Chameleon

She walked casually down the alley towards the recessed doorway where she had noticed the wisp of vapour and then, as a diversion, she called out to no-one.

“Katie, tuck in behind me. You never know what might happen.”

She had barely finished the sentence when a figure leapt out in front of her. She could see it was a man, and he was holding something at chest level with both hands. Whatever it was it looked dangerous, and it was aimed at Dee’s head.

“Bitch!” the man shouted. “I’ll make you pay!” His angry voice was distorted beyond recognition.

Dee marvelled at the fact that almost all amateur assailants felt an urge to issue a warning before acting, whereas if they acted and yelled at the same time the victim would be caught unawares. Dee sensed, as much as saw, something coming towards her face and swivelled to avoid it, whilst launching a kick at the assailant’s outstretched hands. A stream of cold liquid splashed onto her coat which absorbed the most of the noxious liquid, but a little sprayed over her ear. The smell of the liquid hit her senses and she was outraged. The strong chlorine smell told her that someone had been trying to blind her by squirting bleach into her eyes.

At the same instant she recognised the odour, her foot co

***

The scream wasn’t that of a man who had sustained minor injuries to his hands. He screamed as if he was dying. Dee flung off her bleach covered coat and wiped her stinging ear.

“Son of a bitch!” she muttered. “This is undiluted bleach.” In a second she had both feet planted on the pavement and was ready to beat her opponent into the ground. Her training had kicked in instinctively, and she had adopted a closed, long and high stance. In other words, she was presenting a closed or limited view of her body. Her feet were wide apart with her weight resting equally on each foot, and, she was standing tall, ready to deflect any incoming blows or to launch an attack.

The man stumbled towards her, his arms crossed over his face, still screaming.

“I’m blinded!” he cried as he moved ever closer. Dee felt she had no alternative. It could be a bluff, and in any event he had started the fracas. She threw out a series of combination punches to his unprotected midriff and chest, hearing a satisfying gasp as his lungs deflated. She finished with a hard kick to the groin which would have flattened her attacker’s testicles or sent them up as far as his throat.

***

The assailant lay on the ground, crying and sobbing that he was blind, by the time Katie came out into the alley with the security guards. Dee knelt beside the injured man with her scarf ready to act as temporary restraints.

“Bobby,” she called, referring to one of the security men by name. “I need a torch and some bottles of water as soon as you can.”

Dee dragged the man’s arms away from his face but it was too dark to see who he was. He resisted.

“Stop rubbing the stuff into your eyes, you stupid sod,” she shouted.

She pulled his arms behind his back and tied them together with her scarf, wrapping the ends around his ankles for good measure. Trussed up like a turkey, she was saving him from himself as much as restraining him.

The torch arrived, and Bobby pointed it into the man’s face as Dee opened the water bottles and squirted the contents of each into her assailant’s eyes. He yelled and screamed but he could not resist. Dee held his head up and, opening one eye at a time, she squirted water in, rinsing out the bleach. When she was happy that both eyes were thoroughly rinsed, she took her own handkerchief and one from Bobby. Folding them carefully, she placed one over each eye.

Katie came to Dee’s side and saw the man’s blistering red face for the first time. She shrieked his name in shocked surprise.

“Rob Donkin!”

***

By the time the paramedics had arrived and squirted a gooey salve into the young man’s eyes, he was in shock. He wasn’t moving but he was still groaning. The paramedic took a syringe, tapped it and injected Donkin’s left arm. Donkin noticeably relaxed, and the paramedic removed his restraints, holding the scarf out for Dee to take. He looked at her coat.

“You’re covered in it as well,” he noted. “Do you need me to take a look?”

“No, it’s only on my clothes. I’ll be fine. Just get him to hospital before the stupid little sod loses his eyesight.”

Back in Green Earth offices, Dee discarded all of her outer clothing and washed any signs of bleach from her skin. Katie came in with some Green Earth branded clothing and some Tea Tree balm, which she tenderly applied to the red patches on Dee’s skin. Once Dee was fully dressed she examined the damage more closely. She had a couple of red patches on her ear and on her neck, and she could expect to lose some hair colour, but generally she was fine.

Dee looked over to thank Katie for her help and saw tears in the younger woman’s eyes.

“I didn’t see anyone in that alleyway, Dee; I would have walked right into that. I don’t know how I would have coped if you had been hurt protecting me.”

Katie then rushed into Dee’s arms, pushing the older woman back against the countertop.

“That what you pay me for, Katie,” Dee reminded her soothingly, as she hugged her young friend and kissed the top of her head.

***

An hour later in the hotel suite the two women were relaxing in their pyjamas and robes when they heard a brisk knock, followed by a muffled voice from the other side of the door.

“Dee, it’s DC Knox. We met last year.”

Dee checked the TV monitor that showed who was outside the door, just to be sure. She smiled as she saw Detective Constable Knox of the Metropolitan Police, whose round friendly countenance Dee recalled with warmth. She invited him in, and they spent a few minutes reminiscing in the hallway about the case in 2009 where they met.

Eventually the two old friends came into the lounge area and Dee introduced Katie Norman. Katie’s hair was brushed out, her face was make-up free and natural, but the thirty year old DC was still besotted with the star. He couldn’t take his eyes off her.

“I can’t believe I’m meeting you face to face,” he spluttered, losing any cool or ‘street cred’ he might have imagined he possessed.

“I’m always happy to meet one of Dee’s former boyfriends,” she teased. Knox flushed and spluttered again before Dee rebuked the young starlet with a single word. “Katie.”

DC Knott composed himself and explained that Donkin had managed to get hold of some commercial strength bleach which contained around thirty to forty per cent concentrate, whereas domestic bleach contained only around five to fifteen per cent concentrate when compared to the whole volume of the container. It seemed the enraged publicity seeker had then poured the solution into a plastic water ca

Donkin had well and truly been “hoist by his own petard”, in the words of the Detective Constable, who continued; “You may have saved him from blindness with your quick action, Dee, but the medics say it’s too early to tell. His eyes are badly burned.”

Katie came over and sat beside Dee, holding her hand. Neither woman would have wished this on Rob Donkin, but they both knew that the idiot could have blinded them both had Dee not reacted as she did. They both concluded that there was little or no chance that, having filled their eyes with aggressive bleach, Donkin would have stayed around to rinse out their eyes with clean water. He was a coward at heart, and they rightly assumed he would have run away.