Fresh Flesh

by Stella Duffy

  By three in the morning they had all convened at Molly’s flat. Marc had joined Chris, Patrick arrived half an hour after Molly’s call, leaving Lillian at home with Katy and the children. Helen and Judith put aside their differences to be in the same room for the first time in six months. Carrie left the brunette with her straight friend at Bar Rage and came north the minute Sharon stopped spitting invective against her delinquent boss. Molly paced the room, took occasional sips from her refilled glass of wine, snapped at anyone who told her she ought to sit down and look after the baby, suggested they go fuck themselves.

  Helen was furious with Molly for not contacting her sooner. Judith was even more furious with Helen for showing how angry she was. She too was bloody pissed off, but doing her best to stay calm in order to reassure Molly. Patrick wanted to storm Georgina’s office, Lees’ home, Georgina’s home, Luke’s home. Storm fucking anything, just get on with it. Get on with something rather than sitting around in the girls’ house just talking and doing nothing. Marc told him to stop being such a fucking boy and sit down. Molly threw up, cried, drank half a cup of sweet tea, threw up again, stopped crying and spat out that she didn’t care if Patrick was being a boy, if his attitude meant actually doing something, getting on with finding Saz, then it was infinitely preferable to sitting around and waiting and someone should bloody well do something because if they didn’t then she certainly wasn’t going to fucking well sit there and do nothing and didn’t anyone have a suggestion? Carrie looked up from the coke wrap she was getting out of her wallet – it was late, they were all tired, and it was clear that even thinking about sleep was fucking ludicrous – and asked if anyone had a handy credit card. Three cards landed on the coffee table; neither Helen nor Judith even pretended to look away. Carrie chopped the lines fast and fat. They went down even quicker. Molly gave up on tea, finished the glass of white wine she’d been warming in her hand for the past hour, followed that with too much coffee too fast and, when the others had left, Chris and Marc stayed behind to hold her hand.

  While Helen and Judith made important business calls from their respective cars the better not to worry Molly as they described, in technical terms, what they thought was going on – Carrie and Patrick decided to take matters into their own hands, Patrick driving across the northwest of the city and arriving at Lees’ house twenty minutes before the police. Plenty of time for him to smash in the front window and pull Carrie into the house after him. Even in the dark they knew something was wrong. When Patrick finally found the light switch on the far wall, they discovered they had traipsed through an upturned room – and what looked like several pints of blood. Some from Luke’s broken nose. Most, though they didn’t know it yet, from Saz.

  They ran through the small house in five minutes, Carrie screaming for Saz, Patrick slamming doors and smashing anything in his way. It took them no time at all to confirm that Saz was nowhere on the ground floor and it was only Carrie’s quick reactions that stopped Patrick from going completely crazy when he opened the bedroom door at the end of the hallway upstairs. In a dimly-lit room, with cool, even temperature and an ioniser providing clean, fresh air, Samuel Lees was safe from the mess downstairs, quiet in a single bed against the wall, tucked up warm with medical equipment at all four corners, watching over him as he slept peacefully.

  “Jesus Christ, it’s him!”

  Carrie grabbed him and hissed into his face, “Don’t fucking touch him, Patrick. Leave the man alone!”

  “Why? Because he’s old and I shouldn’t hurt him?”

  “No, you tosser, because he’s lying in his own bed in his own house that you’ve just broken into for no good reason—”

  “What?”

  “Listen to me, for fuck’s sake – no good reason that the cops are going to believe. At least not until you’ve explained the whole bloody story half a dozen times, to three different moron policemen – and you’ve already made a mess of the crime scene downstairs, charging through the bloody place like an idiot. Having a go at him isn’t going to help one little bit.”

  Patrick relented, stepped back a pace, “It’ll make me feel better.”

  “We’re not here to make you feel better. We’re here to find Saz. This isn’t all about you, rich boy.”

  Carrie wondered for a moment if she’d pushed it too far herself, saw Patrick’s hand flinch at his side and was relieved when he simply glared at her in the half-light, “And what would you like me to do instead?”

  “I’d like you to stop acting like a fucking idiot and get us both out of here before the cops arrive and we have to explain why we broke in. Saz obviously isn’t here, we’ve been through the whole house, and I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather get on with finding her than waste half the night explaining all this to the police.”

  “Fine. Whatever you say. So where are we going?”

  “No fucking idea. I’ll work that one out in the car. Now come on!”

  Carrie ran off down the stairs and Patrick followed her, a last reluctant look at the old man, sleeping oblivious to Patrick’s malice in his nice warm bed.

  Carrie and Patrick left Lees’ house and drove south down the Edgware Road, three police cars coming towards them from the opposite direction.

  Patrick put his foot on the accelerator and muttered under his breath, “Too fucking late as usual.”

  Carrie didn’t bother to comment; she didn’t think it would help to point out that Patrick himself was one of the main reasons Saz hadn’t spoken to the cops already. Fifteen minutes later they had been flashed by three speed cameras and were at Luke’s apartment. Being a loft conversion it was harder to break in. Patrick had to wake several neighbours before one finally let them in, assuming him to be a jealous husband and not interested in protecting the deadend relationship of a pisshead at four in the morning. Patrick smashed in the door to Luke’s apartment and when they didn’t find Saz there either, he broke up what he could anyway. Carrie couldn’t be bothered stopping him this time.

  Molly sat on her sofa, her head on Chris’s shoulder, eyes on the phone, willing it to ring. An hour later she watched the sun rise over the Heath. Marc made still more weak coffee and Molly stroked the small swelling of her stomach, wondering at what age you explain the word missing to a child – and then hating herself for even thinking like that. When first Patrick and Carrie, and then both Judith and Helen, called in just after seven with no news of any sort – neither good nor bad – Molly prayed. Though she didn’t know who to.

  Eventually Molly realized she had to lie down. She wanted to get away from the place of most tension, away from the phone that rang constantly but with no good news. She went into their bedroom, thinking that maybe she would stretch out on their bed, where at least the feeling of Saz was close. Five minutes later she was just dozing off when she sat up in shock, having remembered where Saz might be. She recalled a conversation after Saz had met Luke in the garden behind his bar. Molly hadn’t been especially interested, had been much more concerned with the possibility of reinvigorating their sex life that evening. But she had listened to Saz’s description of the bar garden; it sounded nice. And so did the designer flats Luke had pointed out behind the tall back wall, the highest ones overlooking his beautiful bit of green. And he’d told Saz she could have a look around if she wanted. The estate agent was a mate. He had a spare key.

  London was well and truly awake now, the rush-hour journey agonizingly slow for Molly and Chris. They’d left Marc to make all the right phone calls, to get people to the new flats as soon as possible. But Molly wasn’t able to sit at home and wait anymore. She knew that if Saz was there – and if she was hurt – then she’d be taken to the nearest hospital anyway, so they might as well head over the bridge. They arrived just as Saz was being stretchered out of the building. Molly trying unsuccessfully to switch her brain from lover-mode into doctor-state, unable to look at the bloody mess of her girlfriend and translate the sight into the medical terms that might have allowed
her a chance to cope. Molly wasn’t going to get a chance to cope.

  FIFTY

  Lees was old and ill and lived on. As did the adoptees and the fertility clinics he founded. There were some happy mother-and-baby reunions, some not. At the clinics there were some successful assisted pregnancies, some not. Lees’ name was dropped from the letterhead of the clinic where Molly, Saz and Chris had conceived.

  Georgina’s house was found to be quiet, tidy, and empty. A thorough search of her safe, drawers and cupboards revealed that she didn’t keep any important personal effects – keys, money, cards, passport – at home. Nor, it was later discovered, at the office. Perhaps she liked to keep them with her at all times. Maybe she felt safer that way.

  Georgina liked Geneva. She didn’t like playing little wife very much, especially not second little wife, and Switzerland was somewhat land-locked for her ocean-loving tastes, but it was better than nothing. Luke may have believed her when she said she was covered by client privilege, but she hadn’t been entirely certain herself. She thought she might as well stay out of the way until it was all tidied up.

  Luke was found late the following night at a pub in Margate, beating shit out of the barman who refused to serve him – too pissed long before he even walked in. Three hours later, when they had managed to sober him up enough to make sense of his jumbled words, he explained that he had not left Saz at the flats to hide her, but simply because he didn’t know what else to do and by the time he’d come to his senses, Georgina had already gone and he didn’t know who else to ask for advice.

  For a long time afterwards he thought he still heard Saz screaming for him to stop. Heard Saz and Sukie screaming for him to stop.

  In going through Saz’s bag for evidence, the police found the letter for Chris’s father. Chris was allowed to take a copy for himself. But he held off finding out about the blood family until he knew about this one.

  For two days Molly and Chris sat either side of Saz’s bed, Patrick and Carrie pacing the corridor, Saz’s mother and sister sitting silent by the window. And Saz’s mother couldn’t even begin to cry.

  When Saz opened her eyes in the early hours of Friday morning, Molly was sleeping, her head in Chris’s lap, everyone else asleep or dozing in the waiting room.

  Chris was on his feet in an instant, “Molly, she’s awake, quick!”

  Molly held Saz’s hand, her eyelids fluttering, “Babe? Saz?”

  Carrie ran out to get a doctor. Chris waited until Saz actually focused on Molly and then left to tell the others, “I’ll get her Mum, OK? I’m just outside, all right? I’m right here. If you need me.”

  Molly nodded, her only attention on Saz, “Babe? Can you hear me?”

  Saz’s swollen mouth opened a little, her dry throat rough and sore, “Yeah … Christ … what the fuck …?”

  “Doesn’t matter, hon. It’s OK now, you’re all OK now. You’re going to be fine now.”

  Molly was lying, but then she was a doctor. She was allowed to. Saz winced, trying to focus on her girlfriend.

  “Ouch.”

  “Yeah, very ouch.”

  “Baby OK?”

  Molly smiled, “The baby’s fine. You’re the idiot who ended up here.”

  “Sorry.”

  “I know. Listen, Saz, you did good. They found Chris’s letter in your bag. The one for his father. He might even have other relations now, aunts and uncles for the baby.”

  Saz tried to speak, but caught her breath suddenly as a sharp stab of pain ran through her, “Good … baby’s going to need family.”

  Molly nodded, held her hand more gently, stroked Saz’s bruised forehead, “Don’t talk. You don’t need to talk. You just need to rest. You have to be careful now, most of you is broken somewhere.”

  From Molly’s point of view – her job giving her an all too clear understanding of Saz’s precarious condition – it was a gentle understatement. But her next request wasn’t, she held Saz as close as she dared, “You really can’t do this any more, Saz. I mean it. Not any more. You understand?”

  Saz would have nodded, but her displaced vertebrae, fractured collarbone made it impossible, tried to answer her agreement but she couldn’t get enough breath to reply.

  Molly could hear Chris returning with other staff, with Saz’s family.

  She repeated herself, more urgently this time, “You hear me, Saz? You’re not going to do this any more.”

  Saz opened her mouth a fraction, breathed in pain, spoke her whispered assent in a rasping shudder, “OK. No more.”

  Molly picked up Saz’s thin hand, careful of the drip, and held it against her belly. Though she knew it was probably too soon to feel anything, Molly thought that maybe she imagined some tiny movement. The baby settling between its mothers.

  When Molly looked back at her girlfriend, Saz’s eyes were closed.

  Also by Stella Duffy and published by Serpent’s Tail

  Calendar Girl

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  Private eye Saz Martin is hot on the trail of a woman known as “September”, who commutes between London and New York in a whirlwind of drug smuggling, gambling, and high-class prostitution.

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  Beneath the Blonde

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  Siobhan Forrester, lead singer of Beneath The Blonde, has everything a girl could want – now she has a stalker too. Saz Martin, hired to protect Siobhan, embarks on a complex investigation.