by Zoe Sharp
“So lover boy was imaginin’ things back there?” Tess persisted.
“I didn’t say that.”
“What, then?”
“I don’t know.”
But I did. Her words brought the whole thing into focus. I was completely convinced that, if Sean reckoned the Vectra had been following us, then it had. He was way too experienced and too canny to have mistaken a coincidence for a deliberate action. But either they weren’t with us now, or they’d suddenly got a whole hell of a lot better at not being spotted.
Or, worst of all, Sean had been right and the tail hadn’t been following the rest of us.
It had been following him.
***
The rooms at the hotel were large and mine had two double beds in it as well as a pullout sofa, which made me wonder about who it was really designed for. I’d half-expected that I’d be sharing with Tess, but she either had her own room or had decided on other sleeping arrangements. I didn’t ask which.
As soon as I got into my room I called Jacob. My mobile didn’t seem to be able to pick up a signal, which I wasn’t sure was down to just being in a dodgy cell area, or whether it wouldn’t work in Ireland at all. I made a mental note to ask.
I used the hotel phone instead, aware that they were probably charging me through the nose for the privilege. I caught Jacob at home and gave him a brief run-down of the trip so far. He gave me the latest news on Sam’s condition, which was remarkably good, all things considered. I asked how Clare was. Her temperature was up, he told me. My father was concerned about possible infection.
“I know I’m probably biased, but she’s in very good hands,” I said.
“I know that, too,” he said, still sounding anxious. “But even so . . .”
***
I showered and changed and met the others downstairs afterwards in the bar. By the time I arrived, everyone was there apart from Tess. I assumed she was still primping. They stopped talking when I appeared, which I tried not to let annoy me.
The boys had made an effort, wearing shirts or T-shirts with designer logos on the breast and, appropriately enough, a range of Nike pub shoes. Even Paxo’s hairstyle was looking spruce again.
Instinctively, I’d dressed to blend in, putting on the one pair of jeans I’d brought with me plus a rugby shirt. There was still enough residual heat left in the day to make it a bit too warm for long sleeves and a high collar, but at least they hid the new bruises on my arms and the old scars around my neck.
Eighteen months previously I’d been unlucky enough to get my throat half cut and I now had a long ragged scar round the base of my neck that was my constant reminder of the incident. It was fading all the time but to me it was as obvious as a flashing neon necklace. I didn’t want to have to explain to the Devil’s Bridge Club how it had got there, or what I’d had to do in order to survive the experience.
“So, Charlie,” Daz said as soon as I’d perched on a bar stool and ordered a beer, “tell us all about Sean Meyer.”
I eyed the barman, who worked on without any indication that he was listening in on the conversation, then shrugged cautiously. “What’s to tell?”
“Well, what’s the story with the two of you?”
“I work for him,” I said, deliberately obtuse.
Daz made a gesture of frustration and William took over.
“What Daz means is,” he asked solemnly, “are you shagging him?”
That brought a burst of laughter that sounded raucous to my ears, set my nerves on edge. I smiled because it was the best defence but inside I went cold and solid. I was overwhelmed by the urge to break things. Bones, mainly.
“I think that’s a question you should ask Sean,” I said, sweetly. “Only, I’d do it over the phone if I were you. It might hurt less.”
***
Tess appeared about twenty minutes later, in full make-up and her usual array of jangling silver jewellery. She was also wearing heels and a very short skirt that revealed a pair of eye-catchingly good legs. Just about every male eye in the room swivelled in their direction. The barman even attempted to casually lean over the bar to keep them in view as she approached.
She sinuously elbowed her way into the group between me and Daz. I had to take a step back to avoid having my insteps punctured by those stilettos.
“Right, where are we going then?” she demanded.
Considering the boys had already had a couple of pints each by that time, I viewed her question with alarm, but Jamie mentioned a pub that he reckoned was within walking distance and had a pool table, bar food and some decent music.
“We can walk up and maybe get a cab back, yeah?” he suggested.
“Why not?” Daz said, eyeing Tess’s heels with a flicker of amusement.
He was still smiling when we all stepped out of the hotel entrance into the still-bright evening sunshine, then his face snapped shut like he’d had a smack in the mouth.
Waiting in the car park on the other side of the road was a dark grey Vauxhall Vectra with four men inside. They were uniformly big men, and would have fitted any of the categories Sean had suggested when we’d spotted them earlier.
They’d been pulled up near our bikes and just for a moment after we appeared, they looked as shocked by the unexpected encounter as we must have done. Then the driver stamped on the gas and the car shot off, scattering gravel and snaking slightly as it hit the road again.
Shaken out of our temporary immobility, we sprinted across the road, not to give chase but to check on the bikes. We’d chained them all together like convicts and couldn’t see any sign that they’d been tampered with. None of the alarm systems registered a trigger.
“Well I s’pose that answers my question,” Tess said ruefully as she joined the rest of us at a pace her footwear would allow.
I nodded. But if the Vectra was shadowing us, where the hell was Sean?
***
We still made the mile walk to the pub Jamie had mentioned, even though I got the impression nobody’s heart was really in it any more. The pub was bright and lively and only got livelier as Friday night hotted up. Tess’s attire ensured she was the centre of attention and she flirted shamelessly with anyone who had a pulse. And with one or two for whom the matter looked pretty debatable.
After we’d eaten, I stayed round the pool table playing a team game with William against Paxo and Jamie, and making a bottle of Grolsch last the evening. It didn’t take long before I understood Daz’s previous reluctance to take on Paxo at pool. He was a demon player. If Jamie hadn’t been bad enough to handicap him, they’d have walked all over us.
“She’s asking for trouble, that one,” William murmured as I straightened from a difficult pot into the centre pocket, having managed to screw the cue ball back up the table for the next shot.
I followed his gaze and saw that two local lads were sizing each other up over Tess. Their body language had taken on the aggressive posturing of two dogs circling with their hackles up before the fight starts. Tess sat on a bar stool in the middle, her legs crossed to reveal a large amount of tanned thigh. She was sipping her drink and smirking. Daz, I saw, was watching proceedings like a spectator rather than a participant. I wondered if she was trying to make him jealous.
“Do you think we ought to do anything?” Jamie murmured, frowning.
“Mm, put myself between two randy young devils and a bitch in heat?” William said, shaking his head. “I don’t think so.”
“Well don’t look at me,” Jamie said, grinning. “Charlie’s the kung fu expert. Why can’t she break them up?”
“What do you suggest?” Paxo asked. “A bucket of cold water?”
“Oh for heaven’s sake,” I muttered, handing Jamie my cue and my bottle of beer. “Here – don’t do anything with either of these until I get back.”
I walked over to the bar and leaned on it casually near where Tess’s admirers were just starting to curl their lips at each other. I pulled out a fiver and waited as though t
o catch the eye of one of the busy bar staff.
“By the way, Tess,” I said, speaking clearly and leaning back a little so she was in line of sight. “You didn’t tell me who was babysitting your little girl while you’re away?”
Tess’s smug face tightened unattractively. “She’s with her grandma,” she admitted through gritted teeth.
By the time I’d got back to the pool table, the two lads who’d been all over Tess had melted away. Paxo grinned broadly and saluted me with his beer.
“Nicely done, Charlie,” he said, shaking his head. “I mean, bitchy as hell, but nicely done!”
***
By chucking-out time there wasn’t a cab to be had. Buoyed up by the balmy evening and the drink, the boys seemed quite happy to weave their way back to the hotel on foot, even in the dark. Tess was the only one who raised any objections but she was quickly outvoted.
The road was bordered by a grass verge on the right-hand side and a low wall leading to the rocky shoreline on the other. A shimmering moon provided the only illumination, reflected off the surface of the water. Apart from the soothing wash of the breakers, it was quiet.
The four lads drifted ahead, littering the natural sounds of the night with their boisterous laughs and shouts. I hung back, keeping my pace slow enough so that Tess could maintain it alongside me. I walked in the grass, feeling the bottoms of my jeans soon soak through with the dew.
Tess tottered along on the road, complaining that her feet hurt, although I would have thought the amount of Smirnoff Ice she’d been knocking back all evening would have had an anaesthetising effect.
“You’re worried about ‘em, aren’t you?” Tess said suddenly, a moment of unexpected clarity surfacing.
I turned to stare at her in the gloom but I could barely make out her features. Ahead of us, Paxo must have tripped over something. I heard him swearing amid catcalls and laughter from the others.
“I suppose so,” I said, guarded. “I just wish they’d level with me.”
Tess made a sound that could have been a snort. “I don’t mean that,” she said, her voice blurry at the edges but still laced with a certain cunning. “I mean now. You’re worried about ‘em now ‘cos they’re pissed. Whaddya think they’re gonna do to ya, Charlie?”
I felt a chill prickle across the surface of my skin. I jammed my hands into my pockets and tried not to rub at the goosebumps that had sprung up on my arms.
“I don’t think they’re going to do anything to me,” I said carefully, annoyed at her perception. Annoyed at myself for giving anything away. “I think they’d be mad to try.”
The lights of an approaching car appeared around a bend in the road behind us, throwing drastically elongated shadows onto the road ahead. The boys were twenty metres ahead of us now and I saw them skitter for the sides of the road in the sudden glare.
I glanced back just as the car cleared the last bend. A mistake. His lights were on full beam and my retinas were instantly scorched by them. I ducked my head away quickly.
Something about the engine note was a warning, though. The car was being held in too low a gear and the revs were thrashing, harsh and high, in protest. It was also too far over to the right-hand side of the road.
Much too far.
I yanked my hands out of my pockets and grabbed Tess by one arm, swinging her round straight off her feet. She gave a single outraged squeal as she went airborne, landing with a massive thump further along the grass and tumbling to a halt.
The car shot past, its driver’s side wheels kicking up a blast of gravel from the shoulder where, only moments before, Tess had been walking.
The boys jumped out of the way with shouts and curses, but the car pelted away through the middle of them.
I’d overreached to get to her in time and ended up on my knees. I got my head up fast, but the car was already disappearing and I failed to get any impression of a model or colour, never mind a number plate.
“Fuck me, are you all right?”
Jamie’s voice. Now the lights of the car had gone, it suddenly seemed very dark.
It took a few moments before my eyes began to settle. Then I could just make out William and Daz picking Tess off the floor. She threw herself into Daz’s arms, weeping. He froze for a moment, then closed his arms round her and started making ‘there, there’ noises.
“Crazy bastard,” Paxo said, glaring after the disappearing car. “What the fuck was he trying to do?”
“I would have thought that was pretty obvious,” I said grimly, climbing to my feet and dusting off my hands on the seat of my jeans. “The only question I have is, why?”
Nineteen
Between us, we managed to get Tess on her feet long enough to get her back to the hotel. We staggered in through Reception with her draped between us, still wailing – drunk, scared, and hurt, in equal measure.
In the light she looked terrible. Grass-stained and dishevelled. Somewhere along the way she’d lost a shoe and her shaken lack of co-ordination only accentuated the unevenness of her gait. The grass verge had been stonier than I’d realised when I’d chucked her across it and she now had a long diagonal graze across one knee and scrapes to both palms. Still, it had been a better option than the alternative.
A stick-thin middle-aged woman was working the late stint on the front desk. She took in the state of Tess and skewered the four lads with a long and suspicious glare. I think if I hadn’t been with them she might have seriously considered the possibility that they’d roughed the girl up themselves. She certainly didn’t seem too convinced about their furtive story of a rogue drunk driver, despite the fact that it was close to the truth.
“I’ve got a first-aid kit in my tank bag,” I said. “Come up to my room, Tess, and we’ll get you cleaned up.”
She took little coaxing, nodding tearfully with her lips pressed tight together like a child promised a lollipop in return for being a big brave girl. She leaned on a table long enough to toe off her other shoe, abandoning it where it landed, and trailed after me.
As we reached the bottom tread of the staircase I paused and looked back, letting her go on ahead. The four of them were still standing in the reception area, stiff shouldered with delayed shock.
“Another close one, Daz?” I murmured.
For a moment his eyes met mine, haunted, then he flicked them away and his expression shifted into devil-may-care so comprehensively that I could almost have imagined the other.
“Bar’s still open,” he said, defiant. “Anyone fancy another beer?”
***
“I never wanted to be here, y’know.”
I glanced up in surprise at Tess’s sudden statement as I dumped another piece of TCP-sodden cotton wool into the rubbish bin. She was perched on the edge of the second bed in my room, having sat down with experimental heaviness and bounced up and down a few times, like she was thinking of staying and was just trying out the mattress.
For a moment I didn’t reply. All I could think of was how hard she’d fought for the right to come along. Then I backtracked and realised Tess herself had never made that much of a fuss about it. With Gleet banging the drum on her behalf, she hadn’t had to.
I also remembered how she’d told me, with apparent sincerity, that Clare had been unfaithful to Jacob with his own son. Not relevant as such, but pretty good as an indication of her inability to separate fact from fiction.
“Why’s that, Tess?” I said, dropping my eyes to her knee again. I’d just about got all the grit out of it but she was going to have to stay out of short skirts for a while.
She snorted hard enough to make the bed sway and waved a hand towards herself.
“Well, look at the state of me,” was all she said.
“So, what are you doing here?” I asked, keeping my voice casual. I caught one of her hands, turned it palm upwards and started wiping dirt from the scuffed skin.
“Tickles,” she said, giggling, trying to pull it away.
“Sorry, but I re
ally need to clean this up,” I said, not letting go, the way you’d hold onto the ear of a fractious child.
I was using a stronger solution of disinfectant than was strictly kind and it should have been stinging like hell but the alcohol was proving an effective painkiller. For the moment. Her hand had started to swell a little, too. “You’re going to have to take your rings off, Tess.”
She shook her head several times more than was necessary, then had to grab on to the bed while the room caught up with her. “Oh no,” she said, “they never come off, this lot.”
She held both hands up, backs towards me, to show off the rake of silver bands, adorned with glittering glass. “Made ‘em all myself. Cool, huh?” She wiggled her fingers and frowned, as though she couldn’t work out why she was having trouble flexing them.
