The Trawlerman, стр. 68
‘Murdered Stella?’
He nodded. ‘Yep. He was all smug, you know. Wouldn’t tell her nothing. The more she asked him, the smugger Frank looked. He wanted her to think that. I don’t know . . . He’d probably just cut himself doing something stupid to his car. Maybe he put the blood there on purpose to make her more scared. But he was torturing her, mentally, you know? That’s what he did to people. So Tina was convinced he’d done exactly what he’d said he was going to do. He’d killed her lover, the one part of her life that wasn’t entirely shite. And then, after dinner, he goes back to work on his car. All part of the mental game. But then he’s under it, and she, I guess . . . she comes and sees the two jacks, holding that bloody car above him . . .’
‘She definitely killed him? Deliberately?’
‘And then she called me, because she trusted me and, because as far as she knew, Stella was dead and she had nobody else to turn to. You should have seen her, Alex. He’d done a number on her. Her face was in pieces. Her lips were out here.’
‘Did you take her to hospital?’
‘Couldn’t. Not the state she was in. The coppers might have come after whoever did it and found him there, dead. So I called up Bill and asked him what to do. He’s a good man. And after that I got rid of his body and I put every penny that cunt had ever given me in the grave with him.’
Alex nodded.
‘You figure it out, Alex. Was Tina right, or not? She thought he’d killed her girlfriend. Far as I’m concerned, he would have killed Tina for real if she hadn’t killed him first. It was just a matter of time, whatever you say.’
The point about being a police officer, thought Alex, was you never had to answer that question; you had the law to do it for you. She believed in that. She had relied on it all her life.
‘Are we square, then?’ asked Curly.
‘Yes. We’re square.’
The question he had really wanted to ask came just as she was at the door, putting on her hi-viz jacket for the cycle home. ‘This man,’ he said finally. ‘You sure he deserves all this?’
She took her time cycling home.
Though the rain had stopped, the roads were still wet, and the water thrown up by her wheels soaked through her. Car lights blared off the wet road. She took the coast path, riding along concrete slabs that seemed to jolt every bone in her body, then rejoining the coast road, cycling cautiously on a surface where water-filled potholes looked like any other puddles.
The light was on in Arum Cottage when she passed, but she was exhausted and damp, so she continued up the hard track, dreaming of a shower, and was annoyed to find, when she reached the shed, that Zoë had left its door unlocked.
And by the time she had remembered that Zoë couldn’t have done that, because she was in London, it was too late.
Forty-eight
Her helmet protected her from the first blow, but it knocked her sideways and she crashed against something hard and angular. Her balance gone, she fell hard onto to the concrete floor of the shed, and whatever she had banged into clattered down on top of her.
When she looked up he was there, then he was gone, then there, then gone, then there. The flashing lamp from her bicycle, propped in the doorway, illuminated him for fractions of a second in the darkness. She watched, fascinated, detached, as if she were viewing some grotesque animation rather than a man attacking her.
What had happened to that ability to predict the future? Her vigilance had deserted her, for better or worse. She had let her guard down carelessly.
Terry Neill was above her now, swinging fists. A second punch caught her on the cheek, but she was able to turn with it this time, absorbing the force of the blow. When she tried to raise her leg to kick him in the groin she realised what it was that had fallen on her; she had been knocked against Zoë’s bicycle. It had tumbled and was now lying across her legs, trapping her. The man leaned down, grabbed her hi-viz jacket and tried to yank her upright, but her leg was caught under the bike and because he was standing on the frame he was forcing her lower half flat at the same time as trying to lift her. In panic, she screamed from the sudden pain in her legs.
He must have forced the lock. He had been just inside the door waiting for her all this time. ‘Bitch,’ he screamed.
He lunged at her a second time, trying again to pull her up. If he pulled any harder, she thought, curiously calm, he would break her trapped leg, the one he didn’t realise he was forcing down with his weight. It was pure fury. In slow motion, she felt parts of her brain fizz; the amygdala sending messages to the frontal cortex. A new clarity emerged. Despite the pain, she arched her back, destabilising him, then at just the right moment kicked out hard under the frame, making him topple. In the flashing light, the moments of blackness were absolute. Disorientated, with nothing to brace his weight against, the bulk of his body sailed forward, over her. In the blinking light she shot an arm up and grabbed him by his shirt collar, tugging him down right on top of her. He landed with a thump, knocking the air out of her, but giving her a new advantage. This way she could hold him close where his arms could do no damage. He struggled to press himself away but in the next second she had an arm around his neck now, locking him down tightly to her.
He was a university professor, not a fighter, and