by Gytha Lodge
‘Yes,’ she’d told him. ‘Sorry. I need to – to go home.’
She picked up her handbag and went staggering out into the hall, weaving almost from wall to wall as she went.
And she was still in that second of frozen time on the dance floor, but she had also spent what felt like hours trying to stay steady on her feet and on her stupid fucking heels as she stumbled up London Road. Somewhere during those hours, she’d glanced behind her and seen that not-quite-right smile following her, and she’d felt frightened.
She’d pulled out her phone but somehow been unable to unlock it. Her fingers weren’t working. They had become someone else’s. And so she’d started trying to run.
And then, without any time passing, she’d been on her face in the earth, sobbing into the ground as he pressed a knife into her lower back. And she recognised his voice this time. She’d heard the Sheffield lilt back in the club, back when he’d been saying nice things to her.
‘Please don’t,’ she’d told him. ‘Please. Please.’
‘Shut your fucking mouth.’
Her hair had been over her face as he’d turned her over, and she’d felt like she might vomit through it. She felt dizzy. Unwell. Nauseous.
He was pulling at her underwear, but he couldn’t be. This couldn’t be happening. She must be able to fight, but it was like a dream where her body wouldn’t work. Nothing worked.
‘Hey!’ It was another voice. A deeper one. One that was full of a different sort of threat. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’
The tugging at her underwear had stopped, and the weight that was on her eased momentarily, though there was a sharp pain in her left arm still. She could feel his hand pressing down on it.
‘Get – the fuck – out of here,’ the man who was on top of her said. ‘I’m not fucking around.’ Louise managed to free a hand and pulled the hair out of her eyes enough to see something. She twisted to see the face of this man pinning her down. The smile had gone, because he was wearing a balaclava now. He’d become faceless. Awful.
There was a tall figure standing a little further away, one that loomed over them both.
‘I don’t care who you are or what you think you’re doing. You need to get off her. Right now.’
‘Mate, I told you to go.’ There was such coldness in that cheerful northern voice. ‘This has nothing to do with you.’
‘Please,’ Louise sobbed. ‘Please don’t go.’
There was a brief silence, and then the tall figure strode forwards. The weight on her arm lifted abruptly as the figure above her was hauled away. And then there was a sickening noise as her attacker swung a fist at the tall stranger.
She heard a noise of pain and then a roar. The taller man brought his fist up so quickly that there was no time for the balaclava-clad man to dodge. It connected with a crunch, and then the taller one was kicking and shoving her attacker away, so that he was scrambling backwards. He was fleeing and trying to shield himself all at once.
It was quiet for a moment after that. He’d gone. The awful man in the balaclava had gone.
She could hear the tall man breathing, and then he said, ‘Are you OK?’
And then suddenly she was crumpling in on herself and sobbing. Sobbing so hard that she couldn’t breathe.
‘Shhh,’ he said, and he was sitting next to her. ‘Shhh. It’s all right. It’s going to be all right.’
He helped her to her feet, and once she was in front of him she saw that there was something sticking out of his abdomen. She reached out. She touched his dark-stained T-shirt just below it, and when her hand came away, it was warm and sticky.
‘You’re hurt,’ she said. ‘You’re hurt. He hurt you.’
He gave a laugh, but it ended in a groan.
‘Ah, s’OK,’ he said, after that, and she looked into his face for the first time and realised that she knew him. Had spoken to him. He’d been in the club too. ‘I’ll get it … doctored … Just let me walk you home first.’
He sounded so sure that she nodded, and started to lead him home. Flakes of snow were beginning to fall around them, and everything seemed unreal.
And it was a while later, but all in that same second, that she was up in her room, and kicking her shoes off so she could climb into bed. She was still shaking, but she curled up facing him and felt better because he was there.
He sat heavily on the bed, making her tip and bounce as the mattress moved.
‘I don’t … Is it all right if I lie down?’ he asked. ‘Just for a minute?’
‘Yes,’ she told him. ‘Lie here.’
He lay down, his face towards her, and he gave a sudden, sharp intake of breath. And then he was struggling with something, until he gave a gasp of pain and relief. It was a knife that had been in him. A knife. She could see it in his hand and a small voice was telling her that this was wrong. That she needed to do something.
But even while it told her that, she was shutting down. Losing consciousness. Losing the world around her in favour of a softer one somewhere beneath all of this.
‘I’m cold,’ he said, and she opened her eyes again, and saw that he was pale. So pale. And his eyes were frightened.
She reached out to his face and began to stroke it. ‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘I’m here. I’m here.’
38
The scene was so very familiar to Niall. Another hotel bar, with Dina waiting for him, long-legged and intensely glamorous in her short black dress, her hair pinned in a loose bun so that most of it fell in artful, dark brown curls.
She was looking at her phone as he arrived, a drink already in front of her. It was always like this. His ex-wife would always be waiting, perfectly arranged for maximum effect.
He shook his head slightly and closed the last few feet between them. She looked up and smiled at him, her expression rueful this time.
‘I’m glad we get to see each other again,’ she said. ‘I hated being told not to talk to you.’
Niall sat, slowly, and then said, ‘We won’t be seeing each other again, Dina.’
Dina’s gaze settled on him for a moment, and then she laughed. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Niall.’ She picked up her martini and took a very careful sip. ‘We’re free to do what we want now. Everything’s all out in the open.’
Niall laughed in return, a sound that was totally unlike her relaxed chuckle. It was a bitter sound.
‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘Everything is in the open. Who you are, and what an idiot I’ve been.’
He saw Dina roll her eyes. ‘You aren’t angry with me for obeying orders, are you? What was I supposed to do? Tell her no, we had our own plan?’ Dina shook her head, the expression in her eyes a little harder. ‘You know it doesn’t end well for people who do that.’
‘There’s not a chance in hell those were orders,’ Niall said, flatly. ‘Everything you’ve tried to do from the moment she brought you in … wriggling your way into the middle of it all, to get one up on me … has been a ridiculous game. And, of course, playing me at the same time. Telling me you missed me, that you regretted ever walking out. Chipping away at my chances of happiness. And for what? To feel like you’ve won?’ And then Niall stopped, closing his mouth deliberately. ‘Actually, forget that. I don’t need to know why. I don’t care any more. I’m here to pick up what you have to give me, and then I’m going.’
Dina gave him a long look, and then she shrugged. She put a manicured hand out to the handbag that was hooked over the back of her chair and drew out an envelope.
‘It isn’t as much as you’re hoping,’ Dina said. ‘Certainly not enough to see you out of debt.’
Niall took it with a shrug and slid it into his pocket without opening it. He wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of seeing his disappointment. ‘It doesn’t matter. It’s all done.’
‘Nearly,’ Dina said, as he rose. ‘She has a few loose ends to tie up, she said.’
Niall paused, his feeling of certainty wavering. ‘What does
she mean, loose ends?’
Jonah had almost made it out of Southampton by the time Hanson’s call came through.
‘I’m so sorry, chief,’ she said. ‘But it looks like – it looks like Alex Plaskitt never attacked Louise Reakes. It was the nightclub owner, Charlie. He’s Marc Ruskin’s brother, and he was at Rain for Step’s birthday, the night Gianetta Jilani was attacked in January of last year. And he had the knife for safekeeping.’
Jonah found his mind slow to process all this information. ‘Step’s knife?’ he eventually managed to ask.
‘Yes,’ Hanson said. ‘He was also at Blue Underground on Friday. I’ve called the staff there and it turns out he wasn’t actually working like he implied. He was the other side of the bar, and one of the staff can remember him flirting with Louise Reakes. He’s sure it was her because she came back in asking questions later. Charlie had told him to lie if anyone asked, and say he’d been working. And the bouncers were told to support the idea that he’d been punched by a punter. They thought he actually had been, after Charlie tried to walk home then came back to put ice on it.’
‘Right.’ And he was turning the car across the cross-hatching, swiftly and illegally. He switched the flashing blues on. ‘Did they say where he is?’
‘In his Portsmouth club,’ Hanson replied. ‘Rain. And … Niall Reakes called me. He’s frantic with worry for Louise because she’s apparently in danger. He says we need to track her down, but he can’t raise her or April Dumont, who he’s sure she’s with.’
‘Right, that’s …’
‘The thing is,’ Hanson went on, ‘Niall found out they’re going to Rain. Where Charlie is.’
He thought back to Louise’s accounts of their night out, and how the venue had been April’s idea. He felt a run of cold up his back.
‘Was it Portsmouth they were going to on Monday when we picked them up at the service station?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ Hanson said. ‘I think so.’
And that had been April’s idea, too. If Issa hadn’t disrupted everything, they would have been off for a night out in Portsmouth. To a club. He was willing to bet he knew which one they’d been headed for.
‘OK. I’ll be there in five to drive you, provided you’ve only had a couple of drinks. Tell Domnall to take Ben and go. Now.’
This couldn’t be happening again. It couldn’t be.
And yet it was. Louise had made no conscious decision to run. By the time she’d surfaced from the terrible waking dream, she was no longer close to the bar. She was running, skidding down the corridor that led to the way out, with her handbag banging uncomfortably into her leg.
There were bouncers on the door. They could help her. She could tell them what was happening and they could protect her until she could call a cab and get hold of April.
But then, as she drew level with one standing in the doorway, she remembered what April had said. Charlie owned this place. Charlie, who she’d wanted to set Louise up with. The same man Louise had once fled from at a wedding, with a better instinct than she’d had when she saw him again, years later.
Fuck, she thought. Fuck. They work for him.
And so, as one of them gave her a coldly amused look, Louise ran past them, and out onto the road. A terrifyingly empty road.
She’d expected to find people out here, but it was drizzling now, and nobody seemed to be out in it. She looked frantically for some kind of shop that might be open, but all she could see were estate agents and dry-cleaners, their lights off and shutters down.
What’s wrong with this place? Why didn’t you stay at fucking home, Louise?
She saw an alleyway to her left, and she scuttled into it. She could at least be out of sight while she called for a cab. She ducked behind a large blue wheelie bin that stood against the near wall of the club. God, it was cold. She wasn’t dressed for this. The overhang from the roof above was so small that it barely kept any of the rain off her, and the wind kept picking it up and hurling it around.
She reached for her phone, and then felt her heart drop. A terrible, lurching fall.
Her phone was still in her jacket pocket, all neatly folded up on the padded bench of their booth.
Fuck. She wanted to hit something. Herself. The bin. Anything. What the fuck were you thinking, Louise?
But she had to stay quiet and think. She had to get herself out of this mess.
Could she just go back into the club? She might be able to find a group of people to protect her.
But she remembered all of the men and women in there, how drunk they were already. Would they even stop him if he came and dragged her away to somewhere quiet? Some part of the club that only he knew about?
There were voices somewhere on the road, and she froze, trying to catch what they were saying. But whatever had been said had been over too quickly for her to understand.
And then she heard footsteps, and she knew that the bouncers had told him where she’d gone. She’d been too close to them when she ducked down the alley. Of course she had been. She’d done everything wrong.
And while she stayed absolutely still, hoping that he might somehow walk past her without seeing, or turn round and go back to the club, she started to talk to her husband again in her head. She imagined writing to him, safe and warm in their house. She imagined getting out of here and surviving somehow, and she promised herself that she was going to write it all down. All of it.
I’m going to see you again, Niall, she thought.
The footsteps were painfully close. He was walking past the bin. There was no way he could fail to see her now.
She could feel her hand shaking, and she shoved it into her handbag. The handbag that had no phone in but was still unbelievably full and heavy in the way of every handbag she’d owned, despite her having cleaned it out and organised it earlier this evening.
‘Louise …’
He said it so quietly. So gently. And Louise felt her body try to sob in fear, but she wouldn’t let it.
Charlie was suddenly there, in front of her, looking at her, but it was somehow better now that he’d found her. This was the worst it could get, and she wasn’t going to die cowering behind a fucking bin.
She stood up straight, and she looked back at him.
‘There you are,’ he said, and his eyes flickered over her and over the bin, and he smiled.
She understood the smile. He was thinking that she’d brought him to the perfect place. Because after he’d killed her, he could simply tip her into the bin and come back for her later.
‘I’m so glad you came,’ he said, with a cheerful little laugh. ‘I can’t believe it’s been quite this perfect, but …’ He glanced over her face. ‘You do remember me now, don’t you?’
Louise nodded, and said, in a voice that wasn’t as steady as she wanted it to be, ‘You’re the one who has to drug girls in order to fuck them.’
His mouth moved. Tightened. His grin went a little awry.
‘Just as much of a bitch as I thought you were,’ he said. ‘You should watch that, Louise. Men don’t like it.’
And here it was. The feeling of strength that Louise had been looking for. She’d pissed him off, and she was going to keep doing it. She was going to make him angry, because she was so very, very done with being afraid.
‘Did you enjoy getting thrown around by him?’ Louise asked. ‘By Alex? He totally owned you.’
Charlie gave a laugh that had no humour in it. ‘Yeah, well. He should have stayed out of it like I told him to. Because I totally killed him.’
She could see in his expression that he was thinking of what he was going to do to her. She watched him, tensely, waiting for his move. Was it going to be a knife this time? Had he brought one?
He looked right and left, up and down the short alleyway, and he seemed satisfied. He stepped towards her, and before she’d had time even to think, his hands were round her throat.
‘Bye-bye, bitch,’ he said, as he lifted her up off the ground with hi
s hands.
It was the worst thing she could remember feeling. It made her want to vomit and kick out at him. And it hurt. Jesus, it hurt.
Her hand was still in the bag. But it was holding a rubberised black handle, as it had been for some minutes. And, in spite of the pain, she put every ounce of her consciousness into that instead of her desperate need for air. She was nothing more than her hand on the handle, and she drew it out and across in the small space between them, and then she drove it up and sideways into the flesh below his armpit.
There was a long second while he did nothing, and then, just as she started trying to pull the knife out, he suddenly let go of her. She fell, gasping desperately for air, but she didn’t lose her grip on the handle, and she could feel it levering downwards as she dropped to her knees.
Charlie let out a howl. And then he started to kick her, his feet connecting hard and painfully with her thighs. Her stomach. She once again thought she might vomit, and wondered if her throat might be too swollen to let it out. But she stayed kneeling there and grabbed on to the handle with her other hand, too.
And then she remembered how Alex had died, and with a strangled roar, she yanked on the handle and felt the blade come clear of his flesh. The feeling was followed by an awful pain in her head. He had hold of her hair and was lifting her up by it.
‘What the hell?’
She heard the voice. Her friend’s voice. April’s voice.
At the sound of it a sudden rush of fear ran through her.
She brought me here. She wanted to set me up with him …
She’d planned all of this. April had planned all of it.
‘No,’ Louise said.
But the pain in her head stopped. Charlie was slumping backwards, and it was April whose arm was round his neck.
‘Get off her! Get off her!’
Charlie spoke, but it wasn’t quite his voice any more. It was a gurgling, cracked sound.
‘She – fucking – stabbed me!’
He stumbled backwards, and April shoved at him until he fell. She looked him over, coldly. And then she met Louise’s eye, for a moment. She gave her the strangest smile.