Dark Fever

She didn’t answer, but she didn’t lock the door because she had to admit that fainting was definitely on the cards. The room was coming and going in a most disconcerting fashion, as though her vision was disturbed, but she knew it was her brain which was not operating at full strength. The injection must have been pretty strong stuff, whatever it was.

In the bathroom she pulled off the red dress, dropped it on the floor, in a tumbled heap, then turned on the shower and stood under it, washing herself from head to foot, feeling unclean. A few minutes later she towelled herself roughly and then slid into her nightdress.

Barefoot and damp-haired, she went back and found Gil in the last stages of making the bed with fresh linen. The used bedclothes lay in a pile on the floor, crumpled and untidy. She gave them a distasteful glance then looked away.

‘Thank you, that was very thoughtful. Why didn’t you call a maid to come and do it?’ she said as he straightened to look round at her, his dark hair tumbling over his forehead, a lock half covering one eye.

‘I thought you would rather not have anyone else around just now.’

His sensitivity touched her. ‘No, I wouldn’t,’ she admitted huskily. ‘You’re very kind, Gil, taking all this trouble.’

‘It’s no trouble; you forget I was working in hotels when I was still a boy. It’s my family trade. I can make a bed faster than the speed of light!’ He grinned at her. ‘There isn’t a job in a hotel that I can’t do efficiently. Anything I ask my staff to do I can do better!’ He paused, then added more soberly, ‘And also the police want your bedclothes, to take away for forensic examination.’

Shivering, she grimaced. ‘Of course. Stupid of me not to think of that.’

She climbed back into bed and Gil tidied the covers with deft, practised hands. ‘Can the police come in now to talk to you?’ he asked her quietly. ‘They’re waiting in a car outside.’

She took a deep breath and nodded, and he brushed a few damp strands back from her bruised face, his fingertips cool and soothing on her hot skin.

‘Do you want me to stay with you this time, to translate for you?’

She couldn’t meet his eyes. ‘Do they speak English?’

‘A little, but not too well,’ he told her regretfully. ‘If you don’t want me here, would you like me to find Freddie and get her here to help with the language barrier?’

She looked at him then, eyes stricken. ‘She knows?’

Gil stared back at her, his face tight, his mouth a white line. ‘I had to explain why you wouldn’t be at dinner tonight. Don’t look like that! Freddie isn’t going to think any the worse of you because you’ve been attacked by that vicious little swine! You’re hardly to blame for what happened! Why should you feel guilty?’

‘Because I’m stupid and I’m a woman,’ Bianca burst out, her voice shaky. ‘Women have an in-built guilt programme—it starts when they’re just little girls; whatever happens to them they are the ones who are made to feel guilty. It’s always their fault. They’re in the wrong place, at the wrong time, they’re too attractive, they were wilfully wearing make-up, or pretty clothes—there are a hundred excuses for blaming them.’

‘Freddie’s a woman—she isn’t going to blame you.’ He paused and added roughly, ‘And neither am I! It was bad luck that you ran into this nasty piece of work right at the start of your holiday. Maybe I shouldn’t have insisted on calling the police, getting you involved in this investigation—you’d never have seen that little bastard again if I hadn’t interfered.’

She lay back, calming again, and gave him a wry little smile. ‘No, Gil, it isn’t your fault either. You were right— I had to tell the police. Sooner or later he was bound to move on to more violent crimes than snatching handbags—he was going to use that knife, and I think he’d have killed someone, not merely raped them. He’s dangerous; he had to be stopped.’

He nodded. ‘I know. But I wish it hadn’t been you who had to face that ordeal.’

‘I’m tougher than I look. I can cope. I’ve had plenty of practice in coping with tough situations.’ She thought of the long, hard birth of her first child; she had been very young then and very scared, but she had come through that, and through all the problems since; she had somehow even managed to survive Rob’s death and the loneliness she had felt ever since. ‘I’m pretty tough,’ she added with a touch of self-congratulation, and Gil looked at her with sardonic amusement.

‘You don’t look so tough to me!’ He ran a hand down her loose, silky black hair, lightly touched her bruised cheekbones with one fingertip. ‘I wish to God I could have stopped this happening to you, Bianca.’

She inwardly flinched at the contact. If only he would stop touching her. In some ways he was so sensitive. Why couldn’t he work out how she felt at this moment—as if she would never want another man within feet of her?

‘Ready for the police now?’ Gil moved away and she relaxed again, with a smothered sigh of relief.

He went out of the room; she heard him opening the front door of her apartment, then the sound of other voices, a heavy tread of feet, and the room seemed to fill up with policemen.

In fact there were only two and they were clearly trying to be quiet and sympathetic—but she found their presence so disturbing that she felt as if there were half a dozen of them.

Gil stayed throughout the interview, translating for her. Although she was very nervous, it turned out to be less of an ordeal

than Bianca had been afraid it was going to be. The police were very down-to-earth and practical with their questions, and gradually Bianca relaxed.

While she was being interviewed one of the police team moved silently about the room taking fingerprints from door-handles and other places which the suspect might have touched, and another man wearing transparent plastic gloves gathered up the bedclothes from the floor and her torn dress and underclothes from the bathroom, stuffing them all into large plastic bags. As he carried them out Bianca watched him, her throat closing in revulsion.

Another man with a camera was waiting to take pictures of her face, showing the bruises which were rapidly darkening, the skin shiny and stretched around her eyes, on her jawline, around her mouth.

She jumped as the flashbulbs popped, and knew she was going to look like a scared rabbit, her eyes red and very big.