the chair next to Danny.
He said, ‘I’ll bet you’re thinking you’re making one hell of a bad impression with your new boss, aren’t you?’ She opened her mouth to say something; Henry held up a silencing finger. ‘I’ll tell you this, Danny. All I’m interested in — bottom line — is how you perform in the workplace. However, I know from my own experience that personal issues often cloud professional judgments. I know that for a fact, Danny. I’ve been that person in that situation more times than I care to remember. So what I’m trying to say, dead clumsily, is that I realise people are more than machines, more than what they are for eight hours a day at work, and I’m interested in my team as individuals who have thoughts, feelings, aspirations, problems… whatever… and these are the things I have to deal with to get the best out of my people.’ He blew out his cheeks and said, ‘Phew! That was a long one. So, if I can help you Danny, let me. Okay? Totally confidential.’
She slumped back, regarding Henry’s face slowly. Letting her eyes take his features in. It was a kind, concerned face. She felt instinctively she could trust him.
‘ And not only that,’ he reminded her. ‘As you said, I am involved already. I have some right to know about what happened in the garage last night… at the very least.’
‘ Yeah, you’re right Henry.’
She looked away, gathered her thoughts and decided to tell him the lot. ‘Me and Jack have been having an affair for about six months. I fell in love with him, I guess. All that lonely female baloney. But it was going nowhere, except down the tubes. I’ve tried to end it a few times now, but he’s so overbearing and clinging and possessive — horrible, really, if I’m honest — and I just let it go on and on. Night before last I’d had enough and told him it was over, for good this time. But he won’t let it lie and I don’t want to hurt his wife. I’m sure she doesn’t know yet. I feel a complete bitch and I’m not happy at all with the situation… I’m so bloody depressed, actually. I’m dying to get out of that office onto CID.’ She stopped talking abruptly because she realised the babbling had started. She swallowed and wiped the beginning of a tear out of her eye. ‘Sorry, Henry.’
‘ It’s okay.’
‘ What did Jack say last night, after I’d gone?’
‘ Nothing, other than to abuse me.’ Henry leaned forwards, elbows on knees. ‘What do you want to do, Danny? What’s the best thing that can happen now?’
She considered the questions a moment. ‘For him to accept it’s over, leave me alone, and let us both get on with our lives.’
At eleven-thirty that morning, Trent swigged down the last dregs of his morning brew. He was alone in his cell, sitting on the edge of his bunk, leafing idly through one of his teen-girl magazines. He closed it, slid it onto the pile underneath his bunk and got to his feet. He walked over to the steel toilet in the corner of the cell and urinated, his back to the door.
As he finished he heard a movement behind. He zipped up and turned.
Blake leaned nonchalantly against the door. In his grimy nicotine-stained fingers he held a self-rolled cigarette from which a single whisper of smoke rose.
‘ Okay, nonce?’ he sneered. He slurped his tongue around the inside of his mouth, then spat on the cell floor.
Cold icicles of fear spread rapidly through Trent’s veins. Literally, his blood ran cold.
‘ What do you want?’
There was a strange, deadly look in Blake’s eyes which Trent immediately interpreted. When the answer spilled out of the villain’s mouth, Trent was not surprised.
‘ You… I want you — but you’ve always known that, haven’t you?’
Trent nodded. He could scarcely breathe.
Yes, he had known that one day Blake would want to have him too. But it would not be from a loving desire, it would be from hatred.
‘ I want to give it to you, Trent,’ Blake said. ‘Everything I’ve got — and I want to make you suffer just as much as you made them little girls suffer… and after that I’m gonna make you suffer ten times more so they’ll never ever properly repair you.’
‘ You’ve already done that.’ It was a hoarse, strained whisper that grated out from Trent’s dry throat.
‘ I haven’t even started.’ Blake pushed himself upright and took a menacing stride into the cell. Trent almost screamed, though it was more of a whimper. He recoiled, stepped backwards, caught the back of his knee on the toilet, causing the joint to fold. He grabbed thin air in an attempt to prevent himself from falling backwards, failed, and next thing he knew he was sitting on the lavatory, looking meekly upwards at the towering menace of Blake.
The big man burst into laughter.
‘ You pathetic twat.’ He reached for Trent’s throat with his right hand. The fingers curled around his windpipe, digging in, hoisting him to his feet. Blake pivoted and slammed Trent against the cell wall. ‘You haven’t got an ounce of fight in you, have you? I’m going to really enjoy raping you, so you’d better prepare yourself, ‘cos I won’t be long. Maybe today, maybe tomorrow, you little piece of shite.’ His face was only inches away from Trent’s. He reeked of smoke and body odour. His breath made Trent gag. ‘Who knows?’ he snarled. ‘But it’ll be soon and you won’t know what’s hit you — because I intend inserting more than just myself up your backside. So let yer imagination run riot.’
He opened his fingers, releasing Trent, who, choking, slithered down the wall, tears streaming out of his eyes. ‘See ya.’ Blake gave a friendly wave and spun out of the cell. Trent could hear him laughing all the way down the walkway.
Trent quickly removed his trousers and underpants and dashed to the toilet, plonking himself down only just in time. The terrifying encounter had taken its toll on his bowels. They opened up immediately.
With his head in his hands, he realised he would probably have to act sooner than later.
Talking to Henry had proved to be a nice release for Danny. She left his office feeling better having dumped such a heavy burden from her shoulders. It helped her greatly with the mental side — a trouble shared, and all that — but the physical side was another matter altogether.
Danny would be the first to admit she had allowed her fitness to deteriorate over the last ten years, but it had happened in such slow stages that she had been unaware of just how unfit she had become because it had been masked by her sedentary lifestyle.
It had taken the exertions and batterings of the last forty-eight hours to demonstrate what a blob she had become.
Firstly, chasing Claire Lilton and rescuing her; then being assaulted by Jack, coupled with the early-morning incidents at her house. Everything had accumulated in such a short space of time so that when she sat down at her desk she felt so creaky she should have had her pension book in her bag.
Yet she knew that if she had been only slightly fitter, she would not have felt half as bad.
She leaned back in her chair and took a quick evaluation of her body, from feet upwards.
Actually her toes did not feel too bad.
Everything else above and beyond was in pretty poor condition though.
The ankle she’d twisted throbbed meanly away underneath the tubi-grip bandage and was swollen like a football. She rotated her foot carefully and winced.
Her long legs were stiffening up. Running after Claire — all of what, 200 metres? — had made her use muscles which had lain dormant for ten years, despite the most robust lovemaking, and there had been plenty of that. They ached all the way up to the cheeks of her bum.
During the buffeting on the sea-front, she only now discovered she must have taken a few knocks which went unheeded at the time, probably due to adrenaline. Her chest was painful around the ribs, and the outer point of her right elbow felt like it might have been, smashed against the ground.
The base of her spine was still damned sore, making every other movement of her body a chore. The back of her head was agonisingly tender and her face smarted from the blow Jack had delivered to her. And, of course, there was the cut on her left cheek, stitched with such precision by the same drop-dead gorgeous doctor who’d tubi-gripped her.
Sod Jack, the bastard, she thought bitterly. She wondered whether or not to make an official complaint of
