Angel of Death (32 page)

A short distance up ahead the lane split into a Y shape. ‘Cut the lights,’ said Angel.

Mark did so, plunging them into moonlit darkness. ‘Which way?’

Angel pointed to a gap in the hedge. ‘Go through there.’ Her breath whistled as the Audi juddered along a rutted farm-track. ‘Stop and turn off the engine,’ she said, when the lane was hidden from view by a grassy hollow.

They sat in silence, ears straining for the sound of approaching engine noise. A minute passed. Two minutes. Nothing except for the slight rasp of Angel’s breathing disturbed the silence. Mark blew out his cheeks. ‘I think we’ve lost him. What now?’

‘How the fuck should I know?’ Angel speared a glance at him, suddenly resentful of his need for her help.

Mark blinked, taken aback.

Guilt tugged at Angel. The last thing Mark deserved was her anger. ‘I’m sorry,’ she sighed. ‘It’s just I haven’t got a clue what now. I never expected to be sitting here with a hitman on my arse.’

‘Is that what he is, a hitman? I thought maybe he really was a po…’ Mark’s voice wobbled and trailed away. He swayed forward as a wave of faintness washed over him.

Angel caught him, her hand slipping on the blood streaming from his shoulder. ‘We need to sort your bandages out.’ She pulled the bandages back up, but it was too dark to see what needed to be done to keep them held in place. ‘I’m going to switch the light on.’

‘What if he sees us?’

‘We’ll just have to risk it. Better that than you bleeding to death.’

Angel snapped on the interior light. She cut two strips off Mark’s gown. He groaned as she used them to tie the bandages tightly over the jagged gash. ‘Thanks,’ he said hoarsely, when she was done. ‘I owe you my life.’

‘You don’t owe me a fucking thing.’ The sharpness was back in Angel’s voice. She switched the light off, more because she couldn’t bear to see the gratitude in Mark’s eyes than because she feared discovery.

A moment passed, then Mark said tentatively, ‘Do you mind if I ask you a question about Stephen Baxley?’

Angel made no reply, but the tension in her silence was so palpable that Mark’s voice snagged in his throat. His need for answers quickly overwhelmed his nervousness. ‘How did you meet him?’

Angel remained silent for so long, he thought she wasn’t going to answer. Then in a low, intense voice, almost as if she didn’t want Mark to hear but felt compelled to speak, she said, ‘Do you know the Devonshire Green skate-park?’

‘Yes.’

‘I used to hang out there after school. There was this guy. He must have been about thirty-five or forty, and he always wore a grey flasher’s mac.’

Mark frowned. He had a vague recollection of his so-called father owning just such a coat.

‘Not that he ever flashed anyone, or anything like that,’ continued Angel. ‘He just used to sit watching the kids on their skateboards.’

Mark exhaled with revulsion. ‘Jesus, what a creep.’

‘Yeah, he was one creepy fuck. If I saw him now, I’d spot him for what he was in a second. But back then all I saw was a lonely bloke with nothing better to do than sit on a bench. A harmless saddo.’

‘How did you get talking to him?’

Angel was silent for another long moment. Then she began quickly, as though watching her memories flash by on a screen. ‘I’d had a run-in with my dad. He’d rolled in from the pub after work with a skinful inside him, same as always. I knew as soon as I saw his bastard eyes that things were going to turn to shit fast. He used to get this look in them, like the sight of Mum and me made him want to puke. He hadn’t been in the house for more than a minute when he found some excuse to go off on Mum. I got between them, so he belted me too. I’ve still got a scar on my chin where his wedding-ring cut me. I ran out of the house. I didn’t stop running until I got to Devonshire Green. I can’t remember if I was crying. I must have looked sorry for myself because your dad—’

‘He wasn’t my real dad,’ broke in Mark, his voice laced with loathing.

‘Sorry. Stephen asked if I was OK. I told him to piss off, but he didn’t leave. He offered me a hankie for my chin.’ Angel’s voice became faraway as she burrowed deeper into the soil of her memory. ‘He didn’t ask how I’d got cut. He just looked at me, waiting for me to speak. And after a while I did. I don’t know why. Maybe it was because of his eyes. I remember thinking he had nice eyes. And once I started talking I couldn’t stop. Things I’d never meant to say came out. I told him how my dad was always beating the crap out of me. And how I hated him so badly I wanted to kill him. I’d never talked to anyone about that stuff before. My mum made me promise not to. It felt good to get it all out. He said he understood how I felt because his dad used to beat him up. He told me he ran away from home when he was fifteen and never went back.’

‘That was a lie. He lived with his parents until his early twenties. He was just trying to gain your trust, I suppose.’

‘Well it worked. Over the next few days I got into the habit of stopping by his bench for a chat. He had this way of listening that was different to any other adults I knew. He made me feel…’ Angel searched for the right word, ‘special.’

‘That’s funny. He made me feel the exact opposite,’ Mark observed in a wry tone.

‘He was very good at making people feel what he wanted them to feel. I found that out later on.’ Angel heaved a breath. ‘So anyway, I told him how I wanted to run away but didn’t know where to go. And I told him how sometimes I thought about killing myself because it seemed like there was no other way out. That’s when he offered to help me. He said a friend of his had an empty flat I could use. I was too naive to think he might want something in return.’ Another silence. Another heavy sigh. ‘We arranged to meet up in a few days. When the day came – I think it was a Thursday – I skipped school, returned home after my parents had gone to work and packed a bag. Then I went to Devonshire Green. Stephen was waiting in his car. He was really nervous. He made me lie flat on the back seat. Then he drove to The Minx and left me in the car while he got the keys to the flat.’

‘The Minx? What’s that?’

‘A strip-club on South Lane. His friend owned the place.’

‘What was his friend’s name?’

‘I don’t know. But I’d like to find out.’

Mark’s forehead wrinkled. The Stephen Baxley he knew mixed with businessmen, financiers and politicians, not strip-club owners. ‘Maybe it was someone he knew from back when he lived in Park Hill.’

‘Stephen lived in Park Hill?’ Angel said, surprised.

‘He grew up there.’

‘You wouldn’t have known it from the way he spoke.’

‘Yeah, well, he made a big effort to lose his accent. The only time it ever came out was when he got angry. Do you reckon this friend of his could be one of the men from the basement?’

Angel thought about the Chief Bastard. She thought about his smooth, respectable face, his polished, cut-glass accent. Not exactly the character traits you associated with a strip-club owner from Park Hill. Of course, the Chief Bastard could have dropped his accent too. A doubtful frown shadowed her face. She’d worked in numerous strip-clubs. Their owners had all been hard-bitten, rough-talking men. In their line of business, such pretensions would be seen as a weakness, not an advantage. ‘It’s possible, I guess.’

‘You don’t seem convinced.’

‘Whoever they are, they’ve got some seriously shady connections in the north-east.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Because it was a friend of Stephen’s friend who took me to Newcastle.’

‘Why were you taken to Newcastle?’

Angel rubbed her forehead. Mark’s questions were starting to make her head reel. ‘Keep your gob shut a minute and I’ll tell you. The flat was a grotty little place, but I didn’t care. For the first time in my life I didn’t have to be afraid of my dad. It’s hard to describe how that made me feel. It was… it was like I could suddenly breathe.’ As if to emphasise the point, she inhaled deeply. Her breath seemed to snag on something, and she coughed for a moment before continuing. ‘Stephen and I talked for hours. I don’t remember what about. I do remember that he suddenly kissed me. Then we fucked.’

‘He forced himself on you.’

‘He didn’t have to. I wanted to repay him for his kindness. He didn’t want money, so I gave him the only other thing I had to offer.’ A snarl came into Angel’s voice. ‘What I should’ve done was stick a knife in the dirty bastard.’ She paused to swallow her anger before resuming. ‘After that first night, Stephen came to see me every few days. He’d bring me magazines and clothes, and he cooked for me. We went on like that for weeks, maybe even months. I lost track of time. I never left the flat. The outside world seemed to barely exist any more. Then one day he said he had some friends who wanted to meet me. He took me to a big house out in the country. I’d never been in a place like that before. I remember thinking to myself that whoever lived there must be really important.’ A contemptuous hiss sliced through the darkness. ‘What a dumb little bitch I was.’

‘Whose house was it?’

‘It belonged to Herbert and Marisa Winstanley. Do you know them?’

‘No.’

‘Well they know you. It was in their basement that you were—’ Angel broke off. She couldn’t bear to think of what had happened to Mark there, let alone say it.

‘Herbert and Marisa.’ Mark repeated their names slowly, as if trying to prod his memory. ‘What did they do to you?’

‘One of them, I don’t remember which, gave me some wine. It must have been spiked because I blacked out. When I woke up, I was groggy and my arms were being held down by Marisa. Herbert was raping me.’

‘Jesus,’ Mark breathed, swallowing hard.

‘When they were done, Stephen took me back to the flat. I lay on the bed, not thinking, just numb. He was in tears. Can you believe that? After what’d happened to me, he was the one crying.’

Mark could hardly believe that. He couldn’t remember ever seeing Stephen shed a single tear.

‘He kept saying how much he loved me,’ Angel continued. ‘How he’d do anything for me. And do you know what the craziest thing of all is? I believed him. Why did I believe him?’ She shook her head, her eyes searching the darkness as if she might find an answer there. ‘A few weeks went by before Stephen said he had another friend who wanted to meet me. This time I knew what that meant. I was upset, I said I didn’t want to do it. But he pleaded and begged. Said he needed me to help him, like he’d helped me. Said if I truly loved him, I’d do this for him. He kept at it until I eventually agreed to do it. What else could I say? If I’d refused, he might have chucked me out and I’d have been forced to return home. I’d rather have fucked any number of his friends than risk that happening. So I went back to the Winstanleys’ house. A different bloke was there. He didn’t tell me his name. He just fucked me and fucked off. And that’s how it went from then on. Every few weeks Stephen would take me to the Winstanleys’ place, and afterwards he would feed me his lines about how sorry he was and how much he loved me.’

‘He was prostituting you,’ Mark said, with sudden realisation. ‘How could you bear it?’

‘At first I couldn’t. But it wasn’t so bad after a while. There was always plenty of booze and drugs around. A bottle of wine and a snort of ketamine, and you don’t feel much of anything.’

‘Didn’t you ever think about escaping?’

Angel expelled a sharp breath. ‘Haven’t you listened to a fucking word I’ve said? Where would I have escaped to?’

‘You could have gone to the police.’

‘They’d have returned me to my parents.’

‘Not if you told them why you ran away in the first place.’

‘Maybe, maybe not. You can’t trust coppers to always do what’s right. And even if they had done, I’d have ended up in a home or some other place under someone else’s control. At least with Stephen I had some control over my life.’

‘No you didn’t.’

Mark was right, Angel knew. Stephen had controlled every aspect of her life – what she read, what she ate, who she fucked. The hold he’d had over her had been deeper and more deadly even than her addiction to heroin – he’d made her believe he loved her, and she’d been convinced she loved him too. It wasn’t love they’d felt for each other though. It was something else, something ugly and deformed, born of his perversion and her desperation. But by the time she’d realised that, it was already too late. Her head dropped as though it was too heavy to hold up. She didn’t have the energy or inclination to try and explain to Mark how she’d felt. Besides, the rest of the story was waiting to be told. It gnawed at her mind like a malignant tumour that was too deep to be removed.

‘On the day
it
happened, Stephen turned up at the flat in a right state.’ Angel spoke in a trembling monotone. ‘He was a nervous wreck. Said he had something he needed me to do for him, something our whole future could ride on. He took me to the Winstanley place. Two men I’d never met before were there. One was Doctor Henry Reeve. I don’t know the name of the other one. I call him the Chief Bastard.’

‘What did he look like?’

‘He’s about your height, but much more well built. And he’s bald with tufts of brown hair sticking out above his ears. And he’s got these nasty, pissy little brown eyes.’

‘What about his teeth?’

Angel was silent a moment, searching her memory. ‘I don’t remember his teeth. I do remember his breath. It stank of cigars and booze and something else, something rotten. Made me want to puke. He was nervous too. All of them were. I overheard him more than once saying to the psychiatrist, ‘Are you certain he won’t remember anything?’’

‘That’s got to be him,’ exclaimed Mark. ‘The man I dreamt about. I heard him say the exact same thing.’

‘I assumed what they were talking about had nothing to do with me. I just thought I was there to screw them both. So I got to work on making sure I was too out of it to remember much myself. Next thing I knew, I was in the basement. There was a video camera and all sorts of sex toys down there. And there was a young boy. At first I thought he was asleep, but when I looked closer I saw that he was even more out of it than me. I was horrified. I tried to leave, but they wouldn’t let me. The Chief Bastard kept hitting me. He told me what he wanted me to do to you. It was sick. Beyond sick.’ Angel’s breath came in a shuddering groan. She twisted towards Mark with an imploring note in her voice. ‘I didn’t want to do it. Oh Christ, I didn’t! But you’ve got to understand. Stephen was a manipulative pervert. But the Chief Bastard, he was something else. When I looked into his eyes I just knew he’d kill me if I didn’t obey him. And he’d have enjoyed doing it too. So I… I…’ Her words gave way to a strangled sob.