Personal Protection

by Tracey Shellito

  It was pissing down.

  I staggered down the steps into the car park and managed to make it to a pile of dustbins on the edge before I threw up everything she had cooked me that night, into the black, plastic lined interior.

  “Randall?”

  Don’t ask me how she knew. Somehow she’d found out I’d heard, guessed where I’d be. I couldn’t face her. Wasn’t I supposed to be the strong one? And here I was puking up.

  She’d followed me out of the club with no regard for herself.

  She’d put on one of those tiny little hostess dresses that leave nothing to the imagination. She stood shivering in the falling rain, white marabou and high heels making her look like a bedraggled Page Three angel.

  I wiped my mouth, stripped off my jacket without thinking and put it round her shoulders. Then she saw the stain.

  “You’re bleeding!”

  “My stitches tore while I was breaking up a fight.”

  “And you didn’t say anything?”

  “I bandaged it up. I didn’t want you to worry.”

  Her hands caught mine before I could move away. “Randall…”

  “When were you going to tell me?”

  “I was only approached last night. I haven’t decided what I’m going to do.”

  “Stringfellow’s want you and you haven’t decided?”

  She looked away.

  “It would be a clean break, a way of escaping what happened to you. This place can’t offer you a chance like that, money like that. And I can’t complete with the lure of the city.”

  I was parroting the words I’d overheard. It didn’t make them less true.

  “Randall…”

  “I’ve always known it couldn’t last. Someone who looks the way you do could have anyone she wanted. What can I offer that would keep you?”

  “More than you know. You’re always running yourself down.” She brushed rain out of my hair and off my shoulders. “Can we go back inside and talk about this? I don’t know about you, but I’ll catch cold if I stand here much longer.”

  I was about to reply when a long shadow fell over us. I turned to see the bouncer I’d insulted on the first night, Villiers, the one I thought was responsible for the knife-throwing incident. He was standing expectantly with two ‘friends’. Shit. Just what I needed.

  He pulled out a blackjack, tapped it thoughtfully on one hand. From the sound of it, the home-made cosh was filled with loose change. The others were similarly outfitted. Without the Kevlar this was going to hurt.

  “This is to teach you to stay out of things that don’t concern you.”

  I pushed Tori behind me. “Go inside.”

  I admit it was chauvinist. But this wasn’t her fight. If she stayed out of it they would leave her alone. They wouldn’t let me walk away. I either did this now or they’d get me later on ground that favoured me less. From what he’d said this wasn’t just about macho pride and the bouncers ‘union’ staking their territory. They might have something to do with what had been happening to the girls. No time to worry about that now. I rotated my shoulders to shift the stiffness put there by my emotional state and the rain and walked forward to meet them.

  Footing was uncertain. That could work both for me and against me.

  The bouncer’s friends ran towards me. The left one slipped on the slicked tarmac and went down. I kicked him in the head. He stayed there.

  The first to reach me met my fist in his balls. He gave a high-pitched scream and folded over the injury. I almost joined him as my stitches took another wrench.

  My crouched position helped me avoid the bouncer’s cosh, as I twisted, lower than he’d aimed. The coins crashed into the fleshy place below my left shoulder blade and the top of my ribs. Using the momentum of my punch and twist, I drove my right shoulder into the bouncer and propelled him back, jabbing two rigid fingers into his extended arm. He lost his grip on the cosh. Coins spilled out across the parking lot, making footing more treacherous.

  The first man got up wearing an ugly expression. I couldn’t blame him. That didn’t mean I was going to stand around and let him take his revenge.

  I cut off his roar with a kick to his throat that sent him gasping down next to his friend.

  A noise behind me spun me round. Tori. Why do women never do as they’re told? She stood over the fallen men with a dustbin lid, the promise of a swift strike in her eyes if either of them showed any sign of getting up. (OK, I can’t say I was sorry to get some back-up.) I turned to tackle the last man standing.

  He hadn’t been twiddling his thumbs. A handful of the loose change in my face was followed by brass knuckles to my ribs. Pain drove the breath out of my lungs as effectively as the thought of Tori leaving me. He blocked the jab I made at his groin. His fist caught me alongside of my head. My already blurred vision swam further out of true. I dropped to my knees in the wet.

  As he locked his hands to bring them down on the back of my neck, I grabbed his ankles and yanked. He went down with a satisfying crash, hitting his head on Brian Senior’s BMW and setting off the alarm. I used the side of the Porsche to pull myself to my feet, then dropped on to his ribcage with both knees. The sickening crack more than made up for the pain in my arm, head and ribs.

  Tori dropped the dustbin lid and raced to support me as I staggered away.

  “What’s going on?” Brian Senior roared over his car alarm from the top of the steps.

  Quick as a flash, Tori shot, “Randall stopped these pricks stealing your Beemer.”

  I blinked blood and rain from my eyes and stared. I couldn’t find anything to say. Which was as well. I’m crap at lying. Which makes me a good bet as a girlfriend but a liability when it comes to PI work. Or so Dean tells me.

  Members of the crowd pushed their way outside. This whole scene – from overhearing Tori had been headhunted by Stringfellow’s, to the end of the fight – had taken us past closing time. Brian Senior swore, got everyone back inside with the promise of free drinks, then hurried down to turn off his alarm before it attracted unwelcome attention.

  Tori rummaged in the pocket of my jacket for my car keys, got the door open and sat me on the seat. She sorted through the jumble of clothes in the boot and climbed into the baggy, newly washed sweatshirt she’d worn before, and a pair of my sweat pants, the only thing that would go over the strappy shoes without her having to take them off.

  Squatting beside me, she explored my head and ribs through the bar door and didn’t like what she found. She settled my jacket around my shoulders and swung my feet inside, turning on the heater.

  “Randall, promise me you’ll stay there. I’ll only be a minute. I have to go in and collect my stuff. Don’t fall asleep, OK? It’s dangerous with a head wound. I can’t drive. I need you to stay with it long enough to get us home.”

  Sensible girl.

  Appearing in A and E when the other three had been taken there would generate questions neither the club nor I would want to answer. Her boss had already removed the wounded, with the help of a few other bouncers, to another forecourt. An amusement arcade. Only then did he phone an ambulance for them and allow the customers to leave. Tori secured my promise and pushed her way back inside.

  Brian Senior sensibly did not question Tori’s take on events. We escaped after minutes, though it felt like hours. I sat nursing screaming ribs and watching my face swell in the mirror.

  When we arrived home Craig and Dean were waiting. Tori had called them from the club, when she’d gone inside to fetch her things. While Dean saw to the car, Craig helped Tori hustle me in to deal with the medical side.

  He was able to allay her fears about my sleeping. I did not have a concussion. The fist had only laid open the top of my cheek and temple. My resident nurse washed and closed both cuts, strapped up the one broken and one cracked rib even though it’s an unfashionable practice these days, re-sewed my arm then gave me something to make me sleep to allow everything time to start knitting together.

&n
bsp; She shooed them out as fast as politeness would allow when Dean showed signs of wanting to interrogate me about what had happened. I assured him I’d fill him in tomorrow. He wasn’t happy, but grudgingly accepted now was not the time to press the issue, and left with as good grace as can be expected of a nosy queen thwarted in his desire to get the goss.

  Finally alone, Tori stripped me of my remaining clothes and pressed me into bed.

  She treated me to the second free strip of the evening, which I was in no fit state to appreciate, considering she was probably going to leave me. Pain does funny things to a girl.

  “If you wanted me to stay so badly, you could have found a less dramatic way of persuading me,” she mused, crawling into bed beside me.

  The drugs kicked in. I was too groggy to argue. I put an arm around her, let her cuddle up to my uninjured side and fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

  10

  “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “Work,” I mumbled, muzzy from whatever Craig had dosed me with.

  “Back to bed, soldier, you’ve been relieved of duty.”

  “I have?”

  “Brian Senior came round this afternoon. They’ve found a replacement for Spink. They tried to phone, but I’d turned the ringer off. You needed to rest.”

  I sat heavily on the swivel chair. The bedroom seemed too far just now.

  Tori indicated a neat stack of twenty pound notes on the desk. “He left last night’s pay, severance and a bonus for saving his car.” She chuckled. “I hadn’t the heart to tell him the truth. He’s so tight, getting anything out of him is blood out of a stone.” She flourished a membership card with my name. “He also left this. Unlimited Membership, no expiry date. I’m impressed. The only other person who has one of these in the Chief Superintendent.”

  “Not sure I’m going to need it if my reason for going there is gone,” I told her honestly.

  She set down the membership card, knelt on the floor and began fussing with the buttons on the shirt I’d been trying to get into, unable to meet my eyes. I caught her hands.

  “You really should go back to bed,” she mumbled.

  “So you can kick me when I’m down?”

  Her eyes snapped up, annoyed. “No!”

  I dropped her hands and caught her face instead. My knuckles were split.

  “Talk to me. Are you leaving me?”

  “It doesn’t seem right discussing this with you when you’re…”

  “Bad news doesn’t get better for putting it off. When do you go?”

  Her eyes were on my lips, her hands making impotent fists on my knees. “They want me to come down and try out on Saturday.”

  Five days. I let go of her face. My hands had started to shake. I didn’t want her to see.

  Now I was unable to meet her eyes. I didn’t seem to be able to draw breath. She sensed my distress, caught my hands in hers and stroked the backs, avoiding the split knuckles.

  “Randall, I may not make the grade! I might not like the place, or the way they want me to do the job. It’s very different…”

  She was trying to convince herself. I knew what was coming next.

  “If it pans out, you could come down, too. I’m sure there’d be someone more than happy to employ you, with your reputation. Maybe you could even persuade Dean to relocate! Or if that doesn’t work, we could always meet up at weekends...”

  What made it worse was she believed it.

  “Tori, I can’t. My life is here. Not because I want it to be here, because I can’t afford to go anywhere else. The only things mine to sell are the Porsche – which isn’t the genuine article – and the furniture in this apartment. I don’t own the place. I’m a tenant. I have no savings. All the money I have is tied up in the business. I had to get a loan to buy into that when I became a partner. I owe the credit card company a mint from the bender I was on when you met me. I’m still trying to settle with them. Doing high risk jobs is what keeps the business and my head above water. I’m sorry. If you go, you go alone.”

  “God, Randall, I didn’t know!”

  “It’s not something I advertise.”

  Tears leaked out from beneath her mascaraed lashes.

  “This is one hell of a chance. It will never come again.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’ll stand by whatever it is you want to do. You know that. I love you, Tori, but you can’t let that stop you, or hold you back. This is your time.”

  She climbed into my arms, on to my lap and wept.

  Eventually she dabbed her eyes, bathed them in icy water to take down the swelling, reapplied her make-up, changed, got into a taxi and left. She refused to let me drive her.

  Now I was up I couldn’t countenance the thought of retreat to the doubtful security of sleep. I took more painkillers, peeled out of my eclectic mixture of sleep- and street-wear, took off the bandages and stood under a scalding shower. By the time I stepped on to the duck-board the medication had kicked in. I was able to apply new dressings without turning the air more than indigo. Food and clothes made me feel better still. Fortified, I called on the only person I could count on never to let me down.

  Even during our falling out, Dean hadn’t completely refused to speak to me; he’d just made sure I knew I would pay and pay until he was satisfied. I was glad that was behind us. I had a feeling I was going to need his help soon. If Tori left for good, I couldn’t afford to crawl back into the bottle. Neither the business nor I could afford it.

  D & C’s place is out in the swank area of Blackpool real estate near Stanley Park, not far from De Vere’s health club, of which they are both members. As I said before, it’s a very nice place, tastefully furnished and maintained. An early frost had made the garden look like Santa’s grotto. Only thing missing were gnomes.

  I paid the taxi and crunched up the driveway. Dean answered the door after two rings. He didn’t look surprised to see me. Gay men don’t do surprised, only jaded.

  “Not at work?”

  “They found someone to replace Spink.”

  “Pity they didn’t tell that to your fan club last night. How are you feeling?”

  “In pain, but I’ll live. Look, can I come in? I’ve learned a few things, possibly about Tori’s attacker, maybe about what’s been happening to the other girls. I’d like to run it all by you, since you’re the brains of this outfit.”

  “Nice of you to notice!”

  “Are you telling me you’ve got some real work to do, or are you busy socialising?”

  “No, I was about to settle down to a quiet night in front of the TV with Craig. Some of us only work from nine to five.”

  Shit.

  “Never mind. It’ll keep.” I turned to go.

  “Wait. You look like hell. Heaven knows what the neighbours will think if I let you walk away in that state. You didn’t drive here, did you?”

  He scanned the road nearsightedly for the Porsche – not wearing his contacts – alarmed at the thought. What do you know? He does care!

  “I’m not that stupid.”

  “Sometimes I wonder.” He held the door open.

  “You really know how to endear yourself to a girl.”

  I raked my Rockports over a boot scraper, stamped my feet on the step, then stepped inside on to his real sea grass Welcome mat. If I was going to ruin his evening the least I could do was not mess up his house.

  “Who is it?” Craig’s voice drifted from somewhere in the warm interior.

  “It’s only me,” I returned.

  “Bang goes my night!” He stuck his head round the doorway and winced at the sight of me. “You look worse! Should you even be up?”

  “You tell me, you’re the nurse. Whatever you doctored me with knocked me out for what was left of the night and most of today. I only got up a couple of hours ago. I still ache, but do I feel better, even if I don’t look it.”

  “Bloody lesbians! Your macho crap gives us pretty boys a bad name. Why can�
��t you wallow in the attention and let Tori nurse you, like a real patient?”

  “Jealous?”

  “Fuck no! You’re putting me out of a job as well as buggering up my evening!”

  “You’d only whine that I was behaving like those straight bitches you work with.” I put on his affected moaning voice: “They’re always away looking after their kids and having days off for their gynae problems.”

  He glared at me.

  “I suppose this means we can forget the Shiraz and Titanic?” This aimed at Dean.

  “Sorry,” Dean said, managing to sound contrite. Craig gave one of his overblown Gloria Swanson ‘I’m so put upon’ looks, sniffed and flounced back wherever he’d come from.

  “Titanic? Again?”

  “Just because you can’t stand it…”

  “Let’s not get into a fight over a film. I haven’t got the energy. Besides, I know you only watch it to drool over Leo.”

  “I do not! Well, not entirely.”

  I grinned, then wished I hadn’t. God, my face hurt!

  “Tell Craig I’ll buy him another bottle of vino to make it up to him.”

  “Don’t worry about it. He’ll drink this lot by himself. He won’t remember you were here by the end of the night.”

  Convenient. I tried drinking to forget, and just my luck, it didn’t work. The memory was there sharp as ever in the morning, with a hangover to accompany it. That, my health and the money are why I stopped. Now I don’t drink. Ever.

  Dean let us into the kitchen/breakfast room and poured us both something non-alcoholic, while I peeled off my coat and settled into a chair.

  “Before you start in on what brought you here, perhaps you’d care to explain how you ended up in this state. Tori told me one of your attackers was a bouncer at the Paradise. I thought you were trying to be one of the boys?”

  “It might all be connected.” I told him about the first night, the altercation I’d broken up on the balcony, the arrival – too late – of the cavalry, Villiers and Grey. I omitted the knife-throwing incident but followed up with what the bouncers had said last night before the fight.