by Zoe Sharp
My parents' house had been besieged. We had reporters and photographers creeping through the garden for weeks. By the time of the civil case, the twisted facts and outrageous stories they'd printed had hopelessly biased any chance of my getting a fair hearing. The media went into a frenzy over the Not Guilty verdict against my attackers. By the time they'd finished with it, it was me who was as guilty as hell.
“It must have been quite a shock that your mother refused to support your appeal,” MacMillan said now. “Especially with her being a magistrate herself.”
“She's a great believer in the criminal justice system in this country,” I said through gritted teeth. So great a believer that she'd refused to acknowledge the possibility that there might have been a miscarriage of justice. She'd shut her mind to it. And shut me out. It had been the final nail in my coffin.
The Superintendent made no comment as he came to his feet. He'd obviously gone over the reports from the time, and the scepticism was plain on his face. I'd been pilloried as a cold-blooded liar in a court of law. Why on earth should he take my word as gospel now?
“I don't suppose,” he said, although clearly not holding out much hope, “that you do have any idea of who might be behind these attacks?”
I wasn't sure whether to be surprised that he'd bothered to ask my opinion, or insulted, but I remembered Joy, and gave it thought. “There's always Angelo – one of the doormen from the New Adelphi,” I suggested. “The girl who found Joy yesterday, Victoria, she's his girlfriend. He'd beaten her up pretty badly, and I'd say he probably enjoyed doing it.” When MacMillan didn't respond, I added, “And he could have picked both Susie and Joy when they were at the club.”
“That would be Angelo Zachary, would it?”
I nodded.
“We've already interviewed Mr Zachary after the death of Miss Hollins,” he said. “He had an alibi from the bar manager, Gary Bignold from the time Miss Hollins was ejected from the club, to well past the time we believe she was killed.”
If it had been Len who'd vouched for Angelo, I would have suspected it, but Gary had no special allegiances as far as I could tell. I shrugged. “I can't help you, then.”
He moved to the front door, paused on the threshold. “Not very loyal to your colleagues are you, Charlie?”
I just glared at him, and he sighed, reaching into an inside pocket of his jacket. He produced a rather plain-looking business card, enlivened only by the colouring of the Lancashire Police crest. “If you do have any further contact with this man,” he instructed, “call me.”
I took the card. It gave me a good reason to unclench my hands. “Will you let me know – if you make any progress?” I asked.
He nodded. “Of course.” There was a pause, then he said, “You’re not quite what I was expecting, Charlie.” He cocked his head on one side.
“Maybe I just don’t scare easily,” I said. But I was more scared than I would like to admit. Not to the Superintendent, and not to myself, either.
It was a nasty, insidious kind of fear, that eats away at you from the inside out, twists your guts into knots, beads sweat on your upper lip.
You only have to relax your guard for a second and it’s away and running, like a bolting horse. I concentrated on keeping a tight rein on mine.
MacMillan showed himself out, and I watched from the window as he climbed into a big dull-coloured Rover saloon parked next to the far kerb. Just before he drove away he glanced up and looked directly at me. It was too late to pull back without making it appear more suspicious, but the whole encounter left me feeling restless and uneasy.
***
It didn’t start out badly, the Special Forces course. I wasn’t training for the full-blown SAS, which is everybody’s first assumption. There are still no women allowed there, but that didn’t mean there weren’t plenty of other opportunities in the lesser-known covert units. Ones where females had proven far more effective at undercover surveillance work.
And I’d been good enough. Without conceit, I knew it.
The trouble had come when the others realised it, too.
To begin with, Sergeant Meyer kept his promise to push us all hard – harder than we’d ever experienced. By the time the course was halfway through, almost fifty percent of the trainees had chosen to go outside the wire and not return.
But after a while it seemed he was on my case far more than the others. I couldn’t turn around without encountering that brooding scrutiny. I refused to let it intimidate me, used it to drive myself to greater heights and plunder deeper internal resources than I’d ever known I possessed.
Looking back, the turning point was my ability to shoot. I was pretty good with a long gun, but when it came to pistol it was a whole different ball game. Even the range instructors couldn’t quite get their heads around the fact it soon emerged I could take the bull’s-eye out of a target with a 9mm handgun at the limit of the thirty-metre range. At first, they treated it almost as a joke, and then the prospect of using me as their secret weapon at the next Skill-At-Arms meeting went from canteen banter to an actual plan.
They started to coach me outside the confines of the normal training program. It wasn’t long before Sean Meyer got involved. He’d been teaching us unarmed combat and tactics, and the first time he turned up on the range to watch me practice, he made me so nervous my hands shook loading rounds into the magazine.
“Charlie, isn’t it?” he said.
“Yes, Sar’nt.”
“Relax, soldier, or the only thing you’re going to hit tonight is the sand berm at the back of the range.”
I kept my eyes firmly fixed on the task at hand, mumbled, “Yes, Sar’nt.”
I heard him sigh, saw him move towards me in my peripheral vision, and jerked my head up. Normally, the only time he came anywhere near me was to demonstrate a chokehold, strike or throw. And they always hurt, as they were designed to.
He saw my instinctive reaction and his mouth twitched into the ghost of a smile. He reached across for one of the empty magazines and started threading in rounds, hands moving automatically through a ritual as familiar to him as a rosary. The action was companionable, almost friendly. Ironically, it only served to make me even more wary of him.
“So, where’re you from, Charlie?” he asked.
“Just south of Manchester,” I said cautiously, knowing that telling him my parents lived in the stockbroker belt of Cheshire probably wouldn’t win me any respect.
“I’m from up north myself,” he said. “Arse-end of nowhere. Couldn’t wait to get out, to be honest.”
I glanced at him in surprise, at the conversational tone as much as the information. I hadn’t given any thought to his background. People like him were born with three stripes on their arm and a badged beret moulded to their head.
Before I knew it, though, we were chatting. There was no other word for it. And I realised I’d stopped flinching every time he came near me, and the tension had gone out of my shoulders.
He finished loading the final magazine, slapped it a couple of times against his palm to seat the rounds, and laid it on the firing point next to the others.
“OK, let’s see what you can do now,” he said, stepping back and reaching for his ear defenders.
I lifted mine into position, took a deep breath and slotted the first mag into the pistol grip of the 9mm Hi-Power. Then I pinched back the slide to chamber the first round, shifted into a stance, and began to shoot.
It was only later, when I’d got back to the female quarters, showered and scrubbed the mix of cordite and gun oil off my hands, that I discovered we’d been seen together. It didn’t take long before the rumours started.
And after rumours came jealousy, and betrayal.
***
After the Superintendent had gone I hadn't the will to go back to my clearing up. Instead I dug out Terry's code book and leafed through it again, half-heartedly. The sets of initials swam past my eyes.
I tried to remember people's
surnames from the club. Gary's was Bignold, but there were several different GBs listed. Dave's was Clemmens. Hmm, not so many DCs.
“Oh this is hopeless!” I muttered, throwing the book down on the sofa. It landed open and something caught my eye. I stopped dead.
Angelo. Angelo Zachary. AZ. I grabbed the book again. Those initials were only listed with one number prefix, 168. I'd found the New Adelphi.
All I had to do now was find out which of the people listed in Terry's book had owed him big sums of money. That should lead me to his killer. A man who'd started getting his kicks out of raping and murdering women.
And now, it seemed, he was hoping to get a real thrill out of planning to kill me . . .
I jumped up. I had so many disconnected theories forming and I needed someone to bounce some ideas off. To see if I was way off base. Most of all, I needed to get away from the possibility that the phone was going to ring at any moment and scare me to death again.
I thought all too briefly of calling the number on the card the Superintendent had given me, but I had no desire to get back into the ring for another round. He didn't trust me, and I suppose I couldn't really blame him for that.
I went over to the phone and snatched up the receiver, dialling Jacob and Clare's number. To my surprise Clare answered. I'd expected her to be at work, and I'd planned to run a few things past Jacob's cool, logical mind.
“No, I've got a day off,” she said. “Why, what's up, Charlie?”
“I can't really explain over the phone,” I hedged. “Look, are you in all morning? Can I come round?”
“Of course,” Clare said promptly. “I'll put the coffee on now. You sound very mysterious. I can't wait!”
I climbed into my gear, aware that I was still feeling stiff and inflexible as I struggled into my leather jeans. It was raining when I got outside. Miserable great grey blobs that made me blink when they splashed into my hair. By the looks of the darkened sky, this was as good as it was going to get all day. I was glad I'd put my waterproofs on.
The Suzuki, bless it, fired up first kick and it didn't take more than ten minutes before I was bumping down the drive to Jacob and Clare's place.
This time, with one eye on the downpour, the dogs made do with greeting me by way of excited barks from the shelter of the porch. Sensible animals. Clare came out, though, with Jacob's giant waxed cotton stockman's coat draped over her head.
“Come in and dry off by the Aga,” she instructed, grinning at me with button-bright eyes. “Jacob's all agog to know what you're being so secretive about!”
It didn't take long, once I'd got into my story, for the smile to leave Clare's face. We sat round the kitchen table to talk, warming our hands on mugs of hot cappuccino, sprinkled with real chocolate.
Having made sure there was no food on offer, Bonneville had retreated to her blanket pressed up against the front of the Aga. The room was soon permeated by the vague smell of hot dog. Beezer had made straight for Jacob's lap. She was now sprawled on her back there, delighting in his preoccupied scratching of her tummy.
I brought them up to speed on recent events, including the break-in at my flat, Terry's murder, and now Joy's death. They both listened in horrified fascination, and it took a while to satisfy them that I really was OK. I suppose it helped convince me at the same time.
“It sounds like this Angelo bloke is a complete psycho,” Jacob commented. “From what you've said he has a remarkable capacity for violence.”
I nodded. “And he's got a rotten temper to go with it. So, maybe if Terry had found out that Angelo was dealing drugs, and then been suddenly presented with something that he thought might give him leverage against Angelo, Terry might well have decided to indulge in a little extortion.”
“If that's the case, he certainly picked the wrong man to blackmail,” Jacob put in grimly.
“So Angelo goes round to see him. Maybe he was intending to pay him off. Maybe he was intending to do him over. Who knows?” I went on. “But that wasn't how it happened. Terry didn't have the computer to give back to Angelo, because he'd already given it to me. So Angelo pulls a knife and guts the poor bastard.”
Clare pulled a squeamish face and got up to refill our coffee mugs. Jacob just nodded at my logic.
“It would be a real 1984-type Room 101 scenario,” he mused. “‘Don't do it to me; do it to Charlie! She's the one you want!’ That sort of thing.”
George Orwell's classic had made enough of an impression on me as a schoolkid for me to know what he was on about. “Exactly,” I said. “So, in the meantime, Len – and then Marc – find out about the drugs Angelo's been dealing in. Marc would never go to the police in a thousand years. But he'd take action of his own.”
“But you said it wasn't Angelo who beat you up, so who were those two men?” Clare queried as she sat down again.
“I've no idea,” I shrugged, frustrated, running a hand through my hair, “though there's no reason why Angelo would need to turn out in person. He must know plenty of hired muscle in his line of work. The trouble is, when I got that phone call last night I was convinced that whoever killed Joy – and Susie – was connected to whoever had come looking for that damned lap-top.”
Clare's mouth opened, and stayed that way for a while. “You mean you think Angelo killed them all? But why?”
“The voice changer,” Jacob said slowly, as it came to him. “They must have taken it when they ransacked your flat.”
“Exactly,” I said. “And if the same man murdered both the women – which was certainly the impression I got from MacMillan – then it can’t be Angelo. He’s got an alibi for the night of Susie’s death.”
“What did the police say about Terry?” Clare asked, but Jacob answered her before I could.
“Come on, love, Charlie’s not supposed to even know he’s dead. She couldn’t very well start giving the old Superintendent the third degree without admitting she was the one who discovered the body, now could she?”
Clare was frowning. “But, if it wasn’t Angelo, who does that leave?”
I drained the last of my coffee. “I wish I knew,” I said. “I’m going over to see Ailsa this afternoon to see if there’s anyone she can think of that they’ve had trouble with at the Lodge. A husband or boyfriend maybe. After all, it seems that our murderer was hanging round there on a couple of occasions before he got Joy.”
Besides, I’d promised Dave his first self-defence lesson, and the Lodge was as good a place as any to teach him.
They stood silent as I climbed back into my waterproofs. Clare had hung them in the inglenook near the Aga, and they were not only bone dry, but the plastic material was almost too hot to touch.
“I could be way off base about it all, in any case,” I said as I made my way, rustling, to the front door. “Just because Angelo beats up his girlfriend doesn’t mean he’s a murderer. It could be someone else at the club who’s involved with the drugs, and gave the computer to Terry. I don’t have a shred of proof. I just wish I knew if there was any forensic link. That would really clinch it.”
“I’ll try my contact on the crime desk again, but she’s going to get very suspicious if I suggest something the police haven’t already come up with by themselves,” Clare said. “I’ll come round on the bike on Sunday morning and let you know what she says. We can have a blast up to Devil’s Bridge together.”
I nodded, aware that when Clare said a blast, she meant it. I usually struggled to keep up.
Now though, she was still frowning in thought as she came to the door to see me off, hugging herself against the cold. “There must be some other way to find out, isn’t there?”
“I’m sure there is,” I said. I pictured myself calling up MacMillan and asking to pick his brains. It would be a cold day in hell, I predicted, before that happened. I gave her a wry smile. “I just haven’t thought of it yet.”
Jacob came up behind her, put his hands on her shoulders, smiling. “What you need is a tame doctor,” he s
aid to me. “Don’t you know anyone you could sweet-talk?”
It wasn’t until I’d said my goodbyes, coaxed the Suzuki into life, and was halfway back to Lancaster that Jacob’s words sparked a thought. A thought that was so ridiculous it made me snort with suppressed laughter inside my helmet.
Yes, I did know a doctor. Was very well-acquainted with him, as a matter of fact, but whether I could sweet-talk him into anything was another thing altogether.
My father.
***
When I got back to the flat, I went straight upstairs to the phone, without even stopping to take off my waterproofs. I knew my parents' phone number off by heart and I dialled it without having to think about it. Maybe if I had, I would have hesitated.
