Tara

by Lesley Pearse

  'Come on, I know there's more.' Harry put the blade against his other nostril. 'What about taking porno pictures of young girls? How many of those have you done?'

  'I can't remember,' he sobbed, and to Harry's disgust he wet himself.

  'You perverted, evil wanker,' Harry said as the stream of urine soaked Wainwright's dark blue pyjama trousers and ran across the sheet. 'Where's your bottle now, queer boy? Tell me where you keep all the stuff about your victims. Now – before I cut your cock off, too!'

  'It's in a box under the stairs,' he sobbed. 'Look, I'm sorry, I'll give you anything, just let me go!'

  'I haven't anywhere near finished with you.' Harry laughed, opening the dressing table drawer and pulling out a sock. 'Let's just shove this in your mouth for now, to shut you up. I hope you'll still be able to breathe, can't always with a split nostril!'

  It took only seconds to check the dressing-table drawers. Underwear, a couple of sweaters, a bundle of notes which he threw across to Wainwright in disgust, and a packet of Durex.

  'You ain't got much gear,' Harry said derisively, slashing his knife down the jacket of the expensive navy blue suit hanging up. 'Still, I expect you can still sell yer arse to make a few bob when I've finished with you. I ain't got any plans for that.'

  He checked through the house quickly. There was no food, just a few teabags, coffee and sugar. No books, no letters, as if he'd come here in a hurry and abandoned all that went before. The bathroom revealed his true narcissistic nature, with shelves holding fake tan, face creams, expensive cologne and a galaxy of shampoos and bath oils.

  In the cupboard under the stairs was a Johnny Walker whisky box. Harry dragged it towards him, then lifted it up and took it over to the kitchen table. Just a quick flick through revealed details of Wainwright's victims, filed in alphabetical order of their christian names, each in a cardboard wallet. There were at least twenty-five wallets.

  Tara's file was plump, and as he opened it excitement at actually finding hard evidence instantly turned to nausea. First there were more prints, blown-up ones he couldn't avoid looking at, plus some slightly blurred black and white photographs taken without her knowledge. In some of these she was with Josh, getting into his car, going to a restaurant. One was of her standing in the window of her workroom looking down to the street, in another she was in her room wearing only bra and pants and it could only have been taken from the church across the road.

  'You bastard, you've been spying on her,' he muttered, making a mental note to frighten him still more before he left.

  Leaving the box in the hall, Harry went back upstairs. Wainwright had worked himself up into a lather, dripping with sweat, tossing and bucking around so much it was surprising he hadn't come off the bed.

  'You're pathetic' Harry looked down in contempt at the man and wished Myra could see him like this so she'd never look at him again. 'You're like a bloody great slug, leaving a trail of slime behind you.'

  Wainwright's brown eyes pleaded with him.

  'I want to know more,' he said, advancing towards the bed with the knife back in his hand. 'I want to know where you come from, your real home. If you don't want to tell me I'll slit the other nostril.' He pulled the sock out of Wainwright's mouth. 'Come on then, you've got two minutes. Real name, real address.'

  'Wainwright is my real name.' His voice shook with fear. 'This is my real address.'

  'Bullshit, there's no personal belongings here.'

  'I was married.' Tears filled the man's eyes. 'She chucked me out.'

  'Address,' Harry commanded.

  '131 Gorse Road, Bushey in Hertfordshire,' Wainwright whimpered. 'But don't go there – my children.'

  'You've got children?' Harry's lips curled in disgust. 'God help them, having a father like you. Why did your wife throw you out?'

  Wainwright just shivered and whimpered.

  'She found out you were a faggot, I suppose?'

  The lack of reply seemed to confirm this.

  'Well, I'll be going in a moment or two. I've had as much of your stench as I can take.' Harry reached out, took the sock off the bed and shoved it back into Wainwright's mouth. 'I'm taking the files, I'll drop by the police station to hand them over. I'll explain you would have brought them in yourself but you're tied up at the moment.' Harry sniggered at his joke. 'Don't panic, big boy, you'll be released by morning!'

  He was just about to turn off the bedroom light when Myra sprang into his mind.

  'By the way.' Harry bent over the bed and stuck his knife right up against Wainwright's cheek. 'Myra in the pub! She didn't tell me anything about you. Nothing whatsoever. I followed you here and I swiped that envelope from behind the till. If I discover anything has happened to her, or that you've been near her, I swear I'll come back for you and cut off your cock.'

  He paused, sticking the top of the knife into his cheek far enough for the man to make a muffled squeal which had to be agreement. Harry drew his knife down Wainwright's cheek, just deep enough to draw blood and terrify the man.

  'A scar on a man's face is a dead give-away, I always think.' Harry smirked. 'It warns people not to trust you, like a leper carrying a bell.'

  He turned off the bedside light then, smiling as he heard more muffled sounds of distress.

  'Calm down, Simple Simon,' he called back. 'The police will get here eventually, no point in struggling now.'

  Harry sat at his desk, head in his hands. It was light outside now and he'd been through each of the files carefully. Reason told him it would be best to dump the whole lot on the police anonymously and let them deal with it, but his upbringing had conditioned him to distrust them.

  It was a hot potato all right. Blackmail was a despicable crime, but some of the people in these wallets were beyond sympathy and Harry was tempted to just pass on the information to one of the sleazier Sunday papers. The politician who took two under-age boys to a hotel in Brighton posing as their uncle, yet only days later spoke out about cleaning up vice in inner cities. The abortionist who'd plied his trade round the bedsits of Paddington leaving carnage in his wake. But there were others, mere unfortunates – a transvestite, adulterers and homosexuals, and women like Tara, silly enough to let him photograph them in compromising positions. They shouldn't be punished with further humiliation.

  But if he didn't give this stuff to the police, what should he do with it? Burn it, return it to the owners or merely sit on it? He moved from his desk over to the leather Chesterfield and lay down.

  This was the one room in the building he'd made no structural alterations to, and he loved it. It would always remind him how fickle Lady Luck could be, and Great-grandpa Baxter on the wall with his disdainful look would make sure he took good care of business.

  The windows were re-glazed, fifteen panes to remind him of prison, but the view was over the Thames. Once the Baxters must have stood at that window watching ships unloading below. He wouldn't be able to oversee that way, but he had a spy hole in the panelling to watch the croupier in the gaming room next door.

  The oak panelling was re-varnished, a plain grey carpet on the floor. An old roll-top desk was a find from a junk shop in Shoreditch. It was a truly masculine room. Harry liked to lie down on the sofa and imagine himself in three or four years as a tycoon, sitting behind his desk barking out instructions to his minions.

  He felt his eyelids drooping and told himself he would just have forty winks, then phone Tara, and the police to tell them Wainwright was tied up.

  Banging woke him. Someone was trying to get in downstairs.

  He raced out on to the landing, then down the big wide staircase towards the foyer and the front door.

  'I'm coming,' he yelled as they banged again. 'Give us a chance!'

  It was the delivery of furniture – twenty-four small round tables, sixty chairs and twelve button-backed settees in dark red velvet.

  'We came earlier.' One of the men looked angry. 'There weren't no-one here. You're lucky we didn't take this lot back.'<
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  It took some time to get it all unloaded and Harry felt obliged to give them both a drink in the bar when they'd finished. As he saw the men out, he happened to glance at his watch.

  'Bloody hell!' he exclaimed. It was just after six, Wainwright had been tied up for some fifteen hours.

  He dialled 999 nervously, asked for the police and left the message about a man tied up in Loftus Road, hastily putting the receiver down before they could trace the call. Then he rang Tara.

  'I've been nearly out of my mind with worry.' Her voice sounded shaky and scared. 'What's been happening?'

  'I got held up,' Harry said. 'But don't worry, I've got the negatives, he won't bother you or Josh again.'

  He heard her exhale, it sounded as if she was crying.

  'It's over, babe,' he reassured her. 'Now can I come over and see you? I want to kiss all those worries away.'

  'So it's to be Harry, then?' Gran sat in her rocking chair and looked as if she was sucking lemons. 'After all the warnings you still want a jailbird and a gambler?'

  Tara was ready to leave, in jeans and a T-shirt, her holdall on the kitchen floor beside her. It was three weeks since Southend and this three-day break at home had been intended as a peace-making mission, a chance to sort out her feelings and to find out if Harry would ever be accepted.

  'Come on, Gran.' Tara folded her arms insolently and looked away in disgust. 'This is Harry we're talking about, not someone I picked up down the Salvation Army hostel.'

  She was leaving now, a day early, because she couldn't stand any more argument. Instead of going back revitalised, she felt worse than she had when she arrived.

  'I wrote and told you all about it,' Tara went on. 'You refused to acknowledge the letter, wouldn't even talk to me on the phone. Well, I've done everything I can, and if you won't accept Harry, then I'm going back to London and I'll stay there.' She turned away angrily, opened the kitchen door and went out to say goodbye to her mother.

  The yard was bathed in sunshine, a couple of chickens pecking at some straw over by their coop. The barn door was open wide, revealing a gap left by the new tractor which Stan was using down in the lower meadow. There was evidence everywhere of new prosperity, not just the tractor. There was a sturdier door on the barn, the room next to the dairy had a bright sign announcing 'Farm shop', with dozens of pots of jam and marmalade arranged in the window, and a recently painted bench stood outside so customers could sit down and have an ice cream or drink. Big tubs of petunias and a hanging basket on the dairy wall added to the idyllic scene.

  Amy was washing the churns in the dairy. She looked up as Tara came in and smiled weakly. She had her big white apron on, her blonde hair tied back with a scarf, but there was defeat in her eyes.

  'She hasn't come round?'

  'No, Mum, and I don't think she will.' Tara put her bag down on the stone floor. She didn't want to leave like this, but Gran hadn't given her any choice.

  Amy sighed and wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. She was piggy-in-the-middle again and she didn't know what to think, much less do.

  'Mum, what do I do?' Tara began to cry and immediately Amy went to comfort her. 'I'm so happy with Harry, he's everything in the world.' She sobbed on her mother's shoulder. 'He isn't like Dad or Grandpa, he isn't.'

  'There, there.' Amy held Tara tightly. 'I know he isn't like them. It's just this club that bothers us. All those shady characters. We can't help worrying, not just about what might happen to him, but you, too. You've moved out of the flat above the shop. What's going to happen when you're up half the night with Harry? Are you going to be able to work?'

  'Harry's not living with me,' Tara said, lifting a tear-stained face to her mother's. 'He's got a place of his own again back in the Angel. I won't be going to the club every night!'

  It wasn't strictly true that Harry wasn't living with her, because he had been with her every night since she moved in. But he had got a flat of his own, for when the club opened.

  'Only time can resolve this one.' Amy dabbed at Tara's face with the corner of her apron. 'I'm not against you. I love you too much for that, and I do know how it feels to want to be with the man you love.'

  'Oh, Mum.' Fresh tears started to flow. 'She's been nasty to you and Greg too, hasn't she?'

  'She can be the most aggravating woman in the world,' Amy said bitterly. 'We wanted to get married this summer, but she's managed to scupper that plan by playing on my conscience.'

  'How?' Tara asked.

  'Well, we had a row when Greg suggested building a surgery here. I lost my temper with her and flounced out, saying I'd give her a taste of what life would be like without me on call.'

  'That was when she twisted her ankle?' Tara asked. She had sensed there was something more to the tale of Gran slipping in the cowshed a month or two back, but she hadn't known Amy wasn't actually there at the time.

  'Yes.' Amy blushed, the memory still making her feel guilty. 'It happened the day after I stormed out. She didn't call me or anything. Just strapped it up and hobbled about on a stick. Stan came round to Greg's in the end and said the farmhouse was in a terrible mess.'

  'She couldn't manage without you, then?' Tara took just a little pleasure in this.

  Amy half smiled. 'She looked after the animals, but that was all. The dishes were piled up in the sink, the floor was covered in pig swill because she couldn't carry the pails. You can guess the rest.'

  'But unless you stand firm, she'll always expect you to do things.' Tara caught hold of her mother's arms and squeezed them. 'Can't you marry Greg and live with him, but come round here each day?'

  'She'd be so lonely,' Amy's eyes welled up and this time it was Tara who comforted her.

  'But if she was lonely she'd soon let Greg build the surgery,' Tara said. 'You mustn't let her blackmail you.'

  'Easier said than done.' Amy broke away and dried her eyes. 'For now we're just waiting, chipping away at her.'

  'I suppose that's what I'll have to do, too.' Tara smiled bleakly.

  Amy looked up at the clock on the dairy wall. 'If you're going to catch the twelve o'clock bus you'd better go,' she said sadly. 'Give things time. Not just with your Gran, but with Harry, too. Keep your options open.'

  There was nothing more to be said. Tara put her arms round her mother one more time and hugged her tightly.

  'Bye, Mum,' she whispered. 'Keep in touch!'

  'You're the most precious thing in my life,' Amy whispered back. 'I want you to be happy above all else. If Harry's the one that makes you happy, I won't fight it.'

  Tara had to run to catch the bus and they were almost at the turn-off to Stanton Drew before she got her breath back.

  The little round toll house with its thatched roof standing in the middle of the junction evoked memories of Simon. When Harry had finally phoned to say he'd dealt with Wainwright all she felt was relief. But the next day, when she read the story in the papers of the man tied up and tortured in Shepherd's Bush, she felt sick. It had to be Simon and, even though Harry was merely protecting her, it didn't feel good to know he could do such things.

  Harry wouldn't confirm or deny what he'd done. All he was concerned about was getting her away from above the shop into her own flat. But Josh's words on the subject had chilled her.

  'If that's his way of sorting out a problem, I hope you two don't ever fall out.'

  Josh had been moody and sullen for a few days after the event; he said little when she got the flat vacated by one of Miranda's friends in Pembridge Road in Notting Hill Gate. But since then he'd grown warmer again. He'd found a girl to help her in the workroom, and even bought her a television as a flat-warming present.

  Reason told her she should be entirely happy. The flat was just one big, sunny room with a tiny kitchen and bathroom, but it had its own front door, huge windows overlooking a much quieter road than Church Street, and it felt like a real home. Harry had got a friend in to paint it. She'd splashed out and bought a settee that opened into a
double bed, and full-length curtains in a wild jungle print.

  But even though when they were together passion wiped out all anxiety, a little voice kept telling her to be careful.

  Chapter 27

  'Please try and look as if you want to go to the party,' Tara begged Josh as he drove her through the City. 'You've known Harry since you were small, there'll be lots of people there who knew you then. It'll be fun!'

  Josh looked his best tonight in a dinner jacket and bow-tie. His dark curls shone, his face was tanned. He looked like a man on the way to his first million.

  'About as much fun as it was hearing them call me dirty Yid,' he said drily. 'I can't actually remember one nice person from that era.'

  'You said Harry was kind then!'

  'Well, yes, I suppose he was.'

  'If nothing else you can flaunt yourself.' Tara giggled. 'What better than to come back stinking rich and rub people's noses in it?'

  Tara didn't really know why she'd talked Josh into coming tonight. He was no fun when he was in this dour introspective mood and Harry didn't really care whether he came or not. But she knew the press would be there and Harry needed all the celebrities he could get on his side.

  At least she knew that she was looking good. She'd made the outfit – a cream plunge-necked slinky cat-suit that fitted like a second skin, with flared trousers and a beaded wide belt slung around her hips. The matching jacket draped over her shoulders was studded with more bead work across the yoke and lapels. She had spent two hours at the hairdresser's having her hair curled into ringlets and for once even she knew she looked gorgeous!

  As Josh turned off the main road just past Tower Bridge, Tara was reminded again what a gamble Harry's club was.

  The Top Cat Club's green neon sign glimmered through the gloom ahead. The logo of a cat wearing a top hat seemed to defy the smoke-blackened brickwork surrounding it, the bricked-up windows, the rat-ridden air of the place.

  She was surprised to see that Harry had kept all the pulleys and hoists and repainted them in the original red to match the huge loading-bay door. Aside from glass in the windows, paint and restored doors, it was just as she'd last seen it back in February.