driver, a tall, reedy youth in a black jacket, looked up and saw him, their eyes meeting for a split second before Dominic ducked his head and turned away. He was acutely aware of the plaster covering the ragged stitches on his face, the livid bruising darkening the flesh around it. It drew unwanted attention.
He locked the car and strode across the forecourt, pulling the collar of his jacket up, keeping his face under the brim of his baseball cap as he slid his credit card into the handheld machine at the counter inside. Cash was a better option – it left no trail – but all his accounts were deeply in the red. There was a beep as the card was declined. He reached for a second card. Declined. He found another in his wallet, feeling his shoulders relax slightly as the payment finally went through. He took the receipt without a word and stalked back towards his car, giving the red Nissan a brief glance as he reached into a pocket for his keys.
Two of the teenagers had their phones up, pointing at him.
The driver stood by the car and one of the girls leaned out of the window. Filming. Photographing. Keeping their smartphones on him as he crossed the concrete to his BMW. Dominic felt his jaw tense with a familiar flash of rage, the breath hot in his nostrils. The old tingling in his fists.
The driver was typing now, thumbs a blur over the screen, lines of concentration creasing the pallid skin of his forehead. Dominic shifted his direction and walked up to him.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Hold on a second.’
‘Give me your phone,’ Dominic said, holding out his hand. ‘Now.’
‘What?’
‘Give it to me.’
The youth stood his ground. ‘Don’t think so, mate.’
Dominic thought for a moment about the broad-bladed jungle knife strapped to his forearm in its sheath. Self-protection. It could be in his hand in less than a second, the grooved handle nestling in his palm. The satisfaction of seeing this arsehole’s face if he drew it.
Not here. Too many cameras.
Instead he reached out and ripped the phone from the teenager’s hand, turned it around to study the screen. A looping video of him paying at the desk inside the garage, then walking across the forecourt, a clear shot of his face with its angry purple bruising.
‘Hey!’ the teenager tried to grab it back, but Dominic held him off easily with one large hand against his bony chest. He scrolled down to look at the caption below the video.
SPOTTED! #Killer #ChurchGuilty #TheGhost
It was already posted and live, out there on the internet for the world to see.
The teenager struggled against his grip. ‘How does it feel?’ he said, his voice high and tight with false bravado.
‘How does what feel?’ Dominic said.
‘To have killed those women and got away with it.’
Dominic could feel a flush heating the skin of his face. Those months seared onto his memory, the accusations that had followed him ever since: a household name for all the wrong reasons. Arrested and held for four days straight, questioned over and over again. Returning to a house half-emptied by police forensic officers, besieged by journalists camped on his front lawn. Months on bail as work dried up, months of headlines, evidence mounting day by day, the police a whisker away from charging him but never actually crossing that threshold.
And now this. Limbo. A grey half-life where the unconvicted guilty live. Only one way out.
There was no good answer to the kid’s question. Instead, Dominic swung the mobile into the edge of the concrete pillar, shattering the screen, smashing it again and again and again until shards of plastic and metal fell from his hand onto the floor at their feet. Ignoring the teenager’s cries of protest, he grabbed the lapels of his jacket, lifting the younger man onto his tiptoes up against the Nissan.
‘Psycho! Let go of me!’
The other teenaged lad was scrambling out of the passenger side of the Nissan, his hands up in supplication – hey hey hey come on now mate – but Dominic could barely hear the reedy voice. The anger was churning and boiling up at the back of his throat, threatening to choke him.
‘You want to know how it feels, do you?’ he growled into the teenager’s face. ‘How it feels when your life turns into a fucking hashtag?’
‘You’re a nutter, you’re—’
Dominic reached up to his own cheek and tore the plaster away, pointing to the mass of black