The dismay flared in Gary's eyes. He had that trapped look, that look of someone who's slipped and slithered their way into deep trouble, rather than taking a calculated gamble. He knew that he was in way over his head, but there was still something that might drag him out of the slime again.
“He made me give him an alibi,” he said quickly. “Angelo, I mean. The night that girl was killed – Susie. Angelo knew what I was up to and he said if I didn't cover for him, he'd drop me in the shit.”
He looked from one of our faces to the other, opened his mouth to speak, then wisely realised that anything he said would probably make things worse. He shut it again.
Marc sat down in his leather chair behind the desk. With his dark colouring and clothing he looked like a Mafia don. “Just get out,” he said grimly. It sounded like as soon as Gary turned his back Marc was going to shoot him in it.
Gary got painfully to his feet. “A-am I sacked?”
Marc tilted his head on one side and considered him, like something he'd picked up on his shoe. “I don't think so,” he said, surprising both of us. “Not this time.” He stood abruptly. “But if you ever try stealing from me again, I'll finish you,” he said, his voice chillingly pleasant. “You won't work again.”
He could have just meant “in the licensing trade”, but the way he said it made it sound like Gary's lack of employment would be caused by his sudden inability to eat solid food.
Gary stumbled out of the office, pulling the door shut behind him. For a moment there was silence.
Without looking at Marc I asked, “So, how long have you known about Gary's little scheme?”
He smiled at me. “Right from the start,” he admitted.
“So why did you let him keep doing it – keep robbing you?”
“I’ve found staff are notorious for it,” he said, as though it was obvious, “but if they’re putting their energies into comparatively small-time stuff, like Gary was doing, at least they’re not ripping me off in any bigger way. I look upon it as an acceptable level of loss.”
“And what about this business of him giving Angelo an alibi for the night of Susie’s death. What on earth is that all about?”
I was about to ask more, but suddenly Marc’s body stiffened and he came out from behind the desk at a half-run, his eyes fixed on the other side of the room.
I snapped my gaze in that direction, just in time to see the door swinging ajar.
Marc reached it first, wrenched the door open wide, and we hit the corridor outside almost together.
It was empty.
“Shit!” Marc snarled. “There was somebody there!”
We charged down the short corridor, turned the corner and kept running. The noise of the music was getting louder with every step as we made the main body of the club.
The corridor brought us out onto the gallery area near the entrance, overlooking the lower dance floor. The place was already crammed. It was impossible to tell who had been lurking outside the office door.
Marc swore, slamming his clenched fist down onto the rail in frustration.
I scanned the room again. My eye was caught by a still figure among the swaying of the clubbers and I froze.
Angelo.
Over on the other side of the gallery, near the entrance, he was standing looking directly across at me. The swollen lip was distorting his mouth into a scornful Elvis-type sneer.
Or maybe that was just Angelo’s intended expression. That he knew I’d tried to trap him. And had failed.
With a final, arrogant glare, he turned away, disappearing into the crowd.
I realised I was grasping the railing so hard my knuckles were showing white through the skin. When I unclenched them, I was annoyed to find my hands were wavering.
I’d made my move and, with a shiver of foreboding, I knew the next one was probably down to Angelo.
All I could do was wait for it to happen.
***
I left soon after that. There wasn't much point in staying, and neither Marc nor I had the stomach for going on with it.
I rode the bike home through the gloomy streets, feeling as though I was permanently living my life in semi- darkness. I hate the winter, with its slow mornings and quickened afternoons. It doesn't matter how much they fiddle with the clocks, there just isn't enough light to fill a day.
I pulled the bike off the road onto its usual slab of concrete and killed the motor. I was bone tired, and not really concentrating, which was pretty dumb, when I come to think about it now.
I pulled my helmet off, set the bike securely on its side-stand, and climbed off trying to ignore the protesting of my muscles. It wasn't until I was crouched by the rear wheel, and was halfway through threading the roller-chain round the swinging arm that I heard it.
Slowly – too slowly – it seemed, I realised that I could hear someone breathing. And it wasn't me.
I got to my feet gradually, tense, started to turn. There was movement in the shadows, close to the wall of the building. My heartrate stepped up, but I wasn't prepared for the sheer intensity of the emotion that rose up when the figure of a man emerged fully into the light.
“Hello Charlie,” Tristram said.
Twenty-one
A sense of pure panic assaulted me, ripping and tearing.
With something like a moan, I reached down and grabbed one end of the unfastened roller-chain, yanking it out of the spokes of the rear wheel like a whip. It wasn't the most wieldy weapon, but it was hard and heavy, and it was all I'd got. It would have to do.
For a moment, Tris stood and watched me in a kind of suspended hush. It was cold enough to be able to see his breath. Then he did the most extraordinary thing. Possibly the last thing I was expecting him to do.
His face crumpled, his shoulders began to shake, and he burst into helpless, racking floods of tears.
My first instinct was to offer comfort, but it didn't last long enough to translate into movement. I hardly needed to remind myself that Tris had stalked, and raped, and murdered. He was not the gentle man I thought I knew. He was a stranger. A monster. Maybe this was the ploy he'd used to get Joy to drop her guard. How he'd lured Susie to her death.
“Tris,” I said carefully, loud enough to be heard over his wretched sobbing. “What are you doing here?”
He looked up at me for a second, too distressed to speak. He cut a desolate figure, with his ragged haircut and old-fashioned parka. Slowly, his tears subsided into a soft gulping. He lifted his hands to wipe his nose and eyes. Hands, I noted with relief, that were empty.
“I came to s-say I'm s-sorry,” he said at last. “The police released me. You can call them if you like,” he added, reading my mind. “I'm not on the run or anything stupid like that.”
“Why did they let you go?”
“Because I didn't do it,” he said simply. He shrugged at my doubtful silence, as if he hadn't really expected me to believe him, and I was surprised to find how much that hurt. “They have a certain amount of forensic evidence, so I understand. I gave them sample of everything they could possibly wish for,” he shuddered delicately at the memory, “and it didn't match. So, they let me go.”
I took a little while to digest the information. Tris wasn't the rapist. A sense of utter relief washed over me, but was short-lived in its duration.
“So what on earth were you doing skulking around the grounds in a balaclava?” I demanded.
Tris gave me a sad smile, and stuffed his hands into the front pockets of his coat. “Making the most stupid and ridiculous mistake of my entire life,” he said, heartfelt.
I recognised the truth of that, felt some of the tension unwinding out of my shoulders. “You'd better come up and tell me about it,” I said.
