by Jill McGown
The deal was that Rob had Ginny for as long as he wanted, any morning he wanted, which was usually a couple of times a week. In return, Lennie drove his cab during the day, keeping one third of the takings. Rob paid for the cab’s upkeep, diesel, insurance, all the rest. At first, he’d wanted Ginny in the evenings, but Lennie had put his foot down about that. Evening was her busy time; he wasn’t having her lose custom over the deal.
Mornings, he’d said, or no deal. Ginny could have killed him, but it was business, and he’d told her to stay out of it.
Now, though, it was the waste of his own time that he resented; Rob’s cab was a goldmine. He got a third of everything on the clock, and all of everything that wasn’t. You could do deals all the time—people got a bargain, and he got the cash. Stansfield people took taxis everywhere—they reckoned there were more taxis per head there than anywhere outside London.
There were other perks, too. The punters liked having a cab to pick them up, and Ginny had a small but growing regular clientele. And Stansfield had a big new conference center and hotel; visiting businessmen got cabs all the time after their high-powered lunches—often boozed up, always flush, and sometimes looking for a bit of action to while away the afternoon. Lennie knew where all the illicit gambling went on, and the other sort of action he could provide for them, with a door-to-door service into the bargain.
Ginny was the best move he’d ever made. He’d got talking to her after that business with Drummond, and he’d taken her in hand. Her main asset had been that she looked way below the age of consent, and that effect had been lost when she had slapped on makeup and wiggled about on high heels with her matchstick legs, so he’d put a stop to that. She was skin and bone, and the usual tarty clobber didn’t make her look any better. Small, skinny—he could still pass her off as fourteen in a curtained room, and charge through the nose for her, which was what he did, when he got a customer that wanted that sort of thing. And she was experienced, unlike Rosa, who had taken the huff, and jacked it in after a couple of months.
He’d married Ginny six months ago when they’d moved into this place. That still surprised him a bit; he’d told his mates down the snooker club that it was so they couldn’t make her give evidence against him. It got a laugh. But she’d wanted all that. The Mr. and Mrs. bit. So why not?
She was a good kid. She kept him in food and cigarettes, and he kept her out of trouble. And she had got him the cab, which was worth its weight in gold. So it wouldn’t do to upset Rob, but it was after ten, and he’d been up there an hour.
Jarvis was paying as much for her, if he did but know it, as he would for a high-class call girl, but not if Lennie couldn’t get the cab on the road. He wished the bastard would hurry up with her.
Ginny was on the floor, dizzy, gulping precious air, and from somewhere far away, she could hear Rob’s voice.
“If you’re going to use a pistol for protection, you should learn how it works,” he said, sounding as though nothing had happened at all.
She lay breathing heavily, her eyes closed, the blood singing in her ears, her heart pounding so hard it hurt. “Bloody thing doesn’t work,” she gasped, her voice hoarse. “That’s why they gave it away.”
“Sit up,” he said.
She opened her eyes and saw him crouching beside her, holding the gun loosely in his hand. Reluctantly, she sat up.
He pointed to something on the left of the gun. “This,” he said, “is the safety catch. It was on.” He slid it away from him, and pointed the gun up at the dressing table. “If I were to pull the trigger now, it would work, believe me,” he said. “That mirror would be history.” He slid the catch back again, and got to his feet. “Stand up,” he said.
“I can’t.” Her knees were still like jelly; her chest was still heaving. She shook her head. “I can’t.”
“You can,” he said.
He still had the gun, so once again she did as she was told, and stood on shaking legs.
“Hold it in both hands, with your finger on the trigger,” he said, handing it to her. “Go on,” he urged, when she hesitated. “It’s quite safe as long as the catch is on.”
She looked at him. “What if the catch had been broken or something?” she said. “When you made me pull the trigger?”
“The way that gun was waving about, you’d have been lucky to hit the ceiling.”
Ginny didn’t say anything. She tried to do what he’d said with the gun, but there seemed to be too much hand and too little gun.
“Like this,” he said, standing behind her, putting his arms around her, down her arms, his hands over hers, directing their position on the gun. “You always hold it with both hands. That steadies it, helps you cope with the kick. Hold it away from you and toward your target,” he said.
He extended her arms further than they wanted to go, his own being longer, pointing the gun at their entwined reflection in the mirror. “And remember two things,” he said. “One—if you’re not used to handguns, never try to hit anyone or anything that’s any more than three feet away from you, or you’ll miss, and two—never point a gun at anyone unless you intend to use it.”
“You would have done it,” she said. “Wouldn’t you? If I hadn’t tried to pull the trigger. You would have strangled me.”
“You wouldn’t have let me,” he said. He looked back at her reflection. “Self-preservation, Ginny—it’s the strongest instinct there is. You learn that much in the army, if nothing else.”
“You were in the army?” He had never talked to her about himself; never talked to her at all, really. Had never called her Ginny before. But if she had thought that that moment of friendliness had changed the way he felt about her, she was wrong.
“Whores don’t ask questions,” he said. And then he just stood there, not looking at her, not looking at anything. Forever.
“Let me go, Rob,” she said eventually, when her arms had started to quiver. She looked at him in the mirror, at his eyes, far away, and she knew he hadn’t even heard her. And they stayed like that, like a double statue, his arms bent, but hers outstretched. “My arms hurt,” she said, after a while, but he ignored her. Then, in desperation, almost in tears, as her arms ached for relief, “Let me go, Rob, please.” But he still stayed there, for so long that she would have sworn he’d forgotten she was there, except that something was making him hard again.
A firework cracked outside the house, and his eyes snapped back to hers. He released her arms, and turned her to face him as the gun fell from her hands, throwing her back against the dressing table, scattering the stuff on top of it as he pushed into her.
“I’m not supposed to do it without a condom,” she said belatedly, anxiously, convinced that Lennie could practically hear it if she did. “Don’t tell Lennie.” He’d skin her alive if he found out.
Ginny didn’t like having sex with anyone but Lennie—and even then, it was the time before and after the sex that she really enjoyed, the bits you missed out on with the punters. But she hated it with Rob, because he hated doing it with her. He couldn’t do it with his wife, so he did it with her, but he hated it, and so did she. Twice a week, first thing in the morning. She had tried to argue about that, but Lennie had agreed to it, and she was stuck with it, because Lennie reckoned they made more out of his deal with Rob than they did out of all the other punters put together.
She closed her eyes like a child, so it wasn’t really happening. But it was hard to convince herself of that as the back of her head was being bumped regularly and uncomfortably against the mirror.
He didn’t speak when he’d finished. He pulled on his pants and jeans, and at last, he had left, and taken Lennie with him.
Ginny tidied up the dressing table, putting everything back where it had been. Rob had taken up two hours of her precious morning. She only had the mornings to herself, truly to herself. Thursday afternoon and Friday lunchtime she had regulars, and Lennie sometimes brought punters in the afternoon. And he always brought some from t
he Ferrari in the evening. Mornings were her time off—the only time she knew she wouldn’t be working. That was why she’d argued with Lennie about Rob, but it had been no good.
Two hours, and most of that spent being half throttled, or cold and miserable with him making her hold that stupid gun out like that. She picked it up from the floor, tentatively slid the safety catch off, and extended her arms of her own accord, something she had thought she might never do again. As he had done, she pointed it at the mirror. She had only kept it to scare anyone who tried anything, really. It was all right for Lennie saying take it back, but you never knew what was going to come through the door, and Lennie wasn’t always there.
And she knew how to use it now, so that was even better, She pushed the safety catch back on again, and put the gun back in the drawer. Lennie never came in here much, and if he did, he never looked in the drawer. So it was safe to keep it there.
She left the room and ran the bath she had promised herself, letting herself into its delicious warmth with a sigh of relief.
In Austen Street, Stansfield, Carole Jarvis listened as Rob showered away the cheap perfume in the fond notion that she didn’t know where he’d been and what he’d been doing. It hadn’t taken a genius to work out why he had teamed up with Lennie Fredericks, someone he wouldn’t even let into the house, why most days he was home at nine o’clock in the morning, after the office runs, but now and then he wasn’t. And why those were the days he felt the need to shower before he even saw her.
It had started three or four months ago; to begin with, she had just been pleased that he had got the cab on the road during the day, and that money was less tight. She had thought that the days when he was late home were just good days, days when he’d been busier than usual. But then a court case had come up in which Lennie Fredericks had been involved, and she had realized that Mr. and Mrs. Fredericks weren’t at all how she had visualized them. Then she had worked out that Mrs. Fredericks was the little prostitute who had been Drummond’s last victim, and put two and two together about Rob’s mysterious late home-comings.
That was when she had said she would go, but he wouldn’t even discuss it.
Matt Burbidge couldn’t sleep; it was seeing Drummond again like that, he supposed. He had thought—hoped—he would stay away. He smiled briefly as he thought of the nuisance calls he had overheard Drummond making to Judy Hill, then got up, automatically switching on the television on his way through to the kitchen. The lunchtime news came on, and he went back into the living room at the mention of Drummond’s name. The Police Complaints Authority had announced a full inquiry into the circumstances of Drummond’s arrest and detention, to be headed by senior officers from another force.
Oh, well, perhaps there was a bright side to having been dismissed already; the axe had fallen in his case. Some of his ex-colleagues would be shitting themselves, not least, as he understood it, Judy Hill herself. They had thought they’d got away with it, but perhaps not. Matt had never been privy to the details, but he knew they had pulled something off that they had all thought was very clever. Not so clever now, maybe.
But they had done it for him, in a way, and if he could help them out, he should, even if it did mean keeping Judy Hill out of trouble, something he had no desire to do. But the others were his mates, and he didn’t want to see them go down. He wasn’t sure there was much he could do, but little Ginny would get a visit from the investigating team for sure; there would be some pressure brought to bear there, naturally. Perhaps he could get in first.
She had married Lennie Fredericks since, but needless to say Lennie still had her on the game. He doubted that Lennie knew anything about the business in Hosier’s Alley—Ginny didn’t work for him then. Best that he stayed ignorant; Lennie hated cops, and he wouldn’t take too kindly to Ginny’s involvement. He didn’t want to get the kid into trouble. He supposed he could just about afford the going rate, whatever it was these days. Lennie wouldn’t have to know a thing about it.
There was no way Judy could avoid the meeting, not without being very rude to Freddie, who, she gathered, had been up since before dawn helping to organize her birthday present. Everyone she knew seemed to have been up and about in the middle of the night, including Drummond. Freddie had seen her; she could hardly walk the other way. But he was walking along the corridor with Hotshot Harper, of all people.
Harper was a high-flyer; Barton was rarely graced with his presence, and on the odd occasion Judy had glimpsed him, she had avoided him. Not this time.
“Ah, Judy,” Freddie said, beaming in the unexpected way he had, turning his perfect pathologist’s face into something altogether more welcoming. “Happy birthday.”
“Thank you,” she said.
“I don’t believe you’ve met Detective Inspector Hill,” Freddie said, turning to Harper. “Judy, this is—” he began.
“I know who this is,” Judy said, interrupting him. “I’ve seen Mr. Harper in action.”
“Ah,” said Freddie. “Good.”
“And what I’d like to know,” Judy went on, “is how you sleep at night, Mr. Harper.”
“Very well,” said Harper, with a little smile. “Thank you for your concern.”
Freddie looked interestedly from Judy to Harper, then at his watch. “Oh, sorry,” he said. “I must dash, I’m afraid.”
Judy could tell that he really was sorry to leave; there was nothing Freddie would like better than to witness an unseemly brawl.
Harper smiled at her. “Are you going anywhere decent for lunch, by any chance?” he asked. “The police canteen,” said Judy.
She didn’t know why she’d said that; she wasn’t going anywhere for lunch. She didn’t often eat lunch, her court case was finished, and she was supposed to be going back to Stansfield. Besides, she should be taking her colleagues out for a drink, and thanking them for the electronic organizer that she had found, rather to her surprise, when she had unwrapped her present. She had thought it would be some sort of joke present, which was why she had opened it elsewhere.
“Do you mind if I join you?”
“If you like,” she said. She hadn’t had breakfast, and her stomach had been in danger of keeping the judge awake. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be taking Hotshot to lunch in the police canteen. Would she?
“Why should I have trouble sleeping?” he asked, when they were settled at a table with their food.
“Because you know as well as I do that Colin Drummond raped five women, and you’ve just put him back on the street,” said Judy.
He shook his head. “I don’t know that he raped anyone at all,” he said. “And I didn’t put him back on the street. The court did.”
“That’s splitting hairs,” said Judy. “But then—that’s what you do, isn’t it?”
He considered that, then nodded, smiling agreement.
“Don’t you have any conscience about defending someone like Drummond?” she demanded.
“What’s someone like Drummond?”
“A serial rapist,” said Judy, angrily stabbing a piece of cheese from her salad.
“He was accused of being a rapist,” said Harper. “He maintained that he was innocent of the charges. And my job is to defend him, to put his case—or are you saying that people charged with very serious crimes should have no defense?”
Judy flushed a little. “No, of course not,” she said. “But I don’t think that Hotshot Harper should come along and manufacture a doubt that doesn’t exist!”
He was smiling again. “Hotshot Harper,” he said. “I like that.”
“It’s not a compliment.” Judy looked at him coldly.
“I still like it.”
“What if he rapes again?” she asked. “Will your conscience prick you then?”
“No.” He ate for a few moments before speaking again. “My job,” he said slowly, “was to defend Drummond to the best of my ability. That resulted, in the end, in a not guilty verdict. I succeeded in doing my job. If he is a serial rap
ist, then the prosecution failed to do theirs. Why should that be on my conscience?”
“I didn’t fail to do my job,” Judy said immediately. “You stopped me. You got my evidence disallowed. Drummond gave me a blow-by-blow account of a rape that he couldn’t possibly have invented, but the jury never got to hear about that, did they?”
“No,” he said. “But if they had, I would have put it to you that you wrote that account, and told Drummond to sign it with the implied threat of violence if he did not.”
Judy gasped. “And is that what you believe?” she asked.
He smiled again. He really had a very charming smile, Judy thought. It was difficult to loathe someone who could smile like that. She’d never seen him up close. He was younger than she had thought. He would be … what? Ten years younger than she was? She felt her face flush a little. She didn’t usually compute the age of her fellow diners in comparison with her own.
“What I believe is of no consequence,” he said. “It’s what Drummond says happened. I didn’t fancy my chances of making the jury believe that, because I’ve seen you in action, too.”
“So you found some more legal hairs to split.”
“Yes.”
“He told me I would be his next victim.”
“He denied that.”
“What do you really believe?”
“I believe that Drummond was convicted on DNA evidence on which too much emphasis was laid,” he said. “Plus circumstantial evidence for which he had an explanation, and a very dubious allegation of sexual assault for which he had apparently been caught in the act, but which the jury did not accept.”
“Dubious?” Judy looked up. “You saw that little girl giving evidence,” she said. “You know she was telling the truth. You just gambled on the jury having forgotten her by the time they came to deliver their verdict.”
“True. But I don’t know she was telling the truth,” he said. “And neither do you. She was very compelling, I agree. But on paper, that whole incident looks very, very iffy.”