Читать книгу The Women's Club - Abusive partners are winding up dead… Criminals who target women are the victims of nasty accidents… Pretend it's not happening, you might live longer - Michael Crawley - Страница 5

Audrey Little’s pc gave a double bleep. Her heart skipped a beat. It was time. She laid her Peek Freans chocolate digestive biscuit aside, sucked a smear of chocolate off her index finger and stabbed ‘Mail’. She read the message and deleted it. Time to pay the piper.

Her plump hand scooped up her handbag from the desk. She left her cubicle and toddled off in the direction of the ladies’ room. The floor was laid out in pink and grey cubicles, each with a female legal secretary toiling away in penal servitude to the mucky-muck bosses: lawyers – men, almost all of them – made to look brilliant by the grunt work of women.

Audrey stiffened her spine. Not so long ago she’d been one of them but a miracle had happened. She’d been scooped from the pool. Her eyes had been opened. She’d been promised that she’d be rewarded plenty for her new clarity of vision. ‘I am woman, the creator.’ The creases in her soft round face hardened with resolve. ‘And woman, the destroyer.’

Out of the dozen washroom cubicles that were available, she chose the third from the far end. Each cubicle had a small frosted window that, for safety’s sake, could only be raised about eight inches. This one was already open, waiting for her.

Audrey took her compact from her bag and knelt up on the seat, which was not an easy feat. Her knees creaked. She resolutely ignored their protests. She’d agreed to this task, knowing it wouldn’t be easy. Anyway, she could always book an appointment with the masseuse at the Ivy Spa if she needed attention. Audrey was cheered by the thought; now that she was being touched again she realised how much she’d missed physical contact with another human being, the skin-on-skin, over the last dozen or so years.

As she’d been told it would, the sun shone directly onto her building, Carver Mutual Life’s, leaving the one opposite, the Edward’s Building, in partial gloom.

She focused on the Edward’s Building now. Yes, there he was. Two floors above her, that’d be the twenty-eighth, a man in a dishevelled three-piece business suit and no tie, stood on a ledge, facing outwards. She vaguely recognised him from pictures in the business section of the newspapers, taken mainly when he’d been entering or leaving court.

Audrey shook her head in admiration. How had they known he’d be out on that particular ledge at this particular time, on this particular afternoon of this particular day? She squinted at the open window to his left, the one he’d obviously just climbed out of. There was nobody there prodding him with a sharp stick. That wasn’t their way. No, he’d been prodded with something much more subtle, much more pointed. Words were swords. Swords of truth.

They’d certainly hit home. She wasn’t so far away she couldn’t see the terror on his face. It made her hand, the one holding the compact, hesitate. Whatever he’d actually done, he certainly looked sorry for it now.

She took a resolute breath. He was probably sorry that he’d got caught, was all. He’d likely been living the good life for years, spending the hard-earned savings and retirement funds of widows and orphans, with no intention whatsoever of making good on the high return on their investment that he’d promised all and sundry.

‘Ponzi scumbag.’

Audrey poked her mirror out under the window and scanned the other building to see where she was reflecting the sunshine.

There! Oh, no, that one wasn’t her little blob of brilliance. That one was tracking upwards, towards the hesitating jumper. Audrey found her bit of light and moved her hand, gaining control of the bright reflection of sunlight her mirror cast on the building opposite. There! Another light was moving downwards from above the man’s head. Audrey smiled grimly. It felt so good to be part of something bigger than herself. She concentrated on the task at hand. Audrey’s blinding light was the first to hit his face directly. Good for her!

The other two brilliant blobs, then a fourth and a fifth, joined in the game. The man shielded his eyes with spread fingers. His face was twisted into a terrified grimace. Audrey shrugged, jiggling the light she had trained on his face. He should be terrified, and so should everyone of his ilk.

Sirens pierced the air. Damn. They were running out of time. Audrey tilted her compact a fraction to the left, then to the right. Her light danced across his face, stealing into the cracks between his fingers, blinding him with the bright white light of vengeance.

He raised his other hand now, batting at the lights as if they were flies.

The sirens were closer. Audrey felt the first pang of fear. What if he were rescued after all? What if she were somehow found out? She stiffened her resolve once more. There was no room for doubt, not in this enterprise. She’d been a chump in the power game for far too long. It stopped now.

Christ! The poor bastard dropped his hands to press his palms flat back against the stone face of the building. His knees were wobbling. Audrey directed her light with deadly accuracy into his now unprotected eyes. The other lights followed.

He looked aside. The lights danced like Tinkerbells across the death mask of his face. He clawed the air and shuffled back towards the open window. They had him on the run! A toe went over the edge. He reached backwards…

Too late!

Audrey couldn’t hear it, but she imagined his scream as he plummeted.

She climbed down from her perch and popped her compact back into her purse. It was odd. She’d thought she’d feel something – this being her first time. Her knees hurt but otherwise it was just as if she’d simply come to use the facilities and had done so. Audrey left the cubicle and paused in front of a mirror to straighten her skirt and smooth her blouse. She stared at her own reflection. Nope. There was nothing there that said, ‘I just helped to kill a man.’ She shook her head to dismiss that thought and replaced it with another, more appropriate one. ‘I just helped rid the world of another lying, testosterone-driven bastard.’ Better. Much better.

On her way back to her cubicle, Audrey couldn’t help but feel a little smug. She was sure she’d be rewarded for a job well done, for proving herself worthy. It wasn’t every woman who could be trusted to carry out her orders blindly, not asking for explanations. She could. That made her special. What form would her reward take? A fat cheque? A promotion? A whole new career? There it was, that feeling of ‘something different’ she’d expected, now that she was on the other side of a job well done.

She felt more alive than she’d ever felt before.