Hell To Pay (Crime Files Book 1)

by Jenny Thomson

  “Why do you think they did that to you, Nancy?”

  Here he went again, expecting me to be the shrink, to do the psychoanalyzing. Did he honestly believe I was going to have a eureka moment and say it was because one of their mothers had short hair and they had some sick fantasy about screwing their mother?

  If I voiced that thought, would I ever get out of here?

  My lips tighten. “You tell me.”

  As he spouts his theories, I pretend to listen, but all I could see was my beautiful locks in scraps on the floor of the house where Mum used to plait my hair.

  When I finally come out of the bathroom, I’m fully dressed and Neal’s snoring away on the couch.

  I watch him sleep (because I want to make sure he’s not dead) and think about how it’s not just women who are easy prey when they go out at night. Men are too. More so than women, because they don’t expect to go to some girl’s home and be drugged.

  Tonight was my test run.

  The next morning, I call my disorientated visitor in a taxi. If the drugs do what they’re meant to, he won’t even remember me or this place. And if he does, it’s no biggie. Would the police even believe his story?

  There’s something else I have to do. Dr. D was certain I had repressed memories, so I make an appointment with the hypnotherapist he suggested. He told me she might be able to help me remember because often our minds block out the things that might hurt us.

  The second thing I do is phone Shug in Bar-L to tell him I need to see him. What happened must have something to do with my baby brother, because nice, ordinary law-abiding people like my parents don’t get murdered in their own homes.

  Chapter 6

  Since that night, something has been niggling away at me. It’s that way you get when you’re at a pub quiz and you know the answer to a tricky question nobody else knows. It’s on the tip of your tongue, but no matter how hard you concentrate on trying to get your brain to dredge it up from the murky depths, you can’t quite latch on to it, so it floats away.

  After they’d humiliated me, made me wish I was dead, one of them stabbed me in the stomach. At first I thought I’d been punched until I gazed down and saw the hilt of the knife embedded below my chest. I remember thinking that I must be hallucinating because I couldn’t feel any pain. Surely, if I’d been stabbed I’d have felt some pain.

  My first instinct was to yank out the knife, but my arms were tied so tightly behind my back they’d lost all circulation; dead arms for a dead girl. Inside my head, there was a manic laugh.

  Unable to move, all I could do was gaze up at the ceiling, noticing for the first time the bits Dad had missed when he did the painting, before everything went dark. I’m blind. I’m blind.

  Panic made every wheeze a struggle. I remembered Caitlin and how in her last days in her battle against cancer, she’d gone blind as her body shut down, and I realized that was happening to me. Rather than make my panic worse, that knowledge slowed everything down and calmed me, easing the tightness in my chest. My whole body hurt, but soon there’d be no more pain.

  As I drifted off, my two attackers were talking about their plans for that night. Although they were in the room with me, their voices sounded far away, as if they were drifting in on the breeze, but I knew what they were saying should mean something…

  Dr. D had warned me that hypnotherapy might not work.

  “It’s still unproven in this country. Personally, I don’t consider hypnotherapy to be as reliable as more traditional methods. However, in your case it may prove useful.”

  His expression turned serious. “But, your conscious mind may not want to remember, as though it’s flicked a safety switch. Nothing may be able to get past that.”

  Whatever his opinion, I need to try something, because revenge is the only thing that stops me from curling up into a ball and weeping until my throat runs dry.

  Dr. Judith Bowen’s practice was in Hyndland, one of Glasgow’s richest suburbs, and she must be bona fide, because she has all these initials after her name on a brass plate on a varnished oak door.

  When I climb up the stairs and ring the bell, a young woman in a dark blue suit appears, a smile fixed on her face. I tell her who I’m here to see, and she ushers me in. She leads me to a seating area and tells me Dr. Bowen will be with me in a minute.

  Five minutes later, Dr. Bowen strides down the hall. She’s not what I expected. She’s Afro Caribbean and a big woman, and I don’t mean fat. She’s from a race of Amazons, and I’m dwarfed in her presence—me who’s five foot and three quarter inches tall in my sensible shoes. If I’d known she’d be a skyscraper, I’d have worn my stiletto-heeled boots.

  She pumps my hand as though she’s trying to get the remainder of the shower gel out of a tube as I try to match her handshake and fail.

  I follow her down the short hallway to her consulting room, taking in the luxury of the surroundings and thinking this therapy lark must pay well. My feet sink into the lush, velvety blue carpet, and I resist the temptation to go “Ah.” I want to lie down and cocoon myself in it. That’s when I notice Dr. Bowen isn’t wearing any shoes. Christ, how tall is she?

  As I sit in the plush chair Dr. Bowen indicates, I survey the room. The entire back wall is covered from ceiling to floor with books. Most of the authors and titles mean nothing to me, but I spot Jung and Freud. There’s also the book Pamela Stephenson wrote about her husband Billy Connolly, and I make a mental note to ask Dr. Bowen if he’s ever been a client before I realize she can’t tell me that.

  “Now,” says Dr. Bowen as she gracefully folds herself into her chair. “Why have you come to see me, Nancy?”

  With my nails digging into the palm of my hand, I tell her about what happened to me. She makes no comment as I speak.

  When I mention Dr. Drinkell’s recommendation, she’s happy.

  “That was kind of him, as I know he’s quite skeptical about hypnotherapy. Many psychiatrists and psychologists share that skepticism. I used to be one of them until I delved deeper into it. What I found was quite remarkable.”

  Listening to her speak is like slipping into a warm bath. She turns her head and gazes out the window. There’s woodland behind her office. When I was a child, one of my hobbies was climbing trees. One year, Dad built Shug and me a tree house in the woods near our house. We used to have picnics there. Cartons of orange juice and sandwiches Mum always cut into triangles.

  The doctor follows my gaze. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

  I nod, but I’m no longer admiring the view, I’m listening to a bird singing outside the window. There’s something familiar about it. The thought hovers above my head like a balloon, and then drifts higher and higher until it’s out of reach and I’m left trying to clutch at the strings.

  “Nancy, are you all right?” Dr. Bowen’s concerned voice drags me back to the present.

  We talk some more about how I’m feeling and coping with being out of hospital, as well as discussing hypnosis, which she assures me is perfectly safe.

  “So, I won’t end up thinking I’m a chicken and clucking?”

  A stony look makes me realize I’ve said the wrong thing. Maybe she thinks I’m being a bit cheeky, but I had to ask. A few years back, I’d gone with some workmates to a hypnosis show, and one of the group who’d gone onstage went home still thinking they were a clockwork toy.

  When Dr. Bowen’s eyes drift up to the clock, I notice our forty minutes are up.

  “Let’s leave it here for today.”

  What? She hasn’t even hypnotized me.

  Dr. Bowen picks up a leaflet from the pile on her desk and holds it out for me. “Before I put any of my patients under, I ask them to read this. It explains how the process works and answers so many questions.”

  I accept the leaflet and thank her. “‘Do you think you’ll be able to help me?”

  If anyone needs to believe hypnotherapy can unlock the secrets in my brain, it’s me, but I don’t want to waste my time, because if
this doesn’t work, I need to find another way. Too much time has passed since that night, and in all that time my parents’ killers have been free men. They should have killed me that night too, but they were sloppy, if the knife had gone one inch the other way, I’d be dead by now.

  “Hypnosis doesn’t work for everybody,” Dr. Bowen tells me as she leads me down the hall.

  I bite back the urge to say I don’t care about anybody else as long as it works for me.

  Chapter 7

  The day after my session with Dr. Bowen, I wake up alone, my pillows damp with tears. Sadness hits me in waves, and I’m blubbing away.

  I used to have great parents and a good job in a graphic design firm that kept promoting me in spite of my efforts to coast by. My boyfriend was considered “a catch,” and we lived in a fashionable area where we were neighbors with artists, writers, and gay couples in matching sweaters and corduroy trousers going through the adoption process.

  Now what did I have?

  My mum’s sister who used to stick pins in her when my gran wasn’t looking. She’d visited me in hospital once, wrinkled her nose in disgust, screeching about how she can’t handle this as she flounced out of the room in a haze of smoker’s perfume. Handle what? Not being tortured, murdered, or raped? Unbelievable. The one time in my life that I needed her and she was too busy thinking of herself.

  What else did I have?

  A cheating swine of an ex, swanning around town with a girl who thought undying love and future happiness could be secured by a boob job, bottle-blonde hair, and cheap and nasty hair extensions, and who, so far, had been proven right? Even my friends had deserted me, including Shelley who’d been like my twin since we’d been sent to the headmaster’s office because our skirts were—shock, horror—an inch above the knee.

  “You need to move on,” she’d told me when I’d outlined my plan for revenge. “Don’t let what happened destroy you, or get you on the wrong side of the law.”

  She’d insisted she was thinking of me, but I knew she was more interested in things getting back to “normal.” Of me being the pal who was always available whenever she needed a babysitter or someone to moan to about her husband’s numerous shortcomings.

  All I had left now was simmering resentment and unadulterated hatred for the men who’d ruined my life and the person who’d paid them to do it.

  There was nothing I could do to get my attackers now—I needed to find them first—but I did have keys to backstabbing Donna Marie’s place. She’d asked me to keep a spare set in case she was ever locked out as I lived nearer to her than her other friends, and she hadn’t asked for them back. No doubt she was too busy batting her ridiculously long eyelashes at my boyfriend to remember that I had them.

  Stopping short of doing a Lorena Bobbitt, there was nothing I could do to them to give them even a taster of the pain they’d caused me. Mutual friends told me they’d been seeing each other behind my back even before I was attacked. Clean-freak Michael was a dirty rotten cheat.

  Whilst he’d been nagging away at me for not putting placemats down on his blessed coffee table, he hadn’t been as OCD-ish when it came to debasing our bed (the one item of furniture we’d bought together) by shagging that filthy little slapper in it. Once I’d thought I’d smelt tobacco on the sheets, but he’d convinced me I was imagining it because neither of us smoked. That bitch had once confided in me with a grin that she enjoyed a fly cigarette after sex.

  You’d think having a girlfriend who’d almost died would have brought Michael to his senses and made him realize what he could have lost, but no, he’d sold his place and moved into that bitch’s red-bricked townhouse near the Kelvingrove Art Gallery. Her gran had left it to her favorite granddaughter in her will. There was no way she could have afforded it on her salary as a receptionist at a doctor’s surgery, yet she was always bragging about what a wonderful place she lived in at a time when property prices had skyrocketed in Glasgow and even parking spaces were going for big money.

  It’s ten o’clock when I get there. I’d timed it so they’d both be at work, but I still take the precaution of ringing the doorbell. I’ve no idea what I’ll say if one of them appears, but I’m getting good at this lying lark and thinking on my feet.

  Nobody answers. No curtains twitch, either, so I knock a few times. Still no answer. Satisfied that they’re out, I use my key and let myself in. As I step over the few items of mail, I call out their names but get no reply.

  Satisfied I’m alone, I head for the living room. My eyes are drawn to Michael’s table. It shouldn’t surprise me that it’s here, but seeing his pride and joy there makes me feel like I’ve been kicked in the stomach. He’s set up home with her. Of course I knew that, but now confronted by the evidence, there’s no longer any room for denial. He didn’t want me anymore.

  Up until this moment, I thought I’d accepted it. Come to terms with being dumped. But I hadn’t. My blood boils when I catch sight of a few of my DVD box sets in amongst a pile beside the plasma TV. The bastard had my Thelma and Louise. There’s a telltale scratch on the cover. And my copies of The Office are there. He bought me it one Christmas and wrote, “We’re Jim and Pam.”

  When he wasn’t wound up so tight or bedding my so-called friend, Michael had been a good boyfriend. How could he abandon me when I needed him most? What kind of person does that? And more importantly, what kind of woman would be stupid enough to revolve her life around a creep like that? God help Donna Marie if she got ill or was attacked, she’d get no understanding from Mikey Boy. He’d probably dump her for the girl he was probably already shagging.

  Tears streak my vision, and I hate myself for it. I’d though Michael was a closed book and I had better things to cry over.

  When I detect movement behind me, I jump, thinking they’d come back and I hadn’t heard them.

  The breath I’d been holding in was released as the lithe form of Donna Marie’s cat, Orpheus, slunk into view. My heart rate returns to normal as I bend down to pet him. Orpheus lifts his head and tail in the air and struts past me. Even cats are turning their backs on me now.

  Getting revenge on Michael and Donna Marie had never been at the top of my list of priorities—when I’d pushed my emotions aside and thought about it, her being lumbered with my neat-freak ex was punishment enough for her backstabbing—but now I’m here, in their house, I knew I needed to do something.

  With little time to plan and the trickiness of getting a sheep’s head, I’d come up with a prank that was childish but effective. Donning a pair of rubber gloves I’d brought with me, I smear the pristine white walls and Michael’s coffee table with the jars of Marmite I find in the cupboards—Michael loves the stuff, whilst I’ve always hated it. I don’t stop until every available white surface is covered in the brown stuff. Then I do the same to the sheets on the bed, making sure to pull the duvet up so they won’t notice it before they climb into bed. By then, it’d be too late.

  Once I was finished, I survey my handiwork with a satisfied grin, picturing their horrified faces when they came home and thought they’d been victims of a dirty protest. Talking about who could have done this.

  Once I’m back in the car, I remove my black wig and hide it under the seat, then I drive off with the grin still on my face.

  Chapter 8

  “I bet you like touching us up, dyke bitch.”

  The speaker is what we call a “half heid” in Glasgow, half of her hair dyed blonde so the ponytail that came through the baseball cap she’d always wear was that color. It was cheaper to maintain that way. What should have been a pretty face is scrunched up like a discarded candy packet, and her baby bump is showcased by a way too small “Baby Mamma” T-shirt that doesn’t cover any skin below her bellybutton.

  The prison guard rolls her woe-begotten eyes and sighs. No doubt, she was wishing she had a more pleasurable job, like being Naomi Campbell’s personal assistant or working as a peace envoy in the Middle East.

  When I spot S
hug hunched over the table, I get a shock. Prison food never did agree with him, but this was more than that. He’d gotten skinnier since the last I’d seen him, and his prison uniform hangs off his skinny frame. He used to have a quick smile, but today it’s barely a flicker as I sit down opposite him; it’s been replaced by a nervous twitch at the side of his mouth. When he places his bony hands on the table, his nails are bitten down to the quick, and there are small bits of dried blood where he’s been worrying the cuticles.

  “Hi, sis. It’s good to see you.”

  He’s twitching and gazing past me, looking at the other tables. I can’t decide whether he’s expecting to see someone else or he’s worried we’re being watched.

  The doors of the visitors’ room are now closed, and the woman from earlier is standing guard, looking suitably officious. There are another three guards on duty.

  “How are you doing, Shug?”

  He relaxes. “Okay, I guess. You’ve to watch when you bend down for the soap, and this guy called Bubba wants me to wear some lipstick and call me Kylie. Apart from that, this place is a hotel. Nae worries. Four square meals a day and no bills.”

  No matter the circumstances, Shug has always been able to make me laugh. Maybe that’s why I’ve never give up on him; he was still my cheeky wee brother, whatever he’d done.

  I lean over the table, not close enough to worry the guards on the lookout for contraband—any suggestion something’s been passed on means a full strip-and-cavity search for the prisoner—so I can speak to him and not be overheard.

  “You know why I’m here.”

  “Aye, to see your favorite brother. Did you leave some money for me at the desk?”

  “Aye. Forty pounds. They tell me that’s the most I can pay in.”

  A wink. “Thanks. Much appreciated.”

  It’s my turn to plant my hands down on the table, bracing myself for what I’ve got to say. More practical that way.