Killer Instinct

Four

Clare rang me later that evening. The police had been to see her, too, and she was as stunned as I was by the whole thing. I let her talk it through without major interruptions. To let her equilibrium right itself.

“I can't help feeling guilty,” she finished, illogically. “I mean, it was sort of because of me that Susie got chucked out, and if she hadn't . . .” Her voice tailed off uncertainly.

“Oh Clare, don't even think about that,” I told her. “Susie made her own choices. She just made some bad ones. Getting thrown out of the club was her fault, not yours. You didn't provoke her. And she could have just got herself a cab home.”

“I know, you're right,” she said, sounding forlorn. “I just feel really bad about it.” She paused, sighing. “I'm glad you were there, though.”

“That's OK,” I said. I was standing leaning against one of the deep set windows in the flat, watching the lights of the traffic on the other side of the river, streaming across Greyhound Bridge towards Morecambe. The movement was soothing, hypnotic in its droning regularity.

I took another swig from a bottle of cloudy wheat beer I'd found as a pleasant surprise lurking in the salad drawer at the bottom of the fridge. “So, how's the black eye?”

“Oh, don't. Jacob's been giving me stick about that ever since, but it covers up all right. One of the boys on the crime desk wanted to interview me about my little fracas with Susie as a side story for the next issue, by the way,” she added with an audible grimace. “He not only wanted to get Photographic to take pictures of me without make-up, but said he'd get the art department to touch it up and make it look like a really worthwhile bruise. Cheeky bastards. I told them you were the one they should be talking to.”

I spat most of the mouthful of beer I'd been about to swallow back into the bottle. “Oh no,” I said, spluttering. “I can just see the way they'd write the story and I can quite do without that kind of publicity, thank you very much!”

“Oh come on, Charlie, it might give business a boost. After all, there should be hordes of women who want to learn self-defence after this. You'll be turning them away in their hundreds.”

The laughter in her voice was infectious and I couldn't help a smile, but kept my voice sober. “Oh yeah? All some tacky story in the local paper will do is throw down a challenge to all the punky kids in the area. Remember that boy last year?”

He'd been fourteen or so, cocky, sneering. He'd walked into one of my introductory classes unexpectedly armed with a small pocket knife. I hadn't moved quite fast enough and I still had the scar, a pale three-inch line across my ribcage that didn't tan well in the summer.

“Oh,” Clare said, suddenly becoming serious. “Yes, I do. Sorry, Charlie, I wasn't thinking.” She was sounding subdued again.

“Don't worry about it. And don't dwell on this whole thing, either. It sounds heartless to say it, but people do stupid things every day and get away with it. Susie was just plain unlucky.”

How many times did I teach my students how to avoid making themselves easy targets? Don't walk home alone at night. Don't take short cuts. It seemed so obvious to me that I found myself unsympathetic towards anyone who didn't follow the simple rules. Some people seemed almost to have a death-wish.

Rape is one of those life-changing experiences that you never entirely recover from, you never really get over. You put it behind you, and you try to move on, but it will always be there, colouring your thoughts and actions. Like a big mental and emotional scar.

If it's touched you personally, you look at other people taking risks with a sense of anger, as though they're belittling your own experience. Like a cancer victim watching people casually smoking. If I could have done anything to avoid having been attacked, I would have done it.

“I don't care how stupid she was. Nobody deserves to die that way,” Clare said now, with a touch of belligerence. “What he did to her – it just makes me feel sick to my stomach.”

“They must have told you more than they told me, then,” I observed. “The police wouldn't do more than say it was a murder enquiry.”

“I talked to the girl on the crime desk at work,” Clare admitted. Although she was only in accounts, Clare's always seemed to be very pally with most of the editorial staff at the paper. “She knows all the gen, but they're not allowed to publish half of it. The police want to hold back as much as possible to try and trap the killer. They don't want a copy cat, either, which doesn't really bear thinking about.” I could almost hear her delicate shudder.

“Can you find out some more of the details for me?” I asked. I'd already had twenty questions from Ailsa. My pupils were bound to talk about the Susie Hollins murder, too. Bound to ask me if I really thought my theories could help them to avoid meeting a similar fate. Until I knew what had happened to Susie, I couldn't answer that. Students get very nervous at unanswered questions. She hesitated.

“Clare,” I said dryly, “I'm hardly likely to go to print in the rival freesheet with it, now am I?”

“OK, I'll ask,” she said, “but I can't guarantee she'll tell me more than she has already.”

She agreed to give me a call later on in the week and invited me round for a meal the following weekend. I rang off with a feeling of unease that I couldn't shift. And although Jacob makes curries that strip the enamel off your teeth, it had nothing to do with the prospect of his cooking, either.

***

The sense of foreboding still hadn't gone by the time Sam arrived. He turned up so exactly on the dot of eight-thirty that he must have been waiting outside the door, one finger hovering above the doorbell, eyes on his watch.

I answered the door to be met by a big smile and a waft of expensive aftershave. I always find that strange on someone who obviously doesn't own a razor. The lower half of Sam's face is covered by a straggly anarchist's beard. He sauntered in, the only way you can walk when you're wearing cowboy boots, in a pair of black Wranglers and a bike jacket. “Hi,” he said, dumping his battered AGV helmet on a chair and shaking a box of computer disks at me. “Lead me to your computer.”

“Hi Sam, I've put it on the desk. Help yourself.” I offered coffee and went to see to the machine, which was down to the last nutty dregs in the bottom of the pot. I like coffee that way, but it's the sort of thing other people tend to tip into plant pots when they think I'm not looking. That can be a real pain when you consider I don't have any pot plants.

I gave up and flicked on the kettle. When I came back Sam had opened up the lap-top and was pondering the message on the screen. He'd put on a pair of wire-rimmed glasses for close work and his long eyelashes brushed against the lenses. Most women would kill for them.

“We need a password. I don't suppose we know anything about the guy who owned this, do we?” he asked. I shook my head. I wasn't about to tell Sam that the only thing I knew about the previous owner was that he was a weirdo. “Pity. People usually use something obvious like their date of birth, or their dog's name as a password.”

“Fido?” I suggested.

Sam rolled his eyes. “In this case, it has to be something with seven letters,” he said.

“How about if you spell it, P-h-i-d-e-a-u?” I got a dark look. The kettle clicked off and I retreated to pour water on the instant coffee.

“I've tried a few obvious ones, like ‘let-me-in’, but I think we'll try a more lateral approach,” Sam said when I returned. He linked his hands together and cracked his fingers out straight in front of him. It made me wince.

He picked out a disk, switched the machine off and slid it into the drive slot before switching back on again, holding down a number of keys as he did so. The lap-top whirred and hummed again, then presented him with an “A” and a flashing block at the top left hand corner of the screen.

“Way to go,” I said, impressed.

“Thank you for your adoration, but we're not there yet,” Sam said, darting me a quick grin over his shoulder. “That's just logged me on to the floppy disk drive.” His hands flew over the keys with the sureness of a touch-typist. He had long slender fingers, spoilt only by the fact that he bit his nails. “I have a little program here that will keep bombarding it with seven-letter words until we hit the right one. All I have to do now is let it get to work.”

He leant back in his chair, looking smug and reaching for his coffee cup. We talked about something and nothing while his program ran, making the little computer buzz and hum to itself. Sam might have sounded confident, but I noticed he kept one eye on the screen all the time.

“Thanks for taking so much trouble over this,” I said.

He waved a negligent hand. “No sweat. Besides, this is kiddies' stuff, really.”

“I'm sorry if the challenge isn't up to your usual standard. What do you normally do for laughs – hack your way into the Bank of England?” I said in a sarky voice.

He grinned in such a way that I realised he probably did.

“So, where did you get it, this password program?” I asked.

“All my own work,” he admitted modestly.

“You ought to market it.”

He snorted into his cup as he took another slug of coffee. “Yeah, and the profits might just pay enough to keep me one step ahead of the serious fraud squad. Think about it, Charlie, if you need to get into a password-protected computer without the password, you're not exactly on the level, now are you?”

I raised my eyebrows, but was saved from having to think of a reply by the computer itself, which had stopped making noises and was displaying a single seven-letter word on the screen.

“Ah-ha, here we are. Bacchus,” Sam read. “Bacchus? Mean anything to you?”

I trawled through my mental vocabulary and shook my head. “Not a thing.”

“OK, pick a new seven-letter word and I'll over-write it.”

“Pervert,” I said immediately, almost without thinking. He raised his eyebrows, but typed it in anyway. “OK, now let's see just what he's got on here that he didn't want us to see. Hmm, that's odd.”

“What?” I asked.

“There's nothing here to protect,” Sam said. “Of course, he could just have been trying to make life awkward for your pal.”

“What are all those?” There seemed to be a list of files available.

“They're just the system files, the ones that tell this lump of plastic that it's a computer to start off with,” he explained. “I meant there are no actual data files on here. He must have wiped them all off before he handed the machine over.”

“That's a pity,” I said. It could either mean that the guy was perfectly legit, and just didn't want Terry reading his private correspondence, or it could mean that he didn't want anyone to be able to prove the machine had originally belonged to someone else – the New Adelphi Club, for instance.

“Of course,” Sam said slowly, “It just so happens that I can probably retrieve whatever it is that was on there.” I realised by his smug expression that he'd been playing me along, waiting to see my reaction.

“Go on,” I said.

“I've got a utilities program that can un-delete files. I can even retrieve data off floppy disks that have been re-formatted.”

This didn't mean too much to me, but it was obviously an impressive feat. I looked impressed. I was about to thank him for his trouble, but it was clear he loved the challenge of this sort of thing, so I just said, “I just hope when you've done all this there's something interesting on the damn machine to read.”

He drained his coffee cup and stood up. “If you're not busy I'll nip round tomorrow after work and we'll see what we can come up with,” he suggested with studied casualness.

“I'm teaching tomorrow evening, and I've got an interview for a new job sometime this week,” I improvised quickly, “but Wednesday would be OK.” I didn't like the light that had come on in his eyes and I really didn't want the guy getting ideas about me. I like Sam, don't get me wrong, but I just didn't want to lose him as a friend by having to turn him down on a more intimate level.

“What's the new job?” he asked now. “You starting another class up?”

I shook my head. “I broke a fight up at that new nightclub in Morecambe, the New Adelphi, and the boss offered me a job on the doors.”

Sam stared. “Don't take it,” he said bluntly.

I cast him a speaking look. One that said there's a line here, Sam, don't cross it.

He flushed. “Sorry, I know it's none of my business, but you'd be a fool to get into that game, Charlie. A few of the lads from the Uni are into it, and it's shit money for the amount of abuse you have to take. The cops never believe your story over a punter.”

I bridled a little at being called a fool. As far as I'm concerned Sam doesn't have the right to make judgements on what I do with my life. Things like that have a tendency to make me stubborn. And that's when the trouble starts. Sam must have known he was pushing his luck because he changed the subject and, soon after that, he left.

After he'd gone I dug out my old school dictionary and looked up Bacchus. It was only an abbreviated pocket version and it didn't list either Bacchus or Adelphi. Not much help there, then.

With a sigh I put the dictionary down and moved into the kitchen. I put together a rough and ready tea from the freezer. I really must remember to go shopping. I ate listening to the hi-fi and planned an unexciting evening involving a paperback novel and an early night.

***

It wasn't until the following day, when I was gathering clothes together for a darks' wash, and checking through the pockets, that I found Marc Quinn's business card. It was still in the back pocket of the jeans I'd been wearing to the New Adelphi Club.

On impulse, I tried both the numbers. The land line turned out to be the most expensive hotel in the area. Marc wasn't in, so I left my name and number, but no message, with the frighteningly efficient receptionist. I tried his mobile next, but that was switched off. I left a brief message on the answering service, then promptly forgot all about it.

I spent an uneventful day, the calm before the storm. I did the washing, made an initial stab at the ironing. I had a trip round the covered market in the middle of town and stocked up on real vegetables rather than tinned or frozen substitutes. I even finally got round to buying some fresh bread.

In the early evening I went and taught my class at the university leisure centre how to escape from a front stranglehold. I was back in the flat by eight. I must only have been home around half an hour when the phone rang.

I hesitated a moment before picking up the receiver. I suppose I'm just naturally cautious, but a year or so ago I picked up a fascinating gadget that alters the tone of your voice, making it deeper, more like a man's. It was specially made for women who live alone, for fending off obscene calls. I flicked it on and reached for the receiver. “Hello?”

“Good evening, may I speak to Charlie?” A man's voice, the accent neutral. Initially I failed to place where I'd heard it before, but the interesting way he curled my name round didn't incline me to hang up.

“Hang on, I'll get her,” I said. “Who is it?”

“My name is Marc Quinn. She does know me.”

I pressed the secrecy button on the phone and switched off the device. It gave me a moment to think. I hadn't been prepared for him to call so soon.

“Hi, Marc,” I said, speaking undisguised. “I just called you earlier to arrange that appointment you mentioned. I didn't think you'd to get back to me so quickly.”

“Ah, well, when there's something I want, I don't like to wait,” he murmured seductively.

I pulled a face. “In that case, remind me not to have sex with you,” I said waspishly.

He laughed out loud at that. “Touché,” he said with a wry note in his voice. “Not very good at accepting flattery, are you, Charlie?”

“When that's all it is, no, I'm not,” I agreed flatly.

“Hmm, you need the practice, then. So, how soon are you going to come and see me?”

I reached over to the desk and retrieved my diary. It was more of a play for time. I already pretty much knew when my classes were during the week. He suggested a time for the following afternoon at the club. It seemed ironic that the excuse I'd made to Sam was solidifying into reality, even if it was a day late.

I have to admit, I liked listening to Marc's voice. Concealed in the background was the faintest trace of a regional accent. He had obviously worked hard to eradicate it, but on the phone it seemed more noticeable than it had face to face. I tried and failed to place it.

“Until tomorrow, then,” he said as we wound up our conversation, and the line disconnected.

I looked at the dead receiver before I put it down. “I hope you know what you're doing, Fox,” I said, but I wasn't giving myself any answers. I guess I was just obstinate that way.