‘I’m off to the supermarket now,’ I said, ‘then I might try and do a bit more work if that’s OK.’
‘Cool.’
‘Do you want anything bringing?’
Abi grinned. ‘Ice cream – chocolate fudge.’
‘You got it.’
As I opened the car door, there was a blur of movement beside me. A flapping of material. Black wings obscuring my vision. Hands grabbed my wrists, forced them behind my back, gripping them both in one large fist, strong as a vice. Acid rose in my throat and my heart thumped with fear.
‘Get in,’ a voice hissed, hot breath in my ear.
I resisted, digging my heels into the ground, locking my knees, but the man held on to my wrists and used his other hand to push my head down and shove me forward. I sprawled across the front seats, bruising my chin on the handbrake. My feet were still outside the car and I kept kicking out, hoping to connect with his shin or kneecap. He leant in after me and yanked my hands up; pain tore across my shoulders.
‘Get in,’ he repeated. Kicking at my shoes, pushing my legs out of the way with his foot, thrusting me up against the passenger door. He followed me inside the car and slammed the door shut.
I tried to kick out but there was no room for manoeuvre. My knees were in the footwell, legs bent, my feet crushed against the gearstick. He belted me across the head with his free hand. The blow rang in my temples, sickening. Then he pressed my head down against the far edge of the passenger seat. He was very strong. The hard plastic moulding of the door bit into the right side of my jaw.
‘You’ve been looking for me.’ A gravelly voice, a Geordie lilt. ‘You’ve been harassing my mother.’
Nick Dryden. ‘No.’ I fought to sound calm, my voice was muffled, distorted as my mouth was pushed out of shape, pressed against the fabric weave of the seat. ‘I just wanted to contact you.’
‘Who for?’ he said.
‘What?’
‘Who are yous working for?’
I wasn’t going to tell him. It seemed like a peculiar question, anyway. ‘Talk,’ he demanded. ‘Who are yous working for?’
‘It’s about Charlie Carter,’ I managed. It was hard to talk with the weight on my head.
‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’ he said brutally. ‘The bloke ’as did it topped hisself?’ Any charm Dryden might have had was definitely switched off.
‘He didn’t do it,’ I said thickly.
‘So…?’ He barked a laugh as though he’d just got a joke. Then again. ‘So that’s what this is about?’
I thought about raising a foot, trying to hit the horn, draw attention and get help, but I would have to swing round and raise my knee from the floor to get any leverage. Impossible. If he relaxed his grip on my wrists, I could fling the passenger door open and scramble out on to the pavement. But while he held me so tight, I couldn’t do anything. I do self-defence classes but we’d never learnt any moves that I could use in this particular situation.
‘You think I’m mixed up in that? You stupid little bitch.’
At least he didn’t come in the Dobsons’ house, I thought. The image of him menacing Jamie or Abi threatened to unseat me. Tears scorched my eyes. I squeezed them back, focused on my rage at the man, my anger.
‘Aren’t you?’ I asked him. ‘You’d been friends and then you ripped him off, practically ruined him.’
‘Bastards,’ he swore, ‘him and his bloody wife. Stood by while my family was kicked out on the streets, destitute. Totally ruthless they were and she was worse than him. Fair-weather friends they were,’ he banged on, ‘they never give us a chance.’
But Selina had attended Charlie’s funeral, she had kept in touch with the Carters, obviously siding with them in the dispute with her ex-husband. Dryden had his own world view, styled to suit himself. A narcissist. He saw himself as the victim in all this. Probably the only way he could live with himself.
‘You stole from the business, you smashed up their car, made abusive calls.’
‘Doesn’t mean I swung for the bloke.’
‘You expect me to believe you?’
The sudden release of my wrists and my head was unexpected. I scuttled round, my nerves chattering, expecting a fresh blow.
Dryden, big-boned, florid, corned-beef complexion, was yanking his shirt from his jeans. I froze. Oh, God – he was going to rape me. Saliva flooded my mouth and I wanted to gag. I began to twist, aiming to get the door handle, when he spoke.
‘Look.’ He pulled up his shirt to reveal a pasty, swollen belly and, running up from his navel, a rope-like scar, silvery and pink. ‘Double bypass. Bonfire night, last year.’ He beamed at me, a deranged, triumphant light in his eyes. ‘Read all about Charlie’s murder when I was in the hospital.’
Bonfire night was three days before the murder.
He barked with laughter again, tugged his shirt down and drew the sides of his long black coat around him. Then he lunged back at me, gripping my chin in one meaty hand. As he spoke spittle landed on my face and I could smell his breath: stale fags, the pee-like scent of whisky and something dead. I could see the nicotine stains in the grooves on his long yellow teeth. ‘It’s nowt to do with me, petal, and if you ever,’ he squeezed my jaw tighter, ‘ever, come sniffing after me or bother my mother again, I’ll carve you up. And,’ he nodded towards the house, ‘that little bairn an’ all.’ He let go. My jaw burned. I was trembling, inside and out, unable to control the shakes.
He opened the door and put one foot down on the road. ‘I wasn’t here.’ He leant back towards me, his voice whispery now. ‘You never saw us.’
He swivelled round and the car bounced at the shift in weight as he stepped out. He slammed the door and walked round to the back of the car. My breath came in jagged gasps, terror and relief, as I followed his progress in the rear-view mirror.
He took a few steps away, still on the road, then wheeled back towards my car. His hand pulled something from his coat pocket: a short metal bar. He raised his arm and slammed the weight against the back windscreen. I flinched as the glass fractured into a thousand pixels and fell, a great wash of crashing, crystal sound.
Then he strode off, his coat flapping, and rounded the corner.
Even then, no one came; just another noise in the symphony of the city.
I sat for long enough, waiting for my heart to steady, for the sheen of sweat on my skin to cool. A sob broke in my mouth, then another. I let them come, releasing the fear and distress, the fury at my impotence, my powerlessness and the vicious bastard’s power to hurt me.
When the crying was done I wiped my face, blew my nose and eased over into the driver’s seat.
My keys were in the footwell there, where I had dropped them. Picking them up, I wondered who I could call. Not Ray. And Diane was still in Dublin. I looked back at the rear windscreen, the bits of glass fringing the hole like some entrance to an ice cave. She’d appreciate it. There was no one to call.
‘Fine,’ I said aloud, my voice husky with tears. ‘Just absolutely fucking fine.’
Then I started the car, took it to have the rear windscreen repaired and went shopping. The world still turned; we still had to eat.
I felt jaded, numb, indifferent even. It was a mask, I think, born of shock, something to get me through the aftermath of being so frightened. And I had to be strong, keep functioning, because there was no one else. I was on my own.
SIXTEEN
While I put the shopping away, I thought about Dryden. He’d left Spain to escape the fraud charges there, and presumably thought I was tracing him for the Spanish authorities or his creditors. His alibi, if it could be proven, was a strong one. And taken with his demeanour, the way he’d sought me out and threatened me meant I no longer considered him a credible suspect. If he was a killer, he’d never have crawled back out of the woodwork like that. He’d have stayed hidden, protected himself.