by Zoe Sharp
My father had offered to pay, of course, but by then relations had deteriorated enough for me to haughtily refuse my parents' charity. Perhaps, if I hadn't been so proud, the outcome might have been very different.
“What do you want?” I demanded roughly now, shock making me ungracious, and resentful that he was the cause.
I could just picture him, sitting in his study at home, with his back to the high sash window. His rosewood desk would be in front of him, with the leather-cornered blotter sitting exactly centred. Besides the telephone, there would be nothing else on the desktop. Paperwork was ruthlessly dealt with the moment it arrived.
“Your mother is very upset,” he said, his tone eminently moderate.
“That makes two of us, then,” I shot back.
He sighed. “At risk of stooping to cliché, two wrongs do not make a right, Charlotte,” he said.
“Is that so? Perhaps she should have thought of that before she betrayed me.”
“Don't be so emotive,” my father rapped, more like his old self. It made what he said next so much greater a surprise. “Can't you simply accept that she made a mistake? An aberration in a weak moment. It's something that she bitterly regrets, and it's causing her untold grief that you can't find it in you to forgive her.”
Typical of my father, that. Giving with one hand and taking back with the other. An admission of guilt coupled with a pointed reminder of my own failings. He made my reaction sound like a character defect. Hardly surprising, when I thought about it.
“An aberration?” I snapped, unable to prevent my voice rising like a police siren. “She refused to stand up and support me when I was on trial, and you call it an aberration?”
“The evidence against you was substantial, Charlotte. On principle, she had to believe that the judicial system came to the correct conclusion. You must understand that,” he said, more gently. “She is a Justice of the Peace, after all. What else could she do?”
“What about me?” I cried, feeling like a child. “What about her daughter? Surely that takes precedence over the damned system? Where were her principles then?”
“She is sorry, you know. She may not be able to admit it outright, but she is, all the same,” he went on, as though I hadn't spoken. “For the damage she's done.”
I tried that out for size on the twisted corner of my psyche that had been feeding on my bitterness and hostility towards them for the last couple of years. It had been leaching acid into my mind like a perforated ulcer. His words should have acted like a balm, but all they did was make it burn more savagely. So she was sorry, was she? For the result, not for the cause.
It was much too little, and way too late.
“And what about you?” I demanded.
His pause, a fraction too long, spoke volumes. “That's not the issue, here, Charlotte,” he said evasively. “This was never about you and me.”
“No, it never was, was it?” I said woodenly. “I don't think I've anything more to say to you.” And I'm not ready to forgive either of you, I added silently.
“In that case, I'm sorry to have disturbed your Sunday morning,” he said without inflection. “Goodbye Charlotte.”
The phone clicked and went dead in my hand. I put it down like it weighed heavy, and moved slowly back to the open balcony, but where before the hum of cars across the river had been hypnotic and anodyne, now it grated.
I finished off the last tepid dregs of my coffee and was about to turn away from the view when I idly noticed the Vauxhall police car approaching along the quay. I felt the first stirrings of apprehension as it moved slowly into view, the occupants glancing up at the houses, obviously looking for an address. They stopped outside mine.
Two uniforms climbed out, adjusting their caps. It looked like the same pair who'd come looking for me the week before at Shelseley. I sighed, and went to spoon instant coffee into a couple of mugs. If being paid a visit by the local law was going to become a regular occurrence, I suppose I'd better at least be sociable.
I left the front door open and heard them stumping their way up the wooden staircase, having a minor argument about who'd done what in the staff canteen the night before. When they reached the landing they paused uncertainly.
“Come on in and take a seat,” I called through. “The kettle's on.”
“Morning Miss Fox.” They did as instructed and made themselves at home on the sofa. As I appeared out of the kitchen, drying my hands on a tea towel, they'd taken their caps off and plonked them upside down on the coffee table. I almost expected them to put their feet up.
I left them to it while I ducked back into the kitchen, returning a few minutes later with two mugs of instant coffee. “So, what can I do for you this time?” I asked, handing them out.
“Yeah, this is getting to be a bit of a habit, isn't it?” the older one said with a grin.
“I didn't realise this was going to happen every weekend or I'd have bought some cake,” I said waspishly, taking the chair across from them.
They looked disappointed, then exchanged glances and pulled on businesslike expressions.
The younger one, Tommy, pulled out his notebook. “We're here because there's been a very serious allegation made against you,” he said, consulting it, “of causing Grievous Bodily Harm during an incident at the New Adelphi Club in Morecambe last night.”
“What?” I realised I had my mouth open and shut it abruptly. “You are joking?” I said, looking from one to the other. Actually, they were both looking faintly amused, as though the whole thing was some gigantic wind-up.
“I'm afraid not, Miss Fox,” Tommy said solemnly. “At the moment no charges are being brought, but we've had an official complaint, backed up by a medical report, that shows one young lad with a forcibly dislocated shoulder, and another with severe facial lacerations and―,” he looked pained, “―a ruptured testicle.”
“Nasty,” agreed the older one, straight-faced but only just. I wondered if they were practising a comedy double act.
“Hang on a minute,” I said, feeling my temper beginning to rise. “Who exactly is it that's made this complaint?”
He read out a female name, which meant nothing to me.
“And who is she, for heaven's sake?”
“She claims to be the fiancée of one of the injured parties, whom you attacked, without provocation, on the dance floor at the club.” I remembered the dark-haired girl with the pierced tongue.
“OK,” I said, holding up my hands. “I'll admit to the shoulder and I suppose to the testicle, but one of them had already glassed the other one in the face before I got there. That was nothing to do with me.”
“So you just waded in there, two against one, when you claim one of them was armed with an offensive weapon, and you inflicted major injuries on the pair of them?” the older one demanded incredulously. He caught sight of my punchbag on its hook in the corner of the living room. “A bit of a boxer, are you?”
I ignored his last sarky remark. “Yes, he still had the bottle on him when I got there,” I said. “Look, I was employed as a member of the security staff to deal with trouble. I saw the fight and I went to break it up, but they both had a go at me. What was I supposed to do while one had his arm round my throat and the other was trying to disembowel me – reason with them?” Oh God, I sounded like Len.
“And you fought them off?” Tommy asked, a picture of dubiousness.
“That's right.”
“By yourself?”
“Yes!”
“Any ideas what started this fight in the first place?” the older one put in.
I shrugged. “It looked like it was probably a classic case of "Oi, get your hands off my girlfriend" but it didn't help that he was definitely on something at the time.”
I thought of Marc's warning, delivered almost as a threat. Nobody spreads rumours that the New Adelphi is open house for aspiring chemists, he'd said. Don't worry, Marc, the only people I've mentioned it to are a couple of coppers. Oh we
ll . . .
The pair opposite me exchanged pointed looks again, but to my surprise they didn't pursue it further. On cue they both got to their feet.
The older one screwed his hat into place and regarded me dubiously. “That will be all, for the moment, Miss Fox,” he said. “We'll let you know if any charges are being brought.”
I rose, too, stuffing my hands into my jeans pockets. “Is that likely?”
“Who knows? But if I were you,” he said with a faint patronising tone, “I'd try and stay out of trouble for a while.”
“Thanks a lot,” I muttered under my breath as they disappeared down the staircase. “That's a great help.”
Their footsteps faded as they reached the street. It was only as I turned away from the door that I saw Tommy had left his hat lying upside-down on my coffee table. I crossed the room and picked it up. I was just debating whether I wanted to bother going after them to give it back when I heard a single set of footsteps on the stairs again and Tommy reappeared in the doorway.
I dangled the offending item from a finger. “Forgotten something?” I asked, my voice acidic.
To my surprise, he gave me a level look as he retrieved his headgear. “No, actually,” he said, “I just wanted a chance to have a quiet word with you. On your own, like.”
I raised my eyebrows and said nothing.
Tommy hesitated, glancing uneasily over his shoulder as though his mate might somehow miraculously materialise on the landing behind him.
“I just wanted to give you a word to the wise,” he went on, hurriedly. “On the face of it, you don't look a likely candidate for a Section Twenty assault, know what I mean? You haven't got a record, but quite a few of the guys Quinn's got working for him have. You're mixing in dangerous company if you want to keep your nose clean.”
“You mean you don't believe that's how it happened?” I demanded, feeling my temper rise like a prickle of hairs. “You think that the kid was clean and I just went overboard?”
He flushed, looking uncomfortable. “Quinn swears security's tight enough so that nobody manages to get into the place with anything on them,” he said.
When he saw my face he added hastily, “Not that I take that as gospel, but by the time the boy was through with Casualty and our lads got to see him, he wasn't showing any signs of being on anything. On the other hand,” he went on, “he didn't seem very happy with his girlfriend that she'd got us involved, which was good for you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, if he hadn't been so dead against pressing formal charges, we'd have been breaking your door down at five this morning and hauling you down the station instead of coming round now for a friendly chat, like.”
“But I was just doing my job,” I protested.
He shrugged. “That's not the impression we got from Quinn's staff. They were dropping hints that you might have gone in too hard, like. You want to watch your back there, Charlie.”
“I will.” I managed to remember my manners enough to be slightly less ungracious. “Thank you, anyway. I appreciate the warning.”
He looked embarrassed. “Yeah, well, you do quite a bit of work up at the Lodge, don't you?” he said. “I get called out to a lot of domestics. Mrs Shelseley's a nice lady.”
“Tom!” yelled a voice from the bottom of the stairs. “Are you going to be all day? Get a shift on, will you.”
“OK,” Tommy called back. “I'm on my way.”
He flashed me a quick smile, jammed his hat on, and trotted away to join his colleague.
I sighed, trying to roll away the tension that was cramping my shoulders. All in all, it wasn't quite the way I'd envisaged starting off my quiet Sunday morning.
***
By the time I'd changed into my leathers, got the bike fired up, and locked the flat, it was well past the eleven-thirty by which I'd promised to be at Jacob and Clare's. I knew Jacob, who timed the cooking of his meals like a covert military operation, was going to be spitting feathers, but I also knew it was going to be easier to explain my lateness face to face.
As I gunned away along the tree-lined quay towards town I should have been having a good time. The weather was just right, the sort of cold air the Suzuki really runs well in, but I would have felt better if it had been dark grey skies and raining buckets.
I was so angry it made my hands ache.
I slipped through into a gap in traffic on the main road going past the bus station and weaved smoothly across all three lanes to make the best progress. If I was going to ride like that, I really should have been giving it all my concentration, but half my mind was on other things.
How dare they not believe me! OK, so you tend to get pulled by the lads on Traffic more when you're on a bike than if you drive a car. Even so, that hardly made me a criminal, for heaven's sake. And anyway, it was clear they didn't have a clue about my past to damn me by.
I barrelled left round Sainsbury's and, by dint of dropping down two gears and caning it, managed to hit the temperamental lights on Parliament Street just as they were turning to amber.
I always used to think of myself as very law-abiding. Still do, I suppose – I even have a TV licence. But when I'd needed justice in the past, it had been spectacularly unforthcoming. Now I was suddenly on the receiving end of the boys in blue, when all I'd been doing was my job.
If this was the sort of treatment I could expect working for Marc, I made up my mind to tell him to stuff it!
I made it out to Jacob and Clare's place on the outskirts of Caton in record time for me. Clare came out to greet me as I pulled up. She had a couple of the dogs with her, a loopy wire-haired terrier called Beezer and a clumsy old half-blind black Labrador named Bonneville.
I wasn't surprised to see Clare waiting for me. Jacob not only deals in classic bikes, but all sorts of interesting antiques as well. He stores the stuff in the numerous barns and outbuildings dotted around the place and he doesn't like surprise visitors.
Somewhere along the drive are two hidden sensors, connected to warning buzzers inside the house. I've never been able to work out exactly where they are.
Now I cut the engine and toed the side-stand down, pulling off my helmet. Beezer greeted me by bouncing three feet into the air and yapping excitedly. Clare took one look at my face and swallowed the crack she'd undoubtedly been going to make about me being late.
“What's happened?” she demanded, leading the way in through the studded oak front door.
“Don't ask,” I said. My anger had dissipated, replaced by a weariness that went through to my bones. I told myself I was just tired, but I knew it went deeper than that.
We moved along the uneven stone flags of the hallway to the big cosy kitchen, where Jacob should have been slaving over a hot stove.
He was actually sitting at the scrubbed pine table. There was a glass of wine by his elbow and a pile of paperwork in front of him, and he was speaking in what appeared to be Klingon on the telephone. It turned out to be Japanese. Clare whispered to me that he was winding up the sale of a pair of restored Velocettes to a collector in Tokyo.
“On a Sunday?” I whispered back.
Jacob looked up and dazzled me with that slow grin of his, then went back to his unintelligible conversation.
Clare dragged me a cold beer out of the fridge and we went through to the snug back sitting room to leave Jacob to finish the call in peace. Despite the sun outside, a blazing fire was lit in the huge open hearth. I disappeared into the depths of their big squashy sofa when I sat down, quickly buried by the arrival of the terrier on my lap.
“So,” Clare said when I'd had my first mouthful of beer, “are you going to tell me what's been going on?”
I told her the whole tale about my experiences at the nightclub since I'd rescued her from the clutches of Susie Hollins. Jacob came in just as I was telling her about my confrontation with Len. They both sat in silence until I'd gone through the events of the night before in full, and my subsequent encounter with t
he police that morning.
“The fascist little shits!” he said with feeling when I'd finished. “Do they honestly think you're going to start a major fight on your first night? Unbelievable!”
“What are you going to do?” Clare asked. Bonneville came waddling into the lounge then, following the sound of our voices, and collided with a standard lamp. Clare caught it without taking her eyes off me, well used to the dog's blunders.
“There's not a lot I can do,” I said. “I'm not sure I want to carry on working at the club, though. I rely on recommendations from the local police for some of my business. I can't afford to upset them.”