Personal Protection (16 page)

She gave me a look that said I had about one minute to say my piece before she either wiped the floor with me or walked away.

“I find it hard to get my head round the idea of someone who already has everything to satisfy a woman, has it all taken away and still wants to have sex with them.”

“Don’t tell me you don’t understand how it feels to be trapped in the wrong body, boi. I’ve seen how hard you try be a man.

I couldn’t disagree. “Yes, I know how that feels.”

“Then aren’t you just jealous, because I’ve done something you’re too afraid to?”

“No. I looked into it. F to M gender reassignment isn’t too successful. I’m not prepared to lose feeling in love-making to look the part. It’s a poor exchange.”

“If you’re not a bigot and you find me attractive, what’s the problem?”

“You won’t believe it.”

“Try me.”

“They can do a lot of things with the knife and you can do more with clothes, make-up and hormones, but you can’t change body chemistry. You look like a million dollars! But you
don’t smell, taste and feel like a woman. It’s as simple as that.”

She didn’t try to stop me when I walked away.

Negotiating that minefield was never going to win me friends. But it did make me think about another uncomfortable possibility. I’d cavalierly tossed off ‘isn’t anybody
straight anymore?’ while contemplating my own lot. What if all of the women attacked here were lesbians? Tori was. Liu certainly was. To an outsider, Sammi was a woman. Even though
she
had once been a
he,
not everyone was as quick to pick up on the tell tale signs. With her sexual preferences, that would make Sammi a lesbian in a stranger’s eyes. I wasn’t sure
about Joy, Terri and Stace. And a bouncer’s throwaway gossip had already furnished me with the information about Lisa Moran. (In light of this, it would be in my interests to check his alibi
for Lisa’s death.)

Was this whole business a hate crime? I’d have to run this by Dean. Perhaps it was somebody associated with the club after all. He was going to be unbearable if he was right.

It didn’t seem right to march up to Joy, Terri and Stace to check my theory, and it was some time before I could catch up with Tori again. Meanwhile I had other things to worry about.
Something strange was going on. Every time I walked past the girls they stopped talking. At first I thought it was my admission to Sammi: that they had all decided to ostracise me because I’d
hurt their Agony Aunt’s feelings.

That didn’t pan out. Whenever they got me on their own, they either flirted with me, or were warmly polite, according to their gender preferences. What was going on?

It wasn’t until the evening was nearly done that I overheard a snippet of conversation which made everything fall into place.

“Who’d turn down Stringfellow’s? Pete might be a bit of a poseur, but think of the money you’d earn and the celebs you’d meet! You’d really be on your way
then.”

“I’d never have guessed there’d be talent scouts in this audience. Just goes to show. You never know who these clowns will bring as guests.”

I know that old saw about eavesdroppers. I edged closer. I couldn’t help myself.

“After what happened to her, it would be the best way to get a fresh start. It’s a pity about her affair. But looking the way she does, she won’t have a problem finding someone
to warm her bed and take her mind off the break-up…

Then they saw me, blushed red as beetroot and scuttled away.

You know the feeling. As if someone has pulled the rug out from beneath you and substituted the banana skin.

I had to get outside. I pushed through girls, customers, bouncers, with the same disregard, and fled up the steps to the outer doors. I couldn’t breathe until I was outside in the cold
night air.

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.

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.

“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?”