Puzzle Pieces

Part Four

When Ric returned to Connie's office, bearing a mug of tea and a blanket, he found Connie precisely where he had left her, sitting hunched in the corner of her leather sofa, her arms hugging herself, as though to ward off the enemy. Putting the tea down on the desk and laying the folded blanket on the sofa next to her, Ric handed her the Cyclozine injection.

"Do you want me to do it, or do you want to do it yourself?" Knowing that it had to go in her upper thigh, Connie assured Ric that she would take care of it. "Then I'll go and find the necessaries for taking your blood." Unwrapping the injection when he had gone, Connie was heartily relieved that he had left her to it, because baring her thighs to anyone's scrutiny was simply not on the cards for her right now. After pulling down her jeans, she briefly examined what were unmistakably bruises on the tops of her inner thighs, as though someone had held them open with quite some force. Shuddering at this realisation, she swiftly injected herself with the anti-sickness drug and dressed herself, not wanting to stare at such unbreakable evidence any longer. Throwing the syringe and injection packet in the bin, she picked up her mug of tea and sat back down on the sofa. Ric had said that he wanted her to talk to him, but where on earth did she start? This wasn't her, this wasn't Connie Beauchamp, a woman who needed to come to terms with what some anonymous dickhead had done to her, it simply wasn't her! She didn't need people to help her sort her head out, and certainly not a colleague whom she'd previously slept with into the bargain. It just wasn't something that under normal circumstances she would even entertain the idea of doing. But then, these were hardly normal circumstances, were they.

When Ric returned, he was carrying all the paraphernalia for taking a blood sample.

"How are you feeling?" He asked, moving the blanket aside and sitting in its place.

"A mixture of stoned, hung over, and just rough in general."

"Then the sooner we get some blood from you the better."

"There's no cure for Rohypnol but sleep," Connie told him matter-of-factly. "So this blood test is really quite pointless. I'm sorry, I should have just stayed at home and let it wear off in its own time."

"Connie, you did absolutely the right thing in phoning me, because you shouldn't be alone whilst you're still under its influence."

"Grace would have been perfectly safe with me," Connie protested in a smaller, far more hurt voice.

"Why would I think she wouldn't be?" Ric asked, knowing that the best thing to do was to simply go along with Connie's train of mind, no matter where it took them.

"You should hear Sam on the subject of what he calls my substandard parenting. What happened tonight will only give him more ammunition."

"Try telling me what you can about tonight. Did you go out for dinner, or did you cook for this person at home?"

"I'd had a fairly hard day, so the nanny agreed to stay on an extra couple of hours, so we went out for dinner."

Connie had stopped speaking, because in gently pushing up the right sleeve of her jumper, Ric had revealed what were unmistakably rope burns around Connie's wrist.

"Before we go any further," Ric asked her quietly, "Are there any other injuries I should know about."

"None that won't heal with time, no," Connie replied just as quietly, her eyes focussing on the marks on her wrist. Swiftly putting a tourniquet around Connie's upper arm, Ric took some blood from Connie's vein and tidied up the detritus of his trade. Slipping out of the room momentarily so that Joseph could take the sample down to the lab for him, He came back to find that Connie had rolled up her other sleeve to find that she had the same marks on her left wrist as well as the right.

Sitting down on the sofa with the folded up blanket between them, almost to prevent him from reaching out in sympathy to comfort her, and did he but know it, to prevent Connie from seeking the security of his arms that she wasn't brave enough to ask for, Ric asked,

"Carry on from where you left off. You went out for dinner with someone, can you remember his name?"

"I've been thinking about that, and no, not a flicker."

"Okay, so what time did you leave the restaurant, and then what did you do?"

"I think it was just after ten. I asked him home with me because I knew that I had to get home for Grace, yet I didn't want the evening to end there. No, hang on, that's not quite right." She stopped for a while, had a drink of tea and thought a bit. "I think he wanted to come home with me, but I said know. If it had just been me at home, I wouldn't have thought twice about bringing him home, you know I wouldn't. But I hadn't seen Grace since I'd left for work in the morning, and I just wanted to spend some time with her, even if she was asleep. That's not unreasonable, is it?"

"No, of course not," Ric assured her, "It's perfectly natural."

"Sam thinks I'm the most unnatural mother he's ever met," Connie told Ric bitterly."

"From what I've seen so far, I don't think you're a bad parent," Ric told her gently.

"So," He said, getting them back to the subject in hand. "How did Mr. X, end up coming to your house?"

"The only sensible explanation I can come up with, because I can't actually remember what happened, is that I agreed on him coming back for a coffee, nothing else." Her face went white with horror. "I bet that's when he put the Rohypnol in my drink, in my coffee. I vaguely remember something about going upstairs to check on Grace, and I bet that's when he did it."

"More than likely," Ric agreed gloomily. "What can you remember after that?"

"Nothing!" Connie replied sharply. "Nothing I feel like discussing anyway."

"You won't even begin to get it out of your head if you don't," Ric promised her quietly but firmly. "You need to expel some of the demons while they're still fresh."

"I think I half remember being tied up," Connie said after a few moments' silence. "I just remember it hurting, not what happened before or after, though I suppose that's obvious. Then at one point, it was almost as though I couldn't breathe, but I can't remember why. Actually, right now, I don't even remember phoning you."

"Connie, I think you ought to let me fully check you over, just to make sure that there's nothing that needs treating."

"You're onto a loser with that one," Connie told him plainly. "Because even though I'd trust you with my life, you aren't doing anything that involves so much as looking at my body, never mind touching it. I'm sorry, Ric, but I really am saying no."

"And I'm not going to try and persuade you otherwise," Ric promised her gravely, showing her that whilst the man she had taken home with her hadn't listened to the word no, he, Ric Griffin certainly would. What he did do, however, was to persuade her to drink the rest of her tea, wrap herself in the hospital blanket and lie down on her leather sofa. But when her eyes widened in fear at the thought of his leaving her to sleep, he asked,

"Would you like me to stay?"

"Would that sound unbearably pathetic?" She responded with a wan smile.

"No, of course not," He said, sitting down in the leather armchair not far from her, and when her hand reached out toward him, he took her hand in his, in an effort to keep away the dreams that he knew would haunt her in the couple of hours sleep she had left of the night.