weather was just right, the sort of cold air the Suzuki really runs well in, but I would have felt better if it had been dark grey skies and raining buckets.
I was so angry it made my hands ache.
I slipped through into a gap in traffic on the main road going past the bus station and weaved smoothly across all three lanes to make the best progress. If I was going to ride like that, I really should have been giving it all my concentration, but half my mind was on other things.
How dare they not believe me! OK, so you tend to get pulled by the lads on Traffic more when you're on a bike than if you drive a car. Even so, that hardly made me a criminal, for heaven's sake. And anyway, it was clear they didn't have a clue about my past to damn me by.
I barrelled left round Sainsbury's and, by dint of dropping down two gears and caning it, managed to hit the temperamental lights on Parliament Street just as they were turning to amber.
I always used to think of myself as very law-abiding. Still do, I suppose – I even have a TV licence. But when I'd needed justice in the past, it had been spectacularly unforthcoming. Now I was suddenly on the receiving end of the boys in blue, when all I'd been doing was my job.
If this was the sort of treatment I could expect working for Marc, I made up my mind to tell him to stuff it!
I made it out to Jacob and Clare's place on the outskirts of Caton in record time for me. Clare came out to greet me as I pulled up. She had a couple of the dogs with her, a loopy wire-haired terrier called Beezer and a clumsy old half-blind black Labrador named Bonneville.
I wasn't surprised to see Clare waiting for me. Jacob not only deals in classic bikes, but all sorts of interesting antiques as well. He stores the stuff in the numerous barns and outbuildings dotted around the place and he doesn't like surprise visitors.
Somewhere along the drive are two hidden sensors, connected to warning buzzers inside the house. I've never been able to work out exactly where they are.
Now I cut the engine and toed the side-stand down, pulling off my helmet. Beezer greeted me by bouncing three feet into the air and yapping excitedly. Clare took one look at my face and swallowed the crack she'd undoubtedly been going to make about me being late.
“What's happened?” she demanded, leading the way in through the studded oak front door.
“Don't ask,” I said. My anger had dissipated, replaced by a weariness that went through to my bones. I told myself I was just tired, but I knew it went deeper than that.
We moved along the uneven stone flags of the hallway to the big cosy kitchen, where Jacob should have been slaving over a hot stove.
He was actually sitting at the scrubbed pine table. There was a glass of wine by his elbow and a pile of paperwork in front of him, and he was speaking in what appeared to be Klingon on the telephone. It turned out to be Japanese. Clare whispered to me that he was winding up the sale of a pair of restored Velocettes to a collector in Tokyo.
“On a Sunday?” I whispered back.
Jacob looked up and dazzled me with that slow grin of his, then went back to his unintelligible conversation.
Clare dragged me a cold beer out of the fridge and we went through to the snug back sitting room to leave Jacob to finish the call in peace. Despite the sun outside, a blazing fire was lit in the huge open hearth. I disappeared into the depths of their big squashy sofa when I sat down, quickly buried by the arrival of the terrier on my lap.
“So,” Clare said when I'd had my first mouthful of beer, “are you going to tell me what's been going on?”
I told her the whole tale about my experiences at the nightclub since I'd rescued her from the clutches of Susie Hollins. Jacob came in just as I was telling her about my confrontation with Len. They both sat in silence until I'd gone through the events of the night before in full, and my subsequent encounter with the police that morning.
“The fascist little shits!” he said with feeling when I'd finished. “Do they honestly think you're going to start a major fight on your first night? Unbelievable!”
“What are you going to do?” Clare asked. Bonneville came waddling into the lounge then, following the sound of our voices, and collided with a standard lamp. Clare caught it without taking her eyes off me, well used to the dog's blunders.
“There's not a lot I can do,” I said. “I'm not sure I want to carry on working at the club, though. I rely on recommendations from the local police for some of my business. I can't afford to upset them.”
“What interests me,” Jacob put in slowly, “is why they came round to see you at all.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, why didn't this Len and Angelo back up your story? I thought you bouncer types were supposed to stick together,” he said with a bit of a grin. “It doesn't sound like they've tried to help you at all. In fact, it sounds more like they're actively trying to drop you in it.”
I thought about it for a moment, then nodded. “I know Marc said afterwards that he'd told them to let me handle something on my own, just to check me out, but I would have thought it should have been obvious to someone of their experience straight away that it was serious.”
“Exactly,” he said, downing the last of his wine as he stood up. “Perhaps you should be asking yourself what you know that could be so important, Charlie. Or what you might find out when you're there. It might tell you why someone seems to want to get you out of the way.”
“That's ridiculous,” I argued. “I didn't go after them for a job at the place. Marc made me an offer last Saturday night when Susie had a go at Clare. Why on earth would he do that one week, then try and get rid of me the next?”
“Maybe he didn't have a choice,” Clare put in. “If I remember right it was actually that bar manager chap – Gary is it? – who first suggested they employ you. Maybe Marc couldn't say no without it appearing suspicious.”
“Suspicious to whom?” I asked, idly scratching the terrier's head. Beezer wriggled her muscular little body with delight. “He could have shot Gary down in flames instantly and it wouldn't have looked anything out of the ordinary. No,” I shook my head, “he seemed quite keen then.”
“So,” Jacob said, “what happened between then and yesterday to make him change his mind about you?” He moved stiffly over to the door. “Do you want to come through to the kitchen, by the way? I'll see if anything of my culinary masterpiece can be salvaged at this late hour.”
Clare grinned at me behind his back as I stood up, tipping the disgruntled terrier off my knees. We followed Jacob's halting steps back along the hallway. He walks with a permanent limp, his legs more steel than bone in places.
Jacob used to race bikes when he was younger, with more courage than was good for him. If he travels abroad he jokes that he has to take his X-rays with him to avoid being strip-searched going through the airport metal detectors.
Once we were settled round the kitchen table and Jacob had retrieved an absolutely perfect beef and baby onion stifado out of the oven in the Aga, he repeated his earlier question. “So, come on – what's happened to warrant this man Quinn's sudden reversal of opinion of you?”
“Susie Hollins was murdered for a start,” Clare supplied, getting carried away with the idea. “Hey, that could be it! She'd just been in his club, and we've only got his word for it that he actually threw her out.”
“Clare,” I said, tearing off a hunk of crusty bread to shamelessly sop up my gravy with. “Marc was sitting down talking to us just after that. I hardly think he'd had time to do Susie in, change into an identical set of clothes so there'd be no bloodstains, and get back upstairs to chat, all within the space of about ten minutes, do you?”
She looked crestfallen. “Oh. No, I suppose you're right.”
I recalled the incidents at the Lodge, but I didn't mention them to Jacob and Clare. I don't know why. I suppose I just didn't want to admit that since Susie's rape and murder someone had been taking rather too much of an interest in other vulnerable women. It was as if putting voice to my fears would make them more real.
Jacob got up to replenish our drinks, giving Clare's shoulder a reassuring squeeze as he went past. “Anything else you can think of?”
