by Alison Bruce
‘What if we’re caught?’
‘We won’t be, but it’s the risk of it that’s turning me on. I don’t even think I’d mind if someone were watching.’ She bent forward and kissed him again. His fingers travelled upwards, across her stomach to her breasts. Her skin was warm, her nipples erect. She tilted her head back, encouraging his lips to caress her neck. ‘Come on,’ she breathed. ‘Come on.’ She pushed his hand back down to her G-string. ‘Pull it off,’ she gasped.
Obediently he tugged it a couple of times. On the second attempt the flimsy elastic snapped. He paused to mutter, ‘I’m sorry.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ She rolled backwards on to the mattress, using all her weight to pull him with her. His left hand tugged at the zip of his trousers. His legs pressed themselves between hers, his hips pushing them apart.
She squeezed his arm with her fingers and wriggled as if trying to escape, but in his ear she breathed, ‘Come on then, fuck me.’
He was heavy and enthusiastic; it felt like being humped by an eighteen-month-old Labrador. His mouth moved to her neck, and he sucked at the skin over her jugular, his hips pushing her legs even further apart. She wrapped her ankles around his thighs. He penetrated her and pushed himself in deep. Her neck began burning as blood rushed to the surface, her lower body throbbing as his body ground against hers. Credit where it was due: he was more Dobermann than Labrador.
Even so, she gritted her teeth and stared into the gloom of the ceiling, patiently counting his thrusts, just for something to do. There were always three hundred or so, she reckoned. Blokes: it was the monotony of them that got to her.
As the wardrobe doors had opened, Goodhew braced himself for instant discovery, only to see the doors bounce back at him in the same instant. For two or three seconds, he was in total darkness, then, as though the wardrobe suddenly relented, the doors popped back open by a good inch and a half. He hoped he wasn’t as visible as he felt.
He watched Victoria positioning herself on Lorna’s bed and realized what she had planned long before the other guy had a clue. Goodhew wished silence wasn’t obligatory at that moment, having a major urge to groan. Why hadn’t he just left when he had the chance?
Then he recognized Bryn’s voice and knew his only real option was to sit tight and wait for this situation’s inevitable climax.
Goodhew leant back and stared upwards into the darkest part of the confined space, probably straight up the skirt of one of Lorna’s little black dresses. The bed springs kept creaking along in the key of F, and he didn’t dare look out through the gap in the door.
When he and Bryn had been sitting in the same class and the teachers asked the children what they thought they’d be doing in fifteen years’ time, he hadn’t pictured this. Strange really.
After about another five minutes, the creaking ceased and he sneaked a glance. He was just in time to see Victoria climbing astride Bryn and off they went again. The springs changed key and picked up in tempo. A few seconds later, they were moving faster and faster still; it was starting to remind him of the end of ‘Come On, Eileen’. Goodhew closed his eyes till he judged it was safe to take another look.
Bryn was lying on his back with his trousers tangled around his calves, but Victoria had slid off the bed and was reaching for her skirt.
‘I’m cold now,’ she explained quietly, but Bryn stared at her and didn’t move. She picked up her underwear. She slipped her feet into her shoes and began buttoning her blouse.
He watched, unblinking.
‘That certainly lived up to expectations,’ she remarked coldly.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I got what I expected. Mediocre.’ Bryn didn’t move. ‘I’d stick with the cars,’ Victoria continued, ‘you’ve probably got some talent for tinkering with them.’
Bryn stiffened. ‘What are you on about?’
‘Lorna.’
‘What about her?’
Victoria stood and faced him full on. ‘To think I fell out with her over you. But now I’ve proved she never mattered to you. For your information, I was so over you when we did this.’
‘Bollocks.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘It’s bollocks. You must think I’m stupid. Lorna wasn’t interested in me, any more than you were. So what’s the big deal about proving you can shag me on Lorna’s bed?’
Bryn had only gone as far as rolling on to his side and raising himself on one elbow. If she had expected him to be irate, she would have been disappointed.
‘What’s the real reason then?’ he insisted.
When she turned her head away from Bryn, Goodhew knew he was now in her line of sight, and could only pray that her attention remained elsewhere.
‘Believe what you want, but I’m telling you, she was jealous about us two. And I’m glad we did it in here, because in the end I hated her.’
‘There wasn’t any diary, was there?’
‘So now I’m a liar? You’re sick.’
‘I’m sick? You got me in here with the sole idea of trashing Lorna, even though she’s dead, and I’m sick?’
‘Like you weren’t up for it,’ she sneered.
This time Bryn reacted like she’d gone too far. ‘Enough.’ He growled and began to pull up his trousers. ‘I admit it, I was up for it. You offered, and I accepted. But you – you’re in a whole other league.’
‘You slept with Lorna, and felt jealous,’ Victoria goaded. ‘Then I slept with you, and she was the jealous one. Looking at you now, no, I don’t understand it, but that’s how it was. I like to settle scores, Bryn.’ She hitched her skirt up a few inches with one hand, and rubbed the other between her legs until it was wet and shiny with his semen, then she smeared it across the mattress.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ Bryn spluttered.
Victoria now had her back to him, facing the wardrobe, and appeared to be staring straight at Goodhew. Suddenly her hand flew towards the twin doors and slammed them shut. ‘That was a message just for Lorna and you.’ Her voice was sharp enough to penetrate the plywood doors. ‘A fuck-off message, if you like.’
Goodhew heard her hurrying away, heading off through the unlit flat and down into the street.
Goodhew listened carefully; he’d only heard Victoria leave. Was he alone yet? His legs were seizing up with cramp and his right arm was turning numb. He was desperate to move, but emerging to find himself face to face with Bryn O’Brien didn’t appeal either.
Victoria had made a good job closing both doors before she left. Goodhew pressed his hand against one of them, testing how tightly it fitted, and realized that opening it silently would be difficult. He dug the tips of his fingers into the join and pressed gently, then harder. It creaked slightly as the doors parted by quarter of an inch, and just as Bryn was dragging the curtains half shut.
Goodhew put his eye close to the opening. The only illumination came from the streetlamp outside, still drizzling just about enough light into the room to leave Bryn O’Brien bathed in anaemia. Bryn was too busy frowning down into the street beyond to sense he was being observed.
He buckled his belt, brushed down the front of his shirt, then stepped into the dark interior of the flat.
Goodhew didn’t dare move, just listened as Bryn moved slowly through the sitting room, feeling his way from door frame to chair, and from chair to wall. It was slow but uneventful until he reached the landing. A stumble. A clatter.
‘Oh, fuck. What the hell is that?’
Bryn must have kicked something, for wood cracked as an object bounced on the stairs. He ran down after it, then the street door opened and slammed shut.
Goodhew scrambled from the wardrobe and staggered to the window as fast as his numb legs would carry him. He was just in time to see Bryn stride out of sight, but there was no way of telling where he was heading. Goodhew sighed in disappointment, but what did he expect? Bryn wasn’t going to park outside, was he?
Goodhew used his torch again to light his way across the flat,
aware of the risk that someone outside might see the light dancing on the walls.
The narrow beam caught something shiny on the landing. He knelt down beside it, directing the torchlight down the stairs. Bryn had tripped over a side table, then sent it crashing down to the hall below.
And, before it had fallen, it had been home to a small pile of junk mail: brochures for holiday parks, lawnmowers and orthopaedic mattresses, still in their cellophane envelopes. There were four of them altogether, inconspicuous and easily overlooked. But none read ‘L. Spence’; they were each addressed to other people.
The first two names he recognized: ‘V. Nugent’ and ‘J. Moran’. The other two were new to him: ‘Miss H. Sellars’ and ‘W. Thompson-Stark’.
They’d all been carefully opened, cut open with nail scissors by the look of the neat seams.
He rescued the table from the foot of the stairs, leaving it propped up against the landing wall to hide its newly broken leg. He scribbled the four names and addresses on a scrap of paper, replaced the brochures, then left to vanish into the night.
Suddenly he had much to do.
THIRTY-THREE
Victoria scuttled from Lorna’s flat on to the street. She ran, clattering along the pavement as fast as her spiked heels could carry her. Everyone thought she was tough but her brittle coat of bravado had just chipped and shattered.
Yes, she’d played the scene out pretty much as she planned, but Bryn wasn’t the pushover she’d expected him to be. Instead of recoiling at her big finale, he’d become infused with rage, the room had filled with it. She suddenly wondered if she’d been terribly wrong about him. She hadn’t finished their encounter with an arrogant flounce out of the door, instead she’d bolted.
Now she didn’t care if anyone saw her, since the only thing on her mind was fear of being caught. Fear of Bryn.
She clutched the small handbag containing her phone, keys, money and cigarettes, none of which she could afford to lose. She darted through a back alley and was out of sight of Lorna’s flat before the door reopened. Ahead of her was a dark tunnel of unlit back fences and high gates, but at the end she knew she’d find a narrow gap taking her out on to the footpath running alongside the Cam.
She was furious with herself, having been so excited by the prospect of humiliating him that she’d been too vague in considering the details of what might happen afterwards. She had already planned this route, but only thought about it as it looked in daylight. She’d accepted that it might be muddy, but now she couldn’t even see the thick puddles underfoot. Silty water slopped into her left shoe.
There’d been another oversight too; she’d arrived in Bryn’s car and now she was cold, with no underwear and no jacket but, more importantly, he could still drive and she had no hope of reaching her flat first.
As the moon vanished behind a shifting cloud, she could only inch her way forward until it reappeared. She needed to run, but not wearing these shoes, and not in the pitch black.
She finally emerged on the path beside the river and then hurried towards the illuminated restaurants on Magdalene Bridge, wondering whether she should hail a taxi. But the lights were only on while staff cleaned up, and the customers were long gone. She glanced up and down the street in case a cab was parked up, waiting there for a job from its dispatcher. Nothing but an already occupied car, whose driver and passengers all stared at her as they rolled past.
She glanced down at her deliberately tarty skirt and mud-caked shoes, and imagined what they must be thinking. She hurried away from the kerb, realizing that any cab driver would be disgusted at taking her such a short distance and, anyway, the wait itself looked as if it would be longer than the journey.
As she moved away from the centre towards home, she kept to the inner side of the pavement, checking regularly over her shoulder and ducking into doorways as soon as she saw the beams of car headlights.
Victoria rented a small flat in the annexe of a large Edwardian house. The approach to it was therefore impressive, even if her flat itself wasn’t. A waist-high wall enclosed the gardens, like an immovable girdle keeping the conifers pinned up against the house. Movement sensors controlled security lighting, and she could now see its familiar glare from a hundred yards away. She kept low and close to the wall, peering over it between the low straggling branches.
Bryn’s old Ford waited in the driveway. Lights off. Engine silent.
Victoria hugged herself and waited. A passing taxi flashed its lights on to her, but then drove on. She wondered whether someone would think she was loitering and perhaps call the police.
Five minutes later, she heard the Zodiac’s engine start up. But it didn’t move and, several minutes on, she heard the fan running, kicking warm air into the interior and clearing the windows. Bryn was planning to wait.
She lit a cigarette, not a conscious decision, just one instinctively made by her agitated fingers. She drew a couple of quick breaths, with her eyes shut, and opened them again just as the taxi returned. This time he slowed to a stop and rolled down his electric window.
‘All right, miss?’
‘Yeah,’ she nodded. ‘Just waiting for someone.’
‘You don’t want a lift then?’
‘No.’ She shook her head firmly, and he pulled away. Before he’d travelled fifty yards, she wished she’d said yes. She watched the taxi’s tail lights shrink to dots. And she desperately wanted to be somewhere else.
She felt in her bag, to check for her purse and phone. Both there. What the hell, she had the money, and it made sense to spend the night in a hotel.
Fuck Bryn, she thought, and she pictured getting warm and clean in the bath, then sliding between smooth cotton hotel sheets and drifting off to sleep, while he was condemned to sleep upright in that aging piece of scrap.
She turned and strode back towards the city centre, intending to check in at the Doubletree Hotel. She’d stayed there once after being taken to Grantchester and back by punt. Before Bryn and Lorna, and all of this mess. She’d had a romantic night, they’d ordered dinner in their room and watched the last punts return just before sunset. Then they’d cuddled in bed and watched Sleepless in Seattle on the TV.
A night of escapism was what she needed now. Just forget about Bryn and Lorna, and all but one of the Morans.
She reached the traffic lights on the junction of Castle Hill and Magdalene Street and she hurried back towards the bridge. This time it was a welcome sight. She had a plan, and she didn’t care what any late-night bystanders thought of her.
On her right was a row of matching shops, painted a sombre battleship grey, with the window and door frames picked out in black.
On her left, the soot-covered wall of Benson Hall rose high and dark. It was sooted and glassless, with bricked panels in stone window frames. In daylight it simply appeared old and genteel, and never seemed the slightest bit threatening.
So Victoria continued down the dark conduit that whisked her towards the centre.
The lights were mostly out on Magdalene Bridge, but two lofty streetlamps still operated, diffusing light across its span. Shops and restaurants left small courtesy lights glowing, but nothing more. The last diners and drinkers had long since dispersed and the only sounds were the rippling of the Cam as it slithered beneath her, and her heels clacking on the pavement.
She didn’t realize that she had stopped shivering; her next small victory was in sight and all her thoughts were by now on the hotel, not on the chilly night air licking at her bare ankles, or her fingers stiffening with cold.
And, worst of all, she hadn’t felt the goosebumps climbing her scalp, trying to tell her she was being watched. Ahead the road narrowed and a shadow moved. But Victoria didn’t notice.
THIRTY-FOUR
The Round Church stood at the top of Trinity Street, like a sentry marking the next precinct of the city. As she hurried towards it, a nervous little butterfly darted around in her stomach. For the first time she noticed how the gateposts were to
pped with stone figures of eagles with books under their feet. She glanced up at them, and they glared back down, looking ready to fly off and scatter loose pages into the streets of Cambridge.
The walk seemed further through these empty streets than it did during the average hectic lunch hour. She wished again that she’d stopped that cab, but she wouldn’t find one now in this deserted pedestrian quarter. She followed the parameter of grounds of St John’s round to the right, before turning into Trinity Street.
Somewhere close by, running footsteps suddenly echoed.
Victoria hurried on, skipping into a trot every few paces, past the lower levels of St John’s College Chapel. The way in front of her darkened and she struggled to remind herself of the same street in daytime. The ornate railings were just as pretty. The blackened stone-work was just as old. She drifted towards the kerbside, narrowly side-stepping a low bollard. What a stupid decision to paint them black.
Another entrance to St John’s College came and went, and for a fleeting moment she considered finding the porter’s lodge and demanding assistance. But she didn’t need the night to continue any longer and, in just another five minutes, she’d reach the safety of the hotel.
Ahead of her, her route became darker still. As she passed a little park, for a few yards the only illumination came from the moon and the eerie glow it cast on the white blossom of the chestnut trees. Their branches waved at her from over the railings.
She passed Trinity College next, and forced herself not to look up at its medieval elevations, remembering all the gargoyles and grotesque stonework. Instead, she fixed her sights further ahead at where all the shops commenced, and began to feel relief that she was soon getting back into safer territory.
The street now made a slow curve to the right. A cashpoint machine flashed, winking at the pink-and-blue display in Jaeger’s window opposite. Even in the dark, the shops here were designed to appeal. But the diversion they offered her was to be short-lived.
She slowed again when she saw a figure ahead: a shadow slipping out of a doorway. Seeing one person was worse than seeing none. But she kept walking, because she had no choice. There was nowhere else to run.