Killer Instinct (33 page)

Afterwards, he helped me drag the crashmats back over to their corner and stand them up against the wall. I pulled my sweatshirt on again, and Dave shrugged back into his jacket. He dug into a pocket and handed over the amount of cash we'd agreed on for the first of his lessons. I accepted without demur. I think I'd earned my money.

It wasn't until we'd moved out of the ballroom and along into the hallway that Dave voiced the question that had probably been on his mind for a while.

“D'you really believe that the stuff you teach these young lasses can actually save them?” he said. He clearly had Nina in mind, but I immediately thought of Joy. It took me a moment to answer.

We'd covered knife attacks in the classes Joy had attended. She knew the theory. She should have been more than capable of fending off her attacker, disarming and disabling him.

Should have been.

But wasn't.

And now she was dead. Just thinking about it twisted a knife in my own side. Joy had paid a mammoth price for not doing her homework. Still, I couldn't help wondering about it. Were her reflexes against a surprise attack really so poor that she'd let a stranger, whoever he was, get close enough to her to pull out a knife and slash her with it? Surely not.

I hedged. “If I didn't believe it, I wouldn't be doing it.”

“Don't you think, though, that people misjudge you at the outset, like those two kids at the club last week, and you rely on that element of surprise too much?” he asked. “OK, so you're fine against someone with comparatively little skill, who's not expecting a counter-attack, but against a stronger opponent, one who knows what he's doing, no way.” He shook his head, grinned at me. “I mean, come on, Foxy. No woman could ever hope to beat a man when their abilities are well matched.”

By woman he meant a smaller, lighter, weaker adversary. I thought of all the martial arts gurus whose work I'd studied. Hardly any were six-foot blokes. They were mostly short in stature, quick and nimble. I'd seen them wipe out bigger, heavier challengers without raising their pulse rate enough to register on an electrocardiogram.

“I'd have to disagree,” I said.

Dave just grinned again as he zipped up his jacket, dug in the pocket for his car keys. “Well, you would say that, wouldn't you?”

I was just about to argue, when the door to Tris and Ailsa's sitting room was flung open, and the lady of the house came galloping out. Grasped in her upraised right hand was a heavy rolling pin with wooden handles and a white marble centre.

“Quick, quick!” she yelled. “I've just seen him, from the kitchen window. He's heading for the front!”

I didn't stop and ask who she meant. I didn't need to.

Before Ailsa had even reached us, I'd spun round and was already running for the open front door. I took the entire flight of steps in one reckless bound, then skidded and nearly lost my footing on the mossy flags at the bottom as a result.

As I fought to regain my balance, cursing, a figure came bolting along the side of the house. Even with the loose gravel underfoot, he was running like an Olympic sprinter, arms working furiously to propel him forwards in a desperate rush.

He came level with the front steps, passing within about twenty feet of me, and moving fast. He must have caught the flurry of movement, though, because he turned his head and looked straight into my eyes.

It almost seemed like everything moved forwards into slow motion. I had time to create a mental record of the dark trousers and ribbed sweater, the black ski mask covering his features. Only the eyes stood out, whites gleaming.

The sudden, stark memory of the two masked men who'd broken into the flat materialised like a phantom, and almost sent me reeling. It was only the thundering approach of Ailsa, with Dave following on, that jarred me into action.

I set off like a hare across the lawn on a diagonal intercept course. The grass was easier to run on. Anger gave me speed. I didn't care that the man was most likely carrying a knife big enough and sharp enough to cut my throat. I didn't care that he'd already proved beyond any shred of doubt how prepared and how capable he was of using it. Stupid, really.

The man almost made it out of the gateway, but at the bottom of the drive the gravel was at its most rutted. Two deep troughs had been gouged out by the constant wheel tracks of the cars turning between the gateposts.

He caught his foot on the crest of one, stumbled with his arms outstretched, and nearly went headlong. The streetlight from the road outside was shining down onto him. In the yellowed glow I saw the fingers of his gloved hands splay outwards. Open.

Empty.

That was all it took. In the next moment I'd taken a final stride forwards, and leapt.

I hit him with the point of my right shoulder just an inch or so below the small of his back, and grabbed. He went down with a violent whumph, like he'd been hit by a fridge.

The force of the impact drove us skittering along the drive for another ten feet or so after we'd hit on the ground. The man was face-down in the gravel, floundering. Of the two of us, I reckon I probably had the easier ride.

We were half out onto the pavement itself by the time we slithered to a messy halt. The man brought his elbow back sharply, more wild than scientific, but it was enough to throw me off his back.

I landed hard, but scrambled up instantly, screwing round into a crouch. The man was on his knees, taking longer to rise. His mask and the front of his jumper were torn and bloody. Frantic, I checked his hands again, and readied myself to strike.

Then, a whirling figure entered stage right at a dead run and unfurled a sweeping upward blow with the rolling pin that snapped the man's head sideways, blood spraying. It would have made an easy six over the boundary, had the head not been still firmly attached at the neck. If the England cricket team selectors had been there, Ailsa would have been capped on the spot.

The man's arms flapped as his body twisted, then he slowly collapsed backwards onto the pavement behind him. I had to grab Ailsa's arm to stop her going in for the kill. She was trembling violently all over, and screaming abuse so tangled it was almost totally incoherent.

The noise had brought out most of the remaining residents from the Lodge. They filed down the drive and approached cautiously across the lawn, but they had the grumbling air of a lynch mob about them. It would only take one brave one to throw the first stone, and things were going to get very nasty.

I thrust the still-quivering Ailsa onto Dave, having first carefully prised the bloodied rolling pin from her fingers. Robbed of the adrenaline that had fired her, she more or less fell into his arms. He took her weight with obvious strain.

Over the top of her head he demanded, “What the hell is going on?”

“Remember Susie Hollins?” I nudged the inert form on the ground with my boot, none too gently. “I think this is the bastard who killed her.”

Surprise and awareness leapt in his eyes.

I dropped down by the side of the man and reached for the edge of the balaclava.

“Now then, shithead, let's have a look at you,” I muttered. I yanked off the mask, to reveal a face that was horribly familiar. The silence that followed screamed at all of us.

Before I could move to block her, Ailsa had peered down over my shoulder. She let out a single wailing cry, then collapsed totally. Dave tried manfully to keep her on her feet, but he was fighting a losing battle from the outset. In the end, the best he could manage was a kind of controlled descent.

Looking back at the figure on the ground, lying bleeding and unconscious, I could understand Ailsa's reaction completely.

After all, it's not every day that you take on a terrifying masked intruder, armed with little more than a marble rolling pin, and discover that the man you've just knocked halfway into next week is your own husband . . .

***

This time, the police arrived at the Lodge much quicker than they had when Ailsa had summoned them before because we'd spotted a prowler in the garden. In fact, Tris was only just starting to come round when they rolled up with lights and sirens blazing.

We didn't get much out of him before he was bundled into the back of a police Transit, other than a single quiet apology to Ailsa.

Somehow, that made it worse.

Right up until then, I suppose I'd still been hoping that he might deny it, that there might conceivably be another reason for him to be running through his own garden, heavily disguised in a manner designed to spark panic, and confusion. In the end, I had to face it, there wasn't.

The idea was taking me some getting used to. OK, so I hadn't known Tris for more than a couple of years, but he was the last man I would have had down as a sadistic rapist and murderer.

My mind re-ran recent scenes like a video that was stuck on “play”. Memories that made my scalp break out into a sweat, and my stomach churn. It was as much as I could do to stay on my feet and functioning until the police took over.

I remembered Tris's soothing hands gliding over the skin of my back. Had he spent all the time he'd been giving me a massage wondering what it would be like to run a knife blade across my throat?

The concealed voice on the other end of the telephone the night Joy had died. I tried to match up Tris's gentle tones with the malicious spite that had hummed clearly along the wires. How could it be one of my friends who had done this?

I tried hard not to let it get to me. Not until the police had carted Tris away, and Ailsa had been given a sedative by her doctor. Dave had ducked out as soon as the emergency services had reached the scene, relieved to hand Ailsa over to the professionals. The Shelseley girls banded together to offer comfort in such a way that I felt like an outsider among them. It wasn't hard to make my own excuses, and slip away.

I rode home slowly, and with great care. It's difficult to watch where you're going when your eyes are burnt with tears.

I stopped on the way to stick another few gallons of juice into the Suzuki. The tank on the RGV is pretty small, and if you're giving it some serious beans you go onto reserve after less than a hundred miles.

I was just squeezing the last few drops into the filler when there was the roar of a Norton pulling in alongside. I looked up to see Sam's big brown eyes crinkling at me through his open visor.

“Hi, Charlie. I thought it was you,” he said, pulling off his helmet and stuffing his scarf into it. “Didn't you get my message?”

“Yeah.” I vaguely remembered Sam's voice on the answering machine. It seemed like years ago. I hung the nozzle back into the pump and locked the filler cap back down. “Sorry, I've had a bit on my plate.”

“What could be more important than talking to me?” he demanded with an irritatingly cheeky grin.

“A friend of mine was murdered,” I dropped on him, just to watch his smile fade. I knew I wasn't being fair, but what the hell? Life's like that, and I wasn't feeling very fair right now.

He made all the usual noises of shock and commiseration, but his eyes had that twitchy look of someone searching wildly for a suitable change of subject. He opened his mouth, but only succeeded in changing feet. “So, what happened to that lap-top, then?”

As he spoke it suddenly occurred to me that it was probably only Terry’s ignorance of Sam’s full name and home location that had prevented my unwanted visitors from paying
him
a nocturnal visit as well. No doubt they would have got round to forcibly extracting that information from me, if I’d given them the chance. “The computer was nicked when my place was turned over at the weekend.” I said flatly.

He looked stricken. I was almost beginning to feel sorry for him. “Jeez, Charlie, I’m sorry. And about your friend. What happened?”

I gave him a brief précis of how Joy had met her death as he filled up the Norton’s tank. He took it in pale silence, and we went in to pay together. There were a couple of people in front of us, dithering with chequebooks. The girl behind the counter looked hard-faced and bored.

As I stood there in the queue, I knew I still hadn’t really taken it in that Tris, my friend, was a cold-blooded murderer. That he was responsible for three vicious crimes. I couldn’t begin to understand what had driven him to do it.

I idly watched another car pull up to the pumps, catching the monochrome echo of it on the security monitor behind the cashier’s head. Sam must have been following my gaze.

“It’s a shame there weren’t any closed circuit cameras at that Shelseley place where you teach,” he said. “They might have spotted who did it.”

“Oh, we know who did it, and they’ve got him,” I said automatically as I stepped forwards to pay.

I waited while Sam handed over the money for his own fill-up, then we walked back to the bikes.

When I’d said the words, it all sounded so cut and dried, but somewhere in the dark recesses of my brain there was a stirring of unease, of apprehension.

There was still a connection with the lap-top Terry had given me that I hadn’t figured out yet. Otherwise, how had my voice changer got from the flat on the night of the burglary, and into Tris’s hands? And where did Angelo fit in to all this?