Sugarcoated (15 page)

‘Squeezed Mum’s hand when she spoke to him,’ Nurse Young’s voice was choky as she blew her nose on the paper towel Martin Smart flicked at her. He gave me his first smile when he said, ‘Would you look at Gloria? Nursing’s biggest softy. Your friend’s stable enough for a neuro ward now, though –’

‘And did he speak? See Sister Smith phoned because Dave was asking for me –’ I interrupted. Over my head Martin Smart and Nurse Young exchanged a look.

‘Is David a special friend?’ Martin Smart wasn’t meeting my eyes. ‘His mum never mentioned a girlfriend –’

OK. I know when it comes to sussing people out I’m not exactly high functioning, but I’d say that the way Martin Smart’s voice had softened meant …

Well, I knew he was consoling me. Because basically the next stuff he said about Dave Griffen was preparing me for the worst. Not that I made full sense of everything. What I learned about Dave Griffen only began to sink in while I slumped, eyes closed, head pressed hard against the steel wall opposite Nurse Young in a service lift that led me out the hospital through an unmanned exit.

Dave Griffen’s body was on the mend.

He was stable now.

But he certainly hadn’t asked for me.

‘No way, Dodie,’ Martin Smart had actually taken my hand to explain.

Because Dave couldn’t speak. No chance.

Too many tubes in his mouth even if he could.

Not to mention wires holding his jaw in place.

And he was being kept under sedation while his brain was still swollen.

His parents the only visitors he was allowed.

‘So, listen, whoever dragged you out here tonight is sicker than the patients in my ICU, sweetheart. And that’s saying something.’ Martin Smart had narrowed his eyes as he walked me to the lift, handing over a hospital issue personal effects bag containing my wet clothes.

‘The scrubs suit her, don’t they, Gloria?’ Like my personal stylist he drew his hand down the length of me in my greens as the lift door closed on me and Nurse Young.

‘You take care,’ I heard Martin Smart whisper.

‘You take care.’

What a coincidence. I remembered being told that by Dave Griffen himself. Last time we met.

Georgina too.

Way more recently. Although, since I’d been belting out my bedroom for the hospital when her
War and Peace
-length email pinged into my Inbox, I’d only allowed myself to glance at the first few lines she’d written:

C, Sorry, but I don’t like the sound of your Stefan guy. What you’ve told me about him reminds me of that line from Hamlet’s stepfather smiling and smiling and being a villain? You take care. I mean it.

I’d read and left it at that.

I’ll tackle her Shakespeare quotes over tea and toast
once I’m hot showered and in my jammies …

That was the cosy prospect just about keeping my spirits up and no more as I left the hospital via the Soiled Laundry And Dead Body Exit and set off home. Honestly, I’d never known such a dreich night. You wouldn’t even put your bin out in it. The streets were still deserted and it was as wet as ever although the rain, wouldn’t you know, had changed into thick, whirling sleet in the half hour since I’d been tricked into Intensive Care to visit a guy in a coma who’d upped sticks …

‘This just isn’t funny!’ With the thin scrubs I’d changed into soaked through already and plastered to me like an icy second skin, I wore the bag holding my other wet clothes on my head while I rang for a cab again.

‘I’m sorry, all our operators are busy at the …’ the same toasty voice lulled before I silenced it with one of those phrases you just
have
to use sometimes even though mothers like mine claim there’s
never
an excuse for filth from the well-raised civilised girl I’m supposed to be.

Well I don’t feel very bloody civilised tonight, Mumsie
, I
thought, suddenly
aching
to see Mum driving towards me right now, saving me from this horrible night.

And no matter what time it is. Even if you’re in bed already, I just press a few buttons on my phone and hey presto …

‘Ooops.’

The money-wasting text I sent without knowing I’d done it:

SOS. stranded. Come get me
Ma?

has to qualify as one of the most pointless act of my life. Stoopid girl here had so much water on the brain I was fantasising Mum half a block, not half a world away. Peeping her horn to mortify me, waving dementedly through the windscreen as she slowed down, leaning over to kiss me as soon as I threw my carcass into the seat beside her and automatically turned down her Will Young CD.
Would you look at the
state of you
?
Mum’d be gasping, pretending to be affronted. I’d be breathing in her perfume, rubbing
away the trace of her lipgloss on my cheeks.

And if Mum was here,
I thought turning a corner, away from the well-lit grounds of the hospital,
no way would I be taking this skanky walkway to the main road.
It was so dark, I literally couldn’t see the ground in front of me. Had to shuffle along in case I tripped over some junkie or shopping trolley or waterproof murderer or something. That made me tense, made me clench my mobile in my fist, start humming at the darkness.
Eye of the Tiger
, high and growly.

So, compared to the noise I was making, the sawing cellos of my
I Am the Walrus
ringtone sounded positively ladylike. The way I answered my phone wasn’t:

‘Who’s this? Sister bloody Smith?’

‘Babes, guess who?’

The voice, the last voice in the
world
I was expecting, stopped me dead. Dead in the middle of a puddle. So deep that water lapped over the rims of my shoes. I suppose that was why my teeth chattered when I tried to speak:

‘St … St … Stefan?’

‘Didn’t I promise to phone? Long time no hear, eh, Claudia?’ his voice gave a chuckle. ‘So what’s my babes up to, then? You sound a bit uptight.’

As I’ve hinted more than once, yours truly has never been a megawatt in the bright lights department; I’m more your eco-friendly bulb. The kind that take an hour and a half to do what they’re meant to. Stupid sometimes, in other words.

But not dumb.

At least, that’s what I reckoned when, alone in the middle of this pitch dark walkway, shin-deep in a puddle, I calculated with the speed of a mathematical prodigy that I definitely wasn’t dumb enough to tell snake-tattooed Stefan, with his heart of a psychopath, multiple indentities and an Honours Degree In Threatening The Life Out Of Muscle-bound Blokes like Dave Griffen, my exact whereabouts.

Wasn’t I only
here
because of a certain Muscle-bound Bloke?

Might not go down too well with his competition. So I lied. Gave Stefan a lion-sized yawn.

‘I’m in bed actually.’

‘In bed? You mean I’ve spoiled your beauty sleep? Oh, babes.’

Stefan’s reply was soft as a purr. However I heard him so clearly his lips might have been touching my ear. And a shiver ran the length of me.

‘Where are
you
?’

My words bounced back hollow off the high concrete walls flanking the walkway. The echo my question had created jittered around me so that instinct made me turn. On edge. Panicked. Checking over my shoulder. Head right. Then left, eyes peering into the gloom to the end of the walkway. Ears straining beyond the tap tap tap of sleet-fall.
Just to check,
I gulped,
that there isn’t someone stalking me. Creeping through the walkway. Closing in. Ready to pounce.

‘Don’t worry, babes …’

It took as long for me to realise that the voice coming through the phone was also coming towards me as it did for me to separate Stefan’s silhoutette from the charcoal murk of the walkway. He seemed to belong to the very night itself.

‘ … and don’t sound so nervous. It’s only me,’
Stefan’s voice murmured into both my ears at once, the faint light from his mobile revealing his perfect smile to me for the first time in days.

‘Fancy meeting you here. Sleepwalking, are you?’ he said, voice soft as chocolate melted over a low heat, although the gloved hand grasping mine and taking my mobile away tightened round my fingers meaner than Neil’s used to do when we played chicken. More in shock than pain, I gasped (So much shock that I dropped the hospital bag holding my wet clothes. Plop. I heard it meet the puddle I was standing in). Unable to wrench my hand free before Stefan’s arm was hooking my neck, I felt his leather sleeve creak against my nose as he jerked me closer and closer to his side until I was completely off balance, one leg clear of the puddle where my clothes floated away. Now my entire weight was propped against the length of Stefan’s flank.

‘Imagine you telling me porky pies, babes. Let’s go,’ he tutted, a yank to my neck stumbling me towards the end of the walkway. A car pulled up across the exit as we approached. No headlights, engine running. A man: burly, squat, his lower face scarfed, held the rear door
open until Stefan reached it. Muttered something foreign. Stefan’s voice sounded guttural and low, older than the one I knew, and whatever he said ended in a rough chuckle and made the burly man step back into the yellow glow of the first decent streetlight since the hospital, whipping the scarf from his face. In the moment before this man came round the back of me and wrapped his scarf over my mouth – jerking back my neck. Jerking harder to tie his knots. Grunting with the effort he was putting into his task – I glimpsed his upper features. By the time he and Stefan were humphing me on to the back seat of the car, using their knees to shove me inside when I started to struggle, I remembered where I’d seen those eyes before. That monobrow.

I was being manhandled by the hammer guy.

… Who drove like he hammered. Hard. Purposefully. Not one of those motorists to be sidetracked by distractions like traffic lights, weather conditions, speed cameras, sharp bend signs, give ways, or STOP warnings. No. No. No. Once Hammer Man had strapped my wrists to the grab handle in the back of the car with some kind of impossible-to-wriggle-out-of cheese-wire, then rearranged his stale-tobacco flavoured scarf so tightly across my mouth that I couldn’t swallow, he moseyed round to the driving seat. Without a word spoken. And put his foot down.

‘Sorry about all this. Don’t worry; it’s going to be over soon.’ Stefan’s voice was melted chocolate again. His gloved fingertip, stroking free a strand of hair trapped in my gag, was more delicate than the footsteps of a ladybird tiptoeing across my eyebrows.

Bastard
I recoiled, my confusion at Stefan’s
sugarcoated kidnap tactics making me almost too angry to be seriously scared … yet.

He was messing bigtime with my head, his bitter sweetness worse than any direct cruelty.

He still seems so kind,
I was thinking while my eyes goggled over the top of my gag at Stefan.
Though he’s keeping me trussed. Choking in the back of a car that has to be stolen
.
Has
to be. Otherwise Hammer Man wouldn’t be tripping every speed camera we fly past
.

‘Listen gonna just let me go,’ I tried to plead, but all I could manage was a gargle, dry and ugly, the half-swallow of it bringing tears to my lashes.

‘Sorry, babes?’ Stefan leaned his face against mine. Cheek to cheek we were. Mine wet, his sweet-cologned.

‘I didn’t catch that. You want something?’

His finger slid down my face to the edge of the gag, hooking it away from my mouth just enough for me to be able to talk. Couldn’t though. As soon as I closed my lips and licked them, the saliva that rushed my parched throat set me hacking and retching.

‘Claudia.’

Tut-tutting, Stefan pinged the scarf back against
my mouth. His mouth was sour.

‘Didn’t that polite mum you bored me to death about teach you to cover your mouth when you cough?’ He pouted at me. Leaned close to whisper, ‘Hospitals are filthy places, too. Who knows
what
nasty germs you’ve picked up visiting your sick friend. You should be keeping them to yourself, babes. Though you’re not exactly good at keeping anything to yourself. Are you? Eh?’ The finger of Stefan’s glove switched under my nose like a playful kitty-tail.

‘No good at all. Big feet, big nose, big butt, big boobs, big mouth. I should have known that.’ His smile remained, though the words behind it hardened as he called out to Hammer Man, ‘Hear what I’m telling our
problem,
Len?’

Stefan kept his eyes twinking on mine as he patted hammer guy’s shoulder. Whatever comment he translated made Len suck air through his teeth and ignore the corner he was aquaplaning to glare at me. Then he and Stefan chuckled. It wasn’t a jolly-Santa sound.

‘Hey, by the way, babes. Case I forget,’ Stefan’s
voice was light as candyfloss again, almost a simper, ‘How
is
your other boyfriend? Sitting up in bed is he? Eating grapes? Hey. Hey. Calm down, babes –’

Soon as Stefan asked about Dave Griffen like that: Throwaway. Mocking. Well, I know given my circumstances I’d have been wise to sit tight, but I completely lost it. Couldn’t help myself.

‘What d’you know about Dave? Did you attack him? Was it you who sent me to visit him?
That
was sick!’ I screamed through my gag while I thrashed and bucked and kicked out at Stefan heedless – at least for the first few seconds – that the slightest movement I made slit the cheese-wire through my wrists like they were the Cheddar it was designed to slice.

Stefan eventually pointed out the damage I was inflicting on myself. ‘Ooooh, your poor handies, babes.’ He flapped at me to sit still. ‘You’re bleeding everywhere, and I really hate the sight of blood,’ he winced, adding, as he shifted away from me on the back seat, ‘leaves too much information.’ While I was distracted by the cold tone of this comment, he grabbed my ankles. Crossed them over so I couldn’t kick out any
more then pinned them together under the weight of his thighs.

‘Y’know those cuts are going to sting like mad. Try to keep calm. Here, is this better?’ As one hand soothed my shin in a circle, Stefan’s other reached across me. Yanked the scarf down over my chin.

‘Who are you? What did you do to Dave? Why are you doing this to me?’ Still writhing to free myself from Stefan’s pin-down, all my questions spluttered out at once. Though I was beginning to lose strength now: the adrenalin rush of my capture giving way to the raw pain throbbing into my wrists as blood trickled warm up the drenched sleeves of my scrubs.

An even deeper pain splintered the base of my spine where my legs lay twisted under Stefan at right angles to my body. When I tried to choke back a sob I betrayed myself, the spill of hot tears leaving me slumped against the car seat.

‘Oh babes, don’t be so upset.’ Stefan used the back of his glove to wipe my eyes. ‘I really
am
sorry about all this. It’s nothing personal, but the bottom line is you’ve caused me too much hassle. Now you’re a risk I can’t
afford. Business is business, after all.’ I caught the scent of fine cologne mingled with good leather as Stefan’s hand smoothed my hair back from my face. His touch dragged against my wet skin.

‘All a bit of a shame, coz I thought you were the smartest, babes. Remember how you lied? When we met? Told me you saw nothing from your dad’s window? Oh babes.’ The fingers of Stefan’s glove blew me an admiring kiss. ‘That was impressive. See,’ he tilted my chin up so I had to look him in the eye. ‘I’d been watching Len here. Len and Janek. He’s my cousin, by the way. Couldn’t be here tonight, though he’d have enjoyed this very much. Poor Janek’s in a police cell. Because …’ Without looking away from me, without interrupting what he was saying, Stefan used his index finger to put strain on the cheese-wire. It
really
hurt. ‘ … some blabbermouth babes told her police chums she recognised him. Oh dear, Claudia. Now we
both
end up here.’

Stefan flopped his head back against the seat rest, rolled it from side to side, his eyes closed, his voice flat.

‘Turns out I was wrong about you. You
are
dimmer
than you look, babes. If only you’d turned a blind eye in daddy’s shop when Janek and Len here were sorting a bit of business out for me. Nothing to do with you, was it? Eh? My people having a word with one of my competitors. Clearing up a few private matters. Firm to firm … Ahhh … But it’s all too late now.’ Stefan swept a weary hand from the ties at my wrist, then to the back of Len’s head. He shrugged. Sighed. Waggled my mobile phone at me. ‘I had great hopes that none of this …’

‘None of what?’ I gulped, little-girl-lost panic in my voice betraying my rising terror.
What’s this guy going to do with me?
Stefan didn’t answer. Just kept shaking his head. Eyes still closed, he tapped the side of his nose with my mobile. The gesture was another of his promises:
That’s for me to know and you to find out.

There was silence in the car then, broken only by the swish of wheels on puddly gravel and the noiseless screaming in my head:
You’re totally trapped here. Finished.
I gasped aloud then, plunging cramp griping my stomach so viciously as my guts turned to liquid fear my arms automatically dropped to clamp the pain.
With tethered hands, this was my most stupid move yet. The cheese-wire bit so deeply I arched up in my seat, groaning right into Stefan’s ear. Neither he nor Len gave any sign they were aware of my distress. Both ignored me, Len’s eyes fixed on the road, Stefan’s shut. Expression blank. He seemed totally composed. Brow smooth. Faint smile on his lips. Relaxed, like he was meditating or something.

Didn’t even seem to register the shrill of my mobile in his hand when my Inbox beeped.

‘Hey.’ Stefan let several moments pass before frowning into my phone screen. ‘Who could be texting my babes at this late hour? Interrupting her beauty sleep again. Could it be the new boyfriend, eh?’ he asked, making a panto of shifting to cosy beside me again till our shoulders touched.

‘
Hel – lo Clau-dia. Duh! Sorry I can’t talk too good no more,
’ he monotoned, attempting – dreadfully – a dumbo, Arnie-Robocop voice.

As he opened my Inbox, he was nudging me.

‘Have I guessed right? Is it dead brain Daaaaave?’ he nudged me harder. Then whistled. ‘No! But guess
who? It’s Mumsie, babes. Oooooh.’ Like a selfish kid keeping a toy to himself, Stefan angled the screen away from me so I couldn’t read Mum’s message. He scrambled what he saw into a trilly falsetto nonsense: ‘Yah, yah, wah, wah.’ Then he showed me the screen, used the same silly voice to read it aloud. It made him laugh. Not me. He sounded nothing like Mum when she’s off on one and his mimicry of her sickened me:

‘Where r u Cloddy? Why
stranded? Where?’

he primped,

‘Iv called Uncle Mike to help u.
Fone him. Not been clubbing
have u? Hope not. Uv school!!!
Baby Sean fab. C pic??? Perfect.
Dad flying home 2 days. Me
next week. Can’t wait 2 c U
pet. Love u lots. Mum xxxx.

Oh dear. How sad. Never mind.’

Stefan, dropping the falsetto, sing-songed into the mobile without looking up. In the flattest of voices he added, ‘Your mumsie’s going to be too late.’ He scrolled the functions on my phone as he spoke.

‘Aha,’ he grinned, flashing the screen at me long enough to catch the blur of a tiny face, its eyes scrunched tighter to the world than the clenched fists below them.

‘Dere’s Aunty Claudia’s little sick boy. How come all de little boys you know are sick, babes? Do you make dem sick maybe?’ Stefan said in a baby voice, deleting what was on the screen even though I was still devouring the first picture of my first nephew …
Maybe the last picture I’ll see of him
…

‘Ringtones. You won’t be needing to change yours again. Isn’t that a thought,’ Stefan said, voice back to normal as he ran through my Functions menu again.

‘Messages? Nope. Not yet … Ah here we are: Camera. Say cheese, babes.’

Before I knew what Stefan was doing he’d whisked my gag back over my mouth then stretched his arm close to my face. Snapped a photo of me, chuckling
as he leaned over the front seat to show the result to Len.

‘Just saying, I’ve seen you looking better. Though not a lot,’ he translated the remark that Len’s shoulders were still enjoying. ‘But you know what, babes? This time tomorrow, ugly as you are, your mum’s going to treasure this last piccy more than
anything
. I promise. Isn’t that a comforting thought? And your face is going to be in all the papers. Hows about that? You’ll be famous …
IN
famous,’ he nodded, busy with the phone again. Disregarding the beep of at least two incoming messages.
Mum? Uncle Mike?
Busy texting his own.

‘There. Message sent back to Mumsie. Want to hear your farewell, babes?’

Despite me shaking my head, humming to drown Stefan’s cruelty –
Ugly
he called me.
Bastard. Liar. Psychopath
– he went on, his voice mocking me now. Slowly he monotoned: ‘“
I blabbed, stupid me. Love from Cloddy x x x.”
How’s that. All the way to Australia. With your last ever piccy. Techonology nowadays. “Fab” as your mum might say.’

Stefan was rolling his eyes, lashes girlishly a-flutter
as he opened the back of my phone, pocketing my SIM card. He lounged across me to reach the window button, droning ‘Beeeeeeep’ while it slid open. He hurled the two sections of my mobile into the sleet.

‘Bye bye Mummy and Daddy. Beeeeep,’ he waved as he put the window back up.

Len was braking for the first time in the entire journey, the car bumping over soft, uneven ground.
We’re on the Clydeside
, I realised, when Len drove past a reflected chain of golden lights bobbing on black river-water.

The image was so beautiful it stabbed my heart.

The car was slowing to a crawl before a massive gate with barbed wire at the top. When Stefan clicked a button on the remote control he pulled from his coat pocket the gate shuddered open, though Len didn’t wait till it clunked wide enough for his wing mirrors to survive before he floored the car though it. Weaving like Dick Dastardly in and out of a settlement of freight containers, he drove at the only one with its door gaping and its ramp lowered. The car felt like a plane engine thrusting into reverse on a short runway when
it finally drove into the container and stopped.

‘Ultimate destination, babes,’ Stefan chimed, in what I assume was his version of a film-trailer voice. As he spoke, he snapped his gloved fingers over Len’s shoulder, palm upturning to receive the kind of scary blade the police always display on the news when they’re having a knife amnesty.

‘Now,’ Stefan said, lunging at me.

‘No, no, no,’ he laughed as I shrank so desperately against the door of the car that the facing creaked. ‘Remember I hate blood. Just making you more comfortable. I never get my hands dirty.’

Stefan’s face was a fraction from mine, close enough for him to land me a peck on the nose as his knife freed my wrists with a single swipe.

‘Much better,’ he said, sawing the individual knots on each hand. When my arms dropped dead and rubbery on to his lap he massaged the life back into my fingers. Because they were too numb for me to wrench away, I had to let sit there and let him stroke me, his voice as gentle as his touch when he murmured, ‘Babes, you’ve made such a mess of yourself already.
Spoiling Len’s fun. He won’t like that …’

Stefan was out the car while this detail about his henchman was sinking in. He was pulling his gloves off, balling them. Flinging them over his shoulder into the recesses of the container. Next he shucked off his leather coat, stepping over it, then twitching adjustments to the shirt cuffs peeking from the sleeves of the business suit he was wearing underneath. From its breast pocket he slipped out a pair of tinted specs. They were dark. Heavy-framed. Way too old for him.