet and sink with mains plumbing.

      And finally, on this day at least, there was one other item in the cage. It was located in the middle of the floor, rolled into a tight ball. It was sensitive to light, to the sound of slamming doors and to the smell of home cooking. Covered in layers of brown wool and dark blue denim, it started as I entered the cage and stared at me silently through wide, hateful eyes. It was tired, disoriented and hungry. And its name was Erica Shaw.

       CHAPTER FOUR

      The self-confident bounce was long gone. Erica didn’t move as I balanced the dinner tray in one hand and removed the padlock with the other. The sound of the key in the door, however, had her bolt upright and scrabbling backward across the rubber floor until her back thumped hard against the far side of the cage. She pulled her knees to her chin and glared up at me, wide eyes blazing with venom and fear, the tight, glowing curls of her hair now a matted, lifeless mess that covered her face and clung to the tears as they streamed across her cheeks. Silently, she trembled.

      “Erica,” I said softly. “It’s dinnertime.” I placed the tray carefully on the edge of the bed. A wooden tray, decorated with piglets and ducklings, with a built-in knee cushion filled with tiny beans. A plastic plate, dishwasher friendly, with a daisy-chain print around the rim. A matching tumbler filled with ice-cold Highland Spring. Still, not sparkling. Plastic knife and fork.

      She neither moved nor spoke; just stared, knees shuddering, shoulders heaving with each shallow breath.

      I joined her on the floor, sat facing her. “Come on, you need to eat something besides cereal. You’re looking thin.” No response. “It’s tasty. Try a bit, see if you like it?” Nothing. “Erica, listen to me. I’m not going to let you starve to death here.”

      I could sense a change in her then, though she gave no visible sign. I felt her desire to answer me back, to demand to know exactly what she would be dying of. But she still said nothing.

      “Okay.” I sighed. “I’ll leave you alone. Do your best.” I pulled myself back up, turned to leave the cage. “Oh, and the sheets on that bed are brand-new.” I swung the door shut, turned the key on both bolts, reached down by my feet for the padlock. “You don’t have to keep sleeping on the floor.”

      And then I took a full serving of orange sauce and green beans square in the face.

      “I’m not eating fucking meat, you psycho freak!” Erica screamed, grabbing handfuls of steel mesh as the offending fillet plopped to the floor. The plate rolled the length of the cage and clattered against the toilet. Potatoes bounced in all directions. Sauce ran from my hair. I kicked myself.

      “Good shot,” I conceded, “but honestly, you’re not in a position to pick and choose.”

      “No, you’re right,” she spat, gripping the mesh, her knuckles white, eyes flashing like those of a cornered tiger. “Which reminds me, how long are you going to keep me in this fucking dungeon?”

      A reasonable question, and one to which I wished I knew the answer. The simple fact is that time, tendency and tourism are fickle bedfellows, and one can rarely predict when they might deign to coincide. Probably best not to tell her that, though, so I tried to look halfway confident as I asked, “How long’s a piece of string?”

      She pushed herself from the door, backed away with a half skip. “Well,” she said, smiling, “you’re hardly going to keep me here for the next eighty years, and you already said I’m not allowed to starve to death, so either you’re holding me to ransom or you’re just going to kill me. Either way, I guess you’ll want to get it over with fairly soon.”

      I