by Zoe Sharp
“Terrific!” Sam said. “I didn't know you could cook.”
“You shouldn't make rash statements like that until you've tasted it,” I warned and headed back to the kitchen. I dug out the dried tagliatelle, a tin of plum tomatoes, garlic, chilli, and the secret ingredient, a Hot Pepperami sausage. Not exactly cordon bleu, but then, I wasn't out to wow him with my cooking.
I threw the ingredients together quickly. It was my usual stand-by and I could do it in my sleep. I set the kettle boiling for the pasta and went back to see how Sam was getting on.
“I hope you don't mind breathing garlic fumes all over everyone at work tomorrow,” I said.
He looked up blankly. “Hmm?”
I shook my head. “Never mind. How're you doing?”
“Well, not as well as I'd hoped,” he admitted. “The most I seem to be able to get is some of the file names, but the contents might as well be Swahili for all the sense I can make of them. Look.”
He opened a file at random. All I saw was a string of smiley faces and the sort of squiggles that could have belonged to some complex algebra problem. He shut the file down again and tried another, with the same result.
“Here are the file names, if they mean anything to you – delivery dates, stock, distribution, contacts. It just looks like it's been used for standard accounts stuff. I assume they copied everything before they passed the computer on to your mate, otherwise somebody's going to have quite a bit of explaining to do to the tax man.”
“And there's no way of finding out anything else?”
He rummaged in the disk box he'd brought with him. “Well, if it's a very simple file I might have something here that would work, but it's a bit of a long shot,” he said doubtfully.
I heard the kettle click off and went back to the kitchen to pour the boiled water into a pan with the pasta. I stuck it on the hob and returned to the lounge.
By the time I got there Sam seemed to be having more success. “Here's what's in the delivery dates file, but it's not a lot,” he said. “Some of the data at the top of the screen is just totally corrupted. There's not much hope of getting anything out of that. Then we've just got a string of numbers. They could be dates, but it's not much to go on.”
I sighed, disappointed. “OK, Sam, thanks for trying anyway,” I said.
“No problem,” he replied, but didn't sound as though he meant it.
He was still frowning when I left him to go and see to the food. When I came back with two plates Sam had shut the computer down, in disgust presumably, and had left it on the desk. He was sitting on the sofa, chin in his hands, and looking deep in thought.
It didn't affect his appetite, though. He wolfed down the pasta making all the right appreciative noises. He ate with his fork turned round, scooping food onto it and into his mouth. My mother would have fainted at the sight.
Still, at least he was well trained enough to clear the plates away afterwards without being asked. He hadn't progressed past the stacking them in the washing-up bowl stage, but you can't have everything.
It was just after eight-thirty when he left. As soon as he'd gone I rang Terry. I tried his mobile number first. It was switched on and he picked up straight away. I told him we'd managed to get into the computer, and what Sam had found on it. It sounded pretty lame when I laid it out for him, but Terry seemed pleased.
“That's terrific! That should be just enough to worry the bastard!” he said, sounding devious. “Do me a favour and hang onto it for me for a few days, would you? I'll come and pick it up over the weekend. Cheers for that though, Charlie, you're an absolute doll!”
“Oh great,” I muttered as he rang off. “Now I'm inflatable.”.
Seven
Almost as soon as I put the phone down, it started ringing. I picked it up half-anticipating that it might be Terry again.
Even though I'd been thinking about her earlier, I certainly wasn't expecting it to be my mother on the other end of the line.
“Charlotte,” she said. She was trying for friendly warmth, but unease pitched her cultured voice a tad too high. I even thought I could hear the faint rustle of a nervously twisted string of pearls.
For a moment I almost panicked as I opened my mouth and nothing happened. No sounds emerged. I shut it again quickly.
“Charlotte?” she said again, a question this time, sharper. “Charlotte, are you still there?”
I cleared my throat. This time it worked. “Yes, I'm still here,” I said neutrally. “What do you want, Mother?”
She didn't ring so often now. Just after I got kicked out of the army and the fuss had started to abate, her attempts then to build a bridge between us had been more earnest, and more frequent. She'd written long letters that I pointedly returned to sender. She'd even driven over to see me a few times.
Now she'd fallen back on the telephone, and even that method of communication had become sporadic. She'd become slowly discouraged by my stubborn lack of cooperation, my refusal to acknowledge that the stance she'd taken had any basis in validity.
I don't know what irritated more. That in some ways she seemed to be giving up on her only child so easily, or that she doggedly persisted. Even with the constantly increasing timescale, I was dismayed to find that talking to her still actually hurt. A physical pain I hadn't been prepared for.
There was a mildly offended pause before she replied, swallowing my snotty behaviour, pouring oil, as she always did. “I don't want anything, darling,” she said soothingly. “I just wondered how you are, that's all. We haven't heard from you in a while, and I just thought—”
“Mother, you haven't heard from me for several years,” I interrupted, stony. “Why would I suddenly either want to get in touch with you now, or want you to get in touch with me?”
Another hesitation, like a fractured satellite link. “Well,” she stumbled. It was uncharacteristic, and unlike her. She valued her poise as much as she valued her classically understated wardrobe and her middle-aged Tory-politician's-wife hairstyle. “I just thought there might be something you needed, or—”
“There's nothing I need from you,” I said, appalled by the waver I let slip through unmasked. I closed my eyes with the effort of stopping back the tears. It was suddenly vital that I didn't let her know she could still get to me. “There's nothing I want that you can give me,” I went on, colder now, in control. “Unless there's something wrong, or either of you are ill, please stop calling me, or I'll have my number changed.”
I thought I heard a soft gasp at the deliberate cruelty. “Oh, Charlotte,” she said, letting her distress through for the first time.
“Goodbye, Mother,” I said, and put the receiver down.
For what seemed like a long moment I sat and stared stupidly at the dead telephone. Parents are supposed to love their children regardless, aren't they? Overlook their faults, forgive their sins. And most of all they're supposed to trust and support them in times of trouble. Not back away. I could understand Nina running for shelter when she'd failed to get the loyalty she'd anticipated from her own parents.
After all, it's not in the Good Parenting Handbook that they're allowed the luxury of letting their distaste show all too clearly, however sordid the predicament in which their offspring find themselves. That's not in the rules.
I thought of Nina again. Oh yes, I knew exactly what it was like. To have your parents frowning at you, with doubt behind their eyes. I think that was the worst thing. That they'd believe I'd willingly taken part in what my attackers were claiming was practically an orgy.
The court martial of Donalson, Hackett, Morton, and Clay had been a shambles. Faced with the prospect of helping convict their mates, vital witnesses on the same squad miraculously developed myopia, or amnesia, or both.
Even one of the girls who was supposed to speak up for me seemed suddenly unwilling to stick her neck out. Either by accident or careful design, it began to look as though I was totally to blame for the “incident”, as they politely te
rmed it.
The end result was that the four accused were let off, and I was unceremoniously chucked out. That should have been the end of it. Sometimes, I wished to God I'd left it there. That way, my mother would never have had the chance to express her doubts about my innocence so publicly.
I sat there, fighting the emotions that crashed over me in waves. Anger was followed by a bitterness I could taste in the back of my throat, and a fierce determination not to forgive my mother, however Christian it might make me feel.
Much as it gives me no satisfaction to admit it, a good dollop of self-pity was in there somewhere, too. I thought I'd stopped feeling sorry for myself. It was disappointing to discover that all it took to bring it all back was something as trivial as an unexpected phone call.
It took me a while to shake myself out of it, to get back to the more pressing problems at hand.
Partly to make sure the phone was engaged if my mother tried to call me back, and partly so I wasn't upset if she didn't bother, I rang Clare. I forced my mind back to the message she'd left on the answering machine. “I hope you've got a strong stomach,” she'd said. Did I really want to know what she'd found out?
I dialled the number anyway. I had another class to teach the day after tomorrow at the refuge, an open one this time, and I just knew I was going to get asked awkward questions about Susie. I needed to know, even if I didn't really want to hear.
I shivered abruptly, as though someone had walked over my grave. Maybe that incident at Shelseley, and now that brief contact with my mother, had just made me more jumpy than usual.
Jacob answered the phone just when I was about to hang up. He told me Clare was in the bath. “Come round if you like,” he offered generously. “It might persuade her to get out of the water before she turns into a completely wizened old prune. I'm going out in half an hour in any case, so you two can have a girlie chat.”
My vision of a quiet night in evaporated. I sighed as I picked up the bike keys and my leather jacket. With a sense of foreboding, I headed for the door.
***
I have to admit that I approached the subject matter for my next class at Shelseley two days later with a new wariness. I'd spent a couple of hours round at Jacob and Clare's place. When I'd left I had a much clearer idea of what had happened to Susie Hollins, and a sickness in my soul.
Susie might have been stupid, and petty, and quick to temper, but as Clare had said, nobody deserved to die that way. The picture that emerged from the police reports the paper had obtained was not a pretty one.
Susie had either gone willingly with her attacker, meaning it might have been someone she knew, or she'd been too frightened by his threats to put up much of an initial struggle. He'd taken her out to a secluded spot, not far away, and there he'd had his fun . . .
Now I faced my class with a new passion. We were in the ballroom, as usual. The light had gone early, dimming until only blackness was visible through the French windows, and all detail of the garden had disappeared from view. Years ago, the ornamental wall sconces had been augmented by a haphazard array of fluoro tubes. They added significantly to the overall light level, but did nothing for the ambience.
It was a largish group, a dozen or so, ranging in age from late teens to late forties. They listened to me gravely. After the earlier rape, and now Susie's murder, I knew I had their full attention.
“Attacks and sexual assaults on women,” I told them, “are rarely carried out in the place where first contact takes place. “We'll call this first location point A, and the second one B. A is where he picks you up, grabs you, and B is where the actual assault takes place.
“Point B is his choice, his territory,” I added. “If you allow yourself to be immobilised and taken there, you will be on his ground. You will not only be at a major psychological disadvantage, but the risk to you doubles. You must do whatever you can to avoid being taken to point B.”
I glanced round their serious faces. I didn't have to elaborate further than that.
“Supposing he's got a knife?” one woman asked. Joy was in her late twenties, skinny to the point of gauntness, but with a very pretty face if you went for the emaciated look, and red hair cut in a bob. She was a relative newcomer, but keen, often turning up at several classes in a week.
I gazed at her levelly. “Run away,” I said.
There was a smattering of laughter at that, but it died away when I didn't join in.
“I'm serious,” I continued. “Choosing to stand there and fight someone who's got a knife is lunacy. Trust me on this. Unless you're cornered, you turn and you run like hell. That's your best option by far.”
“Yes, but supposing he's in trainers and you're in high heels,” Joy persisted. “You're not going to get very far, are you?”
“True,” I allowed. “OK, I know it isn't always possible to run, which is why we're going to cover knife defences in this class.” I went over to my rucksack and pulled out the fake plastic daggers I used just for this purpose.
I told the class to pair up and handed the daggers round. There was an odd number, and it was Joy who ended up with me. She looked nervous at the prospect. I grinned to reassure her as I handed her the dagger.
“OK, to start off with, let's look at what to do if he's got the knife at your throat.” I positioned us so that she had a hold of the front of my sweatshirt with her left hand, the knife held against the side of my neck with her right. “Come on, Joy, take a firm grip,” I instructed. “Remember, you're trying to kill me here.”
Whoever had killed Susie had got a firm grip on her, all right. A death grip. He'd jammed the knife so hard against her throat that the blade had peeled back the skin, slicing into flesh and muscle, opening up the blood vessels so her strength and her will to fight drizzled away. Had he enjoyed then violating her slowly weakening body? Had it given him an added thrill?
I swallowed as I buttoned down tight on the thought. I showed the class how to twist suddenly away from the weapon, dropping away and down to the side, then striking at the hand that held it. By wrenching the wrist back on itself, you could turn the tables, taking control of the knife hand and using their own blade to shear at the arm that still held you captive.
It was a fairly simple movement, and repetition made it surer. I went through it again a few times, then let them all practise for five minutes or so.
“Remember,” I said, “go for the arm that's holding you. Don't be tempted to stab them anywhere else. You're not out for vengeance here, you're just effecting your escape.”
“If it came down to it, could you actually do it?” Joy asked now, and there was an edge to her question. “Could you actually kill a man who was attacking you?”
I paused, giving it some serious thought. I noticed the rest of the class had hesitated, stopped to listen.
“It depends what you mean,” I said at last. “If you're asking have I got the ability to do so, then I suppose yes, I have. I know where and how to hit somebody to do them serious damage, but that proves nothing. You are all physically capable of ploughing through a bus queue in your car, or holding a cushion over your granny's face, but that doesn't mean you'd actually go through with it.”
There was another twitch of amusement from the others and I grinned at them. I hoped nobody would notice I was side-stepping the question, because I didn't really know the answer.
In the relatively short period I spent in the British army I was never required to get close enough to the enemy to actually shoot at them. I learned to fire handguns, rifles and light sub-machine guns simply as part of the training. I often wondered when I was out on the ranges how I would feel about squeezing the trigger if that cut-out board thirty metres away was a living, breathing person.
When you went to paste the little squares of paper over the holes left by the high velocity rounds in your target, all you found were sets of splintered holes. No blood, no shattered bone or ripped intestines, no screams of the wounded. I avoided finding an answer. Tha
t was OK, because the occasion never arose.
And afterwards, when my blood should have been up, when I should have been out looking for violent retribution, I folded like a coward. I tried to comfort myself with the knowledge that it was the only sensible course of action. It took me a long time to come to terms with the fact that I'd run away.
Donalson, Hackett, Morton, and Clay. They'd threatened me with death, and I'd believed them. Believed them enough not to fight too hard to save myself. I'd always wondered what would have happened if I'd had the skills I now possessed. How far I would have gone to survive.
I shook myself out of it as Joy looked vaguely dissatisfied and I tried a different tack. “The law says you're allowed to use the minimum amount of force necessary,” I said. “Gauging exactly what constitutes minimum force is not an easy one. You just have to use common sense.”