Chapter 25
Georgia
The Red Dragon Hotel near the Tower Bridge is new and upmarket, with a lift installed on the outside of the renovated Victorian building.
Though it’s only four stories high, the brickwork reeks of history.
Once upon a time, spices, rum, ivory, and tea were stored here and in the surrounding warehouses.
As we descend in the lift, the blue sky seen through the outer glass wall is impressively pretty.
That. Is. New. I remembered something. The weather. It’s small but also the first hint that coming here might help us solve the puzzle.
Rafe and Lazlo seem oblivious to my dark reminiscing.
Since the Red Dragon is near the Tower Bridge, we’ve left the car in the underground garage.
“Twelve minutes to walk to Elegante according to Google.” Rafe shows us the map on his phone. “We’ll go there after lunch and retrace the route you took to get to where the boat was moored.”
“Sounds good. You okay, Georgia?”
“Sure.” I smile. Ever since I gave them a bit more of my family sob-story, they’ve both been treating me like I’m made of glass. I guess he didn’t quite register the details, the first time we met.
We’ve already bought new clothes for me.
Rafe and Lazlo don’t want anything but I was running low on clean underwear, as well as clothes I can walk around in.
In an effort to avoid more devices being used on me, I bought two pairs of formfitting blue jeans and some T-shirts, as well as a lined jacket and a couple of sweet little dresses.
I brush at the front of the jeans. They’re a nice pale blue and buttery soft, but I’m sorry I didn’t put on the white dress. I was tempted. It’s such a lovely day.
St Katherine’s Dock, here we come, the place where it all began.
“We’re here,” Rafe says.
The lift doors open. The operation of the lift was so smooth the halt was seamless underfoot.
Our walk takes us through clean alleyways lined with red brick and doorways that must lead to apartments or small businesses.
Paving stones arranged in circles decorate shady courtyards beneath the trees beside the Thames.
Footbridges crisscross the marina, cutting the docks into small areas of water and what appears to be islands made of buildings.
On the smooth water, a few ducks and a lone black swan are cruising about.
Boats and colorful houseboats, barges and small yachts, nestle calmly at their moorings.
It looks so damn perfect and safe. There are dozens of shops, cafes, pubs, and restaurants, and nearly everyone we pass is dressed casually in shorts or jeans, and shirt.
Now, it’s daylight and cheerful. Pigeons toddle in and peck at the ground.
But at night the nightclubs rule.
At night most are drunk or taking something, and ready to party, and some are dangerous, as I learned to my dismay.
Very dangerous. That night-time route was undertaken while I was high and following others who knew the way to the yacht.
It was a yacht, wasn’t it? I can’t recall if the boat type was said, and my memory has been scorched and fiddled with by various drugs, trauma, and torture.
As I pad over the solid pavers, I’m not focusing much on where we go, as if by doing so I can see through time to that dark night. If I try hard enough, maybe I can warn myself? What if I could inject myself into that single crucial hour with my present knowledge intact?
What if. It’s a dizzying idea.
I’d tell myself: Don’t fucking go. If you follow these people, these white flashes of cloth under the glow of the streetlights, these laughing men and women with the dancing feet, the laughter, the squeals as someone is felt up…
If I follow them, I might not come back again. I could be lost on a sinking boat, where bubbles escape to stream upward past the lifeless, slow-twirling bodies at the mercy of the undersea currents. And the hull forges down, down into the cold, ocean depths.
That’s a scene from the worst kind of horror.
I inhale. I’m not there. With a shudder I find my way back to this sunny, London afternoon.
My macabre thoughts are banished as we arrive at The Dickens Inn.
We find a table in a small, gardenlike area outside this popular pub, and order a burger for Lazlo, plus fish and chips, wings, and scampi for everyone. I adjust my plate and pick up my fork, then have to swap hands when my bad finger twinges. The joint aches.
The bloody and painful snick-snack of the secateurs as they cut through my finger.
For a second, the pain is vivid and the echoes surface in my mind and pluck at my nerve endings.
I bend that finger. Below my hand is the gray-painted trestle table. And I know people around us are eating but that night is a part of me and it takes some doing to scatter the remains of it. I was there. I followed them.
I almost went down with them and drowned.
Instead I have this beautiful day and my memories.
And this finger that was mutilated, brutally, by the evil assholes who shall remain nameless.
“Hey,” Rafe grabs my hand, kisses the back. “Though we’re doing this, you’re not to meditate on the bad stuff. Okay? Promise me.”
“I promise.”
“Really?”
“I’ll try but you know it’s not that simple.”
“Yeah, I guess I do. That therapist for you, once we’re done.”
I bring his big warm hand to my mouth and kiss his curled fingers. “I’m grateful you both care.”
“He should.” Lazlo looms in from behind and seats himself as the waiter turns up and delivers our food. “Caring is normal. We’re not monsters are we?”
Rafael releases my hand and starts forking food onto his plate. “Sometimes we are. When she wants us to be.”
“Ahh. Such is romance.”
“You two? Romantics?” I scoff at that.
Truly, I am beginning to think they do have a few romantic bones in their bodies—weird though it seems to come to that conclusion.
“You’re not eating,” Lazlo observes. “Eat something or I will start feeding you like a baby.” He chomps into his burger.
“I will.” I fork over some salt and pepper squid. “So, we’re going to recreate the route we took that night. Though I’m not sure where we walked, I hope it will come back to me.”
“Yes. We had decided on this,” Rafe pokes a chip toward my mouth. “Open.” One end of his mouth twists and I’ll bet he was thinking of putting something else in my mouth. Will they ever grow tired of sex? I guess? Maybe. After a hundred years.
I swallow it and he does it again.
“Good little baby, ais-in’t she?” The burger mangles Lazlo’s words.
I can’t help smiling as I chew and swallow again. Then I hold up the fork. “I’m eating. Calm thyselves.”
“That sounds like a sermon.” He waves his burger as punctuation. “Me? Calm?”
Lazlo was what I would call calm, until he inserted himself into this weird relationship and made this a threesome. He was a little silly but mostly serious. Now, it’s as if someone let him off the leash after years of boringness. I pick up a chip and aim it at him. “Your turn. Open.”
He grabs my hand and munches the chip but also sucks on my finger.
Damn. How to turn me on in the middle of a restaurant.
We find the neon-styled entrance of the Elegante 1 nightclub.
Workmen are there on trestles doing something to the sign, so it’s turned on in daylight.
The neon pink and red gives me more food for thought but nothing of note sticks up its hand for attention.
We begin backtracking, working out which way to turn at forks in the pathways.
The docks are like a giant, geometric maze due to the footbridges and the building we have to circumnavigate.
It’s breezy and sunny and everyone is going somewhere or looking at something, a few are on tours, following a guide, and to my surprise it’s fun with my men by my side…despite a lurking unease that beneath the fun is a creature waiting for us.
We wander down yet another alleyway, and this one feels somehow different. And right.
Or wrong.
“Stop.” I stare at the narrowing perspective of the buildings crowding in ahead. They don’t do that, I know this, but it looks as if they do.
The breeze turns cold. The voices of others lessen in my ears.
I know this place, this exact place.
A memory fades in and suddenly I’m there.
It’s night and I’m tailing along, last of the group until one man turns and comes back to me.
A big, hulk of a man wearing a gray shirt. As he steers me then presses me into a wall, I register the weight of large hands. I hit the brickwork with my back, with a thud and an “oof” as my breath leaves me.
I blink at him, dizzily, this heavy-boned stranger with a wide, squarish face and a black beard.
“Who the fffuck rrr you?” I slur out.
His wide grin splits his face. “Me? I’m Mr. Beast.”
I laugh. “Mister Beard? Are you joking?” But I start to tilt across the wall and have to catch myself with one hand flattened to the brick before I fall.
He laughs. “You’re a ripe one. We’re going to have fun tonight, us.”
“You? You?” My giggle worsens and he slaps me. Pain, radiates and the blow jars my face, turns it sideways.
“Shit!” His slapping hand, the one he hit me with, is bleeding and he shakes it.
My tooth also aches and I figure he nicked it there. My lip is already swelling and when I touch it my own hand comes away wet with fresh blood.
With that sting spreading from my ear and across my cheekbone, I put up a hand to fend him off. He comes in for a hard kiss, that squashes my mouth and hurts, even as he grabs my breast and crushes it.
My own return blow to his jaw is more like a punch and knocks him back. With dread pooling in my stomach, I realize my mistake as his own fist rises.
“Beastie! Beastie! Come onnn.” A girl in a red dress is dragging at his sleeve and the rest of the group is ahead, watching us.
“Right. You’ll wait.” He wipes his face with his bloodied hand, smacks it onto the brick beside my head, then goes with the girl in the red dress.
I remember the red palmprint on the wall, right next to me.
“I slumped against the brickwork,” I whisper to Lazlo and Rafe. “Here. He slapped me and bled.”
“Who did, Georgia?” Rafe asks.
“The man with the beard. Mr. Beast he called himself. The same man who had the gas mask on. I’m ninety-nine percent sure.”
Rafe and Lazlo exchange looks. “Here?” Lazlo asks, pointing. The spot is dark and has traces of red-brown, but it’s higher than I thought it should be.
“Heels! I had heels on.” I study it, a vague splotch that’s mostly showing on the mortar between the bricks. This is two yards to the left of an industrial door and under a curved metal eave where the rain would be unlikely to wash it away.
“That sounds worth preserving.” Rafe takes my wrist, while with his other hand he pulls out his phone. “Don’t touch it.”
“DNA?” Lazlo and I ask as one.
“Yes. Let me see if I can get this done fast.”
This could be a really good clue.
“If this man is on a database, anywhere in the world, I’ll bet the fraternity can find out who he is.
” His ringing tone stops. “Hey. It’s Rafael Navarro.
I have a blood sample, I think. On a brick wall.
It’s out of the weather but who knows, someone might decide to steam clean it.
I need it processed for DNA. It might lead us to one of the people involved in the event. ”
He waits, listens.
“Sure, sure. We’ll wait here. Sending you a pin. Got it? Good. How long do you think?”
People are passing us and looking curious, so I take Lazlo’s hand and pretend to talk to him while Rafe sorts this out. “My heart is going pitter pat.”
“Mine too.” He smiles. “Because you’ve got my hand.”
I snort. “Stop making me laugh.”
“Laughter is always good. Just one thing I have to ask.” He looks around.
“Sure. My hand in marriage? A puppy? I’ll say yes to a puppy.”
“Sorry. Not those. Yet.” He squeezes my hand, plays with my fingers and seems to wait for the last person near us to walk onward.
“Have you been feeling like we’re being followed?
You saw that car before, so I thought you might be sensitive to that.
Me, I get an itch when somebody trains a rifle on me.
This is like that. I told Rafe and he feels it too. Though I haven’t spotted anyone.”
“No. I haven’t been feeling that.” I shake my head. There goes the cute silliness. Still, I look around, trying to be casual. “Still no, but it’s always possible they caught up to us.”
“Yeah.” He sighs as Rafe turns and comes to us.
“Done. I suppose we should find somewhere to sit that gives us a view of this spot. It will be an hour or so. That café will do.” He points and heads off.
Lazlo and I amble after him. “After this, I’ll show you both the DSEI Arms con up at the Royal Docks.
It’s closing this afternoon. We won’t be able to get inside the hall, but I might be able to show you one of our display trucks with the VR missile demo.
Some of our other products will be there too. ”
“Not a real missile launch?” I pull a sad face.
“One day, if you’re good for me, I’ll get you a big, bad rifle like a SIG MCX and let you blow away some targets.”
“Is that sexy talk in gun language?” I ask. I am dubious. “’Cause it sounds like the latest Lego.”
Lazlo groans. “Spank her for that later.”
“With a spiked paddle, I think.”
“Heyyy. Not fair. Also, that sounds illegal.”
Lazlo leans down to whisper in my ear as we walk. “Not as illegal as the squeals we’ll get from you.”