the button.
What if the lift doors opened and he was standing there?
She braced herself and forced herself to do it. Pressed the button. The lift hummed into action.
‘Oh shit,’ she muttered, tears streaming down her face. She’d wet herself, she could feel piss running down her legs.
She heard the lift approaching, watched the numbers change above the door until it came to this floor, her floor, her and Gareth’s. She stood there, panting, retching, eyes fixed open wide with awful, gut- wrenching fear.
She knew he was here, somewhere, waiting to get her. She knew he was going to spring out, grab her throat and clamp that horrible thing over her nose and mouth, shake the life out of her, telling her that nobody walked out on him, nobody.
The lift doors opened. It was empty of all but the strong, biting smell of old urine.
She got in and pressed the button with shaking fingers. The doors started to close.
Then a hand reached in between them, and they slid open again.
She screamed.
‘Shit, you gave me a turn!’ An old lady stepped into the lift, holding her hand to her chest.
The old woman looked with disgust at the girl cowering there in the corner, yet another bloody junkie, skinny and dirty, and, for God’s sake, the stink in here, her legs were wet—she’d wet herself, the dirty mare. The woman’s jaw was set in disapproval. She turned and stepped back out of the lift.
The doors closed again. The lift went down.
Mira knew he’d be waiting for her at the bottom, that she couldn’t get away from him, that he was too clever and she was too weak.
But Redmond wasn’t there. Unsteadily she crossed the lobby and went outside. No one jumped on her, no one grabbed her by the throat and squeezed until she died.
She started to walk across the car park, crying, moaning, nearly prostrate with terror. Any moment one of the car doors was going to open and he would be inside, waiting for her, waiting to murder her.
But he wasn’t.
Mira got across the car park. She could still hear Dinky barking up there in the flat, very faintly. She broke into a shambling run, and didn’t look back, not once.
She didn’t dare.
Mira’s money ran out, so finally she slept rough on the streets and turned a few tricks. Her looks were all but gone, she knew it, but some men weren’t too bothered. Stick a paper bag over your head, it was all the same to them. You were a cunt, to be used. And some of them gave her drugs. She tried to get a job in one of the clubs, but they all turned her down. She went in the one called the Alley Cat—anything to get some money in to buy the stuff she needed—but the trannie manager looked at her as if he’d stepped in shit.
‘Fuck off out of it,’ he spat, and she was shown the door.
Out on the pavement, shivering, needing a fix so badly, she stood there looking into the window of the little tattoo parlour next door. She pushed open the door and went in. There was a freaky-looking bull of a man standing behind the counter there, adding up figures on a piece of paper. He wore a white T-shirt and jeans, and every inch of his bulging-muscled body that she could see was covered in tattoos. She wondered if she was really seeing this man, or was she just having a bad trip? He was a walking billboard for his trade. He looked scary, but she had seen scarier. Truly scary was her gently smiling, handsome, twisted lover. With him she had seen into the very heart of blackness; she knew that in kissing him she had kissed true evil.
‘I need help,’ she said, her voice cracking with strain. Tears slipped down her sunken face. ‘Please help me.’
And, much to her surprise, he did.
Chapter 20
Mad Mick knew the rules as good as any fucker. The rule was, you played by the light. You put your money in the meter, and the light over the table was on. Twenty minutes of snooker, and the light was off. If you weren’t finished then, if you had say a pink or a blue or a black still to pot, tough tit. You stood aside and let the next players on to the table.
That was the rule. Everyone knew the rule.
But there was Rizzo Delacourt, playing up to the crowd, drinking beer and saying it was like gnats, saying the boys around here couldn’t play fucking snooker even though one of the same boys had just soundly beaten him on the table. Getting aggressive, getting drunk. Calling for a whisky chaser as he set up the balls again in the wooden triangular frame, poncing around in his big-collared shirt and flared trousers—talk about a dedicated follower of fashion, what was he, a fucking nancy?
All this, despite the fact the light was out, despite the rule. Despite the fact that Mad Mick was waiting for a table to come free, and this table technically was free, the light was off, wasn’t it?
Mad Mick put this theory forward for Rizzo to think about.
Rizzo Delacourt stuck some more coins in the meter and looked at Mick. ‘Well, now the effing light’s on,’ he said. ‘See that? On.’
Mad Mick had a reputation to consider. He was built like an outside craphouse and all his mates were watching. He reached out, removed the triangle and scattered the balls to the four corners of the table.
‘It was off,’ he said quietly. ‘That’s the rules, see? When the light goes out, you make way for the next people who want to play. It’s only polite, I’d say.’
There was a deep hush in the snooker hall as everyone listened in, ready for Mad Mick to start the slaughter in his usual fashion.
‘You don’t shut your fucking mouth,’ the runty little Rizzo said softly, ‘my bruv Pete’s gonna use your cunting head as a ball, you got me?’
Drunk people. They either wanted to fight you or fuck you, and sometimes both. And what bruv? Mick looked to where Rizzo’s eyes were indicating.
There was a large figure lurking back there in the gloom, cloaked in the half-darkness that surrounded the brightly lit table. Now, the figure stepped forward. A gasp went up.
‘Shit,’ said one of Mick’s mates, a fag dropping from his half-open mouth to the floor.
Mad Mick stared.
The man standing there holding the cue like a weapon was not just tattooed, he was covered in tattoos, blanketed in the fucking things. There were swirls of blue and red all over his face and neck and his thick, beefy arms.
They all thought, Ugly great bastard. Little piggy blue eyes and a massive shaven head; tattoos all over that too; he looked downright fucking fierce. Confident that he now had Mick’s attention, the tattooed freak gave him a bone-chilling smile. His tongue flicked out, and there was a further collective gasp from the watchers. His tongue was forked, like a snake’s.
Mad Mick did something he had never done before. He stepped away from a fight. The runty little man called Rizzo played another frame, and then another. And no one disturbed him, light or no light.
Later that night, Mick left the club. He was pleasantly drunk, because drunk was good when you’d been humiliated in front of your friends. Yeah, that was it, he’d been humiliated. He thought
