Fault Lines (29 page)

But she was dead. Worse than dead. Her photo was still behind him on the wall, but now it wasn’t anything except a photo, and a stolen one at that.

He couldn’t go on lying there, so disgusting, with Kara’s photo looking down at him.

As he stood up, he ripped the photo from the wall and tore it in two. Then he fetched the others from his desk and tore them up as well. If she’d gone, she’d gone. He didn’t want her pictures sneering at him like every other woman he’d ever met. He picked up her knickers and threw them with the torn bits of the photos in the kitchen bin.

It was Trish Maguire’s fault. If she hadn’t said the things she’d said, Kara would still have been with him. He hated Trish Maguire.

Half-way back to Southwark the rain started pounding down on Trish’s windscreen like a celestial power shower. She was so tired – and so worried about what she ought to do about Collons – that she could hardly make herself peer closely enough through the deluge to see the landmarks she needed. Even when she did, it was tricky to read the road surface, so slick with rain that it threw up weird reflections. A flash in her mirror made her look away from the road ahead for a moment.

An enormous container lorry surged towards her car, throwing up fans of dirty brown spray from each of its dozens of enormous wheels. Idling as she was, Trish had clearly infuriated the driver, who was flashing all his headlights.

He could bloody well wait until there was somewhere for her to pull in safely. A bus stop appeared in the rainy distance and she turned on her indicator, pulling aside to allow the blaring monster to pass. She saw the driver mouthing something at her through his window and shrugged, sticking in her lay-by until he, his anger, and the spray from his wheels were far ahead.

Trish reached Southwark eventually and managed to park in her usual space on the opposite side of the road from her building. Her head was aching again and she felt drained of all energy and decisiveness. The iron staircase that led up to her flat was almost directly opposite her car yet in all the rain it seemed miles away.

As she tried to gather the tiny amount of strength she needed to get herself across the road and up to bed, she decided she’d have to tell Femur about Blair Collons. However much she wanted to be as kind and protective towards him as Kara would have been, she couldn’t take the responsibility any longer. If he was what she feared, Femur would have to deal with him.

She took her mobile out of her bag and dialled the number he’d given her. No one answered. She rang Directory Inquiries for the Kingsford police and got through quite easily, but they couldn’t raise Femur either. They offered to take a message, but she wanted to be sure it was Femur himself who dealt with Collons and so all she asked them to tell him was that she’d rung and would try again in the morning.

Feeling slightly less pathetic for taking even that small action, Trish got out and locked the car. She had to pull up her collar against the icy rain that trickled off her short hair. On her way across the road she stepped in at least three deep puddles, soaking her shoes and socks. As usual, her keys were right at the bottom of her bucket-like shoulder bag and she had to fumble through money, notes, cheque books, bills she had meant to pay, Lil-lets, makeup and all sorts of rubbish.

She wished that George was there, waiting for her, as he had once or twice waited for her to come back from an out-of-London case. The flat would have been light and warm, and there would have been saucepans full of delicious food steaming in the kitchen, and, best of all, George himself.

At last. The keys poked painfully into her cold questing fingers and she wrenched the bunch up through the layers of detritus, showering bits of paper all over the wet step.

‘Oh, bugger it all!’

She got the Chubb unlocked before she bent down to pick up what she’d dropped. Most of it was already sodden and filthy. Then the keys slid out of her cold wet fingers.

Suddenly anxious, she paused, still bent over, listening. She couldn’t hear anything, but she was sure she was not alone. She had to get inside before it was too late. Fumbling with the keys, her fingers feeling twice their usual size, she shook the bunch until the right Yale came to the top. It was already in the lock and she was flexing her hand to turn it, when she heard a familiar voice behind her: ‘Go in. Quickly.’

She couldn’t move. And she didn’t dare look behind her. His arm touched her shoulder and she felt the prick of sharp metal against the side of her neck. As she squinted sideways she saw the red wooden handle of some kind of tool. Her heart stopped beating for a second and she almost fell. Her right hand was still on the key in the lock; water dripped from her hair down her face and neck, and under the sleeve of her upraised arm, almost sizzling on her warmer flesh. She felt paralysed.

‘Get in.’

‘What do you want?’ she asked, furious with herself for producing such a high, quavery sound. The sharpness against her neck took on an added pressure and turned to pain. The sensation of trickling rain on her neck warmed, and she knew she was bleeding. A gloved hand reached over her shoulder and forced open the door. Then the hand loomed across her face and the arm settled around her neck, not tight enough to choke her but quite powerful enough to fill her with terror.

‘Get in, bitch.’

The flat was pitch dark, with all the blinds shut, blocking out the street-lights and the moon, but Trish knew exactly where everything was. She edged forward, and when she sensed the man pausing to slam the door, she wrenched herself down, away from his enclosing arm, and ran, dropping her heavy bag on the floor. As she fled towards the far side of the room, she heard him trip and fall heavily. She hoped it was her bag that had felled him, and thought she should have stayed to trample on his body.

Standing behind the chair, hearing him swear and pick himself up to come after her, she screamed, a hoarse, shocking sound that had burst out of her before she knew what she was doing.

The man started to walk heavily towards her through the darkness, swearing as he knocked into furniture or stumbled, telling her what he was going to do to her when he caught her.

She couldn’t get away. Any minute now, he’d find a light and see her.

‘I’ll kill you, bitch.’

He was much nearer. She had to do something. But she couldn’t think of anything except the huge, shrieking danger. His breathing was like a bloodhound’s. It was very near now.

‘I can see you, slag.’

He probably could. She could see the shape of him in the dark. He had a round, tight-looking head and big shoulders.

Then the star-like halogen spots in the ceiling flashed and spread light into every possible hiding place in the huge room. He’d found the main switch. Trish clung to the chair-back, unable to move.

He was of middle height, very powerfully built, and he had a black woollen balaclava covering his head, with rough holes cut for his eyes and mouth. His lips were very red against the coarse, ribbed wool, and they were full and slick with spit. His clothes were the muddy green and brown of all paramilitary fantasists.

It wasn’t a knife in his right hand but a long, red-handled screwdriver with a tip that looked as though it had been honed to needle like sharpness. In his other hand he had something soft and black. As he came towards her, his eyes glistening and his lips moving slowly in the rough woollen slit of the balaclava, she saw that it was a sock.

The chair in front of her had a heavy seat cushion and she grabbed it. A knife, even a sharpened screwdriver, would cut through it easily, but it was all she had. It might deflect a blow just enough to give her time to get out of range if he did try to stab her.

He lunged. Trish couldn’t think, but her feet took her out of the range. She clutched the cushion to her stomach and dodged to her left behind one of the long squashy black sofas.

He extricated himself from the chair without trouble, laughing. His breathing was even shorter and more excited. The spittle was collecting in the corner of his mouth, and he pushed his tongue forward, spreading the moisture all around his lips. He drove himself at her again, still laughing.

Trish caught his screwdriver with her pathetic cushion. The cover was cut as though it were made of the thinnest paper. Feathers billowed out of the wound in the fabric and floated upwards on currents of hot air. He spat out a mouthful of feathers like a fox who’d had his fill of one particular chicken and grinned through his mask.

Trish realised he was only playing with her. He could have stabbed her for real, but he hadn’t even tried. Yet.

He pushed up his right sleeve with his left hand. His white skin was darkened by the thick black hairs that sprouted all over it, almost disguising a large tattoo on his forearm. Trish gagged as she saw that it was a red and blue pattern of snakes feasting on a woman’s eviscerated body. He flexed his muscles to make the snakes move.

Feathers seemed to be everywhere, getting in her mouth and eyes, and tangling in her hair. She dropped the split cushion and pushed her hands across her eyes. It didn’t seem possible that she would ever breathe freely again. He moved nearer, still laughing and playing his tongue about his lips. She backed away at the same speed, letting her eyes stray away from his for an instant so that she could pick up another cushion. She heard a slight noise, thought it was the creaking of the front door, and whirled round to see George launching himself forward as he yelled, ‘Trish, look out!’

He smashed into the man at full stretch in a rugger tackle that brought him crashing face down to the floor. As he fell, the screwdriver in his outstretched hand slipped down Trish’s leg, ripping through her jeans. Surprised by pain, she looked down and saw a long red line, with blood swelling out of it in a fat, scarlet mound that burst and poured down her leg.

‘Trish, get the screwdriver,’ gasped George, who was working himself up the man’s prone body, eventually sitting straddled across his back and pinning his arms to the floor.

Trish nodded, but she couldn’t move.

‘It’s OK, Trish,’ George said, more quietly. He struggled to control his breathing then smiled at her, looking almost normal. ‘It’s OK now. I’m here. I’ve got him. He can’t do anything else to you now. But it would help if you could get his screwdriver away from him, and then go to the phone and call the police.’

Trish nodded, but she still couldn’t move.

‘Come on, Trish darling. You can do it. And you’ve got to. We need to get his screwdriver first. Don’t use your hands, just stamp on
his
hand. OK? Come on, darling. Come on, Trish. You can do it.’

Feeling as though she was pulling herself out of a viciously sucking bog, Trish forced herself away from the wall. Once she had started moving, it got easier with each step. And when she planted her still-soaked shoe on the man’s wrist and pivoted the ball of her foot on it, turning it from side to side with most of her weight on it, as though she were stubbing out a fag end, she felt flooded with power. It was extraordinary: a wildly exhilarating surge of utterly shaming revenge.

The man was still cursing her, even though his head was jammed against the floor by one of George’s hands.

‘Shut up and let her have the screwdriver!’ he yelled.

When the man didn’t let go, George grabbed a handful of balaclava and the hair underneath it, picked the man’s head up then banged it on the floor. And again. The balaclava came off in his hand, revealing a young, snub-nosed face covered with stubble. George flung away the balaclava.

The man’s hand opened at last and Trish kicked the screwdriver well out of his reach, before bending to pick it up between her thumb and forefinger.

‘Well done, darling. Now, the police. Quick as you can. Aagh.’

Trish, on her way to the phone, glanced back to see George rolling aside with his hands clasped over his genitals. The man was struggling to his feet. Trish punched 999 into the phone and was answered within a split second. The man was on his feet. Trish yelled her address into the phone and then: ‘He’s got a screwdriver! Quick!’

She didn’t wait to hear any answer, but left the receiver on her desk. The man was running towards her again. His face was clenched into a furious mask. The screw driver was at the back of her desk. She flung a pile of heavy legal reference books over it, and stuck out one foot, hoping to trip him up. But he dodged, ignored his screwdriver and belted for the door. Trish followed him, but she was too late. He’d reached the bottom of the iron stairs before she was half-way down and she knew she’d never catch him.

George’s face was greenish white when she went back to him, and there were huge drops of sweat all over his forehead. ‘Sorry, I can’t chase him,’ he gasped. ‘Trish …’

‘It’s all right,’ she said, taking his head between both her hands. ‘It’s all right, George. There’s no point in even trying to catch him. The police may get him. They’ll be here any minute. You did brilliantly.’

She managed to laugh, half sobbing, and kissed his hair.

‘Aagh.’ George tried to straighten up and failed. ‘Christ! Trish. You’re bleeding like a stuck pig.’

She looked down at her leg and then across to the trail of blood between them and her desk. ‘Shit!’ she said, in astonishment. At last she became aware of how much her leg was hurting.

In the distance she could hear sirens. It sounded as though there were at least three cars. In what felt like seconds there were heavy footsteps on the iron stairs and then a tremendous pounding on the front door with yells of, ‘Police. Open up. Police.’

The last time the police had come pounding on her door, she had hated them. Now they seemed heaven-sent.

‘Coming,’ George shouted, trying to stand up again. He hobbled towards the door. Then, as the banging increased into a frenzy, he added even more loudly, ‘He’s gone. We couldn’t stop him.’

Trish, hopelessly trying to staunch her leaking leg with the remains of the slashed cushion cover, overtook him and opened the door. After one look at the blood everywhere, the feathers sticking to her scarlet hands and leg, the first fresh-faced constable put up a shaking hand to his radio. Other men and women jostled behind him.