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“Security. She’s well trained, too,” I blurted.
“For the art gallery? It’s not quite the national gallery, is it?”
“For me. My husband considers me his treasure.” I laughed, a kind of nervous giggle that slipped out unexpectedly. “Seriously. He will be here soon, no doubt. He didn’t want me to see you. So you best be quick. You don’t want to meet him if he’s in a bad mood.”
“Oh. Avoid-him-in-a-dark-alleyway type?” Dougie grinned.
“No,” I sighed. “Not like that. More ruthless. You see, he breaks things. Generally, companies, sometimes people. Shatters them like fragile china. Then he puts them back together the way he wants them to be. That’s how he makes his way in life. So tell me, Dougie, what did you want to see me about?”
“Okay, Right.” He straightened up. “I did some digging around when I got back. You see, I lost contact with everyone because I left in such a hurry. I found out what happened to Macca.” He went slightly pale. I didn’t mind the Macca reference. That was Dougie’s choice of nickname, and it meant nothing to me. I could cope with it.
Dougie lowered his voice “I found out what he had done to you and the other women. I went to all our old haunts, the ones we went to: you, him, and me, those places where we met others like you and him. They told me he had hurt you bad and a crazy woman who’s locked up in hospital had murdered him. I wanted to come and say....”
“What, Dougie? I don’t understand. What did it have to do with you?” My patience wore thin. Jason would be on the warpath, and we were running out of time.
“We were like brothers. Macca and me. Inseparable. We’d saved each other’s lives a few times on patrol in Iraq and Afghanistan and the like. Drank each other into oblivion in Cyprus. I knew he liked to do kinky stuff with the girls…women. He boasted sometimes about…those things. I wasn’t disgusted or anything, but it was his thing, not mine. We finished with the army, had enough of being ordered around for a pittance. I fancied the mercenary side, but Macca wanted to take it easy for a while, have fun. His kind of fun.”
I waited, tapping my fingers on the table, as Dougie struggled with his words.
He screwed up his face and leaned forward. “I wished I’d known about the incident that happened before he met you.”
“What incident?” I scraped my chair forward. Dougie seemed intent on whispering everything.
“We went on holiday together to Portugal. I got ill—ate crap street food—and stayed in the hotel room. He went to a bar and unfortunately, it wasn’t to his tastes, you know. He probably taunted them then they ribbed him back. He couldn’t help himself sometimes. I blamed his dad, the man was a racist gay basher, and it rubbed off on Macca. God, they picked the wrong man to wind up and when he left the pub, he went after one and beat him to a pulp. He came back to the hotel and told me we had to scarper quick, back to England. I puked all the way back on the plane.”
Dougie guffawed. “He just told me he had a run in with the locals. I didn’t know what kind of locals. I only found out the truth when I got back from Africa, from another mate he’d ’fessed up to when drunk.”
I didn’t know he’d gone gay bashing in Portugal, but it didn’t surprise me to hear he’d done it. “Then he met me, then what?” I glanced at my watch.
“He liked you. We both did, do. Me, I mean. We had good times, didn?
??t we?” He seemed desperate for reassurance.
I shrugged. “Yes, I suppose.” I remembered many fun evenings in pubs and clubs when Dougie came to visit, how the atmosphere had lightened. He’d never laid a finger on me, even when we were alone together.
Dougie fished in his pocket and brought out a creased photograph showing the three of us in a row on a pub bench. I shut my eyes and shuddered. I couldn’t look at his smiling face.
“Sorry, fuck,” Dougie exclaimed, and I opened my eyes to see he had taken the photo off the table. “Shit. I’m sorry. You see, I’m still coming to terms with what he did to you.”
“How do you know what he did to me?” I bit back my tongue—nobody understood what he’d done to me.
“’Cos, I went to one of our old haunts and met a doc or nurse, whoever, who looked after you afterwards, and she remembers it all, even after six years. Took some persuading to get her to talk, and I don’t know many details as she wasn’t that forthcoming. I know he hurt you badly. Real bad. Then I read up on the internet what he’d done with others, too.”
“Why didn’t you know? Six years, Dougie. You didn’t know for six years?”
He spoke in a tiny voice, his deep baritone brought down to an almost inaudible level of stillness. “He told me he didn’t want to see me again. That he would kill me if I went near him. He was furious. Broken-hearted, too. I could see it in his eyes.”
“Sorry, Dougie, you’ve lost me? Why didn’t he want to see you again?” There were tears in Dougie’s eyes, and it shocked me to see them there.
“I kept it a secret from him, the army, and my family. I even dated girls to cover it up. You see, Gemma, I’m gay. Have been and always will be. Crazy, I know, to be his mate, ’cos Macca hated them so much. I listened to his pathetic tirades. Yet, he was my mate. He’d saved my arse countless times. When he wasn’t spewing hate, he was fun, great fun. You know. You remember?”
He had been, or else why would I have stuck by him. I’d ignored his occasional bigotry and gone with the rest of the man because, when we started out together, he’d been loving, tender, and quite different.
I started. I could see where things were going. “You told him, didn’t you?”
“Yes.” He gazed at his teacup, which, like my drink, remained untasted. “I got drunk and...I don’t know why...if I’d know about Portugal, I would have kept my mouth shut. I loved Macca....” Dougie hiccupped, a small sob of despair. “I didn’t expect anything in return, I didn’t need him to reciprocate. I foolishly thought if he knew, he would end his spite, stop the stupid, hateful rants, and just accept us gays. Me. It was just me, after all. I wasn’t a stranger in a foreign bar chatting him up.”
For the first time, I wanted to reach out and touch him. He’d been a fool, but so had I. We’d both trusted the wrong man. “What happened?”
