But there’d been no funny business. They’d been here four days now, and not once had he tried anything untoward. They had separate bedrooms. They spent the evenings after dinner on the terrace talking or listening to music. He didn’t try to get her drunk. He didn’t offer her drugs. He didn’t lunge at her. Well at least he hadn’t done any of that yet.

She could feel his intense interest, all the same. The way he stared at her sometimes was unnerving. Like he was doing right now, his eyes moving restlessly over her body, making her aware that the turquoise bikini she wore was hardly any cover at all. And for the first time since Donny had played with her mind, she actually began to feel a little interest in a man. Lenny was handsome. And he didn’t seem cruel.

‘What’s that?’ he asked, putting his beer aside, indicating with a nod of the head the marks high up on her outer thigh.

Angel put a hand over them. ‘Nothing.’

‘It don’t look like nothing. Those look like scars.’

Angel stiffened. She reached out for her matching turquoise coverall and slipped it over her head, yanking it down so that the marks were covered.

Donny . . .

He was there in her head again, clutching his neck, the blood pouring from him.

Angel gasped in a breath.

But there he was again, taking her to bed with him, her mother drunk in the next room, and when he was finished with her . . .

The glowing cigarette . . .

He’d said she was his and he was going to brand her. And he had. He’d pressed the glowing tip into her flesh, several times. Moments of searing agony, then hot throbbing pain that lasted all night, while he did things to her that she hated.

‘Are you all right?’ said Lenny’s voice.

Angel was crouched over, clutching at her head. Trying to drive the images out, but she couldn’t.

‘Hey . . .’ Lenny’s voice was soothing, calming. ‘I’m sorry, what . . . ?’

His hand touched her shoulder. Angel flinched back, away, so violently that she knocked her drink over. Then she sat there, trembling.

‘Christ, what is it?’ asked Lenny. He was on his knees by her sunbed now, grasping her shoulders in his big hands, staring at her face. ‘It’s OK, Angel, you’re safe, it’s all right.’

‘They’re burn scars,’ said Angel numbly. ‘Cigarette burns. Cuts, too. Donny Maguire did it.’

Lenny sank back on his heels and stared at her. ‘I’m gathering that wasn’t all he did.’

‘No,’ said Angel, and she began to tell him.

109

DI David Hunter was about six-three, with straight briskly trimmed dark hair and hard dark eyes that endlessly scanned everything around him. As always for work, he was formally dressed in a black suit, white shirt and tie. He looked more like an undertaker than a cop. He’d fit right in, shovelling corpses into the backs of hearses and expressing his sympathy to grieving relatives. Hunter’s downturned solemn trap of a mouth rarely lifted in a smile, and he certainly wasn’t smiling now.