That seemed to satisfy the attendant. Are you here overnight? he asked, frowning as he scanned the car park for an appropriate space.
No, Im not planning on staying long, Shaz said firmly, starting her engine and crawling down the aisles of cars, following the attendant and slotting the car into the space he indicated.
Ill let you into the block, he said as she joined him. Whats it like up in the frozen north, then?
Shaz smiled. The footballs better, was all she said as he pulled back the massive glass and metal door and waved her inside. Just as well Im not a terrorist sleeper, she thought as she waited for the lift.
On the third floor, she stopped halfway along the carpeted corridor. Taking a deep breath, she pressed the doorbell. In the silence that followed, she breathed out through her nostrils in a slow steady stream, trying to contain the nervousness that was turning her stomach into a jacuzzi. When shed almost given up hope, she heard the faint whisper of footfalls. Then the heavy door inched open.
Tousled chestnut hair, bleary brown eyes with dark smudges under them and frown lines between, a snub nose and a yawn half-stifled behind a square hand with blunt, well-manicured fingers appeared in the gap.
For once, Shazs narrow smile made it as far as her eyes. The blaze of warmth melted Chris Devine, and not for the first time. The hand dropped away from the mouth, but the lips remained parted. Astonishment came first, then delight, then consternation. Any chance of a cup of coffee? Shaz asked.
Chris stepped back uncertainly, pulling the door wide. Youd better come in, she said.
Nothing worth having had ever come easy. He told himself that at regular intervals through two days of torment, though it was not a lesson he was ever likely to forget. His childhood had been scarred with oppressive discipline, any rebelliousness or frivolity stifled by force. He had learned not to show the currents that moved under the surface, to present a bland and acceptable face to whatever adversity people threw in his teeth. Other men might have revealed some traces of the seething excitement that swirled inside whenever he thought of Donna Doyle, but not him. He was too practised at dissemblement. No one ever noticed his mind was ranging through entirely different territory, detached from his surroundings, entirely elsewhere. It was a trait that in the past had saved him pain; now it kept him safe.
In his head he was with her, wondering if she was keeping her promise, imagining the excitement burning in her veins. He thought of her as a changed being, charged with the secret weapon of knowledge, convinced she had the edge on every tabloid astrologer because she knew for sure what her future held.
Of course, hers could not be the same vision as his, he realized that. It would have been hard to imagine two more disparate fantasies, so far apart on the continuum that there could exist no single uniting factor. Apart from orgasm.
Imagining her imagining a false future had its own frisson of delight that cohabited and alternated with the sliver of fear that she would not keep her word, that even as he played computer games with the stricken inhabitants of a childrens cancer ward, Donna was huddled in a corner of the school cloakroom revealing her secret to her best friend. That was the gamble he took every time. And every time, hed judged the roll of the dice perfectly. Not once had anyone come looking for him. Well, not in the investigative sense. There had been one time when the distraught parents of a missing teenage girl asked for a TV appeal because, wherever shed run off to, their daughter would never miss her weekly fix of Vances Visits. Sweet irony, so delicious hed grown hard for months afterwards just thinking about it. He could hardly have told them that the only way they were ever going to talk to their daughter again was via a medium, could he?
For two nights running, he went to sleep in the early hours and woke at dawn tangled in damp sheets, his pulse racing and his eyes wide open. Whatever the evaporated dream, it robbed him of further sleep, leaving him to prowl the confined spaces of his hotel room, alternately exulting and fretting.
But nothing lasted forever. Thursday evening found him in his Northumberland retreat. Only fifteen minutes drive from the centre of the city, it was nevertheless as isolated as a Highland croft. Formerly a tiny Methodist chapel that could never have held more than a couple of dozen, it had been bought when it was reduced to four bulging walls and a sagging roof. A team of local builders happy to have the cash in hand renovated it to very particular specifications, never doubting the reasons they were given for the desired features.
He savoured the preparations for his visitor. The sheets were clean, the clothes laid out. The phone was switched off, the answering machine turned down low, the fax shut away inside a drawer. The fibre optics might sing all night with calls for him, but he wouldnt be hearing them till morning. The table was covered with linen so white it seemed to glow in the dark. On it, crystal, silver and porcelain were arranged in traditional patterns. Red rosebuds in an engraved crystal vase, candles splendid in simple Georgian silver. Donna would be captivated. Of course, she wouldnt realize that it would be the last time shed ever use cutlery.
He looked around, checking everything was as it should be. The chains and leather straps were all out of sight, the silken gag tucked away, the carpentry bench innocent of tools except for the permanently mounted vice. He had designed the workbench himself, all the tools arrayed on a solid piece of wood like the drop leaf of a table attached to the far end of the bench at ninety degrees to the work surface.
One last glance at his watch. Time to drive the Land Rover across the rutted field track to the empty B-road that would take him to Five Walls Halt with its isolated railway station. He lit the candles and smiled with sheer pleasure, confident now that she would have kept faith and silence alike.
Wont you come into my parlour? said the spider to the fly.
Tim Coughlan had finally had his prayers answered. Hed found the perfect spot. The loading bay was slightly less wide than the factory proper, leaving a recess about seven feet square at one end. At first glance, it looked as if the alcove was blocked off by flattened cardboard cartons stacked on their ends. If anyone had bothered to look more closely, they would have noticed that the cartons werent tightly packed and that, with a little effort, it wouldnt be too hard to squeeze between them. Anyone inclined to investigate further would have found Tim Coughlans bedsit, containing a stained and greasy sleeping bag and two carrier bags. The first bag contained one clean T-shirt, one clean pair of socks and one clean pair of underpants. The other held one dirty T-shirt, one dirty pair of socks, one dirty pair of boxer shorts and a pair of shapeless cords that might once have been dark brown but were now the colour of seabirds after the oil slick has trapped them.
Tim slouched in a corner of his space, the sleeping bag scrunched into a cushion beneath his bony buttocks. He was eating chips and curry sauce from a polystyrene container. He had the best part of a litre of cider left to wash it down and send him to sleep. He needed something on the cold nights to carry him forward into oblivion.
It had taken long months living rough on the streets before hed emerged on the other side of the heroin haze that had robbed him of his life. Hed dropped so low that even drugs were above his reach. That, ironically, was what had saved him. Shivering through cold turkey in a Christmas charity shelter, hed finally turned the corner. Hed started selling the Big Issue on street corners. Hed managed to put together enough cash to buy clothes from charity shops that looked like poverty rather than hopeless homelessness. And hed managed to find work on the docks. It was casual, poorly paid, cash in hand, the black economy at its gloomiest. But it was a start. And that was when hed found his spot in the loading bay of an assembly plant too strapped for cash to afford a night watchman.
Since then, hed managed to save nearly three hundred pounds, stashed in the building society account that was probably his only extant connection to his past. Soon, hed have enough for the deposit and a months rent on a proper place to live and enough to spare to feed himself while the dole dragged their feet over his claim.
Tim had hit bottom and nearly drowned. Soon, he was convinced, hed be ready to swim back up to the daylight. He screwed up the chip container and tossed it into the corner. Then he opened the cider bottle and tipped the contents down his throat in a long series of quick gulps. The notion of savouring it never occurred to him. There was no reason why it should.
Opportunity had seldom knocked at Jacko Vances door. Mostly, hed gripped it by the throat and dragged it kicking and screaming to centre stage. Hed realized while he was still a child that the only way he was ever going to come by some luck was if he managed to make it himself. His mother, plagued by a kind of post-natal depression that had made him repugnant to her, had ignored him as far as possible. She hadnt actually been cruel, simply absent in any meaningful sense. His father had been the one who paid attention, most often of a negative sort.
He hadnt long been at school when the handsome child with the floppy blond hair, the hollow cheeks and the huge baffled eyes had realized that there was a point in having dreams, that things could be made to happen. His little-boy-lost appearance worked on some teachers like a blowtorch on an icicle. It didnt take him long to work out that he could manipulate them into playing accessories in his own particular power game. It didnt erase what happened at home, but it gave him an arena where he began to understand the pleasure of power.
Although he traded on his looks, Jacko never relied solely on the power of his charm. It was as if he had a built-in understanding that there would be those who needed different weaponry if they were to succumb. Since hed had the work ethic instilled into him from the moment he had begun to comprehend the messages of speech, it was never a hardship to him to work for his effect. The sports field was the obvious place for him to focus, since he had a certain natural talent and it offered a wider arena to shine in than the narrow stage of the classroom. It was also an area where effort paid off visibly and spectacularly.
Inevitably, the elements of his behaviour that endeared him to those who had power alienated his contemporaries. Nobody ever loved a teachers pet. He fought the obligatory fights, winning some and losing a few. When he did lose, he never forgot. Sometimes it took years, but he found ways to exact some sort of satisfactory revenge. Often, the victim of his vengeance never knew Jacko was behind his ultimate humiliation, but sometimes he did.
Everyone on the council estate where hed grown up remembered how hed got his own back on Danny Boy Ferguson. Danny Boy had been the bane of Jackos life between the ages of ten and twelve, picking on him mercilessly. Finally, when Jacko had flown at him in a rage, Danny Boy had smashed him to the ground with one hand held ostentatiously above his head. Jackos broken nose had healed without trace, but his black rage burned behind the charm that the adults saw.
When Jacko won his first junior British championship, he became an overnight hero on the estate. No one from there had ever had their picture in the national papers before, not even Liam Gascoigne when he dropped that concrete slab on Gladstone Sanders from the tenth floor. It wasnt hard to persuade Danny Boys girlfriend Kimberley to come up west with him for a night on the town.
Hed wined and dined her for a week, then dumped her. That Sunday night in the local, just as Danny Boy was working up to his fifth pint, Jacko slipped the landlord fifty quid to broadcast over the pubs PA system the tape hed secretly recorded of Kimberley telling him in graphic detail what a lousy fuck Danny Boy was.
When Micky Morgan had started visiting him in hospital, hed recognized a kindred spirit. He wasnt sure what she wanted, but he had a strong feeling she wanted something. The day Jillie dumped him and Micky offered to help him out, he became certain.
Five minutes after she walked out of the ward, he hired the private eye. The man was good; the answers came even faster than hed expected. By the time he read her handiwork in the headlines that screamed across all the tabloids, he understood Mickys motives and knew how best he could use her.
JACK THE LAD LETS LOVE GO! HEARTBREAK HERO! LOVE TORMENT OF TRAGIC JACK! He smiled and read on.
Britains bravest man has revealed hes making the greatest sacrifice of all.
Days after he lost his Olympic dream saving the lives of two toddlers, Jacko Vance has broken his engagement to his childhood sweetheart Jillie Woodrow.
Heartbroken Jacko, speaking from the hospital bed where he is recovering from the amputation of his javelin-throwing arm, said, Im setting her free. Im no longer the man she agreed to marry. Its not fair to expect her to carry on as before. I cant offer her the life wed expected to have, and the most important thing to me is her happiness.
I know shes upset now, but in the long run, shell come to see Im doing the right thing.
Now Jillie could never deny his version of events without making herself look a complete bitch.
Jacko bided his time, playing along with Mickys proffered friendship. Then, when he deemed the moment was right, he struck like a rattler. OK, so whens payback day? he asked, his eyes holding hers.
Payback day? she echoed, puzzled.
The story of my love sacrifice, he said, larding his words with heavy irony. Dont they call tales like that a nine-day wonder?
They do, Micky said, continuing to arrange the flowers shed brought in the tall vase shed charmed from the nurse.
Well, its ten days now since the media broke the news. Jacko and Jillie are officially no longer headline material. I was wondering when Id get the account for payment due. His voice was mild, but looking into his eyes was like staring into a frozen puddle on high moorland.
Micky shook her head and perched on the edge of the bed, her face composed. But he knew her mind was racing, calculating how best to handle him. Im not sure what you mean, she stalled.
Jackos smile was laced with condescension. Come on, Micky. I wasnt born yesterday. The world you work in, youve got to be a piranha. Favours dont get done in your circles without the full understanding that payback day is lurking somewhere in the background.
He watched her consider lying and reject it; he waited while she considered the truth and rejected that, too. Ill settle for having one in the bank, she tried.