by JL Merrow
It wasn’t right, this. I stared daggers as he sauntered out of the pub—then nearly choked on my Coke as he turned, smiled at me and gave me a cheery wave.
Bastard.
Next time I went to get my round in, Harry sent Marianne down to the cellar to check on the beer stocks, then collared me. “How’s your bloke getting on with the case?”
Great. Just when I was doing such a good job of not thinking about Phil. “Well, it’s early days, innit? I’m sure he’ll get in touch if he’s got anything to tell you.”
She gave me a sharp look at that—maybe my tone was a bit off or something. “Pity he’s not here tonight. Would’ve given him a chance to get a good look at the little shit.”
“Don’t worry, he’s had that already. We both did. Carey turned up at his flat the other day. Total nutjob. I’ll tell you what, anyone who puts him out of commission is doing the whole bloody world a favour.”
Harry scowled. “Did he threaten you?”
“Well… Yeah, I s’pose. Only not so’s you could have the police on him or anything. But yeah.” The little knot of anxiety in my gut I’d been managing to ignore up until now tightened.
She muttered something profane under her breath. “I’m sorry you got dragged into this. You take care, all right?”
“Nah, don’t worry. I can look after myself. Look, are you sure there’s nothing you can do? Legally, I mean. I thought we had laws against stalking in this country.”
“Marianne won’t make a complaint. Says she’s worried what he’ll do if she does. That turd’s too bloody sharp to do anything definite, anyway.” Harry looked away as she poured my Diet Coke. “We’ve had some other bloke hanging around and all. Don’t tell Marianne. Big guy, shaved head. Could be Carey’s hired himself some muscle. Or just someone to keep an eye on her while he’s not around.”
Bloody marvellous. “When you say hanging around…”
“He hasn’t been in. Just checking the place out.”
“Hope you’ve got a good burglar alarm.”
Harry gave a grim smile. “Anyone breaks in here, he won’t know what’s hit him. Being on the premises when we’re open for business is one thing. But if he trespasses on my property after hours, all bets are off.”
“Good. Better make sure Marianne’s keeping her bedroom door locked at night, though. Just to be on the safe side.”
“Don’t worry. There’s only two ways into her room—through my room or up the fireplace stairs. And they’re bolted from the inside.”
For some reason, back in the dark ages when the Dyke had been built, someone had thought it’d be dead handy to have a secret passageway leading from the upstairs rooms down to the walk-in fireplace in the lounge bar. Well, that was what I’d been told, at any rate. I’d never been up it, and neither had anyone I knew. Gary reckoned he’d nearly wet himself one day when Harry appeared from nowhere and caught him fiddling with the fire irons.
From the look on Harry’s face, she’d love it if Carey tried going through her room to get to Marianne. I made a mental note to ask Cherry for the exact legal definition of reasonable force as applied to blokes breaking into a lady’s boudoir.
That was when Marianne herself popped back up behind the bar, to report they had two barrels of the Squirrel and none of the other beers were in any danger of running out either, which I was pretty sure wasn’t news to Harry.
“How are you doing, love?” I asked her.
Marianne smiled brightly, but it was brittle at the edges and there were big orange streaks under her eyes where she’d covered up the dark circles with too much makeup. “I’m fine, Tom, how’s you?”
“I’m good, cheers.”
“Not with your Phil tonight?”
Christ, was there a bloody conspiracy to mention Phil every five minutes? “Not tonight. Hashing out wedding stuff with Gary.” I waved in the direction of the bloke himself. Gary ostentatiously looked at his watch and mimed dying of thirst, holding both hands to his throat like he was choking and half sliding under the table. “Um. Speaking of which, I take it there’s no truth in the rumours about you and Carey getting hitched?”
She cringed. “What rumours? Who’s been saying stuff about me and him?”
“He has, or at least, that’s what the new vicar said he’d told her. And well, if you can’t trust a woman of the cloth…”
“I’ll kill ’im.” Marianne glared so fiercely at the bar I was surprised the varnish didn’t blister.
“Yeah, well, thought I ought to let you know what he’d been saying.” I glanced over at Gary, who right now could’ve given Marianne a run for her money in a glare-off. “Looks like I’d better get back to Gary before he spontaneously combusts.”
Marianne’s smile made a brave effort to come back. “Bless ’im. You take care, now.”
“You too, love.” She’d need to, I thought as I took the drinks back to our table. What with all these blokes hanging around.
Maybe I’d better stop by a little more often. Just in case.
We stayed late enough that the bell for last orders was a distant memory, and Harry had already packed Marianne off to bed, by the time Gary drained his last martini and stood up, claiming Julian needed his beauty sleep. I’d been on soft drinks for the last couple of rounds, so I was fine to drive really, but after I’d waved them off on their walk back into the village, it still seemed like a good idea to get a bit of fresh air before I got into the car.
It was a warm night, so you might have expected people to linger in the beer garden but it was as deserted as it’d been when I got there. There weren’t even any little pockets of smokers hanging around reminiscing about the good old days when they could light up in the main bar instead of getting kicked out along with other social undesirables like dogs and kiddies. Although come to think of it, dogs had always been allowed in the Dyke. I stood outside the door for a moment, enjoying the cooler air and the faint scent wafting over from the lilacs, although there wasn’t much of a breeze. It was dead quiet—the Dyke’s far enough from main roads that hardly any traffic noise carries. The only sounds I could hear now were the sort that make you feel more alone: a soft hoot that was probably an owl, followed by a furtive rustling sound that was probably the owl’s supper.
I paced around the beer garden and looked up at what I was pretty sure was Marianne’s window. Unless, of course, she’d nipped into the next room to warm Harry’s bed for her. It didn’t look all that secure. What with the low roof and the sturdy, old-fashioned windowsills, I reckoned I could probably climb up there easy without a ladder. And if I could do it, Carey probably could. Or this “muscle” of his. Shit.
About to go back inside and say something, I hesitated. Would Harry thank me for pointing out any security shortcomings? She was probably streets ahead of me on all this anyway. Plus, was sneaking in windows really Carey’s style? It seemed a bit too overtly criminal for him. And probably less fun, to his twisted little mind, than just knocking on the front door and using his slimy brand of coercion to get in.
Something tickled the back of my neck, and I slapped at it. Great. I was going to end up being eaten to death by those bloody midges for my trouble. I turned to head off to the Fiesta, which was sitting all on its little lonesome in the car park, the Billy-no-mates of the auto world—
—and that’s all I remembered when I woke up with a dry mouth, a splitting headache and a fuzzy-edged Phil looking down at me.
He looked well pissed off.
Chapter Eight
Good to see you too was what I meant to say, but what with my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth at the end of the first word, I sort of gave up after that.
Phil looked even more pissed off and held a cup of water to my lips. It tasted bloody marvellous, and it’s just possible I might have whined a bit and tried to grab his arm when he took it away again. “Oi. Take it e
asy,” he grunted, but he brought the cup back. “Drink it slow, if you want to keep it down.”
Now he came to mention it, the contents of my stomach did feel like they might be getting ready to jump ship at the first opportunity. I sipped cautiously.
“Don’t s’pose there’s any chance of an aspirin?” I asked without a lot of hope once I’d glugged my fill. Heh. My Phil. I gave a weak chuckle, which got me a worried look from Phil.
“I could ask,” he said, in don’t-bet-on-it tones.
I’d taken a look around by now, and what with the plain white blankets on the metal-framed bed I was lying in, and the NHS green paint on the walls, I reckoned it was a pretty safe guess I wasn’t in Kansas anymore. “What happened?”
Phil huffed. “You’re supposed to be telling me that. Back properly this time, are you?”
What? The last bit didn’t make sense, so I ignored it. I tried to think back, but apparently some git had dug my brain out of my skull with a spoon while I wasn’t looking and replaced it with soggy cotton wool. And then stomped on it. Seeing as how the effort of trying to remember made the room spin and upped the pain levels from ow to bloody hell make it stop, I gave up pretty quickly. “I went to the pub?” I hazarded.
“Yeah, and from what Harry told me, you had a couple of pints and about a gallon of Diet Coke, then walked out looking perfectly fine ten minutes before she came out to check for glasses and found you doing corpse impersonations in the beer garden.” Phil glared at me like I’d done it for a laugh or something.
“Yeah… I remember going out there… So what happened?” I asked again. “Did I fall on my arse in the dark?”
“On your head, more like. Don’t know what happened. Harry just said you’d knocked yourself out.” Phil sighed heavily. “Christ, are you trying to give me a heart attack?”
I wasn’t sure what to say to that. ’Specially as I’d just remembered we weren’t on the best of terms right now. Although maybe getting hospitalised trumped all that. “What time is it?”
“Around two. In the morning. You were out for a couple of hours. If you include the bits where you were just pretending to be with it.”
“What?”
“We’ve had this conversation before.”
“Huh.” We had? Sounded like I’d missed all the fun stuff, like getting loaded into the ambulance—at least, I assumed there’d been an ambulance? Maybe Harry or Phil or someone had just bunged me in a car and driven me to hospital—and screeching up to A&E. Well, been there, done that. “So what’s the verdict—am I going to live?”
For a split second, I seriously thought he was going to hit me. Phil looked fucking furious. “Don’t you ever fucking joke about that,” he snarled at me. Then he backed off a step and scrubbed his face with both hands. “Shit, I didn’t mean… Jesus wept, I’m tired. Harry called the ambulance first off. I didn’t get the call till gone midnight. Came straight here. They were doing all these tests and scans…” He took a deep breath and seemed to get a grip on himself. “Said you were lucky. Got a thick skull, so no surprise there. No bleeding on the brain, no major swelling. Yeah, you’ll live.”
And here I’d thought Phil was the boneheaded one in this relationship. “Are we all right, then?” I asked, feeling pretty tired myself.
Phil blinked at me. Then he nodded. “Yeah, we’re all right.”
After that, he insisted on calling a doctor in so she could have a good prod and a poke, and ask me what my name was, what year it was and who the Prime Minister was. It all seemed a bit daft, and I thought about having a laugh with her, but I couldn’t quite seem to work up the energy. In the end, the doc, who was a pretty young Pakistani woman who looked more tired than I felt, took a last eyeful of my eyeballs, pronounced me mildly concussed and told me to get some rest. Phil gave me a kiss, squeezed my hand so hard it hurt, muttered something about not being supposed to be here anyway, and left me to it.
I’d been hoping they might let me go home the next morning—or, if you prefer, later the same morning—but no such luck. Then again, I wasn’t feeling a lot like moving anyway, after a night of being prodded awake by nurses every half hour to check I hadn’t tiptoed off this mortal coil while their backs were turned.
Gary popped along to see me during visiting hours. Well, he probably felt obliged to, after I’d staggered to the pay phone to let him know where I was. He was gutted he’d managed to toddle off home just five minutes before all the drama started. “Darling, you could have died,” he said, seizing me in a bear hug that cut off the oxygen to my brain and didn’t do a right lot for the splitting headache. “Or been left a sad, shambling shell of a man.” He backed off and squinted at me in concern. “Are you sure you really feel yourself?”
He didn’t even go for the obvious innuendo. I was touched by how worried he clearly was. “I’m fine, honest. Just a bit of a bruise.” All right, I felt pretty queasy too, but that was probably just the hospital food I’d choked down for lunch.
“Just a bit of a bruise? You were unconscious for hours. You do know who I am, don’t you?”
With those big eyes looking soulfully at me, I reckoned I could have been forgiven for getting confused between him and his dog, but it was probably better not to mention that. “Gary, I rang you, remember? And it wasn’t hours. Two at most. Less, if you don’t count the bits where I was apparently babbling away but can’t remember.”
“Practically a coma.” Gary shuddered. “All your muscles could have wasted away, leaving only a withered husk. There would have been nothing left of you. But stop distracting me. What I want to know is—”
I braced myself for a repetition of the whole what-happened-I-dunno conversation I’d had with Phil.
“—why am I here, and not your musclebound inamorato?”
What? I did a literal double-take that left my head pounding so hard my eyes hurt. “Ow. You’re a mate, aren’t you? Why shouldn’t you be here?” Then again, I had been wondering when Phil might show his face again. Not that he’d said he would, least as far as I remembered, but you sort of expect it, don’t you?
“Because normally, Tommy dear,” Gary was saying, “when one does fainting-damsel impersonations, it isn’t for the benefit of one’s mates. Mine is not the embrace into which you should be swooning.” His hands now on his well-padded hips, Gary’s eyes went flinty. “He’d better not be the one who put you here.”
“You know, I’m starting to wonder which one of us got hit on the head here. Phil wasn’t even there when it happened.”
“When what happened?”
“Well… I dunno, do I? Can’t remember.”
“Aha!” Gary pointed a triumphant finger at me.
Shit. What was it Dave Southgate told me after Cherry got poisoned? Something about knocking down Phil’s door if I ever came a cropper somehow? Apparently Dave and Gary had more in common than either of them would care to admit. “No,” I said shortly, wanting to nip this one firmly in the bud. “Not aha. Not any other eighties Europop band either. Me and Phil might have had a bit of a disagreement, but nobody’s been bopping anyone else over the head about it.”
“But there was a disagreement? What about?” Gary pouted. “And why am I only now hearing about it? I’m wounded. Pierced to the core. Impaled upon the rusty sword of your disregard. For goodness’ sake, darling, I tell you everything.”
“Gary, you tell everyone everything. And I didn’t want to talk about it last night, all right? Wanted a break from it all.”
“So go on, tell Uncle Gary all about it now.” He perched on the edge of the bed, hands clasped around one knee, making his I’m listening face.
“It’s nothing.” I heaved a sigh. “Just, he goes on about me being touchy, and then he flies off the handle just because I forgot to tell him we’re going over to Greg’s for lunch next Sunday.” I remembered who I was talking to, and added quickly, “I mea
n, God knows I’d rather meet up with you and Darren, but it was all arranged with Cherry ages ago. I just forgot to mention it.”
“Mm, you said that.” Gary stared off into the distance, or at least as distant as you can get in an NHS room. Which was about three feet. “Darling, we’ve never really talked about this, but just how invested are you in this whole Phil thing?”
“He’s not a bloody savings account. What do you mean, how invested am I?”
“Well. You know. Can you see you and Philip one day tiptoeing down the aisle together like my Sweetie-Pie and me?”
I didn’t know what to say. And not just because thinking of Darren as anyone’s Sweetie-Pie was giving me hives. “Well, nobody’s got down on one knee yet,” I said in the end.
“But is there,” Gary paused significantly, “the potential?”
“I dunno, do I?” I hedged. “Potentially, yeah.” It didn’t feel right, somehow, talking about it with Gary before me and Phil had had the conversation. I mean, for all I knew, his short-lived civil partnership with The Mysterious Mark had put Phil off getting hitched for life.
And, well. It wasn’t like he’d rushed round today to mop my fevered brow, was it?
Not that I was feeling neglected or anything.
Gary raised a pitying eyebrow. “Only the potential for potential? I’m sorry, darling, but that doesn’t sound très romantic to me. Rather like, in fact, leaving you to languish upon your deathbed unvisited and unloved.”
“Oi, this is not my deathbed. Unless you know something I don’t—”
“Where to start, darling, where to start?” Gary murmured.
“—about my state of health, I was going to add. And Phil was here last night. This morning. Whatever. He’s probably catching up on his sleep.”
“At three in the afternoon? Still, I suppose it must be exhausting, carrying around that amount of muscle between the ears.” Gary tittered.