by Zoe Sharp
She gave me a slightly scornful look. “Do restaurants let you take your own food in?” she challenged. “You don't get to carry anything into that place. They want to make damned sure you've got to buy fresh on the inside.”
I was startled and tried not to show it. I thought of Marc's adamant statement that nobody brought anything into his club, and of Len's that nothing went on that he didn't know about. Were they naive, or just very clever? Mind you, if they suddenly found out that Angelo had been running a nice little sideline in disco biscuits, it would explain Marc's explosion of anger . . .
I turned back to Joy. “So who did you go to for yours?” I demanded.
I viewed a first flash of temper. “What the hell business is it of yours, Charlie?”
“You have no idea,” I put in quietly, although my own irritation was rising fast.
After a few moments Joy's eyes dropped from mine again. She shrugged. “I don't know,” she said, almost sullen. “I was with a group of friends. One of them went away and he just came back with some gear.”
“And you didn't see where he'd got it?”
She shook her head, then remembered something. “The only thing was, I told him I was worried about taking anything so openly on the dance floor, in case we got thrown out by one of the bouncers. He just laughed and said where did I think the stuff had come from in the first place?”
“But you didn't see which one?”
She shook her head with such certainty I realised I was getting the truth.
I took a deep breath. “Look, Joy,” I said. “I really need to know who's dealing drugs at the club. Next Saturday, can you get your mate to identify who sold him the stuff last time for me?”
I knew I was going out on a limb on the grounds of a tenuous friendship, and it didn't quite come off the way I'd hoped. Her face flushed and she jumped to her feet. “No way!” she cried. “Oh sure, I do a bit of blow every now and again, and you want me to tell you everyone who's ever passed me a joint. You teach me self-defence, Charlie, not morality. If I want my soul saving, I'll go find a priest! Don't be so fucking high and mighty!”
She started for the door. I moved after her. “Joy, wait, let me explain—” I was going to have to tell her about Terry, about the connection with the New Adelphi, about my own attack, but she had already reached the door out of the ballroom.
She rounded on me, eyes bright with tears. “Just go to hell, Charlie!” and she rammed the door open, disappearing through it with an air of absolute finality.
I started after her, but as I reached the door myself, stretching a hand out, it opened inward towards me and a girl stepped through.
We both stopped with a little exclamation of shock. My mind registered the short frame and spiky hair of Victoria, the waitress from the New Adelphi, even as my mouth was saying, “Sorry, excuse me a moment, would you?”
I dived out into the corridor, but Joy had already disappeared along the hallway, heading for the front door. I caught a final glimpse of her stiff back as she hurried down the front steps. I called her name again, but she was gone.
With a sigh I went back to deal with my new visitor.
“Have I come at a bad time?” Victoria asked with a hesitant smile.
“Oh no,” I sighed. “I've just opened my mouth and only succeeded in changing feet. Don't worry about it. Now then, what can I do for—?”
I'd glanced up as I'd spoken and my voice died in my throat as I looked at her.
“Christ, Victoria, what the hell happened to you?”
The left-hand side of her face was one huge contusion, the bruising starting dark purple round her swollen eye and fading out to a sickly yellow at chin and hairline. Steri-strip dressings closed the edges of cuts to her cheekbone and eyebrow. Through the slit of distended lids, the white of the eye itself was speckled with blood. She looked like shit.
Victoria couldn't fail to take in my reaction. She gave a bravado half-smile that made her mouth tremble, suddenly in danger of losing the last thread of her slender self-control.
I put my arm round her shoulder and led her to the chair Joy had so recently vacated. Victoria sank onto it as though her legs wouldn't support her any more, twisting her hands together in her lap.
I perched alongside, keeping my arm round her and digging in the pocket of my jogging pants for a respectable handkerchief to offer. She threw me a brief smile of thanks and we sat in silence for a while as she searched for a logical entrance to her story.
I didn't try and hurry her into it. Whatever had happened to Victoria, although obviously not really fresh, was still close enough to be traumatic. By the way her hands where shaking, she was probably still in shock.
The shock always gets you. It certainly did with me.
The bright lights and the warmth of the Lodge receded, to be replaced with the memory of another time, and another place. It had been dark then, frosty, and cold enough for snow.
Donalson, Hackett, Morton, and Clay.
I'd been younger then, in some ways more self-assured, in others more vulnerable. We'd been learning some hand-to-hand stuff as part of the course, but my attackers knew exactly the same techniques as I did, and I was outnumbered four to one.
In reality, I didn't really know any more about self-defence than to try and knee my attackers in the groin, or punch them in the stomach. Now I can put my mind to over fifty sensitive areas on the face and neck alone.
I was strong and a bit of a fitness freak back then, but even so it was no match for superior male muscle. Under pressure I've always been able to think fast. So I didn't cower. I fought and kicked out instantly, tried to yell blue murder.
I suppose it was about then that the four of them realised they were going to have to kill me to keep me quiet about what they'd done. The memory that has stayed with me longest is of lying half-insensible on the frigid earth, listening to them discussing in panicked undertones how best to dispose of my body.
The emotional aftershocks had taken a long time to die down. I doubted I'd ever be without the ripples left behind. When I was able to view the events with the clarity of distance, I was just left with the anger of my own helplessness.
I felt a burst of that same anger looking at Victoria's battered face, and knowing that had she come to my classes I probably could have taught her how to avoid the worst of it.
Now, she made a determined effort to get herself together. I smiled encouragingly.
“D'you want to talk about it?” I ventured at last.
She sniffed and nodded. “God, sorry, look at me, falling apart on you,” she muttered, blowing her nose loudly, which started it off bleeding. I made a quick decision that she could keep the handkerchief.
“Who did this to you, Victoria?” I asked gently, although I think I already knew the answer.
She sniffed again, dabbing at the fresh blood. “Angelo,” she admitted, her voice breaking. “We've only been going out for a few months, and at first he was great, but lately . . .” She tailed off, glancing at me, and I realised that the blood from her nose had been caused by the ring she usually wore there being half ripped out through the skin . . .
I was trying so hard not to let Victoria see my distaste at this piece of mutilation that I almost missed what she was saying next.
“He seems to really hate you, Charlie. It scares me.”
“Angelo hates me?” I stared at her blankly. “Why on earth does he hate me?”
“Because you're not afraid of him,” she said, as though stating the obvious. “He expects everybody to be afraid of him – especially women. He likes his women passive – submissive, even. When you'd been to the club for your interview he was dead scathing about you because you wouldn't take Len on. He thought it was because you couldn't do it. Then you took care of that fight last Saturday and now he thinks you were taking the piss out of them both.”
I made no response to that. There didn't seem to be much I could say. Victoria took my silence to be scepticism. She p
eered at me again. “I think he hates the control you've got,” she went on, hesitantly. “Angelo's driven by his anger, it takes him over. You're different. You get mad, but you use it. You don't let it dominate the way you behave. Angelo doesn't understand that, and it infuriates him.”
“So he takes it out on you?” I demanded.
She shrugged her thin shoulders. Some big man Angelo was, turning his fists onto a girl a third of his size and weight. It made me burn with the sheer injustice of it.
“What do you need from me, Victoria?” If there was anything I could do, I'd do it.
She looked surprised. “I don't need anything from you,” she said. “I just thought I ought to warn you, that's all – about the way Angelo feels.”
“Does he know you're here?”
A furtive flicker crossed her face. “God, no! He'd go mental if he found out,” she said, unable to keep the trace of fear out of her voice entirely.
I turned to her, gripped her arm. “Victoria, get away from him,” I warned. “If he did this to you, get out now, while you still can!”
She slid her gaze away. “I'm OK,” she protested. “He'd had a bit to drink. He didn't know what he was doing and he was really sorry afterwards.” She got to her feet, tried a bigger, braver smile. “He's promised it won't happen again.” I couldn't work out if it was me she was trying to convince, or herself.
I walked with her along the corridor to the hallway, and out into the gloomy evening. The air was biting, enveloping me in its bitter embrace as soon as I left the warmth of the house. I shivered and dug my hands deep into the pockets of my jogging pants. Victoria was only wearing a light denim jacket, but she seemed not to notice the cold.
Her car, a grubby-looking Mini with a different coloured front wing and a reshaped coathanger for an aerial, was parked with two wheels into the bushes, down near the bottom of the drive. A streetlamp outside the gate threw a sodium yellow glow onto it.
For a few moments I watched her walking away towards the Mini, head down as though trudging into rain. She made a diminutive figure, vulnerable, exposed. Despite her assurances, I worried for her.
I shook my head and turned away, intending to go and have a quick brew with Tris and Ailsa before I changed for the ride home. I must have managed about three strides.
Then all hell broke loose.
Seventeen
Victoria didn't so much start screaming, as let out a single high-pitched yowl of terror. It lacerated the night air, and gave me instant goose bumps. I spun round so fast I skidded and nearly tripped over my own feet on the lichen-covered slabs.
I had time to see a darkened figure grab Victoria's shoulders to shove her out of the way, thrusting past her. She crumpled by the side of the Mini as the figure made off down the drive and out into the road.
Something about the way it moved told me the flying outline was a man. Not only that, but the same man who'd fled from outside the ballroom window. He had his covered head down and was fleeing with a purpose, already thirty yards away. For a moment I was torn over direction. Did I give chase, or go to Victoria's aid?
Rescue won out over capture. I ran over to her, heart thundering far more than it should have been from such a short burst of exercise. To my relief, she was already starting to regain her feet, clinging onto the door handle of her car for support, her back half-towards me.
As she heard my footsteps she gave another stark cry, cowering back. It took me a couple of attempts – speaking loudly and calmly, and not trying to touch her – before her brain registered my voice. She quietened with a sob.
Then, she let me reach out to her, to help her up. I let go once she was on her feet and propped against the side of the Mini. My hands came away wet, and sticky.
Under the gloomy lighting it was difficult to distinguish the colour, but I knew.
“Victoria,” I said, “where are you hurt?”
She looked at me blankly, then saw the blood on my fingers, and her legs gave out again. She slid down the bodywork, ending up back on the ground.
I checked her over quickly, searching for the wound, but I couldn't find one. There was blood on both her upper arms, quite a lot of it, but it didn't seem to have come from Victoria herself.
A little slow-motion action replay rolled through my mind. I saw again the black-clad figure swinging Victoria roughly aside. Saw his gloved hands grasping her shoulders . . .
I straightened up. Victoria's assailant could only have come out of the darkened foliage that bordered the drive. I didn't want to go in there, among the dark whisperings of the leaves, but I wasn't sure I had a choice. The man hadn't moved like he was injured. What did that leave?
As I started to move round the front of the Mini, I felt Victoria grab at the bottom of my sweatshirt, trying to prevent me from going. I had to prise her hand away from my clothes. “It's OK,” I said. “I need to check.”
Brave words. Shame I didn't quite have the brave heart to go with them.
It was dark in front of the Mini, the car casting its own shadow onto the gravel from the lighting in the road behind it. I edged forwards until my toes bumped against the terracotta coping that marked the border between drive and shrubbery.
But coping stones aren't soft, and they don't flinch when you kick them . . .
I spun round, told Victoria to turn her headlights on so I could see what I was doing, but didn't get a response.
When I glanced at her I found the blonde-haired girl had one hand clamped over her mouth as though to either prevent a rising tide of nausea, or bite back on her screams. Above her blenched fingers her eyes were stretched wide, the white gleaming clearly all around the iris. She kept moaning, over and over, “Oh God, oh God.”
I went through her pockets until I found her car keys, opened the door, and fumbled with every knob and switch I could find on the Mini's dashboard until the headlights blinked on.
What I saw in their feeble glow made me wish I hadn't bothered.
The figure of a woman was lying in an almost perfect recovery position, with her feet disappearing into the shrubbery, and her upper body onto the gravel. She was on her left side, but nearly rolled onto her face, with her back to the Mini's front bumper. One arm was out behind her, the other crooked up in front.
It briefly crossed my mind that she might have fallen and hit her head. Blood had haloed round her face, soaked into her clothing. The palm and fingertips of her forward hand rested in the growing pool that covered the stones around her.
Victoria whimpered behind me. I turned back to her. Her ashen face made perfect sense to me now. I squatted alongside her.
“Victoria, listen to me,” I said gently, holding her head so she had to look straight into my eyes. “I need you to go back into the house and get them to phone for the police, and an ambulance. I'll stay here and see what I can do for her. Go and find Ailsa and tell her what's happened. Can you do that for me?”
She clutched briefly at my hand, her fingers almost unnaturally cold, then gave a hesitant nod. She was shaking as she climbed to her feet. I watched her as she stumbled numbly back towards the lights of the hallway, like someone sleepwalking.
I hung back just until she was close enough to the front steps for me to be sure she was going to make it without collapsing, then turned back to the woman.
I got the same crunch of fear in my gut that I'd felt when I'd first seen Terry's body. I wondered how many corpses you had to see before you got blasé about them.
I pushed the memory of the fleeing man from my mind, and trod carefully round the prone form on the ground. The girl's legs were bare and one shoe was missing. Her hair had fallen partly over her face, and her coat collar had rucked up. I'd already crouched and put a hand out to smooth them away when I stilled, recognition as jarring as an unexpected thorn in a bunch of roses.
It was Joy.
Fearing the worst, I pushed her hair back, intending to check her airway was clear. She started under my fingers, making me jump bac
k with a muffled curse. Her eyes opened, smoky with pain. She seemed to gaze at me, but unfocused, and began to struggle in panic.
“Joy, it's OK, it's me. It's Charlie,” I told her, trying to keep her steady. Christ, I needed to keep her still. I'd no idea what her injuries were. “Don't worry, help's on the way. Where are you hurt?”
She was still thrashing around, hands fluttering at my wrists, making unintelligible noises like a wounded animal. I just couldn't understand what she was trying to tell me. Later, it was the sounds she made that haunted me.
She lifted her head, eyes wide. A spurt of blood oozed from between her parted lips, staining her teeth like a heavy smoker. It joined the steadily expanding puddle, which was pooling round my feet. Joy was losing it at an alarming rate. I knew I needed to stem the flow if there was going to be any chance of saving her.
The fight went out of her abruptly and she sagged back. It seemed like even that short spasm of energy had drained her. I took advantage to open her coat, searching for the cause of all that bleeding.
It didn't take me long to find it.
As I pulled back her collar I couldn't suppress a gasp of revulsion. Joy's throat had been slashed straight across from one side to the other.
Her windpipe, a tangle of sinews, and disconnected blood vessels were all clearly visible through the gaping wound. Blood was pumping out at a speed which dismayed me. I yanked my sweatshirt off over my head, balling it up into a pad to hold over the gash. I dredged through my memory and recalled that pressure was the only way to stop bleeding. Trouble was, how did I press on her windpipe without hastening her death?
I squeezed as tightly as I dared, but all that seemed to happen was that my sweatshirt turned steadily dark with blood.
Joy was lying quietly now, her skin taking on a clammy pallor. Her breathing was so shallow I could hardly tell if she was still alive or not. Come on, for God's sake! How long does it take to get an ambulance up here? They always seem to be in a damned hurry whenever I've hustled the Suzuki out of their flightpath.
