6. Mel
Once a Lazenby, always a Lazenby.
She should have known.
Should never have given in to that fatal moment of hesitation when she emerged from the doorway of Ryders, head still fizzing with... with anger at Glenn for turning on her, but also some kind of sense of justification: he’d let the mask slip, let her see beyond that veneer of charming rogue he liked to wear. He’d reminded her of why she would always regret the few times she’d trusted that family.
It was always a mistake.
And so she’d emerged into daylight, blinking as her eyes adjusted. Looked up, across the street, and seen Jimmy sitting there in that window seat. He’d looked away immediately, pretending he wasn’t watching for her, waiting.
And she’d hesitated.
Just allowed that pause to go a moment beyond the point where she could turn to one side or the other and walk, pretending she hadn’t seen him. Now, if she walked, they would both know she’d seen him and then made that choice.
It would have saved time, at least, because now, only a short time later, she was walking away from him anyway. She’d stood and marched out of that fast food joint, leaving Jimmy sitting there, just looked down at her feet and kept on going – any direction as long as it was away.
She looked up now. She’d been walking for a few minutes, along Queen’s Street where Ryders was, and then left onto Commercial Road. Heading back to her room on autopilot, she knew these streets so well.
She didn’t know what she’d expected, but she certainly hadn’t anticipated Jimmy’s mysterious claims about why he was here. She still didn’t know what he was actually claiming he was. Some kind of undercover police officer? Some kind of lone vigilante, out to bring his family down?
I’m a different person now... I chose to become one of the good guys.
Whatever it was, he knew about Harriet, and the fact he was here now, staking out his brother, confirmed she was onto something.
Glenn’s response, too, confirmed that. The slipping of his mask. She’d touched a raw nerve there. Asking around the club, showing the dancers Harriet’s photograph. Was it just a pride thing – Glenn getting pissed with her for going behind his back on his home territory – or had she touched on something more?
He knew something. She was sure of that, at least.
He’d taken to calling her Mels.
He knew something.
§
Jubilee Park. Lines of lime trees marked the paths across open green areas. To one side she saw the trees marking where the lake was tucked away in a fold of the landscape, where she’d fed the ducks with bread when she was little.
The light was closing in now, that twilight grayness that sucked color from the surroundings.
She’d reacted too strongly to Jimmy. Too strongly in many ways.
She shouldn’t have told him to fuck off. Shouldn’t have told him he was just like the rest of the family. Even though that hard man, leave it all to me, attitude had pissed her off, she knew he was different to his brother, his father, knew that telling him he was just a chip off the old block would hurt him far more than any slap.
She felt her wrist automatically at that thought, imagined it was still hurting from the blow.
She’d hit him hard, and now she couldn’t help a little smile at the recollection. The look on his face. The utter disbelief.
He’d been surprisingly awkward in that fast food place. The way his look kept slipping away. Him, trying to be the hard man and yet so vulnerable.
She’d got him wrong in the strip club, on that one, at least. The way he’d kept staring at the girls roaming the place in their underwear and the near-naked dancers. He hadn’t been looking at them – he’d been avoiding looking at her. He did exactly the same in that smelly takeaway, only instead of looking at bouncing breasts and perfect legs he was watching the traffic passing outside, the people walking by. Looking at anything but Mel.
She stopped, out of breath for no reason. Heart thumping for no reason. She wasn’t that unfit.
It had been ten years. Since then she’d been to university, had a succession of shitty jobs and even shittier relationships. She’d gone back to university as a postgrad, and finally started to find her feet. She’d grown up. Taken control.
It wasn’t Jimmy getting under her skin, she realized. Making her react like this. It was the situation. Her fears for Harriet. The adrenaline rush of standing up to Glenn. The sense of empowerment of actually doing something about it, and the anger at the men around her who kept trying to put her off.
Jimmy was just a symbol – of the way she was being treated, the barriers in her way, a flash from the past she’d long since left behind, the girl she’d once been.
So when she felt her heart thumping in her chest and her breath sucking raggedly in her lungs as it was right now, it wasn’t for Jimmy, it was because of all the other stuff – anything but him.
“Fuck it,” she hissed under her breath. And again: “Fuck you, Jimmy Lazenby.”
Mel wasn’t the kind of person who swore much, not that she objected to cursing. She just didn’t do it. Until now.
She made herself focus, reminding herself that none of this was about her, or about Jimmy Lazenby. Harriet.
She took the photo from her purse and studied her friend’s innocent features. It was a sobering moment. A time of happiness captured, however long it had actually lasted.
She straightened, forced a long, deep breath. Started to walk again.
The footsteps behind her came up suddenly.
She had time to register the sound, sense that the approach was fast; time to curse Jimmy, first for waiting for her at that place across the road from Ryders and now for following her, for not giving up and just letting her go.
Then she felt a heavy impact between her shoulder blades, so hard it knocked the air from her lungs. Her head snapped back as her body was abruptly propelled forward, and bolts of pain stabbed through her – from the impact, from that sharp snap of the head jerking at her neck so hard she feared something must have broken, from her arms flying out and snapping straight.
She landed face down in the dirt, taking the impact on her chest, her chin, her nose. Her vision blackened briefly and then she was only aware of the pains in her chest as she gasped for breath, the ache in her chin and jaw, the copper taste of blood.
Her nose. That was where the blood came from, a sudden gush of blood. Was it broken? That was her main thought: would she spend the rest of her life with a crooked nose? And then she was appalled that she should be so vain, when–
A boot struck her in the side. Not a full-blown kick aimed to break ribs, but a dull impact, then a continued pressure turning her onto her side, onto her back until she sprawled there helpless, so easily incapacitated.
It wasn’t Jimmy.
Of course it wasn’t Jimmy!
Her mind was doing crazy right now, panic bubbling under, threatening to swamp her.
She sat, pushing herself up with hands on the hard dirt. A small stone dug into one palm, a jolt of new pain that brought her senses into sharp focus.
She rubbed at her nose with a swipe of one arm, a vivid smear of blood leaving a broad trail along the forearm of her suede jacket. Her nose was throbbing, and she breathed rapidly through her mouth.
She scrambled backward, away.
The guy just stood there, staring.
Had she seen him before? Tall, carrying plenty of weight, but clearly well-muscled. Thick, dark beard and shaved head. A silver ring through his nose and a bar through one eyebrow. Leather jacket, black jeans, Doc Marten boots.
Had he been at Ryders? At the Flag and Flowers the day before?
Her back came up against a tree trunk, and she used it to lever herself up to her feet, wiping at her pounding nose again. She wasn’t going to sit there peering helplessly up at this thug. Even now, she had to look up to confront him, but at least she was on her feet.
He took a step toward her. Another.
He came to stand looming over her, so close that even through the blood she could smell the stink of tobacco and something else on his breath.
Her eyes flitted from side to side, desperately assessing options.
How could she ever hope to out-run him when she could still barely breathe?
What was this? She was thinking Ryders, Flag and Flowers, thinking Glenn Lazenby and his villainous friends, but...
The man’s hand went to her neck, pushed up against her jaw so her throat burned and her head ground against the tree.
His body pressed against her, a physical presence so abruptly terrifying she almost blacked out, and maybe that would have been best.
What if he was just some random psycho preying on a lone woman? Would that be better or worse than Glenn sending someone after her?
“Right now,” he said, his voice a low rumble in her ear, “you’re more scared than you’ve ever been in your entire life.”
The look in his eyes... He was enjoying this, drawing out her terror. His hand on her throat pushed up even harder, briefly tightening before relaxing enough to let her breathe.
“Your mind is racing through possibilities. Am I right? Imagining scenarios you’d never have thought you’d have to imagine. Scenarios with you, and with me.”
He didn’t blink. How did he do that? And why did she fix on that one detail, when she was close to choking to death? When his body was pressing against her and he was making her think... scenarios...?
“You’re wondering how this is going to end, and what particular sequence of events will take you from right now to that end. What you will have to endure. What you might choose to endure, just to get to the end.”
She’d never felt so powerless. So controlled by another person.
He fell silent for a moment, and then finally his gaze moved away from hers. He nodded at the hand she held out to one side and she realized that even through all of this she had clung on to the photograph of Harriet.
“‘Scare her.’ That’s what I was told. ‘Stop her making a pain of herself.’”
So he wasn’t a random psycho.
Fast as a striking snake, he reached out and snatched the photo from Mel’s grip, one hand still on her throat. Now he waved the picture close to her face, and said, “You’re wasting your time. You hear me? You should be looking elsewhere for Harriet Rayner, not stirring things up here, making idle threats about bringing people down. You should be careful which boats you rock.”
Then he laughed, and added, “And remember: unlike you, I don’t make idle threats. I’ll be watching you. I’ll always be there. In the shadows. In your nightmares. And if you fuck off the wrong people, next time I won’t be so nice.”
He pushed his face into hers, his spit on her cheek, the stink of his breath in her swollen nostrils. “Do you get that? Or do I need to make myself even clearer?”
“Where?” she gasped. The blood flowed more slowly now, but still she had to swallow to allow herself to breathe, to speak. “Where should I look for my friend?” Even now, she wouldn’t let go.
“How much of a shit do you think I give?” said the man. “I just know you’re wasting your time here.”
He squeezed her throat again, so tight she thought he’d decided to kill her after all. She felt that blackness creeping into her vision again, the kind of heat in her face that told her she was about to faint, and then he relented and she gasped for breath again.
“Do you understand?”
Suddenly, the guy tensed against her.
She couldn’t work out what had changed, what this might signal, and then the grip on her throat eased again, the hand fell away, and as the guy stepped back both his hands stayed in the air at shoulder height.
“That’s better,” said a familiar voice.
She hadn’t seen him creep up, hadn’t heard him, and neither had her assailant.
Now, her assailant turned slowly, coming to stand facing Jimmy Lazenby who was casually pointing a handgun at the guy’s chest – the handgun that must have been the first indication of Jimmy’s presence when he pressed it into the man’s back.
Mel thought her legs were going to give way, and hated that weakness. Hated the rush of emotions, the sheer relief. Hated feeling grateful to Jimmy Fucking Lazenby.
She leaned back against the tree, hands on its rough bark. Felt the tightness of blood crusting on her lips and chin, and resisted the urge to rub at it, hated that vain part of her psyche that reminded her she looked like shit and her nose was probably broken and she’d look like a rugby player or a boxer for the rest of her life and...
She closed her eyes, forced her breathing to slow.
Opened them and saw that the tableau had not changed: the big bearded guy standing with his hands partly raised, Jimmy with a gun leveled at his chest, the two eyeing each other warily.
“I think that belongs to the lady,” said Jimmy, nodding toward something in the guy’s left hand.
The photograph. Penny Rayner’s photograph of her daughter and late husband. Penny had described it as all she had of them – she couldn’t lose that!
Mel stepped forward and plucked the picture from the guy’s hand, then retreated to the solidity of her tree again. She couldn’t work out if breathing was so difficult because of the drying blood, any damage to her nose and throat, or the simple fact of coming down – albeit only marginally – from being so damned terrified.
She swallowed, didn’t know if she’d be able to speak, but nonetheless tried. “Right now...” Another swallow against the dry ache of her throat. “Right now, your mind is racing through possibilities,” she said to her attacker. “Imagining scenarios... Is that how it goes, your little spiel? You’re wondering how this is going to end.”
She was shaking, and fought to bring the tremors under control.
“Well it ends like this,” she said, finding strength for her voice at least. “You walk away. Go back to Glenn and tell him that if he’s got anything to do with my friend’s disappearance he’s going to pay. We’re going to bring him down. Tell him to be careful which boats he rocks.”
There was a moment when she didn’t know which way this was going to go, the bearded guy’s look switching between her and Jimmy as he weighed up his options. Then the man’s shoulders slumped, he shrugged as if all this was nothing, and he said, “Whatever.” He took a step back, then added, “But remember. I’m watching. Both of you.”
“That’s good,” said Jimmy. “I like an audience.”
And then it was over, and the bearded guy turned and walked away, as if he was merely out for a stroll.
Jimmy lowered the gun, then tucked it into his jacket.
He turned to Mel, and said, “You okay?” Then added, “I’m sorry. I wasn’t following you. I just wanted to be sure you were okay.”
Really? He was apologizing?
And then she’d taken one step, two, and almost fell into his arms.
§
His arms, his embrace, the feel of his body against hers. Such a strange mix of the nostalgically familiar – something that had always been and would always be – and rawness, newness.
They fit together in subtly different ways now. His body was harder, stronger, neither of them allowing themselves to relax into the embrace as they once would have done. His stubble was coarser on the crown of her head, and then against her cheek as he adjusted, arching his back so she could mold herself into that embrace.
But more than those tangible similarities and differences, it was the subtle things that threw her, the ways they moved and adjusted, the scents, even the sounds, that were both the same and different in indefinable ways.
Perhaps these things, the similarities and differences, were just an artifact of memory, and this was how they had always been.
She didn’t know how long they stayed like that, probably only a few seconds, and then he leaned back, holding her at arms’ length now.
She peered up at him, saw him studying her, wondered what this signaled and then almost immediately realized it was probably nothing more than concern for his suit and shirt – blood could be a bugger to get out.
Did he care about such things? Did they even occur to him? And those thoughts alone reminded her that she didn’t know this man, that there were dangers in assuming she did simply because she had once known the youngster who had become this man.
“Sorry. Sorry, I...” She pulled away, made a feeble effort to brush at the red stain she’d left on his shirt, then shrugged, smiled helplessly, apologized again.
“Breathe,” he said. His voice was strong, and surprisingly calming, given that everything else about him in these last few seconds had been anything but calming. “Breathe in and hold it, then, slowly, out.”
What had he detected in her? Why was he talking like this? Was the mad rush of her thoughts manifesting itself visibly, somehow? Was she that easy to read? Was...? Was...? Was...?
She breathed.
Held.
Breathed out.
Understood what he’d seen, the panic emerging now that the peak of crisis and danger had passed.
He reached for her, fingertips gently exploring the bridge of her nose and yet, despite the softness of his touch, sending bolts of pain stabbing into her head.
When she flinched he moved his hand to cup her jaw, allowed her to press cat-like against his palm, and then withdrew.
“Is there somewhere we can go?” he said, business-like now. “I need better light.”
“For...?”
“Your injuries. I need to clean you up, see if you need medical attention. I’ve done stitches in the field before, but if you need anyone to fix up your face you might want someone with a defter touch than me.” He was trying to make light of it, but that only made her wonder just how messed up her face was. And that ‘in the field’ – who was he?
“And... I need to be sure you’re safe.”
She hadn’t thought of that. Hadn’t considered the possibility that rather than seeing that bastard off, they’d merely delayed him and he might be back, even though he’d said as much.
“What was he going to do to me?” she said. “What if you hadn’t shown up when you did?”
Jimmy looked away, which was answer enough, perhaps. “He wanted to scare you.”
“He did that.”
“There’s scared, and then there’s scared,” he said, and something in his phrasing reminded her of her father’s warning that these people were far worse than she could imagine.
§
The house where she was staying wasn’t far, just across the park and a couple more streets away. The place was in darkness, the owner either out or already in bed. Mel unlocked the front door and turned to Jimmy.
“I’ll be okay from here,” she said. “I’m fine. Thank you.”
“No.”
For a moment she didn’t know how to respond. There was no room for negotiation in that response. She just stared, until he went on.
“Sorry, but no. I need to at least be sure your room is secure. And someone needs to have a look at that.” He nodded at her, and she wondered again how bad her broken face must look.
She bit back on her response, her default rejection of help. She knew he cared, and she shouldn’t turn that away.
She led him up the stairs, unlocked the bedroom door, and stood back to let him through.
Inside, pushing the door shut, she found all of a sudden she couldn’t meet his look.
Perhaps sensing her discomfort, he stepped aside, gestured at the bed, all business- like, and said, “If you could just sit down here under the light?”
He went through to the bathroom, came back moments later with a damp cloth, a box of tissues.
She sat looking up at him as he leaned over her, gently tilting her face back and to one side to catch the light.
“So tell me,” he said, as he scrutinized her damaged features, “did you black out at all when you hit your head back there?”
She thought hard, even though all she wanted to do was forget. “I don’t know,” she told him. “I don’t think so. I felt like I was going to, but I don’t think I actually did.”
“Do you feel sick? Dizzy? Any blurred vision, or double vision?”
She shook her head, and winced immediately.
“What hurts?”
She reached up to touch her neck. “My neck. My nose and chin. My pride.”
He moved his hand down, traced fingertips over her neck where her assailant had squeezed.
She flinched at his touch, said, “Sorry.”
He said nothing. Reached for the damp cloth and pressed it gently just below her nose, where blood had dried.
“You’re bruised,” he said. “Your neck. Your chin and nose. There’s swelling, but it’ll go down. I don’t think you’ve broken anything. You were lucky.”
The pressure of the cloth was strangely soothing, warm against her sore skin. Even when he moved up to clean the blood from her nose, she was aware of the dull ache, but his ministrations felt good, comforting.
“Any damage inside your mouth? Any other pains when you move?”
She remembered not to shake her head this time, and said, “No, nothing else. I landed hard, jarred a few bones, is all.”
“Adrenaline’s a great painkiller. It’s going to hurt a lot worse before it starts to feel better.”
“You always did know how to reassure a girl.” She looked away, immediately, not sure she was ready to joke about their past.
He straightened, stepped back, and she realized she hadn’t wanted him to stop. Whatever else it meant, his touch was reassuring, and she wasn’t quite ready to let it go.
“That’s looking a little better,” he said. “I’ll get you a drink of water. You should rehydrate. Have you got any painkillers anywhere? You should double up on paracetamol and ibuprofen for a couple of days.”
She wondered again about this new Jimmy Lazenby, a man at ease with injury. At ease with a gun, for god’s sake!
When she’d sat with him in that fast food place his first awkward question had been to ask how her life had been. Now she wondered where exactly his had taken him. What he had seen and done to reach this point.
One of the good guys. That was what he’d claimed.
He came back from the bathroom again with a glass of water. For a moment she thought he was going to sit with her after he’d handed it over, but instead he moved away, busying himself with checking the door, the catches on the windows.
Peering outside into the deepening gloom, he said, “So why now? Why go after you now? Can you think of any reason? Anything you said or did at the club that might have set the alarm bells off?”
She kicked her boots off and moved up the bed so she could sit with her back against the headboard, her knees drawn up so she could hug her legs to her chest. “No,” she told him. “Not really. Glenn got pissy, though. He dropped the Mr Nice Guy act.”
“He can do Mr Nice Guy?”
She could tell he was trying to make a joke, but it didn’t work.
“I asked around among the dancers,” she said. “He didn’t like that. I showed them Harriet’s picture.”
“And...?” He turned, stood with his arms folded, leaning back against the wall by the window.
“Nothing.”
“But it was enough to stir things up,” he said, his voice low, as if thinking aloud. “What else have you found out?”
She looked at him more closely now. The way he studied her, the relentless digging of his questions. Was he here to make sure she was okay, or was this some kind of interrogation?
For a moment she debated how much to tell him, then caught herself in a spiral, her mind rushing round, not knowing what was right or wrong.
She shook her head, despite the pain. Was he really just here so he could pump her for information? “I don’t know what to tell you,” she said. “Who to trust.”
She tried to read him then, to see if that last comment had made any impression, but his face was a blank.
“Tell me everything,” he said. “You’ve nothing to gain by keeping secrets. Right now, if your friend is in any kind of trouble I might just be her best hope.”
That good guy bullshit again. Knight in shining armor. Just who was he trying to impress?
But he was right.
She had nothing to gain by hiding what little she knew.
She shrugged. “Not much,” she said. “I’ve just been asking around. I know Harriet met Glenn a couple of weeks ago – I was with her, and there was something... I don’t know... A spark? A connection? She asked about him afterward. And when I tracked Glenn down in London and asked him about it he was evasive. That’s all I had to go on. Nobody else had any suggestions, so I came up here. And...”
“What?”
“It’s stupid. It’s nothing.” Jimmy just stood there, watching, waiting. “He’s started calling me ‘Mels’. Harriet’s the only person who ever calls me that.”
“But you were with her when she met Glenn. Surely she called you Mels then?”
“I know.”
“But you don’t think she did.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. And then tonight, that guy... He told me I was wasting my time looking for Harriet Rayner here, and I should look elsewhere. But I’ve only called her ‘Harriet’. I haven’t used her surname when I’ve been asking about her.”
“Are you sure?”
“No! That’s what’s so frustrating. Is my mind playing games? I don’t know.” She pressed her face against a forearm where it rested across her knees, despite the pain.
When she finally looked up, he was watching her, still. “You should soak that,” she said. “When you get back to wherever you’re staying.” The front of his white shirt was smeared a vivid crimson.
He shrugged, said, “Cheap shirt. I have plenty more.”
It didn’t look like a cheap shirt.
She nodded at the window, and said, “How secure is it?”
He shook his head. “Standard locks, the windows are fitted well. The door lock is okay for an internal guesthouse door. It’d take me about thirty seconds to break in. Probably long enough for you to call the police, if you hear something and realize what’s happening.”
“That’s not reassuring.”
“It’s normal.”
She sensed a lull, a feeling of business having just about been wound up. All of a sudden, she didn’t care that he had been drilling her for information, didn’t care why he was here, just that he was.
“Stay a bit?”