Mick stood in a different phone box, about to ring the same Sheffield number, Gabby’s number. The floor of the phone box was wet and it stank of urine. Was that a thing that happened only in London? Maybe it happened everywhere but he wasn’t sure. He rarely used phone boxes back home but he had no memory of them being as foul as this one.
‘It’s me again,’ he said the moment the line connected.
‘Hello, Mick.”
She sounded bored, weary, not especially pleased to hear from him, as though she found him a bit of a pest.
‘Two down, four to go,’ he said.
‘Really?’ And she perked up considerably. ‘Any trouble?’
‘Not for me,’ Mick said serenely. ‘Do you want to hear some details?’
‘No, not really,’ she replied.
‘No? I thought you might. I mean I’m punishing these guys, but I was thinking you might want to know precisely how I’m doing it.’
‘I’m sure you’ll be doing it just right.’
‘I might be doing it too little or too much.’
‘I don’t think you will be.’
‘These guys walk away after I’ve finished with them, you know. They’re wounded but they’re still walking.’
‘That sounds OK to me,’ Gabby said.
‘If it doesn’t sound right I can fix it so they never walk again.’
‘I don’t mind them walking, I just don’t want them doing what they did to me, not ever again.’
‘That’s a different sort of problem,’ Mick said thoughtfully, ‘and I’ve been giving it some consideration. I mean, here I am beating up these guys, but so far they don’t know why. I reckon they just think I’m some nutter. I could tell them why I’m doing it, of course. I could say it’s because of what they did to you, and there’d be some satisfaction in having them know why it’s happening to them. The downside is that the ones I’d attacked would then be able to warn the others and they’d be ready for me and able to protect themselves and that’s definitely not what we want, is it?’
She was very quiet at the other end of the phone and then she said hesitantly, ‘No, it’s probably better if you don’t tell them. Let them work it out for themselves.’
‘If they worked it out for themselves they’d still be able to forewarn the others, wouldn’t they? So what I’ve been doing is dishing out the punishment in such a way that I don’t think they’re going to be very eager to go telling anybody about it.’
‘I’m sure you’re doing right,’ she said.
It seemed he could do nothing wrong in Gabby’s eyes.
‘What you been up to?’ he asked.
‘Working.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. I thought I’d better get back to it, like when you fall off a horse.’
‘Very brave of you.’
‘It didn’t seem all that brave.’
‘Weren’t you scared?’
‘Of what?’
‘That it might all happen again.’
‘For obvious reasons I tried very hard to put that thought out of my mind, OK?’
‘OK. Which act did you do?’
The oldies but goodies,’ he said.
The act went well,’ she said with finality, before he had a chance to ask.
‘I’m glad. No trouble?’
‘No, of course not. This is Sheffield. It’s not like down there in London.’
‘No, it’s certainly not,’ he said.
‘Mick,’ she said, sounding suddenly intimate, ‘I want you to be careful. I want you to hurry up with what you have to do, don’t get into trouble, get it over with and come home.’
‘That’s exactly what I have in mind.’
‘London, it’s a dump, isn’t it?’ she said, and he didn’t really think she meant it but he agreed with her anyway.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘It’s a dump, a slum, a zoo, an armpit. Whatever.’
She made a contented noise down the phone.
‘Another thing I was wondering,’ Mick said. ‘When you went through your ordeal, did you recognize any of the guys?’
‘Why do I need to recognize them when you’ve got their names?’
‘I mean, did you recognize any of them at the time, like before they raped you, while they were just watching you strip. Because it turns out one of them’s quite famous. This Justin Carr character; he’s an actor, he makes films, he appears on television. He’s a bit of a sex symbol. He’s a familiar face to some people, apparently.’
‘Not to me.’
‘Me neither,’ Mick said. ‘But fame’s an interesting thing isn’t it? I mean if you’d been raped by Roger Moore, you’d have recognized him, wouldn’t you? Or Keanu Reeves or Rowan Atkinson. So he’s not that famous. But I was thinking, he was taking quite a risk, wasn’t he? It wouldn’t have done his career much good if it had got out that he took part in a gang-bang, would it? You could have gone to the papers or anything.’
‘He probably wasn’t thinking very straight at the time,’ Gabby said. ‘He was drunk. He was crazy. The others were egging him on … Look, Mick, I know you’re there sorting this business out for me, but really I find it very difficult to talk about.’
She started to cry loudly and forlornly. Mick had no possible defence against it.
‘I can understand that,’ he said sympathetically. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Isn’t your money running out yet?’
‘Oh yeah, maybe it is. Look, before I go—’
The phone went dead and Mick was left wondering whether the money had really run out or whether Gabby had hung up on him.