The Villain’s Daughter (31 page)

After checking her mirror, she carefully pulled away from the kerb. She peered between the wipers as they swished back and forth. Her hands firmly gripped the wheel; they were placed precisely at ten to two as her instructor had drummed into her. She had not spent enough time in the car to develop bad habits.

The streets were quiet and within five minutes she had reached Bethnal Green Road. By now Alice had two conflicting emotions circling in her head: a chronic fear that Toby might be badly hurt, and a guilty tingling pleasure that she was the one he had turned to in his hour of need. That meant something, didn’t it? He trusted her, relied on her. Her heart swelled at the very thought of it. It didn’t even cross her mind that he might have tried to call others first.

The journey was not as bad as she’d anticipated. There was still some traffic but nothing too daunting; the lateness of the hour and the snow combined to give her a fairly clear run. For this she was grateful. She had no idea where Belles was, but would not give up until she found it . . . and found Toby.

She took a left on to Shoreditch High Street. As Alice passed through the junction with Commercial Street and Great Eastern Street, she noticed a couple of prostitutes standing on the corner. Whores, her mother would have called them. Despite the freezing temperatures they were dressed in skimpy tops, mini-skirts and short leather jackets. One of the girls was black, the other white. She wondered what kind of desperation had driven them out on a night like this - but already knew the answer. Their next fix wasn’t going to pay for itself. Alice frowned as she drove, recalling some of the girls she’d worked on in the past. She remembered their skinny frames, the entry marks of the needle in their arms, legs and groins, but their faces were lost to her. After a while, they had all merged together into one sad bundle of misery.

Alice pushed the thought away. It was too terrible to dwell on. She slowed, glancing to the left and right. A nightclub should be easy enough to spot and once she’d found that, it shouldn’t be too hard to locate Toby. She passed a building covered in scaffolding and then a long row of shops. Some of the properties were boarded up and covered in graffiti. It was not the kind of area to be roaming around on your own, she thought. She was glad of the protection of the car.

It was another minute before she came across the red neon sign. Outside the club, on the pavement, a couple of oversized bouncers were arguing with a guy. It wasn’t Toby though. This man was taller and his hair was dark. She kept on driving, keeping her eyes peeled for a bus stop. The first one she passed had no one standing by it. Fifty yards away, wasn’t that what he’d said? She was getting increasingly anxious. What if he wasn’t there? What if he’d started walking and collapsed and . . .

But before her imagination could run riot, she spotted the bus shelter. It was on the other side of the street and she gave only one fast glance in her mirror before veering across and pulling up sharply beside it. The outside panels were covered in snow and she couldn’t see if anyone was inside. Leaving the engine running, she jumped out of the car and called his name. There was no response.

But there was someone there.

For a second she paused, not sure if it was him or not. There was a man certainly, sitting hunched over with his head almost touching his thighs, but was it Toby? The light wasn’t good and his face was obscured. She didn’t recognise the clothes. This guy looked filthy, like a tramp. His hair was matted and he stank of alcohol.

‘Toby?’ she said again, this time more softly.

The man looked up and she gave a gasp. His face was battered and bruised and covered in blood. She instinctively took a step back. And then he smiled. It wasn’t much of a smile, but it was enough. She would have known it anywhere. Alice rushed forward and went down on her knees. ‘Oh God,’ she said. ‘What happened, love? Who did this to you?’

‘You came,’ he murmured.

‘Of course I did.’ As she took his swollen face in her hands, he flinched. She stared at him. He’d been so badly beaten that one of his eyes was closed. The other was only partly open. She made a fast survey of his injuries. His breathing was regular at least. There was no obvious damage to his skull, but concussion - or something worse - was still a possibility. From the way he was holding his chest, there could be broken ribs too. She had to get him seen to as quickly as she could. She took out her phone and began to punch in the number.

‘What are you doing?’ Toby said.

Alice stood up. ‘Calling an ambulance.’

‘No way,’ he insisted, abruptly reaching out and snatching the phone from her. The physical effort made him groan. ‘You can’t. I’m not going to hospital.’

‘What are you talking about? You need help.’

He shook his head. ‘There’ll be questions, babe. They’ll want to know who . . .’ He gave another low groan. ‘Please,’ he begged, gazing up at her. ‘I just want to lie down, get warm. Can’t we go back to your place?’

She hesitated. ‘It’s not a good idea.’

‘You were a nurse, weren’t you?’

‘Yes, but—’

‘So you can take care of me.’ He passed the phone back to her. ‘Please, Alice.’

She had to make a decision and quickly. If they stayed there arguing, Toby was as likely to die of hypothermia as anything else. ‘All right then,’ she said, deciding to take the chance. She prayed that there wasn’t any internal damage. Still, if he showed signs of deterioration on the journey she could always take him straight to A&E.

Toby moaned as she carefully hauled him to his feet. With her arm around him, they half walked, half staggered to the car. She bundled him into the passenger seat and tried to pull the seatbelt across. ‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘It hurts too much.’

She didn’t press the matter. Speed was of the essence now. She had to get him home as fast as she could. Running round the bonnet of the Nissan, she jumped into the driver’s seat, slammed the door shut and set off for home.

Alice’s attention was split between the road and Toby. She continually glanced at him, making sure that he was still conscious. A few minutes passed before she spoke again.

‘It was him, wasn’t it?’

Toby didn’t reply. He gave a half-shrug, flinching as his shoulders lifted.

‘Danny Street!’ she spat out. ‘It was that bastard, wasn’t it? Didn’t you get my call? I told you he was looking for you. I told you to be careful. What happened? Did he bring you here, force you to come with him? Christ, why didn’t anyone help?’ She knew she was asking too many questions, the words slipping hurriedly from her lips as each thought entered her mind.

Toby leaned his head against the back of the seat. ‘He didn’t take me anywhere. I went to the club to see him.’

Her eyes widened. ‘You did what?’

‘You can’t hide from the likes of Danny Street.’ He gave a soft laugh. ‘Well, not forever. He was going to catch up with me eventually and the longer he had to wait, the angrier he was going to get. I figured it was better to face the music than spend the next few weeks hiding from him. I thought I could talk him round, buy myself some extra time.’

It was a tactic that quite patently hadn’t worked. Alice felt hot tears prick her eyes. ‘This is all my fault,’ she murmured. There had been a chance for him to escape from Danny Street’s sadistic clutches and she’d thrown the opportunity away. What price her conscience now? If only she’d done as he’d asked, if only she hadn’t had those qualms about the cold, dead body of Catherine Macdonald . . .

Toby reached across and placed his hand on her arm. ‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t your fault, babe. None of this is down to you.’

 

In the harshness of the bathroom light, Alice could clearly see all his injuries. There were dark purple bruises on his ribs and stomach. There were marks on his neck, the kind of marks that came from a hand being brutally placed around his throat. He was sitting in the bath and she was kneeling beside it, bathing him as gently as a mother would a child. She cleaned his face - his nose at least wasn’t broken - and washed the blood from his hair. It was a sin, she thought, for anyone to intentionally inflict damage on so perfect a body. By nature she was usually a passive person, but she suddenly understood the vengeful anger that could rise up from the very depths of the soul. Had Danny Street walked through the door at that moment, she would have torn his eyes from their sockets.

‘That thug should be locked up,’ she said.

‘I owe him money, babe.’

‘That’s no excuse.’

Toby gave a sigh. ‘If he lets me get away with it, he’s going to look like a pushover. He can’t afford for that to happen. It’s all to do with respect.’

Alice snorted. ‘Respect. He doesn’t know the meaning of the word. And you’ve done . . . well, other things for him.’ She couldn’t quite bring herself to say it out loud. ‘Doesn’t that count for anything?’

‘Sure,’ he said. ‘It counts for half the debt, but only half - and the interest on the rest is growing by the day. Do you have any idea what their interest rates are like? Before long, I’ll be back to square one.’ He pulled up his knees and wrapped his arms around them. ‘Shit, babe, I don’t know what to do. He’s crazy. He’s off his head. He’s going to kill me next time.’

‘He won’t,’ Alice insisted. ‘We’ll find a way to sort this out. We’ll give him what he wants. As soon as someone suitable turns up, we can—’

‘But that could take weeks,’ he wailed. ‘Even months. He isn’t going to wait. He’s not what you’d call the patient type.’ Toby let go of his knees and stared despairingly down at his bruises. ‘And this was just a warning.’

‘So we give him a down payment. I’ve got some savings. It’s not much, only a few thousand, but it should be enough to keep him quiet for a while.’

He gazed at her, his blue eyes full of amazement. ‘You’d really do that for me?’ Then he quickly shook his head. ‘No, I couldn’t. It wouldn’t be fair. God knows when I could pay you back.’

‘You don’t have to worry about that.’ She’d been saving for a deposit on a flat, but what was the point of owning your own home when you had no one to share it with? Love, surely, was more important than cash. ‘I want to do it. I won’t take no for an answer.’

‘You’re incredible,’ he said, grabbing hold of her hand and kissing it. ‘Jesus, what would I do without you?’

Alice buried her face in the top of his head. His hair smelled of lemon shampoo. She could have stayed there forever, happy to know that she’d pleased him so much.

‘But what about Grimm Senior?’ he said, slowly pulling away. ‘My dad will do his bloody nut when he sees the state of me.’

‘You’d better keep out of his way for a while.’

‘How am I going to do that? I live in the same house.’

Alice thought about it. ‘Call him in the morning, say you’ve caught his flu and you’re staying with a friend. He can hardly complain about you taking time off work when he’s still at home himself.’

‘You don’t mind if I stay here?’

Alice felt a thrill at the thought of it. She couldn’t have minded anything less. Leaning back, she picked up a towel. As she helped him from the bath, a smile played around her lips; she couldn’t remember ever having been so happy. For once in her life she was needed. It was a feeling she’d never experienced before.

It was dark in the room but Iris knew it was morning. The first thing she was blearily aware of was the sound of running water, the second - and this jolted her fully awake - was that she was lying in someone else’s bed. Suddenly, like a trailer for a movie, a sequence of images flashed through her mind: climbing the stairs to Guy Wilder’s apartment, eating pasta in the kitchen, drinking wine in the spacious living room, hurling her phone on to the chair after talking to Luke, and then . . .

She could remember the need she’d felt for Guy, her desire to be comforted. With a groan, she scrabbled for the lamp on the bedside table. It took her a few seconds to find the switch and when the light came on she screwed up her eyes. They felt scratched and sore as if a sheet of sandpaper had been pulled across them. Turning her face, she squinted at the pillow beside her. There was no indentation, no sign that anyone had slept there. Then, through the hammering in her head - she had drunk way too much last night - her memory gradually cleared.

She lay back with a sigh of relief. Sleeping with a man you barely knew under the influence of alcohol didn’t do much for a girl’s self-respect. It didn’t do much for her dignity either. And that dignity, after Luke’s casual dumping of her, was already at an all-time low. She rolled the word around on her tongue.
Dumped.
She’d never had a boyfriend leave her before. She had always been the one to do the finishing. A guilty feeling crept across her conscience. Had she ever been as cruel as Luke? Well, perhaps occasionally, but then again there was a difference between a three-month fling and a five-year live-in relationship. The latter, surely, deserved a touch more respect than a long-distance phone call.

Her thoughts returned to the previous night.
Nothing had happened.
Except, she realised, that wasn’t entirely true. As her memory wound remorselessly back through the details, Iris relived the moment when Guy had put his arms around her. She remembered the warmth she had felt, along with the glorious feeling of safety. But then there was that other moment, that vital moment when she had lifted her head and . . . Her heart sank like a stone. Oh God! With terrible clarity, she recalled how she’d made a clumsy pass at him.

Horrified, she stared up at the ceiling. Stupid, stupid, stupid! She shrank down beneath the duvet. What had she been thinking? The sound of running water stopped abruptly. There was a couple of minutes silence and then she heard Guy’s footsteps. She ought to get up too, although she wasn’t sure how she could face him.

What was the time? Dragging out her arm, she peered down at her wrist. It took a while for her eyes to focus, but when they did she leapt straight out of bed. She dashed out of the door, along the corridor to the living room and into the kitchen.