by Roger Hurn
‘And what exactly did you tell them, Mo?’
Mo grinned. ‘The truth mate. In the early hours of Christmas morning I took you from Deptford High Street to your house in Eltham. You was alone and we talked about football. Or, more precisely, how West Ham are gonna stuff Arsenal this season, innit.’
‘Did they ask you if I talked about what I’d been doing that night?’
‘Yeah, they did and I said I never ask you about being a private investigator and you never ask me about being a taxi driver – we only ever talk about the footie on account of how you’re a mad gooner and I support the Hammers.’
I slumped back into the seat. I’d heard what I needed to hear and now all I wanted was for Mo to take me home as quickly, quietly and as gently as possible – which he did. Given that he’s got a wife and five kids who give him constant earache he’s a man who understands just how precious peace and bloody quiet are.
Chapter 23
Mo, being a kindly soul, offered me his shoulder to lean on as I stumbled out of the taxi and swayed like a punch drunk boxer after one too many fights. He guided me into the house and up the stairs to the bedroom where I collapsed on the bed as if I’d been pole axed.
‘There’s money in my wallet,’ I mumbled. ‘Help yourself to it.’
Mo pulled on his beard. ‘No, you’re all right, Ryan. There’s no rush. Drop the fare into the office when you’re back on your feet.’ He shuffled from foot to foot. ‘Listen, man, do you need me to help get you sorted and into bed or what? Only you’re looking well out of it, know what I mean.’
I did know what he meant. I was so weak even kittens could have kicked sand in my face. Now I wasn’t keen on having Mo see me in my undercrackers, but beggars can’t be choosers.
‘OK, Mo,’ I mumbled. ‘But first, tell me you love me.’
Mo sighed heavily. ‘That crack on the head’s done nothing for your sense of humour, Ry. You should get the doctor to check it out ‘cos it’s well sick.’ Then he gently removed my shoes and undertook the task of undressing me. I tried to make an effort but, frankly, I was about as much use as shaving with a wet lettuce. Nevertheless, Mo was equal to the struggle and finally managed to wrestle my dead weight out of my clothes and under the covers. He looked down at me and shook his head. ‘You sure you shouldn’t be back in the hospital, Ryan? You look like an extra from the Walking Dead.’
‘No, I’ll be fine. All I need is some rest and I’ll be back on my feet in no time.’
He shrugged. ‘If you say so.’ He looked uncertain about what to do next. ‘Err … do you want a cup of tea or anything?’
I groaned. ‘No, I just want to be left in peace, Mo. So thanks, but will you just bugger off and leave me be – please?’
‘Yeah, all right then ... if you’re sure.’
Against his better judgement, Mo left me to sleep. But I’d hardly closed my eyes before he was back in the room.
‘Ry, you oughta get your front door fixed, mate. It won’t close properly. Do you want me to do it?’
‘No, I flaming well don’t. The last thing I need right now is you hammering and banging downstairs. I’ll phone and get someone to come and sort it tomorrow or something. Just wedge it shut on your way out. It’ll be fine. As I’ve already been told by an expert, I don’t have anything worth stealing.’ I tried to turn over away from him, but that set off a cacophony of steam hammers in my head so I gave that up as a bad job and just lay there with my eyes closed tight and my middle finger raised. Mo took the hint. I heard him grunt and then tiptoe away downstairs. He slammed the front door a couple of times in a misguided effort to get it to lock, but then he gave up and drove off. I didn’t give a toss about the door. All I wanted was to sleep for a week.
I dozed off pretty quickly and spiralled down into a sleep so deep I may as well have been dead. Then suddenly I was wide awake again. The room was full of midwinter darkness and my mouth tasted like someone had emptied the sweepings from a hamster’s cage into it. But my heart was thumping and sweat was running down from my hairline into my eyes. I couldn’t see or hear anything, but I knew I wasn’t alone in the house. I didn’t call out. I could have done, but I didn’t want whoever it was to know where I was. I tried to sit up and slip out of bed, but it seemed that gravity had gone into overdrive underneath my pillow and I couldn’t so much as raise my head. I felt as helpless as a beetle on its back. Then I heard the stairs creak. The trick to climbing stairs quietly is to walk at the edge and not in the middle. Either the intruder didn’t know this or they weren’t bothered if I heard them or not. Either way there was nothing I could do to stop them. My mouth was lined with feathers and my heart was pounding like a hammer wielded by a blacksmith on PCP. If this had been a scene from a movie the string section would have been in meltdown by now.
My eyes adjusted to the lack of light just in time for me to see a shadowy figure appear in the doorway.
‘For fuck’s sake, Mo,’ I groaned. ‘What the hell are you trying to do – give me a flaming heart attack or something?’
‘Sorry, Ry. But my shift was up and so I thought I’d look in on you to see if you was OK. I didn’t mean to scare you.’ He sounded a bit sheepish. Then his voice took on a cheeky inflection. ‘Or are you just a bit pissed off ‘cos it’s only me and not Carly coming to play doctors and nurses?’
I gave him a radioactive glare. Sadly, it didn’t glow in the dark so it was wasted on him. ‘Funnily enough no. I thought you were Santa Claus nipping back to give me a late Christmas present.’
He scratched his head. ‘It’s been said that a man must do good to benefit his soul – not for any earthy reward. I believe that – which is just as well ‘cos I’m never gonna get any thanks off a moody sod like you, innit?’
Mo was one of nature’s good guys, and I was grateful to him for caring about me, but all I really wanted was for him to be gone.
‘You’ll get your reward in heaven, Mo – or wherever it is you guys reckon you’ll end up. Or failing that, I’ll treat you to a lemonade and a bag of crisps when I’m back up and running. Now sod off and let me sleep.’
He tutted reprovingly. ‘All right my friend I’ll go. But I’ll drop by again tomorrow to see how you are whether you want me to or not.’
‘Cheers, mate,’ I mumbled and I could just make out his beard as it split open to reveal his smile. He clumped off down the stairs and back out into the night.
I lay there expecting to fall back into in the twilight world between sleep and waking; my head full of strange imaginings and deeply unsettling fragments of dreams. But no. Instead, I heard the door open again and footsteps coming up the stairs.
‘Oh, for Pete’s sake, Mo, you’re not my bloody nursemaid. I told you to go home.’
But it wasn’t Mo. It was Natasha and, by the faint light from the street light that filtered through my bedroom window, I could see she was holding a knife!
Chapter 24
Natasha didn’t bother with switching the bedroom light on. Instead she walked over to my bedside and looked down at me. It might have been my imagination, but I thought I could see darkness leaking out of her eyes.
‘Hello again, Ryan. Sorry I’m not Mo. He’s just left, but you know that.’ She giggled. ‘He couldn’t lock the door, which was handy for me. It saved me the bother of breaking in.’
‘Did Mo see you?’ I was hoping he had and her face had registered with him and already he was on his way back here with the law. Naturally, I was clutching at straws. Natasha shook her head. ‘Oh no, Ryan. I made sure that the nice cab driver didn’t notice me. As I recall from that tedious journey we took with him, he isn’t overly bright, but even he would have put two and two together and raised the alarm if he had.’ She blew out a long breath. ‘And that would really not have suited me because you and I have unfinished business to attend to, don’t we my love?’
She plonked herself down on the bed and laughed as I yelped with pain. ‘Oh sorry, darling, I can be so clumsy sometime
s.’ She swung her legs up and straddled me like she was going for the cowgirl position in a low rent porno vid. Only the way she held the knife made it more like a potential snuff movie with me as the victim. My body made a feeble attempt to pump adrenaline through my body, but it was more of a dribble than a surge. I had no chance of either fight or flight so my only hope was to try and talk my way out of trouble. I knew my usually silver tongue might as well have been made of brass for all the good it was going to do me with Natasha. But I had to make the effort.
‘Listen to me, Nat, I …’
She pressed the point of the knife under my chin. ‘Shut the fuck up, you weasel. You don’t get to call me Nat. Only people who care about me get to call me that. And you don’t care a thing about me. You set me up and sided with all those who want to take my necklace from me.’ Her left hand reached up and caressed the amber beads gently. The knife in her right hand didn’t waver. It stayed firmly pressed just above my Adam’s apple. ‘You’re worse than my fucking cousin. At least she never pretended to like me. But you did. You fucked me, then you fucked me over. You’re complete scum, Ryan and I am so angry with you.’ Her tongue slid over her lips. ‘And that is really bad news for you, darling, because there’s only one way I can make the anger go away and that’s by making you go away.’ She giggled again and ground her hips against my groin for a few seconds in a grotesque parody of sex. ‘Gosh Ryan, I’m not making you hard. Oh, boo hoo. I guess that’s proof you really don’t love me anymore. But, it honestly doesn’t matter, sweetie, because, if you won’t penetrate me, I’ll just have to penetrate you.’
She pulled the knife back and made to thrust it into my throat when a female voice yelled, ‘Ryan you fucking bastard. Get that fucking bitch out of my bed!’
Instead of following through with the knife thrust, Natasha twisted round just as my wife snapped on the bedroom light. The two women gawped at each other open mouthed.
‘What the hell is going on here, Ryan? Are you and your floozy playing some sort of sick sex game?’
‘No!’ Natasha yelled at her. ‘This bastard’s betrayed me and he’s going to die for it.’
My missus’ face coloured up. She’s a strawberry blonde and has a temper to match her fiery hair. ‘Of course he’s betrayed you, you silly bitch. He’s betrayed every woman he’s ever met so don’t think you’re anything special. But it takes two to tango so I reckon you and I have got a score to settle you cow! Get off him now and lets you and me sort it.’
Sarah stood there with her fists on her hips and her eyes blazing like blast furnaces. I could feel the heat and fury radiating off her. In her rage she was totally ignoring the fact that Natasha had a knife.
‘Back off, Sarah,’ I screeched. ‘She’s batshit crazy. She’s gonna kill me ‘cos she thinks I tricked her over that fucking necklace she’s wearing.’
Sarah did a double take then sneered. ‘What? You want to kill my old man over that bloody plastic effort! You’re having a laugh, aren’t you sweetheart? Mind you, it is fucking shit though. Where did you get it for her, Ryan, a bloody Christmas cracker?’
Natasha’s face contorted with fury. ‘It’s not plastic,’ she screamed. ‘It’s amber and Napoleon gave it to Josephine as a token of his love for her.’
Sarah shook her head dismissively. ‘Is that what Ryan told you, sweetheart? Christ, you picked a right divvy to shag when you hooked up with this one, Ryan.’
Natasha lost it totally. She howled like a demented banshee, scrambled up from the bed and flung herself at Sarah. ‘I’ll kill you for that you fucking cow.’
Sarah grabbed her arms, but the force of Natasha’s momentum knocked her back and the two of them crashed onto the floor. I could hear them thrashing around and swearing violently at each other, but I couldn’t see what the hell was happening. I forced myself up and struggled out of bed ready to try and pull them apart. But, by the time I’d managed to get to my feet and the room had stopped spinning long enough for me to lurch over to them, Natasha was lying on top of Sarah, and neither were moving. Then Sarah opened her eyes and with an enormous effort pushed Natasha off her. Natasha rolled over and I could see the carving knife protruding left of centre from her chest. She wasn’t dead, but then Sarah screamed, ‘Oh my Christ, what have I done?’
Before I could stop her, she reached out and ripped the knife from where it was sticking out from just under Natasha’s sternum. Blood gushed out. The carving knife had acted as a plug and now there was nothing to stop the flow. She hadn’t meant to but, by trying to save her, Sarah had just signed Natasha’s death warrant.
Natasha’s eyes widened like she was really surprised to find herself lying on the floor. She struggled to sit up but, instead of trying to staunch the blood with her hands, she touched the amber necklace at her throat. She smiled to find it still there and gave a sigh of pure pleasure. Then her eyes fixed on Sarah who was kneeling next to her. Natasha’s mouth twisted into a snarl and she hissed, ‘It’s mine, Sally you bitch, it’s mine. I won’t ever let you have it.’ Then the gold flecks faded from her green eyes and she was gone.
Chapter 25
Sarah was distraught. She cried until I thought she’d dehydrated herself. I tried to comfort her, but she wasn’t in the mood to let me hold her so instead I called DI Smalling on her mobile and told her what had just happened. Then I phoned Maureen. She listened and then said, ‘I’ll call DK. Your wife’s going to need a lawyer and DK’s guy will fit the bill. He’s not perfect, but he’s so close it’s scary, so tell your wife not to worry, he’ll sort it.’ Then she broke the connection.
I knew she was right. Sarah was going to need a good lawyer because, even though Natasha was a psychopath who was wanted for murder, she would probably have still been alive if Sarah hadn’t pulled the knife from her chest. It was all going to be very messy indeed.
Funnily enough, in the end things didn’t work out too badly. For a start, the police were pretty sympathetic when they turned up. Then DK’s lawyer was as smooth and efficient as a brand new Bentley. He was also as expensive, but DK picked up the tab without a quibble. This made me pretty uneasy because I knew that meant I was in his debt and he would call it in one day. He always did.
The coroner’s verdict was that Sarah had acted within the law by defending herself and that Natasha’s death was the result of a misadventure. So my missus was completely cleared of any wrong doing, which was a relief to say the least.
Then Sally Shapley withdrew the necklace from the auction, but I heard on the grapevine that she sold it privately for a small fortune. I don’t know for sure, but I’m guessing that Ms Berry had a hand in that decision and that her client was well pleased with her efforts because, out of the blue, I received a cheque for fifteen hundred quid and a note signed by her that said: “For Investigation Services”. Maureen was a formidable lady who liked to have it her way. I bet she was one hell of a dominatrix. She was someone else I owed a debt to, but, unlike DK, I don’t think she has any intention of ever calling it in. Maybe I’m just not submissive enough for her.
Actually, talking of debts, I owed my missus a pretty big one because if she hadn’t turned up when she did I would’ve been dead meat. Natasha was hell bent on killing me and she’d have succeeded without a doubt because, when she walked into my bedroom, I was helpless and had no chance of stopping her.
Sarah had come home ahead of schedule because she’d been brooding about our last conversation. Then she’d had a big row with her sister when she told her she was coming back to see if we could make a go of our marriage. Her sister thought she was insane and had let rip on the subject of our marriage in general and me in particular. She’s always had me pegged as a complete waste of space, though I suspect it’s not unconnected with the fact that I’m an Arsenal fan while she’s a rabid United supporter. Anyway, this had seriously annoyed Sarah. She might reserve the right to slag me off in no uncertain terms, but she was damned if she was going to let her sister do it with impunity. So
, there’d been a right royal ruction and Sarah had stormed out in high dudgeon.
Luckily for me, despite the holiday train timetable, she’d been able to get back from Manchester to arrive home in the nick of time. I would have rather it had been Mo who’d walked in and saved me, but there you go.
As it happens, Sarah decided she couldn’t stay in our house after the killing so she booked herself into a hotel. Plus, I had to confess to her what had happened between Natasha and me on Christmas night. This went down about as well as a concrete parachute and meant that there was no chance in the foreseeable future that Sarah and I would be playing happy families. In fact, she told me she was filing for a divorce. So I stayed put. After all, somebody had to make sure the front door got fixed.
Chapter 26
I’d recovered well enough by New Year’s Eve to contemplate going out. True to her word, Carly sent me a text saying she wanted us to meet up for a drink. We’d messaged each other a couple of times before that, but I hadn’t told her anything about what had happened to me and she’d been curiously non-committal about what she’d been up to. Frankly, my head had been hurting too much for me to really give any thought to anything other than getting better. But now I was excited. I was going to tell Carly that I was getting divorced and I had high hopes that might be the news she’d been waiting for. I was also planning to give her the star on a silver chain that I’d bought her for Christmas, but hadn’t managed to hand over. I figured she’d love it and that she’d be bound to show her gratitude in an appropriate way. For the first time since the nightmare of Christmas, I was feeling that maybe all was right with the world after all.
You know, Carly is a funny girl in lots of ways and I found it pretty hard to read her. On the other hand, she said she could read me like a book – the kind of book where all you had to do was join the dots. But that was part of her charm. We bickered all the time, and we both loved that. It was great fun and her quick wits and sharp tongue were a big turn on for me. But, most of all, we had a mutual respect that had blossomed over the course of the cases we’d worked together. She was streetwise, had a cool head under pressure, integrity and determination and, although Einstein wasn’t losing any sleep over the competition from Carly, she also had a bright mind. I trusted her judgement and I knew she was on my side one hundred per cent. Oh, and did I mention that she was gorgeous?
