‘Security!’ Rob yelped. ‘Get security!’ He wriggled against her grip like a fish trying to escape the hook of an angler, hell-bent on making a catch.
Brandishing her phone only millimetres from his face, she brought the screen to life. Tweet after sordid tweet illuminated his pallid complexion.
‘You did this, didn’t you?’ She poked at the screen until the website Mo had showed her appeared. ‘Redhotslut? Beat her black and blue. She loves it! Are you kidding me?’ She was a pressure cooker whose weight had been yanked off too quickly, blasting boiling air over her ex. ‘Not enough that you circulated false accounts to the board of directors in BelNutrive? Me and you work together for years. Years! And there was me, thinking it was happy families. But no! You make it look as though I’ve been fiddling my expenses to the tune of ten grand! It wasn’t enough that you lit a fire under the gossip mill, saying I’d been sleeping with the old CEO? Then, you spread rumours that I’d been sleeping with the young lad on my marketing team? And for a fucking encore, you financially ruin me by taking all the equity in our house and denying me maintenance, even though you managed to destroy my livelihood as a marketeer. Because let’s face it, Robert, shit sticks so very, very well.’
He tried to interrupt at this point, but Bev ploughed on, shouting over him, relishing the fact that his colleagues were still within earshot.
‘And it’s not enough that you did all this just because I’d confronted you about your affairs with junior members of staff. You didn’t bloody like that, did you, Roberto? No! Aw, diddums. So, you use my shot-to-bits – understandably – mental health to cast doubt on my ability to mother my own child safely, just so you can control my access to Hope. The apple didn’t fall far from Gerald and Mary’s fucking tree, did it? And now, you’re intimidating me and doing that crazy-making shit from afar. Because heaven fucking forfend I should get back on my feet and lead a normal life. What a cunt you are, Robert Mitchell.’
Finally, she released her ex-husband, allowing him to stand and face her. The pallor was gone now, replaced by thunder.
‘Have you finished causing a scene in front of my visitors?’ He kept his voice calm and even. His thin body was rigid with indignation.
Bev balled her fist, wondering how she could have ever found this prick attractive. ‘It was you. Admit it!’ She forced herself to maintain eye contact with him, though she could see the alarmed expressions on his colleagues’ faces in her peripheral vision. ‘You put all this filth on social media.’
‘No!’
‘Do me a favour. It’s got, “Mitch on a bad trip” written all over it. Bitter. Snarky. Perverse. Well thought-out. Who else knows that much about me? Divorce grounds? All that stuff about my parents. Who do I know that can knock up a belting website in a matter of hours?’
‘Well, that creep you hang out with, for a start. What’s his name? Doc? A criminal record for phishing? I’m sure putting up a spoof website’s not beyond—’
‘Bullshit! Does Doc stand to benefit from making me look like an insane nymphomaniac? Eh?’
‘Out!’ he said, pointing back towards the atrium. He exchanged a glance with a fat man behind the cafeteria servery. ‘Security’s on their way. I’d leave sharpish, if I were you, before they call the police.’
‘Not the first time you’d have tried to discredit me though, is it? Funny this should happen just as I’m in with a fighting chance of getting Hope back.’
A burly security guard was making his way over to them. With one nod from Rob, he grabbed Bev’s arm and wrestled her towards the exit.
‘Get off me. This is assault.’
The security guard spoke in gentle tones as if he was escorting a lost elderly lady to the toilets. ‘You’re harassing a member of staff, madam. We take security of the people who study and work here very seriously. I’m sorry.’
Rob was following in their wake, only a couple of paces behind. Harsh words spoken through tight lips. ‘Coming here and attacking me in my workspace, Bev! Unprovoked? And you think the judge will give you custody? You’re dumber than I thought.’
Bev craned her neck around and spat at him. A glob of mucus hit him squarely on the nose. ‘Wanker.’
As the security guard held her, poised to expel her into the vortex of the revolving doors, Rob spoke through gritted teeth into her ear. ‘I had nothing to do with that disgraceful . . .’ He was clearly searching for a word that wasn’t an obscenity. Because the last thing Rob would want nowadays would be for the world to know he had ever been anything other than a law-abiding arbiter of good taste. ‘Filth you just showed me. But I tell you what. You try to come near Hope without my prior consent and a social worker in place, I’ll make your life a misery. You try to accuse me of trolling you, I’ll do you for slander. Whatever money you’ve got left, I’ll take. And you’ll never see Hope again, I swear.’
She was pushed through the heavy doors into the street and, with a flash of sunlight reflected in the glass, he and the security guard were gone.
Bev stood on the flagstones outside, staring at the entrance to the faculty, trying to make sense of what had just happened. She walked towards her car.
Unpick this. Ignore the willy-waving. What are you left with?
Rob was Machiavellian, selfish to a fault and cruel but he had denied involvement in redhotslut.com and her other online torments vociferously. Had he been for real?
Making her way back to Hale, Bev’s mind was a-whirr as she picked over what had come to pass in the university’s cafeteria ; the defamatory bilge that had appeared online about her. Somebody was making her life hell. Somebody was trying to harm her custody case. Was it was time to get the police involved, or at least, her solicitor, Eve?
Bev rummaged in her bag to find her burner phone, which she hadn’t checked since she’d abandoned her persona of Cat Thomson. Eve first. See what she says about involving the cops. Ignoring the lights popping behind her eyes thanks to stress, Bev flicked the phone into life and waited for the latest call information to load. Within a minute, the phone was pinging incessantly with missed calls. She swerved to avoid a school minibus, intent on seeing who had so persistently been calling this temporary number. Of course, it could only be one man. Jerry Fitzgerald.
‘Cat, it’s me. Call me. I’m sorry.’
‘Cat, it’s Jerry. I didn’t mean to threaten you. Please get in touch.’
‘Cat, I can’t believe you’re overreacting like this. It makes me think that you do have something to hide.’
The tone became progressively more hostile in later messages.
‘It’s me. I know what you are. I know what you’re after.’
‘Don’t ignore me, you stupid tart. Don’t you know who I am? I’ve got more resources at my disposal than you can imagine. I’m onto you.’
Dare she listen to the rest of those messages?
Jerry is behind this torment, after all. How could he not be? He knew.
Ignoring the angry horn-honking of a bus, whose path she had crossed doing forty with only a millimetre margin for error, she thumbed through the contacts tab on her usual phone. Brought up Angela Fitzgerald – only half watching the road ; accelerating to run a changing light. She had to warn Angie.
‘Come on! Pick up!’
Angela answered on the third ring. ‘Bev? What do you want?’ The reluctance to take the call was audible.
‘Did you get away? Did you get safe?’ Bev asked, tugging on the car’s steering wheel to veer right back onto Princess Road.
‘Yes. I’m staying with my aunt for now.’ Angie’s voice sounded stilted, as though someone else were within earshot.
‘Good. Good. Look, we’ve got to meet. I’m sorry. I know your life’s complicated enough as it is, but I’ve got major hassle with Jerry and both of our lives are in jeop—’
Bev had just pulled into the fast lane, heading out towards the M60 and beyond. She only registered the heavy goods vehicle in the nearside lane when it was too late. The Fies
ta bounced off the wheel arches of the juggernaut, careening into the central reservation ; lifting into the air and spinning twice before it hit the ground on the wrong side of the carriageway, landing on its roof in a soupy cloud of debris.
CHAPTER 34
The Wolf
Standing over the unconscious bitch, he’s questioned by nobody about why he should be there among the monitoring equipment and rhythmic beeping. He’s wearing the blue scrubs he’s pilfered from a side room down the corridor that had stupidly been left unattended. Only his fine leather shoes would give him away as an interloper, if anyone were even there to question his authenticity. No trainers or crocs for The Wolf.
The hospital, normally infested by the local scum who come to have the cancer and clap excised from their disease-ridden bodies, is a ghost town, peopled only by those who mark time with medicated, fitful sleep. It is the small hours of the morning, after all. Even the nurses at the main desk for this ward read their magazines and eat their chocolates in silence. He will not be disturbed. He is stealthy because he is The Wolf. Checking that the door is firmly shut, he pulls on his mask. Now, he is a wolf in doctor’s clothing. He smiles at the thought.
They’ve put her in a side room that smells of blood and bleach. Only a night light shines at her bedside. It is enough to illuminate her battered and bruised face. Though her arm is plastered and in a sling, and she wears a dressing on the side of her head, her pulse seems strong. Good. He is enjoying this game. How disappointing it would have been had she died in that crash, just as the hunt was getting really entertaining.
Taking a seat beside her, he watches the movement of her eyeballs beneath those purple and yellow lids. He knows she is dreaming, though it is definitely not of him. He imagines she will be reconstructing scenes from her nightmarish life in a jumble of fear and despair. If she opens her eyes now and looks at him, she will see a man dressed as a doctor, wearing a latex wolf mask. That waking nightmare will be the last terrifying thing she will ever see because clearly, if she wakes, he will have to kill her.
‘Sleep,’ he whispers, stroking her lacerated cheek.
He leans over her, pausing with his face directly above hers. Through the ventilating nose holes in the mask, he inhales her sickly breath. He exhales, knowing she will take in the expelled matter from his body. Now, they are part of one another. Predator and prey, locked fleetingly in a symbiotic dance.
Squeaking footsteps approach, though this room is on an isolated spur off the main ward.
The Wolf moves silently around the bed and retreats into the dense darkness of the unlit en suite, pulling his mask off and stashing it in the waistband of the pilfered blue trousers, covered by the baggy top. His skin and hair are wet with cold sweat from the latex. He takes a clean, fluffy towel, intended for her and dries himself with it.
He can hear the door opening. The squeak squeak of the visitor’s footsteps grows louder. Trainers. Is this a doctor who could surely identify him as an impersonator, should he be discovered behind the door? Will he be unmasked?
There is a sharp tang of perspiration in the room now and the musk of a man’s unwashed body. This is surely no doctor, prowling in the long shadows cast by the room’s night light. The agency night-shift nurses would bustle in and slam the main fluorescents on like interrogators. Wakey wakey, Beverley. Time for your painkillers. He knows the drill in this underfunded NHS dump.
Peeking through the crack in the door, he can see it is her friend – the lanky 1980s rocker throwback with the greasy blond ponytail. He is carrying a large rucksack and wears a red anorak several sizes too big for him, looking dishevelled as though he has just arrived after some long journey. This is not a man. This is an overgrown boy.
The greasy boy takes the seat at the side of her bed. Does he feel that the already depressed seat pad is warm from another man’s body? It would appear not. He merely rummages in his rucksack and takes a half-drunk bottle of Coke out. Swigs from it. Sits there, staring at Beverley with a crumpled look on his sallow face that heralds the onset of silent weeping. Sure enough, his shoulders start to heave and he begins to wipe his eyes on the grimy sleeve of his anorak.
It is 5 a.m. Somehow, this loser has slipped in, unnoticed. The way that he settles back in the easy chair indicates that he has no intention of leaving for a good while, as long as he remains undisturbed.
The Wolf has a decision to make. Should he remain in the en suite or reveal himself? Is it likely that he will be recognised by the loser she calls ‘Doc’? If he stays behind the door, it is inevitable that a visitor drinking Coke will eventually need to use the toilet? Then, his concealment will certainly be discovered. Either the alarm will be raised or he will be forced to murder this fool.
He has made his decision.
As he emerges from the en suite, the boy jumps.
‘Jesus. Where did you come from?’ he says, slapping his hand over his heart. He is out of the chair now.
‘I was washing my hands,’ The Wolf says, picking up the clipboard from the end of the bed. ‘Beverley’s last on my round. Graveyard shift. You know?’ He chuckles. Intently examines the notes on the clipboard. Glances over to the boy. ‘Sit! Sit!’ Anticipating that the boy’s relief at the out-of-hours visit being sanctioned by none other than a doctor will trump any suspicion.
‘Cheers. How is she?’
‘Are you family?’ The Wolf asks, slipping the clipboard back onto the bed. Glancing down to check that his latex mask is still safely stowed in his waistband and hidden from view.
‘Business partner. Friend.’ His smile is weakened by having been caught in the unmanly act of weeping. ‘They called me. She’s got no next of kin, see? Not really. I was one of the last people she’d spoken to on her phone. I came as soon as I could.’ He swallows hard. ‘I can’t believe it. One minute, I’m speaking to her. The next . . . Will she be okay?’
‘What did she say to you?’
‘Eh?’
‘On the phone before she crashed.’
The boy’s brow furrows. He cocks his head at a questioning angle. ‘Why?’
The Wolf can feel sweat starting to roll down his back. Is the boy studying him, wondering where he has seen this slightly familiar doctor before? How might he kill him quietly if it came to it? Garrotte him using the wire from the oxygen clip? Beat him swiftly to death, perhaps. But what with? Anything that might serve as an impromptu cosh is bolted to the walls. ‘It was a bad crash,’ he says. ‘I’m just interested to know her state of mind at the time.’
This visitor shrugs. His eyes dart away, towards the heart monitor. If he knows anything, he is not willing to share it. ‘I just want someone to tell me she’s gonna make a full recovery.’
The adrenaline that had kicked in starts to ease off as The Wolf notices how everything about this chump’s body language is evasive and defensive. The shifty gaze. The folded arms. The staccato way in which he is speaking. It is a comforting thought that the boy might be too unnerved by having entered the bitch’s room without permission, and outside visiting hours, to consider that this doctor’s presence might also be unsanctioned ; his credentials, spurious.
The boy she calls ‘Doc’ is no threat. Though it would give him pleasure to snuff out his miserable low-rent life, The Wolf makes the decision to leave before the two of them attract unwanted attention from the battleaxe agency nurses on the desk.
Before the endgame comes, The Wolf has plans to turn Beverley Saunders’ torment dial all the way up to ten. It will serve her right for all she has done and the terrible lies she has told.
CHAPTER 35
Bev
Instead of the sirens she’d been expecting, the wail coming from the police cars had sounded more like a child crying. They’d been chasing her for the best part of a mile now, their blue and neon green livery vying for her attention as she’d glanced in her rear-view mirror. Trying to ascertain if they were gaining on her, with their blue lights flashing.
‘Go faster, Mum!�
�� Hope had said, sitting in the passenger seat at her side.
Bev had glanced down at her daughter’s small body. ‘Where’s your booster seat?’ she’d asked, panic pushing her blood ever faster around the tangled network of her arteries. ‘Why haven’t you got your seatbelt on? Buckle up, baby!’
‘Weeeee!’ Hope had yelled, rolling the window down and sticking her skinny arms out, fingers trailing the cold, damp air. ‘I can fly.’ Then, she had leaned out so her head and shoulders had only just skimmed the sides of the traffic in the next lane.
Bev had reached out to grab her. ‘Get in! Get back in.’ She’d pulled hard on her daughter’s fleece but the fabric had slipped through her fingers. ‘I can’t protect you, Hope. Get back in!’
The glancing blow from the heavy goods vehicle at her side had hit Hope, yanking her out of the passenger seat and through the window. The car had shot into the air. Rolling, rolling into the opposite carriageway. When she’d hit the asphalt, Bev had woken with a start.
‘Jesus, no!’ she’d cried, trying to propel herself into sitting position but realising her left arm was in plaster, suspended from a rig-up above the bed.
‘Are you OK, Mum-Mum?’ a small voice had said.
Bev had glanced blearily to the visitor chair at the side of her bed and burst into tears at the sight of Rob, slouching to the side as though he’d been sitting there for a long time, wearing a bored and resentful expression with just a hint of smugness about it. Their daughter had been perched on his knee.
Bright-eyed Hope had leaned towards Bev with childish concern on her delicate features. ‘Were you having a yukky dream?’
‘Hope! You’re OK. You’re OK. Oh, my love. Come here. Give your mummy a kiss.’ Her speech had been morphine-slurred but her relief had been acute.
Hope had leaped up from Rob’s lap and had covered Bev’s battle-scarred cheeks in a flurry of wet kisses. Bev had winced at the pressure of her lips on the emerging bruising and the deep cuts that the doctor had taped, but she’d said nothing. Had just revelled in the knowledge that her daughter was by her bedside and unharmed. That particular nightmare had been merely that.
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