Courting Trouble (35 page)

‘I don’t know what to do,’ I said, in a voice more appropriate to a six-year-old.

‘What’s going on?’

This was a dizzying new sensation. I’d never had a daddy to turn to before – a rock and a soft landing simultaneously. It felt disorientating and strange, but there was also a sense of relief in being able to blurt out the whole sordid scenario. When I stopped talking, Danny pounded his fist on the wooden door so hard that the sound echoed in my head like an explosion. What happened next is hard to describe. My father went through some kind of Incredible Hulk transmogrification. He bulked up. Veins stood out on his neck. He did everything but turn green. When I then added that Nathaniel had threatened to groom my daughter, Danny’s face contorted into a look of volcanic rage.

‘Two questions. Where is the fucker? And how do you want me to kill him?’ He was sparking with electric current. I could feel the heat coming off him.

‘No!’ I recoiled. ‘I just want that humiliating footage destroyed. And Portia protected. And him punished. By the law . . .’ I started pacing his living room now, wringing my hands. ‘But he says if I contact the police the naked footage of me will be posted online.’

‘I can make this go away, Tilly. There’s only about nine people in Britain who can make a man disappear . . . Maybe three more that we don’t know about, behind enemy lines in Afghanistan . . .’

‘Don’t you know me at all? When it comes to walking on the wild side, I prefer to tiptoe! The most dangerous thing I’ve ever done is to park in a bus lane! The odd overdue library book is my greatest crime.’

‘So what? You think God’s going to take some time off the Middle East to stagger over to the window and sort this out for you? It’s up to you to change the bloody narrative.’

‘If
I
were writing this narrative, Danny, Nathaniel would die a slow, grisly death, preferably with his nuts pegged out over an ants’ nest . . . But I don’t believe in vigilante vengeance. Who am I? A mafia don? Don friggin’ Corleone? Should I just go put a horse’s head in his bed?’

‘You have the killer instinct of a chihuahua, do you know that? You have to toughen up, kid.’

‘It’s not about toughening up. You don’t understand, Danny. I respect the law, not the law of the jungle. A group of maniacs up north just murdered a paediatrician, thinking the word meant paedophile.’ I thought back to the rough justice meted out to Anne Boleyn, Joan of Arc and the Salem ‘witches’. ‘Respect for the law is the centre of my moral compass. It’s the foundation of my love of the law. It’s the rule I live by—’

‘Yeah, well, that worked out so well for Chantelle, didn’t it? Thank God her granny shot those bastard rapists’ balls off. At least it’s a victory of sorts. Now it’s
your
daughter under threat . . . And
your
genitals about to be flashed to the nation on YouTube. So what the hell are you going to do about it?’

‘I don’t know!’ In the list of Ten Things to Do before You Die, not date a psychopath probably came top.

I was staring, pole-axed, at the front door, when it suddenly whooshed open. A beehived Roxy came cantering into view like a hyperactive peroxide haystack, capsicum spray at the ready.

‘What the hell’s going on?’ she demanded, legs planted, weapon extended. ‘I told you never to come near us again!’ she shouted, and squeezed the trigger.

A split second later, Danny hit the floor, moaning. The caustic capsicum particles were burning his eyes and skin, blistering his face and making every mucous membrane feel as though it was being injected by boiling-hot knitting needles.

‘What the fuck!’ he wailed.

‘Mum! He’s innocent . . . You see? You see?’ I said, running to wet some tea towels. ‘This is what happens when you take the law into your own hands. Mistakes are made! Oh God. Are you okay? How bad is it? What does it feel like?’ I asked Danny, who was writhing around on the floor.

‘Like I’m inhaling cut glass dipped in acid.’

I laid the cold towels on Danny’s face, then disarmed my mother and sat her down.

As I detailed the terrifying events of the evening, Roxy’s face moved into a rictus of incredulity. My fearless mother, who’s prone to elation and never exhausts her wholehearted commitment to life, wilted visibly in her chair.

‘Clearly, the man must die,’ Danny growled. ‘I’d riddle him with bullets right now if some psycho hadn’t bloody well blinded me!’ He squinted up at us through the red slits of his eyes. ‘Does that Nathaniel asshole know what I look like?’

‘Well, yes. He describes you to me as a washed-up hasbeen.’

Something in Danny shifted and tightened and squared off, making him into a compact knot. ‘Washed up?’ he snarled, struggling to his feet.

‘Well, the man has a point, Danny. Look at you. You couldn’t even disarm a woman with a capsicum spray,’ Roxy stated baldly.

‘I am not bloody washed up!’ Danny fumed, just as he fell head first over the coffee table, due to capsicum-induced blindness. ‘Christ Almighty!’

‘I should go and kill Nathaniel,’ Roxy declared. ‘I smoke, I drink, I sugar my tea . . . I’m already a prime candidate for sudden death. If something happens to
me
, it doesn’t matter.’ Roxy lifted up her lime-green leopardskin T-shirt and flashed her tattoo.

Danny blinked at her through inflamed orbs. ‘Why the hell do you have “Do Not Resuscitate” tattooed across your chest?’

Roxy then showed him her flipside of ‘PTO’. ‘If anything happens, do
not
revive me!’

Danny rubbed his stinging eyes to take a better look. ‘No friggin’ way will I agree to that. I’ve only just found you again. I’ll be buggered if I’m going to lose you. You’ll be comatose, so you won’t have any say.’

‘It’s not your choice! You’ll keep me alive over my dead body . . . so to speak.’

‘Would you both stop it! We are not killing or reviving anyone . . . Nor are we committing murder. I just don’t have what it takes to be a criminal mastermind. I don’t even know what size nylon stocking fits my head.’

‘Well, what do you propose we do, Miss Abide-by-the-Rules? Write a letter of complaint to his Oxbridge alumni?’ Danny mocked.

‘Come on, Tilly. You’re making Mahatma Gandhi look aggressive.’

Both my parents stood facing me.

‘I don’t
know
what to do! If we tell the police and Nathaniel is arrested, one of his accomplices will put that horrific footage of me up online . . . My spread-eagled, naked body will end up on a hundred thousand websites overnight . . . And then there’s Portia . . .’ My heart was pounding in my chest louder than a drum soloist at Glastonbury. ‘He could be holding her somewhere, for all I know!’

‘Let’s keep calm. It’s only five o’clock. She’s probably sneaked out to go shopping or to a friend’s place. We
have
been a bit hard on her lately, Tilly.’

‘But the threats he made about her . . .’ My blood curdled. ‘It’s too terrifying . . . But I can’t just let you two loose on him. I mean, what kind of person does that make me? A criminal, that’s who. Someone no better than he is—’

‘It makes you a mother, Tilly,’ Roxy said softly.

‘If you go to the police, he’ll post your sex DVD online and you’ll be the laughing stock of the Bar. Even if by some miracle you can prove that he spiked your drink, raped and blackmailed you, he’ll just say you’re framing him out of revenge because he ended your love affair – meaning, the fucker will get away with it,’ Danny boiled. ‘You just lost a rape trial where the men were guilty as sin. Do you really want to go through that ordeal yourself?’

‘And just think how many other poor women the dirtbag has blackmailed in this disgusting way. Women he’s now pimping to his drug clientele on a regular basis.’

‘Let me fix this for you, Tilly,’ Danny reiterated. ‘I’ve just got to persuade the arsewipe to tell us where he’s stashed the copies of the DVDs, and destroy them. A safety-deposit box, you think?’

I nodded.

‘I promise not to kill him . . . even though I bloody well want to. I’ll just rough him up a little. He’s a pretty boy, so no doubt his body is his friggin’ temple . . .’

‘At which he is the most fanatical worshipper,’ I agreed bitterly.

‘If the bloke’s most recent major relationship is with his own mirror, then he won’t want to be disfigured.’ Danny cracked his knuckles menacingly.

‘The thing is,’ I said, after a beat, ‘abduction requires a cool head, a hard heart and, if he escapes and is armed,
Olympic sprinting
. . . God, oh God! I need to clear my head. Let me just find Portia, and then I’ll think it through overnight,’ I prevaricated.

‘Never go to bed angry, Tilly – stay up and plot your revenge,’ Roxy said. ‘That’s my philosophy.’

‘Mine, too,’ Danny agreed. ‘We also need to get some insurance so that the toffee-nosed scumbag never attempts this stunt again. Which means getting some incriminating footage of
him
to post online.’

Roxy gave Danny an approving nod. ‘Good thinking . . . Let’s put a stop to this monster, in the name of all the other women he and his henchmen have raped, blackmailed, groomed, prostituted and pimped.’

‘Let’s do it for Chantelle,’ Danny added.

‘Let’s do it for Phyllis,’ Roxy agreed.

‘Let’s do it for Portia,’ they said in unison.

‘Portia’s most probably sulking at a friend’s place – but she’s still missing. And he may know where she is,’ Roxy urged.

‘What do you say, Matilda?’ added Danny.

‘Tilly?’ Roxy pleaded.

A curious numbness washed over me, the same numbness a woman might feel seconds after she’s pulled her pushchair out of the way of a speeding car. I felt hot and cold all over. The nausea made me stagger a little. But, though I was unsteady on my feet, my brain was suddenly, miraculously clear. Anger welled up in me – an anger bitter enough to taste. Something altered in the air – and I knew what had to be done. My reflection in the mirror above Danny’s couch was harshly alien. The knowledge that I was going to betray my beliefs and take revenge slid into me cleanly, like the sharp edge of a knife.

‘Do it,’ I said to my father.

‘Go home, both of you. I’ll call you when the deed is done.’

I had practically gnawed my nails down to my elbows, worn a path in the living-room shag-pile and dialled my finger to the bone desperately calling my darling daughter when my phone finally rang a few hours later.

‘I was wondering if I could park something in your garage for the night.’

‘Something?’

‘Yeah . . . A lying, rotten, drug-dealing rapist.’

That was when I realized that a truly loving dad doesn’t buy you a smiley card after a bad day. When you find yourself in trouble, a truly loving dad will kidnap the psychopath who’s ruined your life, string him up by the nipples and await your instruction on his imminent destruction.

‘What about Portia?’ I gasped. ‘Does he know anything?’

‘I’m about to find out.’

‘What happened? Where are you?’

‘I tracked the weasel down. He wasn’t all that pleased to see me.’

‘How did he react?’

‘Let’s just say that there were harsh words and a little gunplay. We’re now in a shack on Roxy’s allotment.’

The vegetable allotment in Kentish Town is a patchwork quilt of gardens on disused factory land stuck in legal limbo land with developers. As we turned the car into the deserted dirt cul-de-sac, the headlights cut twin funnels of light in the rain, illuminating a ramshackle little lean-to. Roxy silenced the engine. The surrounding woodland backing on to a disused railway line was pitch black except for the sliver of light seeping out from beneath the door of Roxy’s gardening shack. The wild, overgrown grass was full of the whisper and scurry of small lives. We walked quietly to the shack and eased open the door. An aureole of light from a naked, bare bulb in a broken hurricane lamp illuminated Nathaniel, bound and clad only in boxer shorts, on a chair. My father, wearing some kind of camouflage outfit that looked as though it dated back to the Boer War, was pointing a gun at his chest.

‘I know it’s rude to point, Nathaniel. Please forgive me . . . but I didn’t have the benefit of your posh upbringing.’

‘Fuck off, you deranged lunatic!’

‘Although it’s not a strict rule of etiquette
not
to point a loaded gun at someone. A strict etiquette rule is never, ever to point an
unloaded
gun at anyone, don’t you reckon, Roxy?’

‘Ab-so-bloody-lutely.’

Tongue-tied with fury, it took me a moment to find my vocal cords. ‘Where is my daughter?’

‘Untie me, you unhinged maniac. Matilda, tell him to untie me right now, or you know what will happen. That Academy Award-winning footage of you will be up on every legal website . . .’

Danny shoved the gun into Nathaniel’s mouth. ‘Don’t talk with your mouth full, matey. You know it’s bad manners. Did they teach you nothing at your uppity boarding school?’

‘What’s bad manners, actually, is that sartorial ensemble,’ Roxy reprimanded Danny in a sotto voce aside. ‘What the hell are you wearing?’

‘Is that any way to speak to an international crime fighter?’ Danny replied quietly. ‘So, girls,’ he now boomed, ‘how would you like me to . . . persuade posh boy here to tell us where he’s stashed my darlin’ granddaughter and the rape DVDs of you and his other victims.’ When Nathaniel said nothing, he continued, ‘. . . What about we play a little bondage charades? . . . That’s where one person is tied up and the others guess what diabolical thing they’ll do to him.’

‘I still have my capsicum spray. What about if we just give him a very hot asshole,’ Roxy suggested.

‘Great idea!’

I looked from my mother to my father with a mix of horror and amazement. They were in perfect, diabolical harmony, as though they’d practised for the part. As Portia would say, ‘
This
is my gene stock?’

‘Just find out if he knows where Portia is.’ My nerves were in a blender turned to fine chop. I checked my phone for the millionth time. It was only 8 p.m. but, with every minute, my panic was mounting.

‘Of course, you could avoid all this unpleasantness if you’d just tell us where Portia is,’ Roxy cajoled.