Lethal Intent (2 page)

Sarah Grace Skinner shook her head. 'I don't get it. What's the point of all this? What's the point of fishing if it isn't to catch fish?'

Her husband pointed out across the waves. 'I caught him, didn't I? I just chose not to kill him, that's all.'

'That makes you feel better, does it?'

'As a matter of fact it does.'

She looked at him wryly, as the skipper took the rod and went to store it with the others. 'When did you become so sensitive?'

'When I was about fifteen, and I gave up boxing.'

Her expression changed to one of pure surprise. 'You never told me you boxed.'

'You never asked. And you hate boxing, so why should I bring it up?'

'What made you quit? Afraid of having your good looks spoiled?'

'There was nobody around who could do that,' he shot back. 'No, it was more the other way round. Junior boxers aren't supposed to be able to do much damage. I could. Most of my fights ended early: the referees were good, and got in quick. So they moved me up a grade, let me fight older kids. In three fights I broke two ribs and a nose… all other people's. Finally the guy who ran the club put me in with a senior; I think he meant it to teach me a lesson.'

'And did it?'

'It sure did. The guy caught me a good one in the first round, but not good enough. The red mist came down and I ripped back at him, just one punch: knocked him unconscious. It took them five minutes to bring him round and it was another ten before he could stand up. They kept him in Law Hospital overnight as a precaution. I tell you, Sarah, I've never been as scared in my life, before or since. I knew the lad I hurt: he was a decent bloke, with a nice girlfriend and a good job. He hadn't meant me any harm, yet I could have killed him.'

He glanced down at his hands: they were bunched into fists, still clutching the marlin rod. 'So I took my gloves off,' he said, 'and I never put them back on again to hit another man. I joined a martial-arts club instead.'

'What's the difference?' Sarah challenged. 'That's even deadlier.'

'In theory it might be, but in practice it's not. What I did was largely non-contact, but more than that, it taught me mental discipline and self-control, how to sublimate my aggression. I admit that I don't always manage to do that, but over the piece it's served me well. Our kids will all study judo and karate, if I've any say in it, just as my Alexis did.'

'Wait a minute,' she protested. 'It may do our younger son some good, but Seonaid's only two! And as for Mark, he's a thinker, not a fighter.'

'Thinking is a big part of what it's about. Plus, he's the sort of quiet kid who can get picked on… and our daughter won't always be two.'

'I see,' Sarah mused, 'so it was mental discipline that allowed you to let that fish go, was it?'

He grinned. 'No. I just couldn't see us eating him on our own.'

She laughed in spite of herself. 'What about the hook?' she asked. 'It was hardly humane to leave that in his mouth, was it?'

'He'll get rid of it now the tension's off,' said the skipper, as he returned, with everything tidied away. He looked at her. 'What say, lady? You wanna try the chair?'

She shook her head. 'I don't think so. I'm tired out just watching that. Take us back to Key West, please. The sun's on the way down, and I'd like to get there before dark.'

The captain nodded, and climbed up to the high cockpit. A few seconds later the cruiser's big twin engines roared into life.

The journey back to the dock took almost an hour; they let it pass without conversation, content to watch the ocean, and then, as it came into view, the island chain that formed the southernmost tip of the state of Florida.

On the quayside, as Bob gave the skipper a fifty-dollar tip, Sarah headed for their rental car. She was behind the wheel when he joined her, and the convertible's roof was packed away. 'Straight back to the hotel?' she asked.

'Might as well. We've done the Dry Tortugas National Park, we've taken the Sunset Cruise, we've swum with dolphins, and we've ridden the Old Town Trolley. I reckon we've seen all the sights.'

'There's one more I'd like to see,' said Sarah, casually.

'What's that?'

'I'd like to see you smile as if you meant it. I'd like you to look happy that you came out here to join me.'

'Didn't I look happy last night?'

She shrugged her shoulders. 'I couldn't tell in the dark. But I doubt if you looked ecstatic'

'You seemed pleased with yourself.'

'I like fucking,' she retorted. 'But that's all it was, and you know it. I enjoy making love a lot more, and you haven't made love to me in a while.'

He shot her a sudden piercing glance. 'Not like he did, you mean?'

Sarah started the Sebring convertible, slammed the lever into drive and roared out of the car park.

'Sorry!' Bob exclaimed, his voice raised over the engine.

'If I believed you really were…' she broke off, easing down her speed '… I'd ignore your question. But I don't, so I'll answer it. You're right: not like Ron did. There's been no real tenderness between us for longer than I can remember and, Bob, that's something I need. I have to feel that you care for me when we're vertical as well as horizontal, and I haven't, not for a while.'

'So you went looking for that tenderness somewhere else.'

'No!' she protested. 'It found me.'

'And if I really believed that…'

Four

Neil McIlhenney sat bolt upright. The room was cool, yet he was perspiring, and breathing hard. He felt his heart thumping, seeming to play a rapid, but thankfully steady tattoo against his ribcage.

Louise stirred beside him, but did not waken. He slipped out of bed and went into their bathroom, feeling his way in the darkness and not switching on the light until the door had closed behind him. He stared at his naked self in the mirror, then rubbed the stubble on his chin, as if he was reassuring himself that he was still in the world, that he could still experience ordinary sensations.

As he looked, he saw that his arms and shoulders were glistening, and that the hair on his chest and belly had spun itself into damp curls, black but heavily grey-flecked. He picked up a towel and dried himself off, then brushed his teeth and rinsed his mouth with cold water. When he felt sufficiently composed, he yanked the cord to turn off the mirror's illumination and opened the door once more.

His wife was sitting up in bed as he stepped back into the room. Her reading light was switched on and she was looking at him anxiously, her arms wrapped round his pillow, pressing it to her breasts. 'What's up, love?' she asked, quietly. 'This is damp. Are you feeling ill?'

He shook his head. 'I'm fine: bad dream, that was all. I shouldn't have had that cheese.'

She grinned, reassured. 'When I was a kid, my poor old dad used to warn me, "Eat cheese for supper and you'll see your granny", meaning you'll have dreams. My granny died when I was five and I missed her like hell, so I used to sneak into the kitchen before I went to bed and pinch a big lump of Cheddar, or whatever else was in the fridge. It didn't work, though: I never did see her.' She paused as he slipped back under the duvet. 'Did you?'

'Did I what?'

'See your granny?'

He reached out and ruffled her hair, then took the pillow from her. 'Both my grannies are still alive,' he reminded her. 'I don't need to use dairy products to conjure up visions of them.'

'What did you see, then?'

A corner of his mouth twisted in a slight grimace. 'I don't think I want to talk about it'

'Scary?'

'Weird.' He gave a shiver, remembering the coldness.

She dug him gently in the ribs with an elbow. 'Go on, tell me. You'll feel better. I used to go to this shrink who made me tell him all my dreams.'

As he looked at her, a broad, incredulous smile spread across his face. 'Why the hell did you need to go to a shrink?'

Lou McIlhenney gave a small frown. 'For the same reason most people go: my head was messed up. It was after my first marriage went down the toilet. I was depressed, lonely, and drinking a bit. My work suffered in the process. For a while I tried to rebuild my confidence with casual affairs, but I found I couldn't do casual.' She shrugged her shoulders. 'So I did what any self-respecting actress would do in the circs: I got the name of a Harley Street psychiatrist from my doctor, and I went into therapy.'

Neil smiled again. 'It worked, that's for sure.'

She snorted. 'Two years and God knows how many thousand quid later it worked. The gremlins were gone and I started to do my best work.' And then she smiled. 'I still suffered from occasional self-doubt, though. Do you know when I realised for sure that I was cured?'

'Tell me.'

'The day I met you: when I went to dinner at Bob and Sarah's and you were there in the fourth chair, I said to myself, "Louise Bankier, this is your moment. You're going to have him." And I did.'

He laughed at her honesty. 'You were that sure of yourself?'

'He really was a very good shrink.'

'And he made you tell him your dreams?'

She nodded.

'All of them?'

'Every one, in all the detail I could remember.'

'Pervert.'

'That thought did cross my mind, but after a while I could tell him the most intimate things without bothering about it.'

'Did you ever worry about your dreams winding up in the Sunday scandal sheets?'

'No. He taped all our sessions but he only worked from notes. He gave me all the tapes; it was his way of making me sure he'd have nothing to gain and everything to lose by leaking to the press.'

'I can see that,' Neil conceded.

'So tell me your dream. I promise I won't sell it to the
Sunday Mail.'

'They wouldn't buy it. Just your common or garden nightmare, that was all.' The vision was still vivid in his mind; he recounted it for her, step by step, until the moment when he snapped awake.

'I see,' she murmured, thoughtfully, when he was finished.

'So what's your verdict, Dr Lou?'

'Did you ever have any experiences as a child that related to the dream?'

His forehead wrinkled for a second or two, and then his eyebrows rose. 'Now you mention it, yes,' he conceded. 'When I was a kid, like six or seven, we had a very big snowfall and it lay for a while. My pals and I decided we'd build an igloo in my back garden, as you do. It was a real pro job, just like the Eskimos have, only it wasn't quite as good as we thought. I was inside it on my own when it collapsed. I was buried in snow and ice and I thought I was going to suffocate in it. Maybe I would have too, but my dad saw it happen and he hauled me out.'

'There you are, then,' said Louise triumphantly. 'Classic case: I'm pregnant, and you're worried about something like that ever happening to our child. No doubt about it.'

'Mmm.' Neil scratched his chin. 'A couple of small doubts, maybe. I've already got two kids, and I never had that dream or anything like it when Olive was pregnant with either Lauren or Spencer.'

'No, but…'

He held up a hand. 'Something else,' he said. 'And this is the scary bit. The woman in the car, the woman driving: it was Olive. It was my first wife, and she took me up there and left me to my death.'

Five

'Get wid da, get wid da hot funky beat!'

The dee-jay's voice boomed out of the speaker array, over a heavy, insistent bass rhythm. On the packed floor dancers moved, some in time to the music, others in the mistaken belief that they were. The hall was decked out for the season: paper Christmas trees hung from the roof, and long strands of tinsel were wound round the lighting gantry. Several of the clubbers were wearing party hats.

The man turned to his companion and nodded in the general direction of the stage as the single line sounded out again and again.

'D'ye think any of those have any fucking idea what that noise is about?' he asked, flashing a wickedly provocative grin that made his teeth shine unnaturally white in the beams of ultraviolet light that wove random patterns around the club.

The other man shrugged, displaying no interest in the question. 'Who the fuck cares?' he growled. 'Is this mate of yours gonnae show or no'?'

'He said he would, but he's an unreliable bastard.'

'He can rely on a sore fuckin' face if he pisses me aboot.' The man's little eyes screwed up, becoming, for a second, mere pinpricks in his fleshy face as if to emphasise his threat, and his menace. 'So can you an' all. Ah'm fucked waitin' for this guy. Dis ye want tae deal or no'?'

'Sure. Same rate as before?'

'Naw. It'll be seventy-five this time.' The man paused. 'Naw, make that a hunner and fifty: yis'll be buying yer mate's as well.'

The sardonic grin was gone. 'Seventy-five a baggie? What happened tae the fifty quid it wis before?'

'Inflation. Supply and demand. Call it whit ye like, but that's the tab, Davie boy. Now stop with the wide-eyed fuckin' innocence…' He paused and pointed to a third man standing a few feet to the right: around thirty, well dressed, well groomed, a stockbroker out for a night on the wild side. '… before somethin' bad happens tae ye.'

Davie boy looked down at his feet. 'Okay,' he muttered. 'Let's do it. Same place as before?'

'Aye. Just gies a minute tae get in there first. We dinnae want tae 'go in thegither.'

'Like anybody would care in here. Why dae ye use the ladies' anyway? Why no' the gents'?'

'Too easy for the nasty boys tae hide in the gents'. Nae coppers in the ladies'.'

'Man, they have women polis tae!'

The fleshy face split into what passed for a smile. 'Ah kin spot thae a mile-off. Fuckin' dykes, the whole bunch. See yis in there.' He turned on his heel and pushed his way through the crowd. The lyric, and the beat, thumped on relentlessly.

Davie boy waited for two minutes, checking the time on his watch as it passed. Finally he followed the man's footsteps. The toilets were on the other side of the hall, two doors a few yards apart, one marked 'His'. He walked towards 'Hers', noting that, as usual, the stockbroker was standing guard outside. They exchanged a glance as he pushed the door open; the eyes were cold, dispassionate, maybe a little weary of his tedious job.