Sweet Revenge thriller

Chapter Five

I'M NOT SURE IF HE HUNG UP, or I hung up, but the end result was me bawling like the demented and Floppy howling as if she thought a duet was exactly what I needed.

Within twenty minutes police officer Polly is rapping on my door. 'Are you OK?' she asks and as my face looks like a boiled lobster probably the same colour as my bloodshot eyes, she pats me on the shoulder, steers me to the couch and says, 'The D.I. is a bit worried about you. I'll pop the jug on, shall I?'

It was quite nice to have some company for a change. Polly had visited me on and off after I got out of hospital, hoping I could remember something else. But I can't.

'Um, Athena, just before you hung up on the D. I.,' Aha, so I'm the one who disconnected. She continues in a stilted voice, 'you said if...' she opens her notebook and reads, '...um, you said, "If you can't do your job, then I will fucking well do it for you."' Polly finishes in embarrassment. But I laugh, not a hearty laugh, the kind of laugh with a sinister undertone.

Her features crease into anger and when her dark eyes meet mine I can read her like a book. A warning...don't go there she is telling me and I know I have to appease her or she'll be setting up a surveillance team on me.

'Hey, tell him I'm sorry. I'm just letting off steam,' and when I slouch into the couch further, call Floppy onto my knee, her soft caring expression returns and I'm confident I've pulled off the image I want to portray—the picture of weedy resignation!

'I know you must be incredibly angry,' she says.

'You think?'

'It would be so helpful if you could remember something. Anything. The persons physique?' I will myself to remain unemotional while she questions me and I shake my head. 'Did you get a gut instinct as to whether they were male or female?' Another shake of my head. 'You said the masked man was yelling. Can you remember any words? Their accent?'

Polly's eyes are wide with hope but all she receives from me is a shake of the head and a grunt. I can see she is frustrated, but what can I do? I cant tell her anything. I just don't remember anything about that God Awful Day!

'You could go to a...'

'Nope,' I interrupt. 'No hypnotists.' They scare the hell out of me. Just what would they find? I have repressed memories, I know that. And, don't get me wrong, I would dearly like to know exactly what they are about, but part of me reckons if I ever found out, my mental state could get a damned sight worse. Christ, I can hardly function as it is!

I cannot wait for Polly to go. And when Floppy and I are alone I realise what needs to be done. It is up to me to get info 'on the street' so as to speak. Someone must know something about the murders. Maybe they can't go to the police, but maybe for money and the promise of anonymity, they could be persuaded to part with crucial information. And I know just the man who could make this happen. But this time when I ring him, The Fixer's number has a voice over telling me 'This number has been disconnected.' Dammit, but I somehow expected that. It was obvious he didn't want me contacting him again. However, maybe this had happened to my father? Maybe The Fixer changed his phone number on a regular basis.

I get my father's diary out again and flick through every page looking for another telephone number, email address, code or abbreviation for The Fixer.

Nothing.

Nothing until I turned to the very last page in his diary. A whole pile of web addresses for Pharmaceutical companies and several web sites of Chemists in the nearby district and amongst them a very unusual web address. It didn't have the usual prefix of www. It is a long string of letters and numbers and near the end is TF\. I cross my fingers that TF stands for The Fixer. At the least, it has to be something worthwhile investigating. So, I enter it into the browser on my laptop and surprise, surprise...the web address is not recognised.