Page 34 of The Monday Night Heartbreak Club

‘Not around the place. Just covering your door. I thought I’d warned him off sufficiently but I couldn’t be quite sure, and I didn’t know that we…

that you and I were going to… that you wouldn’t be coming back here,’ he finished, looking a bit pink around the ears.

‘I wanted to make certain you’d be safe.

Hence the security door I had put on, too. ’

I’d noticed that as I limped in. The big, heavy door that had replaced my old flimsy front door and hung there in the reinforced frame like a Dwayne Johnson ornament. Nobody was going to kick that down, without the strength of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

‘You didn’t have to,’ I said, sounding slightly sulky, even to myself.

‘I know,’ Flynn said brightly. ‘But I thought it might be a good idea and I was right. Look.’ He held his phone screen up in front of me.

The recording was surprisingly good quality. It showed the patch of hallway right outside my door, at night, from the low-level lighting. ‘You’re not going to win any Oscars for this one,’ I said, pushing the phone down.

‘Keep watching.’ He lifted the screen again.

Now the recording showed a distant light source, my downstairs neighbours, I thought, opening and closing the front door.

Grainy darkness reigned on. Then, after a few moments, a shape materialised out of the blackness.

Someone, wearing dark clothing, a hoodie it seemed, had come up the stairs and was standing in front of the new door, glancing from side to side.

‘That’s Dex,’ I breathed.

‘He keeps his hood up, so I couldn’t tell.’ Flynn turned the phone sideways to maximise the screen.

‘It’s him. I know it is.’ A shard of coldness slid between my shoulder blades. ‘What is he doing?’

‘Looking at the door.’ Flynn slid the timer along the bottom to speed up the passing of film time. ‘It seems to have taken him by surprise.’

The figure, moving jerkily now in the rapid frame-time, put a hand against the door and seemed to push once or twice.

Then it looked all around the door, face still hidden inside the hood; just the tip of a nose and a chin occasionally caught what little light there was. Another push, at the frame now.

‘I had a steel reinforcement put in,’ Flynn said, smugly. ‘He won’t get through that without a forklift truck.’

Another moment in which the hooded figure seemed to consider the door. Then a foot came out and smashed against the bottom, in an angle the camera didn’t catch. The shape disappeared and then rematerialised, hopping and waving its arms.

‘He probably broke a toe.’ Flynn’s smugness had reached maximum levels. ‘That thing is solid.’

‘I wonder why he came?’ I stared at the footage. Dex, after a few more shoves in the direction of the security door, slithered out of the frame, obviously back down the stairs again. ‘Surely he’d worked out I wasn’t there.’

‘Dunno.’ The film ended. ‘I thought you ought to see. I wasn’t certain who it was – I mean, I had my suspicions, but he kept his face hidden.’

‘It’s Dexter. I recognise the shape and the way he moves.’ I’d often thought Dex moved like a cat, with that springy, cocky kind of walk that cats have when they know they own the garden. It was beginning to dawn on me that he’d moved like a cat which had prey on its mind.

‘So, anyway. He came here, and the date on this film is just after the explosion. He must have known you were in hospital then; it was in all the local papers. Dad managed to get it listed as a gas explosion, I didn’t think you’d want your business spread over the media.’

‘Gas explosion? How very Harry Potter,’ I said, weakly.

I’d never even thought about it being reported.

It never crossed my mind that there would be any kind of scrutiny as to why a random wine bar in a tiny Yorkshire town might be blown up, but of course there would.

Not much else happened around here on a wet night in April.

The next item down on the news agenda would be the local car boot sale timings.

Flynn shrugged. ‘It was the first thing that came to mind. Anyway. Now you know. He’s still out there. Shame the police didn’t put this place under surveillance but – well, they’re doing their best. Two people that they currently can’t find blew up my bar. The bastards,’ he ended, the words mild.

‘I think I might need another cup of tea,’ I said. My body had tried to go to Full Alert status, but with wonky legs and an arm that wouldn’t obey me, this had only served to make me feel even more vulnerable. Dexter. Waiting outside my door.

‘On it, boss!’ Flynn swung over towards the kitchen area, and then came back, his face creasing into lines of worry. ‘And I’m saying that purely for comic effect, you understand. There is no way in the world that you are bossy or controlling.’

Now I found I could smile properly. ‘Flynn, I know what you meant. You’re the most open and honest person I know. Dex was the master of negging and my brother didn’t even bother to sugar-coat his contempt. I can spot an insult when it comes wrapped in chocolate, trust me.’

‘Phew. I wouldn’t want you to think I was anything like those two.’

He went back to tea-making, humming slightly. It was an irritating noise, yet oddly reassuring.

I sat back as the adrenaline from seeing Dex, albeit on a screen, abated.

Dexter. He’d come here. But I’d been in hospital, and he must have known that.

Besides, he hadn’t been banging and yelling like he had that last night he’d come and tried to attack me.

He’d come silently, trying to work out how to get into the flat.

Before the – well, I couldn’t call it an accident, could I?

Before the explosion that had given me this notable scar and off-centre walk, I had been reading everything I could about becoming a Private Investigator.

The potential of an actual vocation had tingled through my veins in the same way as alcohol used to, giving me something.

Hope, a future that I couldn’t see yet. Anticipation.

All right, all the alcohol had anticipated was a disturbed night’s sleep and a headache in the morning, but the feeling was similar.

None of that would come to fruition now, of course; I couldn’t run an investigation if I couldn’t drive and stood out in a crowd like a bluebottle in a saucer of milk, but the reading had still inspired me.

Right now, it felt as though there was an idea knocking at the back of my brain, trying to get my attention.

‘Flynn, can I look at that footage again, please?’

‘Before or after the tea?’

I looked down at my unresponsive arm, sitting on my lap like a sleeping cat. ‘Before, I think, so I don’t spill.’

‘Here, then.’ He dodged across the room and put the phone in front of me. ‘Just press – that.’ Then he whirled back to attend to the kettle and teabags, like the perfect butler.

I watched the film again. Then again. Simultaneously, that other night replayed on a loop in my mind.

Why had he come? He said to see me, but he’d come back when I wasn’t here, desperate to get in.

He came in that night, but he’d chased me out and the guys had taken him down and had him arrested. Then Flynn had had the flat secured…

I watched Dexter kick the door, to the detriment of his footwear and, hopefully, his actual foot. Think, Fee, think…

That last time I’d seen him, when he’d kicked his way in, what had he said?

It had been something that had made my internal ‘that’s odd’ meter start ticking.

Something incongruous, something that hadn’t fitted with the Dexter I knew.

And all this time my brain had held on to those words, preserved them, because it knew they were strange.

Those Investigator books had encouraged that sort of thing.

‘Anything unusual can be a giveaway.’ ‘Never underestimate your ability to read a “tell”.’ ‘People betray themselves all the time…’

What had he said?

‘Go easy on the tea consumption.’ Flynn put the mug down in front of me, moving his phone slightly to one side. ‘You’ll be in the loo all afternoon at this rate.’

I jerked and almost got myself to standing, managing full upright posture by grabbing the side table. ‘That was it!’

Flynn stared at me and then at the tea. ‘Was it? I used the teabags in the cupboard.’

‘No. The bathroom. That was what Dexter said that struck me as odd! When he broke in here that night? The night when the club came to my rescue?’ I gave Flynn a grin that was, no doubt, wild-eyed and slightly mad.

‘There’s no need to ask me, I’ve got that night engraved behind my eyes like the worst kind of horror film,’ Flynn said levelly. ‘You leaving a trail of blood, running down the street in your pyjamas with that…’ He was groping for a word and I helped him out.

‘Violent abuser.’ Two words. But they summed Dexter up. ‘On a drugs binge.’ I added, for clarity.

‘Yes. Him. With him chasing you. It was terrifying. I was terrified.’ He moved in and gave me a sudden hug. ‘It could all have gone so wrong.’

‘But it didn’t. You, the guys – you all saved me.’

Flynn looked wryly at my limp arm. ‘Not quite fast enough, though.’

‘You weren’t to know he’d send his goons in to pay you back. But I thought at the time that it was overkill. All that, blowing up the bar, over me?’ I copied his ironic expression. ‘I mean, I’m great, but I’m not worth all that.’

The embrace deepened until I could feel Flynn’s breath against my cheek. ‘You are,’ he whispered. ‘You so are.’

For a few moments I gave in to the hug and allowed myself to feel protected. Important. Worth something. I might not believe it yet, deep down, but Flynn did, and that was what mattered.

‘Anyway.’ I stepped back, but only a little way because having Flynn hold me was worth any amount of explosive injury. ‘I remembered what it was that Dex said that night. He said that he needed to use the bathroom.’

‘Seems an odd turn of phrase,’ Flynn observed, groping one hand for his own mug.

‘Exactly. Dexter never said that. If he needed the loo he’d say something wonderfully poetic like “I want to piss”, or “gotta take a shit.” None of this “use the bathroom” nonsense.

It’s been processing, all this time, in my head.

Being blown up put it on the back burner a bit, but now I’m starting to wonder – did he cause that explosion to make sure I was out of the way so he could get into the flat?

Was it the toilet he needed? Or the actual bathroom?

Those books I was reading when I thought I really could be a private investigator told me that people tend to say what they really mean without knowing it. ’

I gave Flynn another wild stare.

‘I’ll go and…’ He moved, but I put my tea-holding hand, the only working one, onto his shoulder to stop him. Tea slopped along his shirt but he didn’t remark on it.

‘No. I’m going to do this. I’ve got an idea.

’ I put the tea down, just too late to save Flynn’s shirt, and began my lurch across the floor towards the bathroom door, gripping onto furniture on my way to help me stay upright, although the sheer fizz of adrenaline was almost propelling me towards the ceiling right now.

Flynn watched my progress. ‘Anything I can do?’

‘There’s a hammer in that drawer.’ I pointed with an elbow as my hand was holding on to the wall. ‘We might need it.’ Then the reality of what I needed to do crowded out the buzz of impetuosity. ‘And I might need to use you to do the actual mechanics.’

I received a bright smile and he went off to rummage in the Drawer of Stuff, as I continued my inching progress into the bathroom.

I switched on the light and stood and stared around the dingy little room.

At that moment, my downstairs neighbours slammed their front door and, obedient as ever to cheap landlord issues, the shower cubicle rocked.

The sink was immaculate; Flynn must have cleaned in here, even the mirror had been wiped.

And, thanks to my earlier mending activities, the floor no longer tipped and tilted as the loose boards moved.

The loose boards. Moved.

‘Quick, Flynn!’ My voice cracked under the weight of certainty.

‘Quick as I can! This drawer is a mess… Oh, here it is.’ A second later he appeared in the doorway, in time to see my unpicturesque descent to the floor. ‘Are you all right? Fee?’

‘No, no, that was intentional! Here.’ I rolled up the mat that, despite being little bigger than a bath towel, was large enough to cover most of the floor. ‘Can you lift up these two boards here?’

Flynn stared at me. ‘Seriously? We’re in the middle of all this and you want to do some home renovation work?’

I was out of breath. Getting myself down onto the floor without hitting my head on any of the fixtures had exhausted me. ‘Dexter. Bathroom. Loose floor,’ was all I could say and I saw the understanding come into his eyes.

‘You think…?’

‘Flynn, I know. Dexter’s never read a book in his life, he’s hardly going to have come over all CIA, is he? Do it.’

With some difficulty, because I’d nailed those boards down fairly securely in my earnest attempts to improve my surroundings, Flynn lifted the floor. Underneath was a small dark and dusty space. ‘Go on then,’ he said, sitting back onto his heels. ‘You check.’

Gritting my teeth and supporting my weight against the side of the shower, I reached my fingers into the gap.

At first there was nothing, and my eyes pricked with dawning disappointment, but half a moment of groping more and I touched the edge of what I had known must be down there. There were two of them.

‘Two phones?’ Flynn wrestled with the hammer, clearly unsure as to what to do with it now. ‘Why would he have two phones?’

‘Two phones, hidden away in the flat of someone that wasn’t closely connected with him?

He hardly took me out and showed me off, did he?

’ I’d obviously read far more of the dodgy gangster end of the fiction market than Flynn had.

But then his dad had probably had him studying marketing manuals as soon as he started phonics.

‘I think there will be a LOT of information that the police will be interested in on here.’ I shook the phones.

‘He’s probably got the squeaky-clean ones somewhere in Leeds for the police to find.

These ones he kept here, nice and out of the way.

He could take them whenever he wanted to and just pop them back, I wouldn’t notice. ’

Flynn’s mouth twisted as though he were eating grapefruit. ‘What a… tosser.’

‘Couldn’t have put it better myself.’ I straightened carefully, sweating and exhausted. ‘I think you’d better call the police, Flynn.’