Trust No Bitch: Part 3

Clara Wright

Clara's interview hadn't even begun when the balding detective came in to tell the policeman holding her that she could go. She almost felt that it was a trick, that there'd be another waiting outside the interview room for her with a pair of handcuffs, but there wasn't. She had gotten away with it. You've gotten a-fucking-way with it, she had silently congratulated herself, climbing into the taxi she had phoned for and considering which whiskey she would pick from the corner shop later that night. Lounging back in the front seat, she told her driver to take her to Ellisbury cliff top; it was there that she had "unfinished business" to attend to. After using the shower in Alice's flat to clean off the scarlet that was staining her skin and then, changing and throwing the bloody cloak into the washer down in the laundry room, she'd been in the process of getting rid of the knife and the mask up at the cliff top when she'd received a phone call from a frantic Lilly. Swearing under her breath, Clara had wrapped the knife up in the mask and then used a stray rock to weigh it down, planning to come back for it later. Well, later had come and she supposed, as she pushed a £5 note into the palm of the driver, that she had to hurry. If she had been let go, she assumed Gemma and Lilly had too, and they would soon be calling. They would all be calling. And she had to leave, get away from it all, think what she was going to do next. Because Alice had always been at the top of her list, the one Clara had really cared about punishing, but she wasn't alone in precipitating Cleo's demise. There was still Cleo's brother, Dylan, and The Supplier themselves. Running through the trees, panting, she staggered over multiple sprawling tree roots, too busy thinking of subtle methods of retribution to watch out for them. She couldn't do the whole prolonged torture thing again, she thought as she finally reached the cliff edge, the trees beginning to clear. It had required a level of assiduity that Clara did not naturally possess, all the observation that went into finding out the things that would bring down Alice the most. No, she thought to herself, bending down in front of the rock under which she had previously hidden the mask and the knife. That wouldn't work. You're going to have to do something...

Shit.

The stuff was gone.

The stuff was gone.

Shit, shit, shit, thought Clara, spinning round on the spot with both hands pressed to her forehead. Maybe, it was a different rock. Please let it be a different rock, she pleaded, though picking up a couple more only to find nothing underneath, she knew that she had been right the first time.

Somebody else is here, Clara thought, walking backwards, closer and closer to the cliff edge, as she heard the rustling of bushes, and the snapping of a twig from the trees behind her.

And then, they emerged from the blackness of the forest, cloaked and masked.

The Supplier.

Immediately, Clara pulled her phone out of her pocket and began to dial; she couldn't call police, they could find the weapon, but she could call Gemma.

Call Gemma.

It will be okay.

It will all be okay, Clara tried to inwardly reassure herself as the Supplier got closer and closer, selecting Gemma's name from her contact list and pressing the call button.

But then, came a ringing.

A ringing much louder than Clara had anticipated when she had began calling Gemma. Because Clara hadn't anticipated any ringing at all. Because Gemma shouldn't be close enough for Clara to hear her phone ringing.

Unless.

It was her.

And then mask came off, and there she was. Gemma, underneath it, holding up her ringing phone, her face as contorted as the mask's, in what seemed to be fury, pure fury.

"I was following you. I was waiting outside Alice's." She spat, her gloved hands balled up on either side of her body. "And I know what you fucking did."

"You're The Supplier?" Clara stammered, taking another feeble step backwards.

"I know what you fucking did, Clara."