by Zoe Sharp
“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.
The noise had brought out most of the remaining residents from the Lodge. They filed down the drive and approached cautiously across the lawn, but they had the grumbling air of a lynch mob about them. It would only take one brave one to throw the first stone, and things were going to get very nasty.
I thrust the still-quivering Ailsa onto Dave, having first carefully prised the bloodied rolling pin from her fingers. Robbed of the adrenaline that had fired her, she more or less fell into his arms. He took her weight with obvious strain.
Over the top of her head he demanded, “What the hell is going on?”
“Remember Susie Hollins?” I nudged the inert form on the ground with my boot, none too gently. “I think this is the bastard who killed her.”
Surprise and awareness leapt in his eyes.
I dropped down by the side of the man and reached for the edge of the balaclava.
“Now then, shithead, let's have a look at you,” I muttered. I yanked off the mask, to reveal a face that was horribly familiar. The silence that followed screamed at all of us.
Before I could move to block her, Ailsa had peered down over my shoulder. She let out a single wailing cry, then collapsed totally. Dave tried manfully to keep her on her feet, but he was fighting a losing battle from the outset. In the end, the best he could manage was a kind of controlled descent.
Looking back at the figure on the ground, lying bleeding and unconscious, I could understand Ailsa's reaction completely.
After all, it's not every day that you take on a terrifying masked intruder, armed with little more than a marble rolling pin, and discover that the man you've just knocked halfway into next week is your own husband . . .
***
This time, the police arrived at the Lodge much quicker than they had when Ailsa had summoned them before because we'd spotted a prowler in the garden. In fact, Tris was only just starting to come round when they rolled up with lights and sirens blazing.
We didn't get much out of him before he was bundled into the back of a police Transit, other than a single quiet apology to Ailsa.
Somehow, that made it worse.
Right up until then, I suppose I'd still been hoping that he might deny it, that there might conceivably be another reason for him to be running through his own garden, heavily disguised in a manner designed to spark panic, and confusion. In the end, I had to face it, there wasn't.
The idea was taking me some getting used to. OK, so I hadn't known Tris for more than a couple of years, but he was the last man I would have had down as a sadistic rapist and murderer.
My mind re-ran recent scenes like a video that was stuck on “play”. Memories that made my scalp break out into a sweat, and my stomach churn. It was as much as I could do to stay on my feet and functioning until the police took over.
I remembered Tris's soothing hands gliding over the skin of my back. Had he spent all the time he'd been giving me a massage wondering what it would be like to run a knife blade across my throat?
The concealed voice on the other end of the telephone the night Joy had died. I tried to match up Tris's gentle tones with the malicious spite that had hummed clearly along the wires. How could it be one of my friends who had done this?
I tried hard not to let it get to me. Not until the police had carted Tris away, and Ailsa had been given a sedative by her doctor. Dave had ducked out as soon as the emergency services had reached the scene, relieved to hand Ailsa over to the professionals. The Shelseley girls banded together to offer comfort in such a way that I felt like an outsider among them. It wasn't hard to make my own excuses, and slip away.
I rode home slowly, and with great care. It's difficult to watch where you're going when your eyes are burnt with tears.
I stopped on the way to stick another few gallons of juice into the Suzuki. The tank on the RGV is pretty small, and if you're giving it some serious beans you go onto reserve after less than a hundred miles.
I was just s
queezing the last few drops into the filler when there was the roar of a Norton pulling in alongside. I looked up to see Sam's big brown eyes crinkling at me through his open visor.
“Hi, Charlie. I thought it was you,” he said, pulling off his helmet and stuffing his scarf into it. “Didn't you get my message?”
“Yeah.” I vaguely remembered Sam's voice on the answering machine. It seemed like years ago. I hung the nozzle back into the pump and locked the filler cap back down. “Sorry, I've had a bit on my plate.”
“What could be more important than talking to me?” he demanded with an irritatingly cheeky grin.
“A friend of mine was murdered,” I dropped on him, just to watch his smile fade. I knew I wasn't being fair, but what the hell? Life's like that, and I wasn't feeling very fair right now.
He made all the usual noises of shock and commiseration, but his eyes had that twitchy look of someone searching wildly for a suitable change of subject. He opened his mouth, but only succeeded in changing feet. “So, what happened to that lap-top, then?”
As he spoke it suddenly occurred to me that it was probably only Terry’s ignorance of Sam’s full name and home location that had prevented my unwanted visitors from paying him a nocturnal visit as well. No doubt they would have got round to forcibly extracting that information from me, if I’d given them the chance. “The computer was nicked when my place was turned over at the weekend.” I said flatly.
He looked stricken. I was almost beginning to feel sorry for him. “Jeez, Charlie, I’m sorry. And about your friend. What happened?”
I gave him a brief précis of how Joy had met her death as he filled up the Norton’s tank. He took it in pale silence, and we went in to pay together. There were a couple of people in front of us, dithering with chequebooks. The girl behind the counter looked hard-faced and bored.
As I stood there in the queue, I knew I still hadn’t really taken it in that Tris, my friend, was a cold-blooded murderer. That he was responsible for three vicious crimes. I couldn’t begin to understand what had driven him to do it.
I idly watched another car pull up to the pumps, catching the monochrome echo of it on the security monitor behind the cashier’s head. Sam must have been following my gaze.
“It’s a shame there weren’t any closed circuit cameras at that Shelseley place where you teach,” he said. “They might have spotted who did it.”
“Oh, we know who did it, and they’ve got him,” I said automatically as I stepped forwards to pay.
I waited while Sam handed over the money for his own fill-up, then we walked back to the bikes.
When I’d said the words, it all sounded so cut and dried, but somewhere in the dark recesses of my brain there was a stirring of unease, of apprehension.
There was still a connection with the lap-top Terry had given me that I hadn’t figured out yet. Otherwise, how had my voice changer got from the flat on the night of the burglary, and into Tris’s hands? And where did Angelo fit in to all this?
Something wasn’t finished, wasn’t over, but I was damned if I could put my finger on exactly what it was.
***
I pottered the rest of the way through the dark and busy city streets and down onto the quay. I was surprised when I got back to the flat to find Marc's sleek BMW waiting outside. I don't know how long he'd been there, but he was still sitting in the driver's seat when I arrived.
As I parked the bike up, he climbed out, leisurely, pulling on a superb long wool overcoat against the bitter wind.
“Hi,” he said. “Are you OK?”
I found myself smiling as I took off my helmet. “Yeah,” I replied, unsettled to find how pleased I was to see him. He was slipping under my skin. I wasn't sure if that was really where I wanted him.
Heedless of the dirty weather, he stood waiting for me to pull the cover over the Suzuki, then followed me up the stairs.
I bunged the coffee machine on, and went to change into some dry clothes. Waterproofs over the top of leathers make you look like the Michelin man and rustle so alarmingly when you walk that you have to resist the tendency to raise your voice to be heard over the noise.
When I came back, having hastily thrown on some clean jeans and a shirt, Marc was standing by one of the windows, staring out across the river. Everyone seems to be fascinated by the view. I must admit it was one of the things I most liked about the flat when I moved in.
He offered to take me out for dinner, but I passed on that one. I didn't feel much like eating out. In the end I rang one of the local Indian takeaways and they brought round chunky lamb tikka and chicken dupiaza with sweet moist peshwari naan bread and crisp poppadums.
I'd only seen Marc on his terms, as lord of the New Adelphi, and in his up-market hotel suite. It was a nice surprise to find that he could still slum it. He lost the overcoat and his suit jacket in short order and we sat on cushions on the floor to demolish the food, mopping up with bits of naan bread and fingers.
“I like watching you eat,” he said at last. “You don't order the most expensive thing on the menu and then make a pretence of picking at it.”
I eyed him over the last piece of poppadum. He didn't get to it fast enough. “You've been going out with the wrong women,” I said, grinning as I used it to scoop up the last of the mint raita.
He smiled at me for a moment, then his expression sobered. “You're looking better than I expected,” he remarked, leaning back against the arm of the sofa with his head tilted to one side, considering. “It's not every girl who could go through what you've had to over the last few days and come out of it looking so unruffled.”
I shrugged. “You either cope or you give in. I don't like to lose.”
“I don't see you as the losing type,” he said, smiling wryly. “You're quite a fighter, Charlie Fox.”
“I wasn't always,” I said suddenly, needing to tell him. “I was a victim once. I swore nobody would ever make me feel that way again.”
He frowned. “But you were still attacked.”
I gave him a level stare, told him, “It's a state of mind.”
I left him to ponder that one while I fetched us both a coffee. When I came back he'd cleared the debris of the meal into the cardboard box they'd delivered it in, and put it by the door to take out. Not bad – house-trained as well.
He smiled lazily at me from the sofa and motioned for me to sit in front of him, with my back to his legs. When I complied he began to knead the knots out of my shoulders. Those long, agile fingers were merciless, but the results felt wonderful. I was aware of the tension slowly loosening up, like ice defrosting from a long-neglected freezer.
Then, in the midst of it, I had a vision of Tris again, rubbing scented oil into my skin with hands that had robbed two women of their lives, and raped and beaten a third.
I smelled Joy's blood again, snapping upright and jerking away from Marc's hands.
“Calm down, Charlie,” he said. “What do you think I'm going to do to you?”
I gave him an apologetic smile as I twisted to face him. “Sorry. I'm still a bit jumpy.”
He smiled also. “Well, at least you didn't punch me this time.” He smoothed a strand of my hair away from my face. “You need to relax more.”
“I can't afford to,” I said. I couldn't afford to let my guard down, even for a moment. It seemed that I'd dipped out of getting my father's medical assistance, but I still needed to find that link between Terry's murder and the attacks on the women. And then between those and the New Adelphi Club . . .
“Would it help to talk about it?” Marc's voice broke into my thoughts.
I took a deep breath, then launched straight in. Once I'd started, it was difficult to stop. It all just came tumbling out like I'd opened the door on a precariously over-stuffed cupboard.
I told him the story right from the start, all about Terry coming round with the lap-top, and how I'd agreed to help him get into it so I could find out if it was the one Marc had mentioned. I only l
eft out my suspicion that Terry had known about drugs at the club. Whenever I'd brought that subject up in the past, Marc had really gone off at the deep end. I carefully skirted round Sam's role in the proceedings too, unwilling to expose him to any further danger.
As it was, Marc listened with a face that might as well have been cut from stone. When I got as far as relating the fact that my voice changer had seemingly disappeared from the flat during the robbery, then apparently turned up again in the hands of Joy's killer, he jumped up and moved over to the window.
“Are you sure it's the same device as the one that was taken from here?” he demanded.
“Not absolutely,” I admitted, “but they aren't exactly commonplace, and mine has definitely gone. Apart from the lap-top, it was the only thing those two jokers took.” I spread my hands, indicating the debris around us that I'd only partly finished clearing. “They simply smashed up everything else.”
“And who did Terry say he got that computer from?”
I shrugged. “He just said he'd been debt collecting at the club, but he didn't mention any names.”
Marc looked thoughtful. “The only lap-top of that type that's gone missing went weeks ago, and I've already sacked the culprits, or thought I had, at any rate,” he said, letting out an annoyed breath. “I don't suppose you got any inklings from this Terry character who it might have been?”
I thought of Terry's coded client book, but I wasn't quite ready to turn that over to Marc. Not just yet.
“Terry had quite a few video customers among the staff at the New Adelphi who weren't exactly hiring out The Little Mermaid,” I said, and saw from his face that I didn't need to explain any further than that. “I think one of the people who owed him a bucket of money was Angelo.”
For a moment Marc stared out into the darkness with no expression on his face, but the way he held his body stiff spoke volumes about the anger, bubbling away just beneath the surface.
“Angelo!” he said at last, and his voice was quiet, as though he was speaking to himself more than to me. “He was the one who pointed the finger at the lads I sacked. If I'd known he was the one I would have . . .”