Personal Protection (22 page)

She grabbed my hand and dragged me to one of the Star rooms. Someone was just coming out as we arrived. She pushed me inside and locked the door.

“Tell me!”

I explained what we had learned.

“Dear God, all this time. You really think it’s him?”

“Sammi does. That’s more important. That isn’t all. You remember the dinner party?”

“How could I forget? But what does that have to do with..?” It dawned, exactly as it must have on Dean. “Lou Lou.”

I caught her before her legs gave out and sat her in the chair usually reserved for the clients. When I tried to let her go she clung to me.

“Stay with me,” she insisted. I had to hoist her again and sit in the chair myself with her on my lap before she was satisfied.

“How..?” She interrupted herself with a shiver. “Never mind. At least I can see why. Are you sure?”

“We’re looking into it. We need evidence before we go to the police. Assuming that’s what you want?”

“I’m not sure, Randall. What are the chances we’d get a conviction?”

“Slim,” I said, honestly. There would be juries who’d consider what goes on here provocation and wouldn’t consider what she did rape. Even with the 1992 changes to the
law to recognise spousal rape, the definition of rape hasn’t changed much since 1956. According to that you have to be a man to rape someone. “You could bring an assault charge. She
abducted and attacked you, whatever provocation she thinks she had.”

“And proving it?”

“Will be next to impossible. You didn’t report it and neither the police nor a qualified medical practitioner examined you.”

“So whether she did it or not, she’s still going to get away with it?”

“I didn’t say that.”

She looked at me long and hard.

“You can’t be contemplating an eye for an eye. I know you, Randall McGonnigal. You could no more rape that woman than I could.”

Then she had another thought. “You’re not carrying your gun?”

“We’ve been through that.”

She looked relieved.

“Then what?”

“First we make sure we’ve got the right woman. Confront her with what we know! She was Dean’s friend. Maybe he has some idea about hitting her where it hurts? I don’t
know. Yet. But I promise that I won’t shoot her. Even if I did know, I’m not sure I should talk about it.”

She stared.

“You can’t just tell me who did it then leave me in suspense!”

“Tori, it’s not your problem any more. You’re leaving the day after tomorrow. You’ll be out of it. It’ll be better that way. If the legality of what I do becomes
questionable, you can’t be blamed. You won’t know anything.”

She sprang off my lap, bristling.

“How dare you take that highhanded attitude with me! Who was it that got raped? Don’t I deserve some say in what happens to the person that attacked me?”

“You’re not objective enough.”

“Damn straight I’m not! Are you?”

“More than you are. I’ve had time to think about this. To find some distance. And as you quite rightly point out, it didn’t happen to me.”

“It’s just another job to you!”

“It will never be that. But it is what I do. And if we don’t try and stay within the law we become no better than vigilantes.”

She looked at me. Somebody hammered on the door. I stood. “She will pay, I’ll see to that.”

Tori turned her back on me. I tried to hold her, but she walked stiff legged with anger around me to the door. I followed her, put a hand on her arm. “Tori?”

She ignored me and unlocked the door. Brian Junior stood impatiently on the threshold with one of the girls and a client. Tori pushed past them.

“I thought you said customers couldn’t touch?” the client muttered. I didn’t quite catch Brian’s explanation as I followed her out, but I knew it would be something
pithy.

“Tori!” I had to shout to make myself heard over the volume of the music.

“Go home, Randall. I need to think about this. I’ll take a cab, a White Knight, or something. I want to be alone.” Then she was gone.

Shit! Sometimes nothing goes right. She left in two days. I’d blown one of our last nights together by doing nothing more than telling her the truth. To top it all, the Scottish git was
sitting at my table when I got back. I knew when to quit. I left.

I wasn’t fit to drive. A walk to clear my head? I hung a left and started for the sea.

Dean swears by the sea as the cure to all his problems. If pressed, he’d say, as a water sign, he’s being true to his nature. I don’t believe in astrology, but there’s
something soothing about watching the repetitive motion of the tide and the shushing of surf.

Five minutes and three main roads later I was on the promenade. It was quiet and dark at this time of the morning. I strolled until I found a spot I liked, then let the North Sea work its magic.
It was icily perfect beneath the moon and the streetlights. The Illuminations had been turned off. Tourists gone to their beds. I stood near the bandstand – filled with skateboarders by day
– and breathed deeply, letting the tension flow out of me along the path of moonlight.

Someone, gender not immediately apparent, shuffled up beside me and tried to bum a cigarette. When I admitted I didn’t smoke, they asked for the money for a cup of tea. From the smell that
was a euphemism for a cheap bottle of booze. I refused. They swore loudly as they shuffled away.

The moment was broken. I started back, not having resolved anything, except that the world had more losers in it than me.

The rain started again. I flipped up the collar of my jacket against the icy drops trying to slither down my neck and trudged to the parking lot.

We like to think we’re in control of events; the reverse is true. Look at tonight. I’d thought Tori would be happy to see an end in sight, let me handle her problem, achieve closure
and move on. It didn’t look as if that was going to happen. Dean and I thought we had the situation under control; we’d get the evidence we needed, tidy up the situation to
everyone’s satisfaction and get on with our lives. We were probably wrong about that too.

I’d been staring at the moon-drenched water longer than I’d thought. The cleaners were leaving the club when I drew opposite. A couple of the girls were standing in the lot,
sheltering under a golf umbrella waiting for their rides home, Tori among them. Brian Senior was locking the doors.

While I was vacillating about going over, two taxis arrived from the top of the road. A waste disposal truck clanked from the bottom road between us. By the time the traffic had cleared, Brian
and his car were gone. So were the girls. Almost. A leg kicked out of the alleyway alongside the club, then disappeared as if dragged.

I know what you’re thinking. I wasn’t in one piece, and it wasn’t my problem. You should know me better. I was born to play good Samaritan.

I darted across the road. The rain made me skid the remaining distance into the alleyway. Luckily I kept my feet.

The single street lamp, coupled with the rain, illuminated the struggling women. I hardly had time to take in more than a glimpse of auburn hair and the flash of a knife, before I piled into the
fight. Instinct made me protect the woman I loved. Training made me seek to disarm the knife wielder. It wasn’t until the blade slashed my hand I realised they were one and the same.

Tori gasped, dropped the knife and took my bloody hand between both of hers.

“God, Randall, I’m sorry!”

“What were you doing?”

“I’ve been carrying the knife with me since the rape. Whenever you weren’t there. In case she… I never meant…”

She looked down at my bloody hand, then let go, turned aside and threw up. I wanted to go to her, but there was her attacker to deal with.

I turned to the other woman.

Sharon had a cricket bat in her hands. (The one she’d attacked her husband with?) She must have left it nearby to drag Tori into the alley, not realising things wouldn’t be so easy
this time, not knowing Tori had a knife. My distraction had allowed her to arm herself again. She raised it. She looked more scared than angry.

“Go ahead, hit me,” I told her. “If it makes you feel better.”

Tori made a strangled noise then lunged. With my uninjured hand I held her back.

“Go ahead,” I said again, making a sweeping gesture with my slashed hand. Blood splattered on to the tarmac. Sharon couldn’t take her eyes off it. “Violence won’t
bring your husband back. It won’t make him be what he’s not.”

She choked back a sob. Tori stopped fighting to get past me, seeing her pain as clearly as I did. She dropped the cricket bat and fell to her knees, crying, in a puddle.

I handed Tori the car keys.

“Go and get the Porsche unlocked and the heater on.”

I gave her the knife, too. It was a kitchen knife, one of a set. She looked at the thing in my hand as if it might bite her.

“Take it. If you dump it with my blood and your fingerprints all over it, the police will be knocking on your door tomorrow asking you who you killed.”

She shuddered, accepted it, took a look over her shoulder at the weeping woman, then back at my hand. I fished out a handkerchief and bound it while she watched.

“I’ll live.”

She didn’t seem convinced but she went. The cut didn’t feel deep. I hadn’t time to find out. I slopped over to the sobbing would-be-attacker and squatted beside her.
“I’d loan you a handkerchief, but I’m afraid mine’s otherwise engaged.”

Sniffling, she looked up.

“Could we discuss this in my car? Catching pneumonia would be letting him win, don’t you think?”

I stood and offered her my good hand. She looked at it, swallowed hard, accepted it and allowed me to pull her to her feet. She wasn’t dressed for the cold. The thin coat was wet through,
her skirt plastered to the back of her soaked stockings. She shivered as a gust of wind threw rain into our faces with a vengeance.

She took one look at the cricket bat and left it, allowing me to lead her out of the alleyway towards the parking lot.

She seemed dazed, as if just waking from a bad dream. What she didn’t look like was a woman who had raped another woman. I felt sorry for her. She was as much a victim as Tori. I
didn’t believe she was responsible, for either the rape or her actions.

When we reached the car Tori was sitting in the passenger seat, legs curled under her. Her eyes bore dark circles that might have been mascara. She’d been crying. The knife was on the
dashboard. Cleaned. The evidence was sticking out of my ashtray.

I took back the keys and popped the boot. Sharon stood passively while I stripped her out of her skirt, stockings and wet coat and wrapped her in the duvet that, along with the clothes, formed
part of my surveillance gear. Then I installed her in the back of the car, took off the sodden suit jacket and climbed in the driver’s side.

With the doors closed, the heater on full, the windows steamed and covered in rain, the three of us were isolated, in our own world. Not an ideal place to have this conversation, but I
couldn’t think of anywhere that would be. Tori and the woman were looking warily at one another, neither willing to start. It was up to me to get the ball rolling.

“I’m going to rehash some history, then we’ll all know where we stand. Not long ago my business partner and friend, Dean, invited me and my girlfriend, Tori –” I
nodded at her but my eyes stayed on Sharon “– to a dinner party with his friend, Greg, and his wife. You, Sharon. Dean didn’t know Tori was an exotic dancer. None of us were aware
your husband had been slipping off to the Bird of Paradise, where she worked, without your knowledge. That he was one of her most frequent customers in the private dance booths.”

The way I’d presented the facts was making an impression.

“When Tori ribbed him about it, Dean was shocked to discover what my girlfriend did for a living. You were shocked to find out where your husband had been going those nights when he said
he was working late. Tori was shocked to find out that you didn’t know what he’d been doing.”

I paused to let that sink in. Now for a little subterfuge. “She thought you knew. Plenty of wives do. She wasn’t trying to show you up in company, Sharon. She doesn’t do
dishonesty. Or cruelty. To Tori, what she does fills a niche, helps marriages, doesn’t destroy them.”

I sighed.

“We were saddened to hear that you hadn’t been able to reconcile your differences and divorce proceedings had started, but we understood. He couldn’t be trusted. He’d
lied to you. We didn’t hear about this until later. Dean blamed me for not telling him about Tori’s job. Which caused a rift between us. In the meantime Tori was raped.”

Tori shivered and looked at her hands. The woman gasped. Started to reach towards her. Not the reaction of a rapist. Tori looked into her eyes and saw that too. She turned to me in confusion. I
hurried on. “We think her rapist was another woman. A woman who used foreign objects to violate her. A woman who wore Lou Lou perfume. The perfume you wore to the dinner party.”

“No!”

It was the first thing she’d said. The word, like her expression, proclaimed her innocence. In the light of what I’d witnessed, she would have to do better than that. Clearly she
thought so too.

“I can see why you thought it was me. After what I’ve done. But it wasn’t! I am guilty of attacking your girlfriend tonight. Stalking other girls from the club. Posting dog
mess through one’s door. Following another home. Vandalising their places when I could get in. It wasn’t fair – they used their beauty to snare men and lure them away from their
wives. I’m not pretty, I never will be. I thought if I took away their security, made them suffer like other women, it would stop. They’d leave. Get other jobs. Our men would stop
coming and see we’re all the same. A bit of love and affection would make their wives blossom. I haven’t…” She swallowed and rubbed her eyes. “I haven’t been
thinking too clearly lately.”

“Attacking temptation isn’t enough,” Tori said, softly. “You have to make yourself over in the likeness of the temptation. If that doesn’t work you have to move
on.”

The two women looked at one another. I wondered whether I should get out and let them thrash out their differences or cement an alliance. Tori broke eye contact and turned to me.