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| THE BODYGUARD by Enola PART 1 The phone rang just when she was doing her exercises but she didn’t answer because she couldn’t interrupt her daily series of one hundred sit-ups. She knew that he’d call again in a few minutes and hoped he had some good news, the news she had been waiting for too much time. When she finished her exercises she got up, took a towel and dried her sweaty face. She sipped some water from a plastic bottle staring at the phone that rang a few seconds later. She put the top back on the bottle and picked up the receiver, “There’s a job for you. I’m waiting for you” said her boss. At last, she thought. She put down the phone, had a shower and left. She knocked on the door of his boss’ office and after a while she entered. A cloud of cigar smoke appeared behind the black leather swivel armchair behind a massive desk. “Good morning Sharon. Please, sit down.” She closed the door and sat in an armchair in front of the desk crossing her legs and resting her hands on her thighs. At that point the swivel armchair turned so he stubbed her cigar out on the ashtray because she couldn’t stand that disgusting smell and spoke, “You look great!” There wasn’t any kind of expression in her face. Any other woman would have been flattered by that kind of compliment but not her although she undoubtedly was very pretty. She looked extremely feminine even wearing those men’s clothes she usually had on thanks to her flattering silhouette, her long curly black hair, her deep blue eyes and her fleshy lips. She never had any make-up, but after all, she didn’t need it at all. “WHO this time?” she asked. A pleased smile appeared in her boss’ face. The thing he most liked about her was that she always came straight to the point. “A musician” he replied, “the lead singer from the Manic Street Preachers” “Never heard before” she breathed. He laughed for a while not amazed at all as he knew she loved a total different kind of music, Beethoven, Mozart, Bach… “His name’s James Dean Bradfield” “Are you teasing me?” she inquired extremely serious. He laughed again making her feel slightly angry, “No, that’s just his name!” He couldn’t add anything else and gave her a piece of paper where she read a name, Martin Hall, and an address. He only told her that Martin Hall was Bradfield’s manager and that he’d wait for her at 4 p.m.. At the point she got up and reached the door but before leaving her boss asked, “Are you sure you’re ready to start again?” She knew without a shadow of a doubt that she was and went away. Finally, after four months, she could starting working again. That had been the worst period in her life, even worse than the time after she had left the anti-terrorist squad sick tired of sexual discrimination. She was a bright member a lot cleverer than the majority of her male colleagues and that was something they wouldn’t have ever accepted. Little by little she was cut off from all security operations and, in the end, she resigned. Just one of her colleagues wasn’t against her and it was him who talked to her about a friend of his who had a bodyguards agency, her present boss precisely. He was one of the few who had ever respected her. He had hugely supported her during her hard and long convalescence after that nasty accident she had had. A bullet had broken her femur just above her knee and she had run the risk of losing her leg. She still limped slightly and on frosty days a tearing pain tormented her. She arrived at ‘Hall or Nothing’ at 3.50 p.m., removed her sunglasses, put them in her leather jacket pocket and took the lift till the sixth floor. As she walked towards a secretary she heard a male voice calling her by name behind her. She was surprised by that as just someone who already knew her could call her Sharon. She turned and she immediately recognised the tall sturdy man to whom she had worked with several years before, Steve Head. It was clear now that he had suggested her name. He told her the others were waiting for her so led her into Martin Hall’s office. The door was open wide, he let her enter first so he shut it and introduced her to a blondish man sat in an armchair, Martin Hall. There was another man who was smoking nervously by the window looking outside. He turned and went close to her to shake her hand. He had stubbles and looked exhausted, annoyed and worried. They all sat down and Martin Hall offered her a cup of tea she politely refused. In a few minutes he explained to her why he had called her. James Bradfield got tons of erotic letters from his female fans and there was nothing strange in that, but during the past few weeks he had been getting weird letters written by the same woman with words and letters cut from newspapers and magazines. At the beginning, they had just found them quite bizarre but they had started worrying about them some days before when he had got another letter with death threats. Furthermore, that morning he had received a sort of ‘tasteless gift’. Martin Hall handed her a box and she opened it. It contained a sort of voodoo doll with a nail drove into its chest and a dreadful message which said “You’re going to die”. She was aware that it was a very complicate case, a lot more complicate than she had thought at first. She built up a precise psychological profile of that woman. She undoubtedly was a psychopath. In her letters she gave a detailed description of their presumed sexual intercourses. She could be someone who had had a relationship with JDB and felt as he had cheated her or someone who didn’t and consequently hated him for that. But there was something she didn’t understand. Steve Head already worked for them so why did they need another bodyguard? Steve Head said that the answer was quite easy. They needed someone who could stay with JDB 24 hours per day without catching anyone’s eye. Police was already investigating in an absolute secrecy. Band tour was due to start in a month and they didn’t want the press found out that someone was threatening him. They thought that people would find nothing strange if they saw him with a woman, no one would suspect anything. She had to move to his place as soon as possible and she said that she could do it at once, she only had to go to her hotel to take her things. Steve Head said they’d go to the hotel then he’d drive them to JDB’s flat. While there were walking towards the lift the musician told her, “Y’know Sharon, I already feel safe with you close to my side!” She stopped and looking him straight in the eye she snarled at him, “Since I’m working for you, I’d rather you called me Miss Saunders if you don’t mind!” Afterwards she wore her black shades and pressed the button to call the lift. When they got to the hotel the two men stayed into the car while she went to her room. James Bradfield opened the window and lit a cigarette, “She’s always so friendly?” he said with a hint of irony, “Don’t waste your time trying to make friends with her” Steve Head warned him, “when she’s working she only does her job.” That evening, ignoring completely what Steve Head had said some hours before, he tried to have a friendly chat with her. He was sitting in the sofa smoking and having a whisky while she was in an armchair reading a magazine of health and fitness and drinking some milk. He asked her something about that magazine and he soon realised she didn’t feel like talking to him at all because of her forced and evasive answers, but he insisted and since he had noticed she limped he asked her, “What’s happened to your leg?” “An accident” she replied without looking up from her magazine. He thought he didn’t need to be a genius to understand that but a for a moment he had believed she could have been willing to talk about that. In any case, his goal was another, he just wanted to provoke her to see if she really was so strictly disciplined as she wanted to appear. “Have you ever killed anybody?” She closed her magazine, got up and looking him straight in the eye she replied, “Just to avoid being killed!” So she grasped her glass of milk and went to her room. During the next days they stayed in because she thought that going out was too risky. At first he agreed with her but he soon realised he couldn’t stand that situation any longer. One day he had been on the phone with his mate Nicky Wire for a couple of hours as he needed to talk to someone. He poured out his feelings to him expressing his need to go out, have a pint with his friends and live his life as usual. He didn’t denied that everything would be a little bearable if his bodyguard was more talkative. He was annoyed about her coldness and her apathy, he defined her as a machine programmed to do her job and nothing more. He couldn’t help thinking that her initials, SS, reminded him of Nazi police… The fourth day was even worse than the previous. He paced the room like a caged animal smoking his cigarettes and having a drink one after the other. Since the room was stinking of smoke she asked him to give up smoking because it wasn’t any good for both but he raged at her he was at his place so she had no right to tell him what he had to do there. Exasperated, she grasped his packet of cigarettes he had leant on the table and rushed to the toilet while he ran after her screaming to give them back to him at once. She took all the fags out from the packet to throw them into the WC but before she could do that he grabbed her wrists and twisted her arm behind her back then flung her against the wall. He pressed his body against hers so that she could feel him getting hard against her groin and his breath that stank of whisky and smoke. At that very moment he was sure he finally had her in his power and she was aware of that. What he didn’t know was that she never allowed anyone to treat her like that. As soon as he put his hand on her breast she managed to trample his foot so he bent because of the pain then she pushed him against the wall on his front and twisted his arm behind his back. She could have broken it but she didn’t. She only snarled at him, “Put your fucking hands on me again and I swear to God you won’t be able to play your guitar for a long long time. I’m not one of your sluts and I’ll never be! Keep it always in mind!” He was very impressed, and frightened at the same time, by her strength not only physical but above by the fact that she was extremely strong mentally. He was frightened by her self-control, and kept wondering how she could managed to repress her feelings, that made her seem inhuman. The day after, in the evening, he left his bedroom and announced that he wanted to go out, there was a party and he didn’t want to miss it. She wasn’t any happy about that but she had been to a lot of parties before after all, so she changed as quickly as she could and they took a taxi. When they arrived at the party he went straight to have a drink while she went towards a corner of the room and stayed there, as she was used to do, to keep an eye on him. He looked around for a moment and noticed a girl who was staring at him on the opposite side of the room. He smiled at her and went close to her so they talked for a while and went to fetch another drink. Afterwards they went to sit in a sofa where they went on talking and laughing for some minutes. He had to speak at her ear as the volume of the music was quite high and that was a good chance to brush her skin with his lips and kissed her neck. A while later he kissed her lips but his eyes were on his bodyguard. He didn’t stop looking at her till he was sure she had noticed him. Their looks met for a short moment as she broke eye contact with him at once. She didn’t understand why he was behaving like that. Was he trying to make her jealous? If so, he had no hope of succeeding since she didn’t care about him at all. She only had to protect him from whoever who wanted to harm him and nothing else. After a couple of minutes she noticed they had got up and were leaving so she walked quickly towards them and when she reached them she put her hand on his shoulder. As he turned she asked him where they were going, he turned for a while towards the other girl and told her to be patient for a minute. Then he went closer to her and spoke at her ear, “I feel like shagging that girrrrl!” he replied with a cheeky grin, “Wanna join us Miss Saunders? Can ‘ave you too!” His provocations were stronger and stronger but she didn’t react as he hoped. She only managed to look at him with contempt, he was just a dirty bastard for her. She warned him reminding him that there was a woman who wanted him dead and since he didn’t know absolutely anything about that girl, she told him he had to pay attention. Having finished talking she went away quickly. They went back to the party about one hour later and both of them had another series of drinks. He searched for her again with his eyes and found her still at that corner motionless as a statue. He asked the girl who was with him if she wanted to go at his place and she accepted, so he went close to his bodyguard to tell her they wanted to go back home. She waited for them to leave so she walked after them and when they were out she said she would catch a different cab. Once they arrived she took the lift alone after the had already went up. When she reached the flat the door was ajar and she could clearly hear their laughs, moans and screams coming from his bedroom. She went to the kitchen to fetch some milk then entered her room. She strove not to listen to them but it was something impossible. In the end, she took her CD player and started listening to Mozart pumping the volume up almost to the maximum. The next day she woke up later than usual and called Steve Head. She told him she needed to talk to him so they arranged to meet a couple of hours later down JDB’s flat. Having taken a shower, she packed her suitcase and left it next to the door. Afterwards she went to sit down in the sofa and wrote something on a notebook which left on the table. “Why the hell your suitcase’s close to the door?” he asked in a throaty voice as he left his bedroom, “I resign” she replied “You what?” “You heard well!” she said harshly stranding up. He picked the notebook up, “Who’s Pamela Mitchell?” he asked. She had already reached the door so turned and replied, “Let’s say she’s a sort of colleague of mine. Call her, she’ll be delighted to satisfy all your needs. She picked her suitcase up and went away slamming the door behind her. When she left the building Steve Head was already waiting for her. As he saw her suitcase he understood what was happening. “Why me, Steve?” she asked, “’Cos you’re the best bodyguard woman I know!” he replied genuinely, “Not for this case!” she said quietly shaking her head, “You should’ve called her not me” “You don’t mean Pamela, do you?” “Just her!” she said looking at him, “She’s perfect for him!” “I’m sorry Sharon!” “Not as much as me! You know I hate leaving things half-done, but I have no choice. Can’t do my job in this way!” She sighed wearing her sunglasses. Afterwards she stopped a taxi and went away. When she entered her hotel room she lay down on the bed and close her eyes. At that very moment she prayed to God not to meet him anymore… PART 2 >>> <<< Enola's stories |