Killer Instinct (34 page)

Something wasn’t finished, wasn’t over, but I was damned if I could put my finger on exactly what it was.

***

I pottered the rest of the way through the dark and busy city streets and down onto the quay. I was surprised when I got back to the flat to find Marc's sleek BMW waiting outside. I don't know how long he'd been there, but he was still sitting in the driver's seat when I arrived.

As I parked the bike up, he climbed out, leisurely, pulling on a superb long wool overcoat against the bitter wind.

“Hi,” he said. “Are you OK?”

I found myself smiling as I took off my helmet. “Yeah,” I replied, unsettled to find how pleased I was to see him. He was slipping under my skin. I wasn't sure if that was really where I wanted him.

Heedless of the dirty weather, he stood waiting for me to pull the cover over the Suzuki, then followed me up the stairs.

I bunged the coffee machine on, and went to change into some dry clothes. Waterproofs over the top of leathers make you look like the Michelin man and rustle so alarmingly when you walk that you have to resist the tendency to raise your voice to be heard over the noise.

When I came back, having hastily thrown on some clean jeans and a shirt, Marc was standing by one of the windows, staring out across the river. Everyone seems to be fascinated by the view. I must admit it was one of the things I most liked about the flat when I moved in.

He offered to take me out for dinner, but I passed on that one. I didn't feel much like eating out. In the end I rang one of the local Indian takeaways and they brought round chunky lamb tikka and chicken dupiaza with sweet moist peshwari naan bread and crisp poppadums.

I'd only seen Marc on his terms, as lord of the New Adelphi, and in his up-market hotel suite. It was a nice surprise to find that he could still slum it. He lost the overcoat and his suit jacket in short order and we sat on cushions on the floor to demolish the food, mopping up with bits of naan bread and fingers.

“I like watching you eat,” he said at last. “You don't order the most expensive thing on the menu and then make a pretence of picking at it.”

I eyed him over the last piece of poppadum. He didn't get to it fast enough. “You've been going out with the wrong women,” I said, grinning as I used it to scoop up the last of the mint raita.

He smiled at me for a moment, then his expression sobered. “You're looking better than I expected,” he remarked, leaning back against the arm of the sofa with his head tilted to one side, considering. “It's not every girl who could go through what you've had to over the last few days and come out of it looking so unruffled.”

I shrugged. “You either cope or you give in. I don't like to lose.”

“I don't see you as the losing type,” he said, smiling wryly. “You're quite a fighter, Charlie Fox.”

“I wasn't always,” I said suddenly, needing to tell him. “I was a victim once. I swore nobody would ever make me feel that way again.”

He frowned. “But you were still attacked.”

I gave him a level stare, told him, “It's a state of mind.”

I left him to ponder that one while I fetched us both a coffee. When I came back he'd cleared the debris of the meal into the cardboard box they'd delivered it in, and put it by the door to take out. Not bad – house-trained as well.

He smiled lazily at me from the sofa and motioned for me to sit in front of him, with my back to his legs. When I complied he began to knead the knots out of my shoulders. Those long, agile fingers were merciless, but the results felt wonderful. I was aware of the tension slowly loosening up, like ice defrosting from a long-neglected freezer.

Then, in the midst of it, I had a vision of Tris again, rubbing scented oil into my skin with hands that had robbed two women of their lives, and raped and beaten a third.

I smelled Joy's blood again, snapping upright and jerking away from Marc's hands.

“Calm down, Charlie,” he said. “What do you think I'm going to do to you?”

I gave him an apologetic smile as I twisted to face him. “Sorry. I'm still a bit jumpy.”

He smiled also. “Well, at least you didn't punch me this time.” He smoothed a strand of my hair away from my face. “You need to relax more.”

“I can't afford to,” I said. I couldn't afford to let my guard down, even for a moment. It seemed that I'd dipped out of getting my father's medical assistance, but I still needed to find that link between Terry's murder and the attacks on the women. And then between those and the New Adelphi Club . . .

“Would it help to talk about it?” Marc's voice broke into my thoughts.

I took a deep breath, then launched straight in. Once I'd started, it was difficult to stop. It all just came tumbling out like I'd opened the door on a precariously over-stuffed cupboard.

I told him the story right from the start, all about Terry coming round with the lap-top, and how I'd agreed to help him get into it so I could find out if it was the one Marc had mentioned. I only left out my suspicion that Terry had known about drugs at the club. Whenever I'd brought that subject up in the past, Marc had really gone off at the deep end. I carefully skirted round Sam's role in the proceedings too, unwilling to expose him to any further danger.

As it was, Marc listened with a face that might as well have been cut from stone. When I got as far as relating the fact that my voice changer had seemingly disappeared from the flat during the robbery, then apparently turned up again in the hands of Joy's killer, he jumped up and moved over to the window.

“Are you sure it's the same device as the one that was taken from here?” he demanded.

“Not absolutely,” I admitted, “but they aren't exactly commonplace, and mine has definitely gone. Apart from the lap-top, it was the only thing those two jokers took.” I spread my hands, indicating the debris around us that I'd only partly finished clearing. “They simply smashed up everything else.”

“And who did Terry say he got that computer from?”

I shrugged. “He just said he'd been debt collecting at the club, but he didn't mention any names.”

Marc looked thoughtful. “The only lap-top of that type that's gone missing went weeks ago, and I've already sacked the culprits, or
thought
I had, at any rate,” he said, letting out an annoyed breath. “I don't suppose you got any inklings from this Terry character who it might have been?”

I thought of Terry's coded client book, but I wasn't quite ready to turn that over to Marc. Not just yet.

“Terry had quite a few video customers among the staff at the New Adelphi who weren't exactly hiring out
The Little Mermaid
,” I said, and saw from his face that I didn't need to explain any further than that. “I think one of the people who owed him a bucket of money was Angelo.”

For a moment Marc stared out into the darkness with no expression on his face, but the way he held his body stiff spoke volumes about the anger, bubbling away just beneath the surface.

“Angelo!” he said at last, and his voice was quiet, as though he was speaking to himself more than to me. “He was the one who pointed the finger at the lads I sacked. If I'd known
he
was the one I would have . . .”

He broke off, glanced in my direction, made a visible effort to control his temper.

“Of course, there is a way we might be able to find out what Angelo's been up to,” I said, almost diffidently.

Marc turned back in to the room. “How?”

I hesitated, although I knew what I was going to suggest. Had known it ever since I'd filled up with petrol earlier.

“You have security cameras all over the inside of the club, don't you?”

Surprise crossed his face at the question. “Yes, of course, covering most of the main areas, anyway.”

“After Susie Hollins was killed, did the police take the tapes from the internal cameras?”

“Yes, they did,” he said slowly. “But there was some sort of glitch in the recording. They didn't get anything out of them beyond blurs and static. They gave me a hard time about that, as I recall. They seemed to think the interference was caused deliberately. But why? What does Susie's death have to do with the lap-top? I thought you said they'd got the man who killed her.”

“Well yes,” I said, still unable to think of Tris without a shudder. “But supposing those tapes also showed Terry being given that computer the following day. What then?”

I saw the relevance strike him, then he sighed, and made a frustrated gesture. “It's all immaterial,” he said. “There's nothing on those tapes to see.”

“Yes,” I said again, “but what if it was put about round the club that you were getting in some computer techie whizz who reckoned he could clean up the image enough to get an ID?”

“Is that possible?”

I shrugged. “I've no idea, but then, neither would anyone else. If it was you, would you want to risk it?”

He frowned, thinking hard. “If that rumour was put about, whoever tampered with those tapes might start feeling pretty insecure. He might be tempted to come and destroy or even completely remove them, just to make sure.”

I nodded. “Where are the tapes kept?”

He smiled again. It would have been sinister if it hadn't been following my own train of thought so closely. “Locked away in my private office. No one has a key except Len, and he knows it’s more than his life’s worth to let people go wandering about in there when I’m not around.”

“So all you have to do is spread the word, then pretend to be out for the evening, and see who comes a’burgling.”

Marc’s head came up. “I’ll see to it,” he said, and the cold tone in his voice was unforgiving.

“I want to be there when the trap’s sprung,” I warned.

He nodded shortly, crossing the distance between us on long legs. “If it is Angelo, we’ll get him,” he promised. “And I’ll deal with him in my own way. No police. Agreed?”

After a moment, I nodded. I didn’t know what Marc had in store for Angelo, if he was guilty, and I didn’t really want to know.

“I don’t want you doing any more digging on your own, Charlie,” he said. He gripped my shoulders and I couldn’t help but stare up into those compelling pale-coloured eyes. “I don’t want you taking any more risks alone, OK?”

“OK.” I just had time to murmur my agreement as his mouth came down onto mine. Hard, fast, demanding.

I let go of everything and drowned in the sensation.

***

Marc left at around three the following morning, slipping into his clothes and out of the flat quietly, leaving me dazed and exhausted.

As I slid into sleep, I realised that I felt safer than I had done in days. Safer for the knowledge that I wasn't fighting this battle single-handed any more.

When I went in to the New Adelphi Club that Friday evening, ostensibly to pick up my pay packet for the Saturday before, I'd been racking my brains for a way to get the subject of the security tapes into casual conversation. In the end, I needn't have bothered trying to be so devious.

As I walked in through the back door, the capture and subsequent arrest of Tris Shelseley was the main topic under discussion. I knew there was something up the moment I arrived by the way most of the security team stopped talking and turned to stare at me.

“What?” I demanded. I paused, hands on hips. “Do I have something in my teeth?”

“Most of that Shelseley bloke's knackers, by all accounts,” one of them said with a grin. “Proper little terrier, aren't you, Charlie.”

I pulled a face, dumping my helmet and gloves down on the bar top where Gary was sorting bottles into the appropriate return crates. I should have taught a class at the Lodge earlier that day, but it hadn't seemed right, in the circumstances, so I'd rung round as many of my regular students as I could and cried off. I couldn't help wondering, once the news about Tris got out, whether any of them would want to go back there, in any case.

Dave, I noticed, was eyeing me now with that sly smile. He was sitting in the midst of the group, relishing his role as storyteller, and I wondered what embellishments he'd added to the tale. In particular, about his own role in the proceedings.

“So, they reckon it's the same bloke as got that girl who was here as well, eh?” another of the doormen commented. “He must have been here that night, then. We might all have seen him.”

“Well, they'll know better in a few days, won't they?” I said casually. “When they've had chance to look at the tapes properly.”

It was Len, bless him, who bit. “What tapes?” he growled.

“The ones from the internal security cameras,” I supplied helpfully. I was watching Angelo while I said it, but he just bent his head to light a cigarette with calm deliberation. Then he looked at me through the smoke, slowly, almost in challenge.

His lip was inflamed, I noticed, and remembered what Dave had said about Marc hitting him. There was also a nasty cut just below his right eye, just scabbing over, which Dave hadn't mentioned. Was that work, I wondered, or pleasure?