earned it or she’s simply too bloody miserable to face going home alone, she’s invited back the occasional gentleman. Let him slobber his way on top of her and into her. Endured a few minutes of uncomfortable weight and awkward pounding, in a way that is at once her own punishment and her beau’s reward. It doesn’t happen as often, these days. She’s become less happy with the notion of people seeing her own private space. Perhaps it is since she let the flat go to seed. The increase in her drinking has coincided with a marked downturn in the presentability of her home, though halfway up a multi-storey block, it was never palatial.
‘You sure you don’t want to tag along?’
‘Next time. You’ve got my number. Text me later and I’ll see what I’m up to.’
He gives another big grin. ‘I’ll do that.’
‘I’ll probably just be at home, all by my lonesome.’
‘Well we can’t have that. Can we?’
‘No, love.’
He kisses her cheek before he leaves. She feels his rough stubble against her skin and the tickle of his moustache against her eyelashes. Wonders if he’ll want to taste her down below, like these bloody modern men always seem to. Whether his moustache will tickle her thighs. Whether he’ll want the light on. Whether he’ll mention the scars.
Slowly, carefully, she steps down from the bar stool. Leans over and gathers up her shopping bags. Some cheap cooked meat from the butchers. Some liver. Six white rolls. Bottle of vodka. Twenty Richmond Superkings.
‘You off, Angie? Place will be dead without you.’
Dean has finished loading the bottle fridge and is standing behind the beer pumps, watching the door. It’s been a quiet lunchtime, and he doesn’t see business picking up again until tea. He gets a set wage, so doesn’t wish too fervently for a sudden rush, but his shift passes quicker when he’s busy and the owner gives him disapproving looks when the weekly takings aren’t what he has expected. There are even fewer excuses at Christmas, when, according to Wilson, people have got no excuse not to be pissed.
‘Think I’ll go and put my feet up,’ she says, smiling and feeling pleasantly unsteady on her feet. ‘Taped a
‘You enjoy yourself, love. You deserve it.’
She gives him a different kind of smile from the one she reserves for her gentlemen. It’s genuine. The sort of smile she used to display without thinking. The fleeting, happy grin she once flashed at the man who carved his initials on her vagina before sticking a twelve-inch bread knife through her ribs and fucking her while she lay bleeding on the tiled floor of a pub toilet.
‘Probably be in tomorrow,’ she says. ‘You working?’
‘No rest for the wicked.’
As she heads for the door a cold draught of air works its way up her body and concentrates itself on her bladder. She looks back at Dean and giggles. ‘Call of nature, I think. First of the day.’
‘Honestly, I don’t know where you keep it,’ he says good-naturedly. ‘Must be a camel somewhere in your family.’
‘Ooh, you charmer,’ says Angie, putting her shopping bag on top of the nearest table and heading for the toilet.
‘I meant it as a compliment,’ shouts Dean as she pushes open the door, but she’s already out of range, and he pulls a face as he realises he might have upset her. Fears he’s put his foot in it and that it may cost him a drink or two to make amends. He decides to get it over with and stoops to grab an empty glass.
He’s halfway to the floor when the blow comes.
There is an instant of crushing, mind-numbing pain to the back of his neck, and then he is flat on his face; a crumpled heap of unconsciousness lying on his belly by the beer fridges, one unmoving hand comically positioned inside a half-full box of salt and vinegar crisps.
Dean doesn’t hear the man stepping over his body and walking over to the front door.
Doesn’t hear the soft ‘snick’ as the bolt is slid home or the soft sound of black boots on wooden floor as they cross the room.
Doesn’t hear the door to the toilets creak open, the sound of a blade being drawn slowly from inside a leather sleeve.
Doesn’t hear the screaming begin …
CHAPTER 16
‘You’re sure?’ bellows McAvoy, one finger wedged in his ear to blot out the squeal of the engine and the hum of the tyres on the concrete road. ‘Well how hard did he knock?’
Tremberg changes down to fourth gear, trying to ease an extra 5mph from the one-litre engine. She finds what she’s looking for, and despite the protestations of the smoking metal beneath the bonnet, pushes the accelerator almost through the floor.
‘No … I can’t say for certain, but there’s a strong chance …’
Tremberg looks across from the driver’s seat at McAvoy.
She finds herself examining the back of his hand. It’s all she can see of him, gripping the mobile phone which he is pressing too hard to the side of his skull. The knuckles look as though they’ve been broken several times. They seem to represent the sum total of what she knows about him. That he has inflicted harm, and taken it. That the warm, protective palm and fingers in which she pictures him cradling his handsome son and beautiful wife can be turned over and balled, to create a fist capable of extraordinary, self-destructive damage.
‘Kick the door in,’ he’s yelling. Then: ‘I don’t care. Trust me.’
McAvoy slams the phone down. ‘No answer at her flat,’ he says, looking up at her from under a cowlick of damp, ginger hair, with eyes that are veined red and shining. ‘They’ve tried the neighbours and no answer. Won’t kick the door in without permission …’
He tails off. To Tremberg, it looks as though he is fighting with himself. Trying not to acknowledge that, throughout his career, he, too, has done things the right way. Waited for the order. Done as he was asked.
‘So, where?’ she asks, her eyes back on the road.
McAvoy says nothing. He appears to be biting the skin on his wrist, gnawing distractedly at it like a dog with a bone.
It’s getting dark beyond the glass. There are flakes of snow in the air.
She asks again: ‘Where first?’
They are approaching the industrial estate that marks the Grimsby boundary. The area smells of fish and industry, and the road beneath the tyres, with its concrete surface, is almost soporific in its brain-rattling vibration.
McAvoy lowers his arm back to his lap. Appears to make a decision.
‘The uniformed officer says one of the neighbours reckons she’s usually down Freeman Street from lunchtime. One of the pubs. Couldn’t say which …’
‘Freemo?’
‘If that’s what you call it. This is your part of the world, not mine.’
Somehow, Tremberg manages to coax another 10mph out of her hatchback, taking the needle to eighty as she screeches around the first roundabout on two wheels and roars up the flyover past the docks. She knows this area. Was a beat constable here.
‘What do we know about her?’ she yells, cruising past the fish-processing plant with her right foot hard to the floor. ‘What does she drink?’
McAvoy looks at her as if she’s insane, then gives a flustered shrug and picks up his notepad from his lap. He looks at the unfinished sentences and cryptic keywords he scrawled in shorthand during his hasty chat with the desk sergeant at Grimsby Central, as well as the vague details that Sergeant Linus found on the database and telephoned across within ten minutes of Tremberg and McAvoy running for the car park and spinning the wheel hard in the direction of the bridge.
‘She’s on benefits,’ he reads out. ‘Eligible after the attack. Admitted to Diana, Princess of Wales Hospital for a
