Comeback Read Online Free Page A

called for the ambulance and then, with notable kindness, asked Vicky just what had occurred. She looked up at him and tried to answer, but the phrases came out unconnectedly and on jagged half-hysterical breaths, as if from splintered thoughts.
    “Greg’s wallet . . . well, they banged his head on the car . . . shadows . . . didn’t see them . . . he was trying . . . you know, he was trying to take my rings . . . the plane tickets . . . it’s my daughter’s wedding . . . I’d’ve killed him . . .” She stopped talking as if aware it was gibberish and looked lost.
    “Take your time, ma’am,” the policeman said. “When you’re ready.”
    She took a visibly deep breath and tried again. “They were waiting . . . behind the car . . . I could kill them . . . They jumped on Greg when he went round . . . I hate them . . . I hope they die ...”
    There were high-colored patches of extreme stress over her cheekbones and more strong flush marks on her jaw and down her neck. Blood on her neck, also; quite a lot of it.
    “You’re doing good,” the policeman said.
    He was about my age, I thought, with a natural kindness not yet knocked out of him by the system.
    “My ear hurts,” Vicky said violently. “I could kill him.”
    I supposed we’d all noticed but not done much about the source of the blood on her tunic. One of her lobes was jaggedly cut and steadily oozing. She turned her head slightly, and the other ear shimmered suddenly in the car’s lights, revealing a large aquamarine ringed by diamonds.
    “Your earring,” Fred exclaimed, fishing his pockets for a handkerchief and not finding one. “You need a bandage.”
    Vicky put a finger tentatively to her torn ear and winced heavily.
    “The bastard ,” she said, her voice shaking. “The bloody bastard. He tugged . . . he just ripped . . . he’s torn right through my ear.”
    “Shouldn’t earrings come off more easily than that?” the policeman asked uncritically.
    Vicky’s voice, high with rage and shock, said, “We bought them in Brazil.”
    “Er . . .” the policeman said, lost.
    “Vicky,” Fred said soothingly, “what does it matter if they came from Brazil?”
    She gave him a bewildered look as if she couldn’t understand his not understanding.
    “They don’t have butterfly clips on the back,” she told him jerkily. “They have butterfly screws. Like a nut and bolt. So they don’t fall off and get lost. And so people can’t steal them ...” Her voice died away into a sob, a noise it seemed suddenly that she herself disapproved of, and she sniffed again determinedly and straightened her shoulders.
    Hanging on to her courage, I thought. Seesawing towards disintegration, hauling herself back. Agitation almost beyond her control, but not quite.
    “And another thing,” she wailed, misery and anger fighting again for supremacy. “They stole my handbag. It’s got my passport . . . and, oh hell, my green card . . . and our tickets . . .” A couple of tears squeezed past her best resolutions. “What are we going to do?”
    The distress-filled plea was answered pragmatically by Fred, who said he wasn’t consul for nothing and he’d get her to her daughter’s wedding willy-nilly.
    “Now, ma’am,” the policeman said, uninterested in travel arrangements, “can you give a description of these two men?”
    “It was dark.” She seemed angry with him suddenly. Angry with everything. She said furiously, “They were dark.”
    “Black?”
    “No.” She was uncertain, besides angry.
    “What then, ma’am?”
    “Dark-skinned. I can’t think. My ear hurts.”
    “Clothes, ma’am?”
    “Black ... What does it matter? I mean ... they were so quick ... He was trying to pull my rings off . . .”
    She extended her fingers. If the stones were real they were worth stealing.
    “My engagement ring,” she explained. “Bastard didn’t get it, thanks to Peter.”
    The urgent whipping siren of a dazzlingly lit ambulance split the night and