“I’ve seen half of what they’ve done,” Marc said, his glance flickering down my body. “Now I want to see the rest.” He spoke in a quiet tone, but I knew that arguing would have been futile.
I shrugged and heaved myself out onto the pavement. I was feeling the after effects good and proper. There didn’t seem to be a part of me that didn’t ache, and I never realised bruises drew from such an inventive palette of colours.
A sudden thought struck me, and before we went in I tottered round to check on the bike. I admit I breathed a bit of a sigh of relief when I saw it, still chained and covered. Whatever else they’d done, at least the Suzuki had escaped unmolested.
By chance, I’d still got my keys in my leathers, but I wasn’t too surprised, when I finally managed to stagger to the top of the wooden staircase, to find my front door standing wide open.
In daylight, the mess looked a lot worse. I stood in the living room, staring round me, feeling detached. Marc prowled through the rooms, head down, jaw clenched, simmering.
Finally, he came back into the living room. “Bastards,” he said tightly. “Pointless bastards! What the fuck did they think they were doing?”
I glanced at him, a half-smile twisting my lips. “You need a reason to be a psycho?” I asked.
He came and put his arms round me, but I stepped out of his embrace and moved away from him, uneasy. I knew I didn’t want his comfort, nor his pity, but I wasn’t sure what I did expect from him.
We seemed to have bypassed the first few stages of normal courtship, moved too fast into intimacy. We’d become lovers when we hadn’t even had time to become friends.
I wandered through into my bedroom. It hadn’t escaped their attentions, either. The Scouser had sliced his way through my mattress, the curtains, and even taken the knife to every pillow. One of them was from my mother’s, a feather one. The stuffing was now scattered all over the room like confetti at a full church wedding.
The ingredients of my drawers had been turned into a novelty carpet. He’d taken particular care to rip his way through what seemed to be my entire stock of underwear. It was symbolic, somehow, too personal, and it sent a prickle of apprehension through me.
Marc had followed me through. Now he gripped my shoulders and turned me to face him. This time I didn’t pull away.
“Charlie, listen to me,” he said urgently. “Whatever it is you’ve been doing, stop it. Let it go. Whoever these people are, they’re obviously deadly serious. Don’t take any risks.”
I broke eye contact and let my gaze slide across my ransacked home. “But there’s a connection to your club,” I argued.
He cut me short, curtly. “If there’s anything going on at the New Adelphi, I’ll take care of it,” he said grimly. “I don’t want to see anything like this happening to you again. Understand?”
I bristled under his glare, wavered for a moment, then gave in. I let my shoulders slump.
“Yes,” I said at last, wearily, “I understand.”
***
When he'd gone, promising to call me, I sat on the remnants of my sofa for a long time without doing anything other than thinking. I hadn't recognised the two men who were responsible for my new line in interior decor. It certainly wasn't anyone who I'd met, or they would have known that in this case Charlie wasn't a man's name. So who were they and, more importantly, who had sent them?
I thought, briefly, about calling the police, but decided against it, for a number of reasons. I tried to tell myself that my reluctance to involve the authorities had nothing to do with the men's threats, but I'm not entirely sure I believed me.
In any case, what did I tell them about Terry's computer? I was pretty sure it had been nicked from the New Adelphi, which meant I'd been handling stolen goods. And the last time our paths had crossed they'd as good as accused me of beating up the two boys at the club. Somehow, I couldn't see my current predicament interesting them greatly, especially after the desultory response they'd made to Ailsa's call from the Lodge.
Shelseley. The name almost made me start. I'd just assumed the prowler there had some link with the residents. An ex-husband or boyfriend maybe. That it was just coincidence he'd first appeared right after Terry had given me the lap-top. Was there a connection there?
I turned this idea over a few times, then dismissed it. The men who'd come after me were too professional to go in for such half-hearted scare tactics. They knew what they wanted, and they'd gone straight for it.
I'd had time to conduct a quick search, and discovered the lap-top had definitely gone. Either the Scouser had come back for it, or the smoker had hopped away with it under his arm.
If that was the case, if my manic burglars were solely connected with Terry's damned computer, and they hadn't been trailing me round to Shelseley, then how the hell had they known where to look for it?
“If you've killed her, the shit's going to really hit the fan after last time.”
I remembered the smoker's words. What last time? I thought of Susie, and shivered, trying to push the sudden irrational fear out of my mind.
It wasn't the same man, I told myself. It couldn't be the same man. I closed my eyes with the effort of forcing a return to calm, and order. I would not let myself be terrified by what had happened.
People lock themselves away, turn their homes into fortresses when the possible risk simply doesn't demand such precautions. Their own sense of panic imprisons them. Marks them out to be victims. If I let myself become incapacitated with fright, I was halfway lost before I began.
I dredged up enough energy to stir myself off the sofa, climbing stiffly to my feet. Despite my resolution not to be scared into retreat, my first action was to sort out the busted lock on the front door. I rang a local firm who said they were stacked out, but promised to be round at four that afternoon.
I tried Terry's mobile number again, but it was still switched off, and his home number rang out without reply. I couldn't face starting on the clearing up, and I didn't want to sit around and mope all day. Besides, I needed to do something about my mobility. I stuffed some surviving clean clothes into my tank bag and headed out.
I pulled the front door closed behind me and left it at that. Everything of value I owned appeared to have been trashed anyway. I didn't think any opportunist burglar could do anything more than had been done already. Maybe they'd even tidy things up a bit.
The Suzuki was reassuringly familiar as I cruised out along the quay, even if riding it made me wince. My back and shoulders felt as though they were wired tight, and every pothole and undulation in the road surface jerked the breath from my lungs.
I needed time to think, and some mindless activity to keep the rest of me occupied while I was doing it. I rode round the one-way system and up to the gym I use. It was once a dubious auto salvage yard, but that went by the wayside years ago. The graffiti-decorated corrugated iron fencing that used to keep the guard dogs in is still up, though. It tends to discourage the posers, but the hard-core of people who go there to train don't do it for the image.
I sometimes do a bit of work for the owner, a strapping German whose real name had been lost in the mists of time. For as long as I'd known him, I'd never heard anyone call him anything but Attila.
He was into body building of serious proportions, and was constantly being offered doorman jobs. This was despite the fact he was as soft as they came. He confided to me once in a reflective moment that he actually fainted at the sight of blood.
I hadn't been in to the gym for ages, and was feeling guilty about it. Right now, it was the nearest place I could think of that had a decent steam room.