So I went down to the car park, got her coat and handbag out of her car and put them in mine. She didn’t like having her handbag in the room. Her clients were strangers.
A laptop was under her coat, on the passenger seat. Gemma had been too upset to remember to tell me she’d bought one. That was why, I thought. I didn’t know at that time it wasn’t hers. She’d been talking about buying a computer of her own. She was always on mine. This one seemed very expensive. I put it and her other things in my car and drove to the nearest petrol station.
The attendant filled her up, and I went inside and paid. When I came back, sounds were coming from inside the laptop. The kind they make when they’re starting up or reprocessing. If Gemma had left it on by mistake, the batteries would run flat. That’s how I was seeing it. I didn’t know at that time that it was a specially designed surveillance computer. To me it was just a fancy laptop. I lifted the lid to turn it off. Gemma was on screen. It was live, recording her in her room. She was lying on the bed naked. A man was sitting on top of her, humming. It had sound.
At first I thought it was some kind of sick bondage. Her hands were behind her back and he was taping her mouth.
But as I was pulling on to the dual carriageway and speeding back to the hotel to get her out of there – I was furious at seeing someone treating her like that; I’d make her give it up, to hell with how hard a time she gave me over it – he was putting on a pair of surgical gloves and opening out a wallet of instruments next to her head, taking out a protractor and making some kind of design on her chest. And while I rang reception, he picked up a scalpel and began cutting into the lines the protractor had scored.
But the phone just kept ringing. I was out of my mind. She was trying to get him off her, but he must have been three times her weight.
‘Top Towers Hotel …’
He had his hand on her throat, pinning her down, while carving with the other. She was powerless to do anything but watch the scalpel carving.
‘… Hold the line please.’
‘For fuck’s sake answer the phone.’
‘Top Towers Hotel.’
‘Gemma’s being killed. She’s in room 720.’
He reached for a saw.
‘Is this some sort of practical joke?’
‘Gemma’s being killed in room 720. Help her. Please. He’s killing her.’
And started sawing …
‘Oh my God! My God! What room did you say, miss? What room—’
‘For fuck’s sake – 720. Hurry. He’s killing her. He’s killing Gemma.’
… into her groin, grating into her bone.
I wish you all the best in life. Angela Reading.
I sped back into the hotel car park to run and help her, even though I knew she was beyond help – no one could survive what he had done to her – but when the car came to a halt, he was there, stepping in front of it, out of nowhere, glaring at me through the windscreen then lunging at my door.
All I could do was get away from there as fast as I could, go straight to the nearest Garda station, but he was getting into a Transit van and coming after me, and the traffic going towards the city was thick and wouldn’t let me out. If I joined it, I’d be locked in it, and he would catch me. By taking the country road going out of the city, I might be able to outrun him. It was the only route open to me. And it led to Clonkeelin, which no one but me knew about. If I could lose him, I could ring the police from my holiday cottage. Or on the way.
Only I’d made the mistake of thinking that he’d picked Gemma randomly. I thought he’d seen her working the hotel and gone up to her room. It never occurred to me that he knew her. Knew us both. That he’d been watching us.
If I’d known that, I’d never have gone to Clonkeelin. When I eventually lost sight of his Transit in my rear-view mirror, I thought I’d shaken him off, not that he’d realised I was going to my cottage and had taken a short cut to wait for me there.
When I reached it, my mobile rang and when I answered it a voice said, ‘Lucille, how’s it going? I’ve been looking for you. We’ve something to discuss,’ and then the laptop’s built-in phone rang and he said, ‘I hear you’ve something belonging to me.’
This man had tricked me. He’d rung both phones and heard the one in the laptop ringing through my mobile and knew I had it. Not that I cared about any of that then. But if I’d known that the laptop was to play such a crucial part in what would happen later, I’d never have got out of the car. I’d have kept driving until I could get to the police.
But I did get out. I hung up and went inside to call 999 and as I was closing the hall door, a voice said, ‘Ah, Lucille, I had an idea you were driving in this direction.’ And then a spray of some kind hit me and I passed out.
RED DOCK
Ted Lyle is what you call a cowardly bastard. He should’ve kept that surveillance laptop in his car. But he was afraid in case the law got wind and nabbed him. So he kept it in Gemma’s. They’d figure it was all her doing and blame the scam on her was how he was looking
