by Zoe Sharp
Fortunately, or unfortunately, it was my father who answered the call.
“Good evening,” he said, giving his number clearly and precisely. I knew I should tell him it was bad practice to do that, but at the same time I knew I wouldn't bother.
“Hi, it's me,” I said.
There was the fraction of a pause. This really was a very bad idea. “Charlotte,” he said neutrally. “It's nice to hear from you. Are you keeping well?”
“I'm fine. No, that's not true, I'm not fine,” I said crossly. The gulf between us seemed suddenly wider than the Grand Canyon. I had no idea how to begin going about crossing it.
“I'm sorry to hear that,” he said. “What seems to be the matter?”
I sighed. I hoped he showed more warmth to his patients, but I wouldn't bet on it.
I swallowed. “I need your help,” I said. God, it was difficult to say.
There was a longer pause this time. “In what way?” he asked cautiously. Not, yes of course. Not, anything I can do. Not, you only have to ask, darling . . .
“There've been three murders in Lancaster over the last few weeks,” I said, forcing myself to speak quickly in case I changed my mind. “Two of them are rape murders of women that are definitely connected, but the third was a stabbing of a man. I think there's a link between all three. The police don't. I need to know if there's any forensic evidence that relates them.”
I rushed on, listing the names before he had a chance to refuse. When I'd finished I held my breath, tense, waiting. It seemed to take him a long time to speak again.
“May I ask what makes you think I might be able to help?” His voice sounded cold over the phone line. It wasn't quite the response I'd been hoping for.
The tension snapped. “Of course you could help – if you wanted to!” I cried. “How long were you a consultant at Lancaster hospital for heaven's sake – ten years? You should know everyone there, or didn't you ever speak to the pathology department?”
He chose not to answer that one, asking instead, “Don't you think the police are perfectly capable of handling something like this without your somewhat amateur interference?”
“Probably,” I snapped. “In the meantime someone's beaten me up, trashed my flat, and threatened to cut my throat. I'm sorry if that doesn't mean anything to you!” I gave a laugh, more of a half-hysterical yelp. “Of course, how silly of me, I was probably asking for it, wasn't I?”
I slammed the phone down, staring at the pattern of the fabric on the sofa for a few moments, determined not to cry.
He'd never been like other fathers, but I should be used to that by now. As a teenager I'd always been quite proud of the fact that he hadn't embarrassed me with public shows of emotion like the other kids' dads. That he hadn't tried dancing at the school disco. Hadn't make a fool of himself on sports day.
I shook my head to clear my vision of the tears that had been threatening dangerously to spill over. I grabbed my helmet again and moved to the door. I didn't care about the filthy weather. I just needed to get out there and ride. To give the bike some pain, get it out of my system.
Most of all, I needed to get away from the silent telephone. To escape from the fact that I'd just dropped an emotional bombshell on my father. And it didn't seem to have gone off.
Nineteen
Dave was standing in front of me with both his hands clasped round my throat and, in my opinion, he was putting a bit too much gusto into pretending to strangle me.
“I can only show you roughly the sort of things I normally teach,” I told him. “Most of my students won't be as physically strong as their opponent. They have to be a bit more scientific because half the time brute force just won't cut it. See?”
I demonstrated by tugging at his wrists. All I succeeded in doing was making him tighten his grip round my windpipe. Throwing him a sideways glance I said, “This will be the shortest set of lessons in history if you choke me to death on the first day.”
He slackened off slightly with an apologetic half-smile, but was obviously happy that he'd proved his point. That the only reason I wasn't getting hurt was because he was being gentle, not through any level of skill on my part. Typical macho bullshit.
We were alone in the ballroom at Shelseley Lodge. I hadn't particularly wanted to teach Dave at the flat, and he claimed his own place was so small that swung cats left with a blinding headache.
The Lodge had seemed a logical compromise, and Ailsa had put forward no objections. The police had finished combing their way through the gardens, she told me, although the area where Joy had fallen was still fenced off with fluttering yellow incident tape.
I'd spent a little time with Ailsa before Dave had shown up, seeing if she could think of any possible suspects. There were plenty of women who'd passed through Ailsa's care with violent and unpredictable men in their lives, but no one specific sprang to mind.
“Besides, the police already asked me all this, love,” she said, giving me a tired smile. “I had some hawk-like Superintendent round yesterday, asking endless questions.”
I didn't like to press her further. She had enough problems of her own to worry about. When I'd arrived there were a couple of cars in the driveway being loaded with possessions, as more of the Lodge's residents moved out.
The day had been lit by thin pale sunshine and now the light level was falling fast. I had to flick on the overhead lights before Dave and I could continue.
Now, I re-focused with an effort. “OK,” I told him, “your priority here is to get away very quickly. It takes remarkably little time to be strangled. You can't afford to waste it.”
I suppose I cheated a bit, really. I'd left my hands on his wrists and as I spoke I went for two pressure points on the back of his right hand. A quick twist and I'd not only broken his grip, but I'd put a solid lock onto his wrist and started taking him down with it.
Dave could have stayed upright, if he'd been really determined, but it would have hurt him to do so. The only way to escape the pain was to roll with it. When I let go he favoured me with a rueful smile and climbed to his feet again.
“Nice one,” he allowed grudgingly. “Can I try that on you this time?”
I nodded and put my hands round his throat. He was wearing another of those dreadful nylon jackets, but today it was over a lime green polo-necked jumper with a designer label stitched into the collar. I remembered the bruising from his altercation with Marc and tried not to clutch him too tightly.
I'd found Marc's hands much more careful when they were touching my body. And dextrous.
I brought myself back on track with some difficulty and explained the technique to Dave. Finding the right pressure points isn't easy. Most people require practice to get it right, but Dave picked them up more or less straight away.
Next thing I knew I was hitting the crashmat in a half-roll. As I came back to my feet, I found him watching me with a crafty grin on his face.
“You've done this before,” I said accusingly.
He looked suddenly innocent. “I've just always been a quick learner.”
Before I could answer there was a tentative knock on the already open door to the ballroom. I turned to see Nina hovering from one foot to the other on the threshold.
“Hi,” I said, giving her an encouraging smile. “Come on in.”
“Oh.” After some hesitation, she advanced further. She was wearing a long knitted skirt and ugly shoes that seemed to be the zenith of current fashion. I would have broken both my ankles the first time I tried to walk down a flight of stairs in them. “I don't want to disturb you,” she said. “I just came to say goodbye, that's all.”
“You're leaving?” I tried to sound surprised, but I don't think I could really raise it.
She nodded, not quite meeting my eyes. She flicked a nervous glance in Dave's direction. He caught it, and casually wandered off to one of the French windows in apparent contemplation of the rapidly darkening garden. I watched some of the tension seep out of Nina'
s body as he moved away, and was grateful for his unexpected sensitivity.
“I wanted to say thank you as well,” she said.
“What for?”
“Well, for the other night.” Edgy, she checked that Dave was far enough away not to be obviously listening in. “You went out to see if you could find him – you know, th-the man I saw.” She was wearing a Celtic design silver ring on one hand, and was twisting it round and round until I thought she'd screw the end of her finger off.
“I didn't know, you see, not until Ailsa told me – what h-happened to you,” she said quickly, when I still looked nonplussed. “But you went out anyway, into the dark. I-I don't know how you could bear to do it.” She shrugged, almost helplessly. “I hope one day I'll be able to do that, too.”
“You will,” I said, and meant it. “If you want to, you will.”
She seemed about to say more, but a middle-aged couple appeared in the entrance to the ballroom and made throat-clearing noises. They were too well-dressed, too well-fed, to ever look comfortable in their present surroundings, and by the looks of it they hadn't tried too hard.
“Nina,” the woman said, “we need to go, darling, if we're going to miss the worst of the traffic.” There was a trace of strain in her voice, like the owner of a runaway dog forced to pick out their prized pedigree hound from among the mongrels and strays of the city pound.
“OK, Mummy,” Nina said over her shoulder. She turned back, gave me a smile that hinted at the sunny teenager she used to be, and impulsively hugged me. Her thin arms were fleetingly tight around my shoulders. “Thank you,” she said, breathless, then she was scurrying away across the wooden floor.
Her parents both put a protective arm around their daughter as she reached them, and their brief stare in my direction was cold to the point of hostile. I ignored them.
“Take care of yourself, Nina,” I said, giving her a final wave.
When they'd gone, I turned to find Dave watching me with curious and calculating eyes.
“What happened to her?” he asked, nodding towards the empty doorway.
“She trusted someone who wasn't to be trusted,” I said shortly. “Now, are you here to talk, or fight?”
I spent the next half an hour or so running through various moves with Dave that should get him out of a few potentially nasty situations. By the time we'd finished both Dave and I were sweating and breathless. I was down to a T-shirt and Dave had lost the jacket, but he must have been regretting the choice of jumper, bruises or no bruises.
To finish, we did a brief recap. I quickly ran through each of the moves again, but there was really no need. He'd got the hang of them.
Afterwards, he helped me drag the crashmats back over to their corner and stand them up against the wall. I pulled my sweatshirt on again, and Dave shrugged back into his jacket. He dug into a pocket and handed over the amount of cash we'd agreed on for the first of his lessons. I accepted without demur. I think I'd earned my money.
It wasn't until we'd moved out of the ballroom and along into the hallway that Dave voiced the question that had probably been on his mind for a while.
“D'you really believe that the stuff you teach these young lasses can actually save them?” he said. He clearly had Nina in mind, but I immediately thought of Joy. It took me a moment to answer.
We'd covered knife attacks in the classes Joy had attended. She knew the theory. She should have been more than capable of fending off her attacker, disarming and disabling him.
Should have been.
But wasn't.
And now she was dead. Just thinking about it twisted a knife in my own side. Joy had paid a mammoth price for not doing her homework. Still, I couldn't help wondering about it. Were her reflexes against a surprise attack really so poor that she'd let a stranger, whoever he was, get close enough to her to pull out a knife and slash her with it? Surely not.
I hedged. “If I didn't believe it, I wouldn't be doing it.”
“Don't you think, though, that people misjudge you at the outset, like those two kids at the club last week, and you rely on that element of surprise too much?” he asked. “OK, so you're fine against someone with comparatively little skill, who's not expecting a counter-attack, but against a stronger opponent, one who knows what he's doing, no way.” He shook his head, grinned at me. “I mean, come on, Foxy. No woman could ever hope to beat a man when their abilities are well matched.”
By woman he meant a smaller, lighter, weaker adversary. I thought of all the martial arts gurus whose work I'd studied. Hardly any were six-foot blokes. They were mostly short in stature, quick and nimble. I'd seen them wipe out bigger, heavier challengers without raising their pulse rate enough to register on an electrocardiogram.
“I'd have to disagree,” I said.
Dave just grinned again as he zipped up his jacket, dug in the pocket for his car keys. “Well, you would say that, wouldn't you?”
I was just about to argue, when the door to Tris and Ailsa's sitting room was flung open, and the lady of the house came galloping out. Grasped in her upraised right hand was a heavy rolling pin with wooden handles and a white marble centre.
“Quick, quick!” she yelled. “I've just seen him, from the kitchen window. He's heading for the front!”
I didn't stop and ask who she meant. I didn't need to.
Before Ailsa had even reached us, I'd spun round and was already running for the open front door. I took the entire flight of steps in one reckless bound, then skidded and nearly lost my footing on the mossy flags at the bottom as a result.
As I fought to regain my balance, cursing, a figure came bolting along the side of the house. Even with the loose gravel underfoot, he was running like an Olympic sprinter, arms working furiously to propel him forwards in a desperate rush.
He came level with the front steps, passing within about twenty feet of me, and moving fast. He must have caught the flurry of movement, though, because he turned his head and looked straight into my eyes.
It almost seemed like everything moved forwards into slow motion. I had time to create a mental record of the dark trousers and ribbed sweater, the black ski mask covering his features. Only the eyes stood out, whites gleaming.
The sudden, stark memory of the two masked men who'd broken into the flat materialised like a phantom, and almost sent me reeling. It was only the thundering approach of Ailsa, with Dave following on, that jarred me into action.
I set off like a hare across the lawn on a diagonal intercept course. The grass was easier to run on. Anger gave me speed. I didn't care that the man was most likely carrying a knife big enough and sharp enough to cut my throat. I didn't care that he'd already proved beyond any shred of doubt how prepared and how capable he was of using it. Stupid, really.
The man almost made it out of the gateway, but at the bottom of the drive the gravel was at its most rutted. Two deep troughs had been gouged out by the constant wheel tracks of the cars turning between the gateposts.
He caught his foot on the crest of one, stumbled with his arms outstretched, and nearly went headlong. The streetlight from the road outside was shining down onto him. In the yellowed glow I saw the fingers of his gloved hands splay outwards. Open.
Empty.
That was all it took. In the next moment I'd taken a final stride forwards, and leapt.
I hit him with the point of my right shoulder just an inch or so below the small of his back, and grabbed. He went down with a violent whumph, like he'd been hit by a fridge.
The force of the impact drove us skittering along the drive for another ten feet or so after we'd hit on the ground. The man was face-down in the gravel, floundering. Of the two of us, I reckon I probably had the easier ride.
We were half out onto the pavement itself by the time we slithered to a messy halt. The man brought his elbow back sharply, more wild than scientific, but it was enough to throw me off his back.
I landed hard, but scrambled up instantly, screwing round into a
crouch. The man was on his knees, taking longer to rise. His mask and the front of his jumper were torn and bloody. Frantic, I checked his hands again, and readied myself to strike.
Then, a whirling figure entered stage right at a dead run and unfurled a sweeping upward blow with the rolling pin that snapped the man's head sideways, blood spraying. It would have made an easy six over the boundary, had the head not been still firmly attached at the neck. If the England cricket team selectors had been there, Ailsa would have been capped on the spot.
The man's arms flapped as his body twisted, then he slowly collapsed backwards onto the pavement behind him. I had to grab Ailsa's arm to stop her going in for the kill. She was trembling violently all over, and screaming abuse so tangled it was almost totally incoherent.