Louise slammed the door so hard that the entire car shook. Darcie clicked her seatbelt into place and shuffled in her seat to face Louise.
‘Are you okay?’ Darcie asked.
Louise said nothing. All she could think about was Donnie’s lifeless body lying on the floor of that basement, fingers spread out on the floor unattached to the hand.
‘Lou?’ Darcie pressed, and Louise glanced up at her.
‘It was like a massacre back there,’ she said, the words echoing in the small car.
‘I know. I feel sick.’
The words were an understatement. When she thought about it, the most brutal thing she’d ever witnessed in her life was her brother’s boxing matches. Bare-knuckle fighting was often bloody and the injuries were horrific. She’d seen Tam with a broken nose, fractured cheekbone and countless black eyes. But to see a full-grown man, a man she’d been in love with, lying on the cold floor of a basement in a pool of his own blood, surrounded by men and women he’d betrayed was something she just couldn’t get her head around. No woman at the age of twenty should have to see that. No woman at all should have to see that.
‘I should have listened to Tam; I should have stayed at the flat.’
Darcie was quiet, almost as though she was holding back the inevitable ‘I told you so’ remark. But she would have been right to say that.
‘I’m such a fucking idiot for thinking he could have ever wanted me for me. I was just a fucking product to him.’ Louise rolled up her sleeve and revealed her wrist, showing Darcie the tattoo Donnie had made her get. ‘I’ve kept this hidden, even from Tam. But finding out about Demi, I wondered if he’d done the same with her. Made out he was in love with her? Did she get a tattoo of the first place they met too?’
Darcie glanced down at Louise’s wrist, and her eyes filled with tears at the sight of the tattoo across her skin.
‘What are those numbers?’ Darcie asked.
‘It’s the co-ordinates of where we first met. But now that I know what he had planned for me, I’m not so sure that’s true,’ Louise said.
Darcie wiped away her tears and took Louise’s wrist in her hand. Staring intently, she read them aloud. ‘Well, let’s check.’ Pulling her phone from her pocket, she typed them into the search engine.
Louise watched her, wondering what she thought she might find.
‘Fucking hell!’ Darcie turned the phone, and Louise stared down at the screen.
52.3735°N, 4.8956°E – Amsterdam Red Light District Tour/Co-ordinates
‘The bastard basically put an address on you,’ Darcie said, her hand falling over her mouth. ‘Why didn’t you show this to us sooner?’
Louise shook her head as the tears began to fall again. ‘I don’t know. I didn’t think about it. I’m ashamed of what I’d fallen for. He made me feel like I was the best thing in the world, and then he snatched it away the second he sent me out to sell that stupid fucking ring. It was all a plot to get me here.’ She pointed at the tattoo.
Darcie leaned over and took Louise in her arms. ‘Are you going to be okay to drive us back?’
Louise took a breath, nodded and wiped her sleeve across her eyes. ‘I can’t ask Tam to come and take us home. He’s busy getting rid of the body of a devil. I’ve driven under worse circumstances.’
She thought back to that night Donnie had run them off the road. The night she thought Tam had been murdered. Nothing could make her feel worse than she did in those moments.
As horrifying as it was to witness Donnie’s murder, she was glad he was dead. It was what he deserved.
Louise started the engine, put the car into gear and drove away from Susie’s house.