GAME ON
I put the letter down onto the table slowly, my mind numb. I didn't realise I'd got my hands to my face until the rubbery smell of the gloves started making me feel sick. Maybe I would have felt that way in any case.
So, the killer possibly suspected that the police were keeping an eye on my phone. Maybe he'd been watching this place the day that Superintendent MacMillan called round. Maybe he just knew the score because he'd done this sort of thing before. So, he'd decided to pay me a visit.
The sudden thought that the man who'd viciously raped and murdered Susie Hollins and Joy had been right up to my front door while I slept was too much. I lurched for the loo, and spent some time there, not exactly engaged in thoughtful meditation.
When I straightened up and studied my reflection in the mirror over the sink, a haunted face met my gaze. My skin looked white and stretched tight over my bones, emphasising the last vestiges of the bruising round my cheekbone. My eyes seemed sunk back into their darkened sockets, like a heroin-chic model. There was no getting away from it. I looked like shit.
I peeled off the gloves, washed my hands, then scrubbed my teeth thoroughly. For someone who's not normally sick, I'd spent far too much time throwing up lately. I didn't want to end up needing expensive dental work because the acid from my stomach had rotted out my teeth like an anorexic.
As I staggered back through to the lounge I wondered long and hard about calling Superintendent MacMillan. I thought about it, dug out the card he'd given me with his phone number on it, turned it over in my hands.
Trouble was, I'd been pretty badly mauled during our last encounter. I'd no desire to be accused of fabricating the note myself in order to reinforce what MacMillan saw as a dubious claim that I was under threat.
I had a growing conviction that the man they were after was Angelo. It had to be. Who else was there? Unfortunately, I didn't see that the Superintendent was any more likely to take my word for it now than he had been the first time I'd mentioned Angelo's name.
Besides, the police had already dismissed him as a suspect on the strength of an alibi I now knew to be bogus. The trouble was, Gary's admission had not been extracted without a certain amount of coercion that would probably make it totally inadmissible in any court in the land. And MacMillan was certainly not likely to take my word for it.
Then I remembered. Tris had told me that the police had enough forensic evidence to eliminate him from the suspect list as soon as they'd run the right tests. If I could get Angelo taken into custody, for whatever reason, they'd have their chance. I was sure MacMillan's finely-honed instincts would do the rest.
The only thing I could think of straight off was the possibility that Angelo was involved with supplying drugs at the New Adelphi. Trouble was, if I just made an anonymous tip-off about chemical activity at the club, it was likely to get raided, and that meant all the staff would probably be arrested.
I knew Marc had sworn to deal with Angelo in his own way over that matter, but the stakes had risen since then. Way risen. And besides, if Angelo was also guilty of rape and murder, I wanted more than the beating Marc was likely to arrange for him. I wanted justice.
And I wanted it quickly.
I looked again at the sheet of paper on the table. I couldn't do nothing. Couldn't let him stalk me, torture me with threats and promises. I had to act. Had to! If I wanted to stay sane.
If I wanted to stay alive.
And if I wasn't prepared to place my trust in Superintendent MacMillan and simply tell him the whole story, right from the beginning, I had to do it some other way.
I picked the phone up, dialled a number, listened to it ringing out. On the tenth ring, just as I was about to give up, it was answered by a voice thick with sleep.
“Hello?”
I ignored a pang of guilt when I realised it was only just past eight-thirty, and on a Saturday morning at that.
“Hi, it's Charlie,” I said. “Yeah, I know what time it is, sorry, but listen, I need to ask you the most enormous favour. Are you into clubbing?”
***
When I went in to work at the New Adelphi Club that evening, my nerves were racked so tight I could hardly breathe evenly.
Burning a hole in the back pocket of my jeans, wrapped in a plastic bag, was the threatening note I'd received that morning, together with MacMillan's card. I thought I might need both before the night was out.
We went through much the same ritual I'd been through the Saturday before. The security team all clipped on their walkie-talkies, straightened up their bow ties, and disappeared into their own areas of responsibility.
Len came stamping in, glowering at everybody, but particularly at me, it seemed. I wondered if I was just being paranoid, or if Angelo had told him about my failed attempt at entrapment. If he had, I wasn't sure if that meant things had just got safer, or twice as deadly.
I had plenty of time to think about it. The evening started painfully slowly, but put on speed and weight with an air of overwhelming menace, like gathering storm clouds in the tornado belt.
I went through the motions of my job, patrolling the ladies' washrooms, breaking up a cat-fight between two girls who'd just found out they'd both arranged to go home with the same bloke. I thought they should have been tearing lumps out of him, not each other, but I kept that opinion to myself.
I tried taking the quieter of the two out of the fray, but that didn't quell things. I ended up propelling the more aggressive of the pair towards the door. She was making an almighty racket, and grunting with the effort of trying to embed a four-inch spiked heel into my shin along the way. It probably made me not quite as gentle with her as I could have been.
We waltzed our way to the main entrance, and I gave her a bit of a push-start into the car park. She reeled away, dishevelled, screeching her thoughts on my parentage and sexual preferences to the world at maximum volume.
I listened with polite disinterest. When I'd had enough I turned away from her, catching Angelo and Len studying me with an intensity that jarred my already edgy nerves.
“What?” I demanded, my voice harsher than I'd intended.
Len shook his head and stalked away. Angelo flipped his cigarette end spinning into the darkness with a deliberation that was almost an insult.
“Getting a taste for this, aren't you?” he said. “Thought you would. Hasn't taken you long, though.”
I was saved having to think of a suitably cutting reply by the arrival of a new group of punters. Among them was a bearded man with baby seal brown eyes. He looked nervous and fidgety, eyes dancing everywhere, fingers never still.
Angelo took one look at him and wanted to see the contents of his pockets. In the top one of his shirt was a twist of paper containing a couple of elongated yellow capsules.
“Oh yeah, and what's this then, sonny?” Angelo sneered.
“They're for me sinuses!” the man protested, none too convincingly.
Angelo just smiled and confiscated the pills, but waved the bearded man into the club.
Just then, my walkie-talkie crackled. “Charlie, it's Len. The ladies' on the upper floor need checking. See to it.”
I thumbed the transmit button and murmured my agreement.
Angelo's leer was still in place as I made my way back inside. I gave him a stony glare, which he ignored. I was halfway along the entrance passage when I heard him on the radio to Len, with the obscure instruction for him to go to seven.
I'd heard Angelo and Len trade the same message the week before, and hadn't thought any more about it. Now it gnawed at me like a starving rat.
I made my way through the growing throng and caught up with the bearded man in the general press by the top of the stairwell on the first floor.
“So,” I asked him quietly, checking round for signs that any of the security staff were watching our exchange.
