Oh, and Hairy Joe, currently serving Helen MacNeil with his usual grudging and surly approach to the hospitality industry.
I ruffled the hair between Henry’s ears. ‘How you holding up, teeny man?’
He gazed up at me with big sad dark eyes. Because no one was feeding him Bacon Frazzles. But, thankfully, Joseph didn’t appear to have caused Henry any permanent damage.
Alice pawed at me again, all fussing and jittery. ‘It wouldn’t take long to go to the hospital. It’s—’
‘I’m not going to the hospital!’ Let’s face it, I’d had worse beatings in the past. Lots and lots of them. This one barely made the top fifty...
Helen returned to the table, hands wrapped around two pint glasses of something pale, two shorts, a tin of Diet Coke and a packet of cheese-and-onion. A pint and a nip went in front of me. Then she settled into the other side of the booth and slid the Diet Coke in front of Alice. Who slid it back again and helped herself to one of the whiskies, knocking it back in one. Then gulping down about half the pint before Helen could open her mouth to complain.
‘I don’t drink.’ The Coke tin tisssshhhed at me as I clicked the ring-pull back. ‘Pills.’
She watched, mouth pursed as Alice polished off the last of the pint.
A burp. ‘I needed that, does anyone else feel like another drink, I think we deserve another drink, I’ll get a round in shall I, yes, a drink’s exactly what the doctor ordered, or what the doctor’s about to order, I mean I am a doctor, so technically it’s not really drinking it’s medicinal.’ A cold metallic bark of a laugh. Then she hurried over to the bar.
Helen took a sip of whisky, rolling it around her mouth. Then, ‘She’s kind of... jumpy.’
‘Last time we had a proper run-in with Joseph and Francis, it didn’t end well for a friend of ours.’ I closed my right eye and pointed at it. ‘Alice had to watch.’
‘Not everyone’s got the guts for it, I suppose.’ The last of the whisky disappeared. ‘What happened to you? Used to be a safe bet at the Westing — don’t remember anyone even making it to the second round against Ash Henderson.’
‘Yeah, my bare-knuckle days are long gone.’ I puffed out a breath. ‘Thought you were still palling around with Jennifer Prentice?’
‘Needed a lift back to Oldcastle, didn’t I? Besides, she wants to drive me about, following you, and pay for the petrol — like I’m going to turn that down?’ A smile. ‘Soon as your DS friend dropped you off, I told Jennifer where she could stuff her book. And when I saw that pair of freaks going into the Tartan Bunnet...?’ Helen shrugged, then started in on her pint. ‘You owe me, now. Big time.’
‘Francis sucker-punched me, OK?’ I dabbed the icepack against my face, going delicate around the nose and eyes. ‘How bad does it look?’
‘You really want to know?’
‘That bad?’
‘Worse. Hold still.’ Then she reached across the table and placed her palms against my cheeks. ‘This is going to hurt.’ Her thumbs jabbed into the sides of my nose and twisted.
A crunching noise filled the world and molten glass exploded between my eyes, rushing out across my cheeks, nostrils and sinuses catching light. Scalding liquid pouring down my top lip and spattering onto the tabletop. ‘Fuck!’
‘Don’t be such a baby.’ She pressed the icepack against my face again. ‘You’re getting blood everywhere.’
‘Son of a bitch...’
She pushed every beermat on the table into the spreading pool of bright scarlet. Leaned back in her seat, took a bite out of her pint — giving herself a pale froth moustache in the process. ‘Way I see it, I saved your life. And Dr Whatsit, too. And probably your mutt as well.’ Another mouthful. ‘So yes, you owe me.’
Yeah, I probably did.
Someone else I owed was Jennifer Bloody Prentice. All I did was chuck her phone into the sea, and she pays Joseph and Francis to ‘beat the living shit’ out of me? No way I was letting her get away with that. She could—
‘Oh my God, what happened?’
When I looked up, there was Alice, staring, drinks wobbling on a round brown tray.
‘Fixed his nose.’ Helen toasted her with the pint. ‘You’re welcome.’
‘I’ll get a cloth...’ And she was gone again.
‘The exchange rate is: your life, Dr Weirdo’s, and the dog’s for Gordon Smith’s. I think that’s fair, don’t you?’
The throbbing was settling into a dull ache — as if someone was squatting inside my skull trying to shove my eyeballs out of their sockets with hobnail boots on. ‘What happened to the six million?’
‘That’s gone down to two again.’
Not to be sniffed at — assuming my nose ever worked again. Two million would set us up somewhere new. Somewhere that wasn’t Oldcastle. Somewhere Alice could retire and maybe we could open up a bookshop or a pub or a wee hotel or something. Somewhere no one would come looking for us after I skinned Joseph alive.
— sauf’, und würg’ dich zu todt! —
(drink, and choke yourself to death)
34
‘... afraid you’re right, Jane. We’ve barely caught our breath from Storm Trevor and here comes Storm Victoria...’
‘Gah!’ Fumbling for the alarm-clock radio, mashing the button to make the idiots shut the hell up.
‘... have to batten down the hatches for the next three, maybe four days as this area of low pressure—’
Blessed silence.
And then the real pressure kicked in — as if someone had jammed a bicycle pump into my sinuses and was ramming the piston home with every beat of my heart. Mouth, sandpaper dry. That’s what happened when you couldn’t breathe through your nose.
Probably didn’t help that I’d packed it full of cotton wool to stop the bleeding.
And still the world stank of burning bees.
Getting back to sleep wasn’t going to be an option, was it? At least not without a shedload of painkillers and a big glass of water.
I struggled out of bed, ribs screaming like a slaughterhouse, grimaced and winced my way into the tartan dressing gown hanging on the back of the door, and hobbled into the corridor.
Clicking the lights on sent frozen daggers stabbing through my retinas, so I switched them off again. Limped through the gloom.
No sign of Henry in the living room. Probably curled up at the foot of Alice’s bed.
Which was good, because no way in hell could I face any sort of enthusiasm this early in the morning. 06:25 according to the microwave clock.
Two amitriptyline got washed down with a glug of water, followed by a tramadol for good measure.
Getting old, Ash. Used to be a time you’d shake something like this off, and be up and doing the next day ready for anything. But now?
Two punches and a head-butt, and it was as if I’d been run over by a tank.
Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, the city was a shroud of faded streetlights, draped over the valley’s corpse. But the glass was cool against my forehead.