Personal Protection (18 page)

“No, I didn’t. Does that make a difference?”

“Heathen! It will if you’re going to sit in that church.”

He explained.

“There is no way! No hats. No kneeling. No praying. I’ll wait outside.”

“I never know when I’m going to run into one of your sacred cows. All right. I suppose it’s either that or try passing as a bloke. In any other company you’d fake it
easy, but with those apes all six foot wide and six foot tall you’d stick out like a sore thumb. I’ll do the good deed and watch the grieving mourners. After all, you’re doing the
interviews. Your nearest and dearest probably has a point.” Then, seeing my look, “What? What have I said now?”

“She may not be my nearest and dearest for much longer.” I told him about her audition.

“Oh, Randall, I’m sorry.”

“It isn’t a done deal, yet. Still…

He looked on in sympathy. There wasn’t much to say. We’ve all been there. He knew my financial straits well enough to know I couldn’t up sticks and follow her, no matter how I
felt. He set aside his mug to grip my hand across the table.

“I know I’m not her, but if you need me, you know where to find me.”

“Thanks. I won’t crawl back into the bottle.”

“I never thought you would,” he lied.

Comforting fiction. Nice to hear anyway.

“Hi, you’ve reached Randall McGonnigal. I’m not here right now. If you don’t object talking to machines, leave a message after the tone. I’ll get
back to you ASAP.”

Beep.

“Hello, Randall, it’s Tori. I hope you can hear me! I thought I’d call and check on you. You either took my advice and went back to bed or you’re with Dean. Either way, I
hope you’re feeling better. The club has an extension till four. I’d forgotten about it till I arrived. As you’re hardly your usual self, I’m going to sleep at my place,
rather than chance waking you whenever I finally crawl home. I’ve arranged for a White Knight to take me home, so don’t worry, I’m safe! I know you have an early start, conducting
interviews, so I’ll see you tomorrow night. For dinner, if that’s OK with you? Eight o’clock, my place. Call me if you can’t make it. Gotta go! It’s my set. Love
you.”

Beep.

Shit. Alone! We only had four nights before she left. I played the message a second time, just to hear her voice, then wondered if I’d be doing that when she was gone. I made myself erase
the tape; I wasn’t going down that road again.

It was five to midnight. I felt wrung out from pummelling my brain with the intricacies of the case, thinking like a detective instead of a bodyguard whose girlfriend has been raped. The
painkillers had worn off. I ached all over. I stripped, took a couple more and got back into the shower. I stayed under the water till it cooled and the hurts had died to a dull ache.

“You don’t look as bad I thought you might.”

“Thanks, I think.”

Liu smiled and cocked her head on one side. “Give it another day and no one will notice it at all unless they’re right next to you.”

To my surprise I’d fallen asleep the moment my head had hit the pillow. The only visible signs of the fight I’d had on waking were multihued ribs and swelling at my temple.

“We should get on.”

“Of course. You have Sammi at lunchtime, don’t you?”

She made it sound like we’d be doing more than just talking. That was deliberate. I saw I would have to take a firm stance if I was to prevent this getting out of hand.

“Liu, we have very little time.”

She pouted.

“Considering the unpleasant nature of the subject I thought the least we could do was have a little fun.”

“Liu, I have a job to do. It hardly makes me sound professional! Have a heart, my partner has to listen to these tapes!”

“I’ll behave.”

Verbally, she did. Visually it was a completely different matter.

“What do you want to know?”

She leaned back. Her already short skirt rode up. I forced my eyes back to her face. She smiled.

“I need you to tell me exactly what happened. Start with the day, date and time, then everything you can remember.”

“It was a Saturday, in August, the very end. I’m sorry, I don’t remember the date.”

Glad of the chance to look away, I flipped through the calendar and noted the date of the last Saturday in August. Liu continued,

“I was on my way home from the club. It was three, maybe three-thirty in the morning. I was wrecked. One of the girls was ill. We’d had to cover more routines on stage.”

I nodded in sympathetically.

“The cab dropped me at the end of the street where I live. There were roadworks blocking the way further up. It was raining. I paid, then ran up the street to the house so I wouldn’t
get too wet. While I was standing in the porch, fumbling my keys out of my bag, I heard footsteps. High heels. I clutched my bag and spun round, so I didn’t get hit from behind. I thought it
was a mugger!”

“You did the right thing.”

“From you, that means a lot.”

She did that Sharon Stone crossing and uncrossing her legs thing. I definitely wasn’t going there! Tori hadn’t even left yet. I kept my eyes firmly on her face.

“I didn’t get a good look at her. She was wearing a coat with the hood pulled low over her face. She was taller than me and white. Definitely a woman. She hissed,
“Bitch!” and threw something. I flung my arm in front of my eyes. I heard her running away and felt something dripping down my hair. Eggs! I counted myself lucky it wasn’t worse.
I found my keys, fled inside, got my coat off, emptied the pockets and dumped it in the washer. Then I rinsed my head under the tap to get the eggshell out of my hair. I made sure I’d put the
dead bolt on the door and went upstairs. I lit candles and had a bath and a stiff drink.”

“Has anything like this happened to you before?”

“No.”

“OK, let’s go back over the events in a little more detail. You didn’t hear footsteps until you were at your door?”

“Well…”

“I know you were running. That tends to block out other sounds, and the rain wouldn’t have helped, but try to remember exactly what you heard when you got out of the taxi.”

She thought about it, eyes closed, conjuring the moment.

“I don’t remember hearing any feet but mine while I ran, but now you come to mention it, I do remember hearing a car engine as I turned up my road. Do you suppose she was following
me? Following my cab?”

“It’s possible. You say she was taller than you?”

“Yes. Five seven, five nine. I know she was white because she wasn’t wearing gloves. I saw her hand go back to throw the egg in the streetlight. There’s one outside my
house.”

She shivered and hugged herself.

“I’m sorry, I know it isn’t easy for you to revisit this.”

“I thought I was over it. Then Tori came in last week and told Sammi what had happened to her. Suddenly everyone had stories! It was horrible! We’d all had things happen to us that
we just swept under the carpet hoping they would go away. That it was a one-off. That it must have been something we’d done. That we were to blame for what had happened. How fucked is that?
Why do we blame ourselves?”

“I don’t know, Liu. You’re not to blame. I do know that.”

“I am. If I’d mentioned it earlier, maybe Tori wouldn’t have been…”

“You mustn’t think like that.”

She began to cry. I pulled open a drawer and grabbed a handful of tissues Dean keeps for female clients who come to report on their philandering husbands. I turned off the tape and came around
the desk to kneel before her, take one of her hands, press the tissues into the other. She sniffled into them with mumbled thanks. I sat back on my heels and waited it out. I didn’t dare get
any closer, even though she needed comfort. She clutched my hand until she felt able to talk.

“You don’t blame me?”

“No more than Tori does.”

She tried out a smile. I returned it.

Why do women think themselves to blame when something like this happens? I’m sure psychologists have a name for it. All I know is how angry it made me to keep hearing it when someone else
was to blame. Angrier still to know that at least one stalker was another woman.

Sammi had been in her flat when the doorbell rang. Foolishly she hadn’t checked the intercom, just buzzed her visitor up. Glad of the company? In a mood to take risks?
When she opened the door, her ski-masked attacker forced his way in, bounced her head off the wall a few times, and while she was too stunned to fight back, bent her over the armchair back and
raped her. When he was finished, he’d smacked her head one more time for good measure on the wooden frame of the chair and fled.

Sammi’s attacker was a man. She was sure. He hadn’t used protection and she’d caught the clap. She was also the only one to report her attack.

“And a fat lot of good that did,” she complained. “All it got me was an unsympathetic WPC, who they changed for a bloke as soon as they found out I’d originally been a
man – and he was even more obnoxious than she was.” She made a face at the memory.

“They left me in one of those surgical gowns. It felt like hours. Sitting around, cold and aching, first in A and E with a police registered surgeon. Then an intrusive examination that
hurt almost as much as the rape. Then in a police station. And all they had to say was I brought it on myself. Bastards!”

The first thing that hits you is disinfectant. It almost but not quite covers the smell of sick people. I hate hospitals. In my job I see the inside of the places more than
most. Our quarry was located in a bed near the doors on a ward near the psychiatric wing and the children’s ward. Thanks to Craig’s insider knowledge we made our way straight there from
the outside, using a shortcut that avoided going through reception and advertising our presence.

Of the three men I’d fought, only the bouncer, Villiers, had been kept in for observation. According to Craig my dropping on his ribs had sent a broken bone back to puncture a lung.
They’d had to drain it and re-inflate it. I tried to feel sorry for him. He could have died! But I looked worse than he did and what they’d intended for me would have been far worse.
That made my part in this affair much easier.

Dean walked over in his smart suit, clutching his clipboard as if he belonged there. Nobody questioned him. He looked like a consultant. Anyway, it was visiting hours. I waited until he’d
drawn the curtains round the bed to ensure privacy then slipped through the door into the shrouded enclosure with a suitably malevolent expression. It strained my acting abilities when I saw the
bouncer’s face go from polite inquiry to pale as his sheets when I followed Dean in.

Before he could buzz for assistance, Dean slid the pager away and grabbed one wrist. I grabbed the other and clamped a gloved hand over his mouth to stop him yelling. His body bucked against the
bed.

“We can do this the easy way or the hard way, Mr Villiers. Which is it going to be?”

He took a long look at me and subsided.

“Sensible choice. All we need are some straight answers then we’ll leave you to recuperate in peace. But if I think you’re lying to me you’ll be doing something else in
peace. Do we understand each other?”

I put pressure on his wrist until I could feel the bones grind together and watched his face pale further. After that he nodded vigorously. Dean let go of the man’s wrist and straightened
his suit fastidiously.

“My business partner will let you go now. Bearing in mind what you and your friends did, I’d advise you don’t scream for help. She’s understandably a little
over-enthusiastic in the physical persuasion department just now.”

“What do you want?” Villiers muttered.

For once I didn’t have to work at looming menacingly. When the person you’re intimidating is lying down it’s easy to be impressive at just over five feet tall.

“Before you and your goons laid into me, you said, ‘This is to teach you to stay out of things that don’t concern you.’ What did you mean?”

“I don’t know what you…”

Dean looked away as I slapped my hand back over his mouth and began to squeeze a nerve cluster near his throat: what Trekkers think of a Vulcan nerve pinch. “I may not have a dick, but I
do have total recall. What did you mean? Or do I have to get really nasty?”

“Fuck,” he gasped as I freed up his mouth. “What do you think I meant? You made me look like a right pillock in front of people I’d worked with for years! I
couldn’t just let the insult go by without doing something.”

“Knife throwing wasn’t enough?”

Dean looked at me sharply. Thankfully he didn’t blow things by picking me up on it. But this guy wasn’t the only one who’d be having a difficult conversation today.

“That wasn’t me!”

“Who was it then?”

“Grey. He thought you needed to be taken down a peg or two.”

I’d caught Grey looking at one or two people in an ugly way, Sammi and myself included. It wasn’t too hard to believe. I stepped away from the bed.

“If I find out you’ve lied to me I’ll be back. And you’ll wish you hadn’t.”

I did the dramatic exit through the curtain and set off down the stairs at the hurry up. I’d wait for Dean outside. This was one scene I didn’t want to have anywhere we could be
overheard.

He exploded as he burst out of the doors, clearly having built up a head of steam on the way down. “Someone threw a knife at you and you didn’t tell me?”

“Because I knew you’d react like this.”

“You could have been killed!”

“No I couldn’t. I caught it. I can do shit like that.”

He started to make a snappy comeback, then thought better of it. He knew it wasn’t a boast. When he stops to think about it he knows what I’m capable of. And hadn’t he just
watched me torture information out of someone? (Not something I was proud of, but a salutary lesson all the same.)

He exhaled noisily. “All right. I overreacted. I’m sorry. Are you going to be OK? With what you just did? I mean… It goes against everything you’ve been taught. Martial
arts codes and what have you.”

“It was necessary. I’m not about to make a habit of it.”

“That’s good to know.”