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“You took great pains to retrieve that computer, didn't you?” I ploughed on as though he hadn't spoken. “That was why you sent your thugs after me. They obviously had orders not only to get the lap-top back, but to persuade me not to go to the police as well.”

I put a trace of emphasis on the word “persuade”, just as I could imagine Marc had done when he'd originally briefed his boys. I understood the reason for the delay coming to get me now. He'd had to bring them in from one of his other clubs specially. And he couldn't take them away from work on a Saturday night, now could he?

Marc didn't deny it. A part of me still hoped that he would, that I was wrong. He sat looking defeated, shoulders slumped, and didn't even meet my eyes. I hardened my heart along with my resolve, and kept going.

“What I really can't forgive, Marc,” I said acidly, mildly gratified by the fact that my voice didn't waver, “is that after you'd let your boys work me over, you took me back to your hotel and gave me a working over of your own. Was that all part of the careful plan? The softly softly approach just in case they hadn't been able to beat enough out of me?”

His head came up at that, eyes haunted, face bloodless. “Charlie, I swear I never meant for that to happen either.” His voice was a whisper, truth cutting through like daylight. Not that it mattered, I suppose, whether he was lying or not.

Not any more.

“Are you so cold,” he demanded, “that what we had together – what we shared together – really meant nothing to you?”

I'd shied away from pursuing that subject too closely. The wound was still too raw. Instead I met his gaze levelly. “Not when you saw it as nothing more than a means of control over me,” I said, “no it didn't.”

The silence was still hanging between us when the door opened and MacMillan reappeared. His sharp eyes flicked between us, as though expecting to see fresh blood on one or the other.

“Well,” he said, “you didn't hit him again, then.” I couldn't tell from his tone whether he was relieved or disappointed.

“Did you get Angelo?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Not yet, I've got my men checking, but it's chaos out there, I'm afraid.” He peered at me closely, seemed to read my mind, and sighed. “What else haven't you told me?”

I hesitated before I spoke. “Yesterday we tried to lay a bit of a trap here for Angelo. Both Marc and I wanted to confront him about the lap-top, but not for the same reasons, it seems.”

MacMillan perked up again. “What happened?”

“We didn't catch him, but we did discover that his alibi for the night Susie Hollins died was false,” I said. I took a deep breath. “I think he might be your serial rapist.”

I explained about Gary's confession. “Angelo must have thought it was a close call. This morning he left me this.” I peeled the anonymous note I'd received out of my back pocket and handed it to MacMillan. He looked at it without removing it from the clear plastic bag I'd put it in, his expression sober.

“You need to be very, very careful on this until we're sure we've got him in custody, Charlie,” he cautioned. “He's a very dangerous man.”

“No shit, Einstein?” I bit back, unable to stop the rising sarcastic inflection. Careful? Right now I didn't even have the energy to go carefully down a flight of stairs.

MacMillan frowned at me and was about to speak when there was a knock on the door and one of his plainclothes men leant round the edge. “Sorry to interrupt, sir,” he said respectfully, “but there's no sign of Zachary. Apparently when we showed up he belted one of the bobbies good style and did a runner. I've got a car on the way to his last-known address now.”

“He was going out with one of the bar staff, a girl called Victoria,” I informed him. “She might know where he'd have gone. You can't miss her – she's the one Angelo's been using for target practice.”

The man nodded without asking for further explanations, and ducked out again.

MacMillan nodded, satisfied, and got to his feet. “I think you can leave things solely to us from now on, Charlie,” he said firmly. “I'll have you escorted home and get a WPC to stay with you until we've got our hands on this Angelo character.”

“But can you at least tell me if that fits?” I demanded. “If there's any evidence to link Terry's death with those of the two women?”

The Superintendent wasn't to be drawn. “I'm sure you understand that I can't say anything that might prejudice ongoing investigations,” he said, falling back on that old fob-off line.

I sighed, resentful. A couple of uniforms arrived to conduct Marc to the waiting van, but as they took him away I stepped in front of him. There was one last question I had to ask.

“Why, Marc? Why did you do all this?”

He paused. “Why?” he repeated, his voice vibrating with the same anger that suddenly lit his eyes. “Like you've just so accurately reminded me – I was born in a slum, Charlie. Everything I have, everything I am, I created myself. I worked for it, fought for it, every step of the way.”

His carefully modulated accent was dissolving, the flat vocal tones of his long-suppressed Manchester beginnings seeping up through the cracks. “Who are you to judge me when you were brought up in comfort, luxury even,” he jeered. “You’ve never had to live day by day with hunger, fear, desperation.”

“That’s true,” I admitted, “but that doesn’t excuse what you’ve done, Marc. Making other people desperate, and hungry and afraid doesn’t make it right. Plenty of people have escaped from poverty without resorting to dealing in drugs to do it.”

“Oh yeah?” he flung at me. “Name one!”

“That’s enough,” MacMillan put in with that same measured quietness. He nodded sharply to the coppers and they resumed their escort duty. He put a hand on my arm. “Are you sure you’re OK? Would you like me to get one someone to give you a lift home?”

I thought of the Suzuki waiting in the car park and shook my head. The ride would do me good. I planned to take the long way back to Lancaster. I was weary to my bones, but I knew I needed to get the cobwebs out of my head before I stood a chance of sleep.

Besides, I realised as I watched the strange trio passing through the doorway, with Marc irrevocably lost to me the prospect of going to bed no longer held quite the same appeal.

***

Surprisingly perhaps, I slept deep and untroubled that night. At around quarter to eight I woke with no nightmare sweats, just a vague sense of deep unease.

I climbed stiffly out of bed and pulled on my towelling robe, shuffling into the lounge. I registered without undue amazement that there was a small blonde policewoman dozing on my ripped sofa. I left her to sleep and headed for the shower.

I showered carefully, inspecting the new bruises that were mingling sociably with the fading old ones. My eye was puffy and tender and my back ached like I'd been doing twelve hours of manual labour. My hand had been so sore last night on the ride home that I could barely operate the front brake lever. I'd had to rely on the foot-operated rear brake to do all the work.

I dressed in jogging pants and an old T-shirt, then moved through to the kitchen, filling the filter machine. I think it was the smell of fresh coffee brewing that finally brought my companion round.

She sat up, doe-eyed with sleep, and looked round groggily. The change in attitude set off the sort of racking cough only committed smokers have first thing in the morning. When they haven't had the first cigarette of the day to bump-start their lungs. If she thought she was going to light up in here, though, she had another think coming.

MacMillan had introduced her last night only as WPC Wilks who, he declared somewhat cryptically, was going to look after me. She'd climbed into a panda car and patiently followed my meandering course along the seafront to Hest Bank before doubling back to Lancaster.