I could of course confront him and demand to know where the money came from, and what he has spent £4,000 on since his release. But this would certainly shatter our delicate relationship and I doubt if I have the skills to sort the wheat from the chaff in any explanation he cares to offer.
So in my dilemma, I’m turning to you, Dr Ozigbo. Mr Hadda has mentioned your name and your job, lightly but affectionately I felt, and I’ve tracked down your address via the Internet. No such thing as privacy these days! And what I want to ask you is this. As the psychiatric expert who supervised his progress through the regeneration course (sorry, don’t know what you call it, but that’s how I think of it!) how convinced are you that he is no longer a menace to the community?
Obviously you must have been very convinced last autumn or you wouldn’t have recommended his release on licence. But in the light of what I’ve just told you, how convinced are you now?
We are both employed in the cure of souls, Dr Ozigbo, though not in the same sense of the term. Your concern is individual; you try to repair damaged psyches. Mine is pastoral; I try to look after the welfare of my flock. If you do not feel able to reply to this letter, or if in your reply you are not able to offer total reassurance, then my duty will be clear and I’ll have to report what I know to the authorities even though I fear that the consequences for Mr Hadda might be severe.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Yours sincerely
Luke Hollins
After she’d read the letter, Alva went into the kitchen, took a prepared chicken salad out of the fridge, poured herself a glass of white wine, carried food and drink into the living room and sat down by the fire. Before she started eating, she switched her radio on to catch the six o’clock news.
Its burden was familiar. The world was in a mess. Not quite the same mess it had been in when Wilfred Hadda started his sentence – the worry now was that the economy was overheating again rather than bumping along the bottom – but the same wars were being fought, the same groups were blowing people up in the name of the same gods, the ice-mass was a little lower, the sea levels were a little higher, a couple more species had been declared extinct – no, on the whole Hadda would probably not have noticed any significant change on his release.
She brought to mind their last meeting, some three months earlier. She had met him as he came out of the prison. The only other person there was a small bespectacled man in a battered Toyota. She recognized him as Mr Trapp, the solicitor. They hadn’t met, but she had glimpsed him when he was acting for Hadda as his probation hearing approached. He wasn’t the most impressive representative of the legal profession she’d met, but he seemed to know his business.
It occurred to her it must have been a pretty big favour he owed Hadda to still be paying it off after all this time. Or maybe it was Hadda’s capacity to inspire personal loyalty that she saw working here. She’d felt it herself and there were suggestions in Luke Hollins’s letter that he’d come under the influence.
It was a dangerous quality in a man with his sexual predilections.
There was no such thing as a cure, of course, not unless you went a lot further down the chemical road than she was able to contemplate. All you could do was try and restore that barrier between impulse and action that keeps most of us within the bounds of socially acceptable behaviour. First of all you had to strip away all the excuses and evasions, the explanations and deceptions, and once you had got the patient to see what he was, then you could start building up a positive image of what he might be.
It was a tortuous road that you trod with great care, for at the end of it lay the question, Is it safe to let this man out into the world again?
She had of course discussed progress with Simon Homewood at regular intervals. He had been consistently helpful and supportive. And always he had talked about the final recommendation for parole as being their joint decision. Technically this was true, but nothing Homewood said could blur Alva’s awareness that ultimately the responsibility for Hadda’s release would be hers.
She’d also spoken of the case in general terms with John Childs. Curiously she derived much more comfort from her non-specific chats with him than she did from her much more detailed discussions with the Director. Perhaps this was because his response was tinged with a gentle cynicism against which she was forced to test her own conclusions and intuitions.
‘Is it inevitable,’ he asked, ‘that recognition of the evil of one’s actions is accompanied by regret for performing them?’
‘Not in certain extreme cases of sociopathic behaviour,’ she replied. ‘But I do not categorize my client as a sociopath.’
‘Then what?’
‘A man with a compulsion he deplores so much he could only deal with it by denying it completely. Like some alcoholics.’
‘Isn’t that a rather easy judgment? I mean, alcoholics don’t hurt other people. Except their families. And they have the AA to help them. And I doubt the public would tolerate a support organization called Paedophiles Pseudonymous.’
‘The Law makes judgments,’ said Alva. ‘My job is to assess and, where possible, adjust.’
‘And ultimately to advise,’ said Childs. ‘It’s a huge responsibility.’
‘And you think I should duck it by leaving my client banged up for ever?’
‘Good Lord, no. I’m sure you wouldn’t dream of letting him loose if you had the slightest fear he’d still be a danger to young girls. Whether, of course, he might be a danger to anyone else hardly falls within the brief of your terms of employment.’
He smiled as he spoke, so she decided he was making what in the Home Office passed for a joke and smiled back, and the conversation then moved on to young Harry’s imminent enrolment at university.
By the time of Hadda’s parole hearing, she entertained no doubts about his fitness to return to society, and her certainty carried the day with the panel. Nor did she feel any pang of unease as she saw him emerge from the jail and stand for a moment, looking up at the sky.
She got out of her Fiesta and advanced to meet him. Trapp had remained in his car.
‘Elf,’ said Hadda, ‘it’s good of you to come. Good to see you exist outside.’
‘That’s the point,’ she said. ‘You’ve got to know that my concern for you doesn’t stop at the prison gate. It never did.’
‘I appreciate that. And I know I thanked you inside, but now I want to thank you outside for all you’ve done for me. Without you . . . well, I don’t know what I’d be. I certainly know where I’d be! Thank you. And I’m sorry for all that crap I fed you.’
She shook her head and said, ‘You were in denial. Anyway, it was full of truths; not always the truths you imagined, but without them, I’d never have known how to move forward.’
This amused him enough for the transforming smile to flicker briefly across his lips, and he said, ‘So a diet of crap can do you good? Must remember that whenever I hear myself moaning about prison food. Now I’d best be on my way. I’m due at the hostel at ten. Don’t want to start my new life by being late.’
She knew he was booked into a halfway house, knew also that when he moved out of there after a couple of weeks, he planned to return to his family home in Cumbria.
She’d said, ‘Good luck. The probation service will keep me updated on how things are going, but if you ever feel the need to get in touch direct, don’t hesitate.’
He had smiled and for a moment she’d thought he was going to lean forward and kiss her goodbye. But in the event he only gave the kind of head bob men give to royalty, then went across to the old Toyota, got in and was driven away without glancing back.
A job well done, she’d thought. Not necessarily a job finished. When you’re dealing with the human mind, you can never say the job’s finished. But so far, so good.
And now there was this letter.
She made herself finish her meal and wine before she picked it up again.
Luke Hollins was wor
ried and so was she. Even though the syndrome Hadda had presented with predicated great powers of deception, this firm evidence of their continuance was disturbing.
Even more than the source of the money, she shared Hollins’s concern about the missing four thousand.
A man with Hadda’s record spending that kind of money in a few months . . . her heart sank.
She knew what she ought to do and that was drop this lock, stock and barrel into the lap of the probation service. And she knew that the almost inevitable result would be a revocation of Hadda’s licence and a return to custody, at least until his case was reviewed.
These things she knew.
At the same time she realized that, without spending long hours in soul-searching and mental debate, she knew exactly what she was going to do.
9
Drigg Beach on the Cumbrian coast is a heavenly spot on a fine summer day. A couple of miles of level sand, skylarks above the dunes, oyster-catchers at the water’s edge, the Irish Sea sparkling all the way to the Isle of Man, to the south the bulk of Black Combe looming benevolently over the land, to the north St Bees Head staring thoughtfully out to sea, all combine to provide a setting in which even the prospect of Sellafield Nuclear Power Station slouching in the sunshine can attain something of a festive air.
But in the darkness of a cold December night with scorpion tails of sleet riding on the back of a strong nor’wester that drives the white-maned waves up the shore like ramping hosts of warrior horse, it can feel as remote and perilous as the edge of the Barents Sea.
Tonight, however, there was human presence here, on the shore and on the water.
A motor-powered rubber dinghy came riding up the beach till it grounded on the sand. Two men in wet suits jumped out carrying between them a large leather grip. At the same time two more men climbed out of a Toyota Land Cruiser parked on the shore and ran down to the water’s edge where the first pair deposited the grip. As they returned to the dinghy, the men from the Land Cruiser carried the grip to the car. They were ill matched in build, one large and lumbering, the other much slighter though with an athletic rhythm of movement that gave promise of strength. He certainly seemed to take his share of the load as they hoisted their burden into the Toyota’s load space.
Meanwhile the dinghy men had unloaded a second grip on to the sand. They then climbed into the dinghy, the helmsman put the engine into reverse for a few metres then swung round and accelerated out to sea.
By the time the shore men had carried the second grip to the Toyota, the dinghy had vanished into the darkness.
Once more the two men bent their backs to swing their burden up into the load space.
‘I shouldn’t bother,’ said a voice.
From the landward side of the vehicle stepped a figure. He was tall, broad-shouldered; his features were hard to make out but they could see that over one eye he wore a piratical patch; and in his hands he carried a long-handled axe.
The smaller man reacted first, releasing his hold on the grip handle, and reaching into his jacket. The shaft of the axe swung and caught him under the jaw and he collapsed to the ground without a sound.
The taller man had been unbalanced by having to take the full weight of the grip and by the time he let go and straightened up, he found the blade of the axe was six inches from his neck. It stayed steady even when the axeman took his gloved right hand off the shaft and reached down to pluck a gun from the unconscious man’s jacket.
‘Makarov,’ he said dismissively. ‘Just an old sentimentalist then.’
He tossed it behind him, then nodded down at the grip.
‘Open it,’ he said.
The big man obeyed.
The grip was full of transparent packs of white powder.
‘Lay them along the sand,’ said the axeman. ‘In a straight row.’
When that was done he pointed to the grip already loaded.
‘Again,’ he said.
The man repeated the process except that this time when there were only a couple of the packs left, the axeman said, ‘That’ll do. Now walk slowly along the row.’
The man started to walk. Suddenly he cried out in terror as the axe-blade whistled past his ear. Then it buried itself in the first of the packs, splitting it open so that the powder spilt out across his shoes.
The process was repeated till all the packs had been burst. By the time they returned to the car, the tide was already running up over the line.
‘The fish will be happy tonight,’ said the axeman. ‘See if you can revive your mate.’
He laid his axe on the sand, took an empty rucksack off his back and placed the remaining two white powder packs in it. The big man knelt by his companion.
‘Hey, Pudo, Pudo, you OK?’
There was no response, so the big man tried slapping his face. Perhaps he meant to be gentle, but he wasn’t built for refinement. With a scream of pain, the recumbent man tried to roll away from his companion.
‘I’d say if poor old Pudo’s jaw wasn’t broken before, it certainly is now,’ said the axeman. ‘See if you can get him on his feet without breaking anything else.’
He shrugged the rucksack on to his broad shoulders, retrieved his axe, raised it high and brought the broad back of the head down on the pistol barrel. He then picked up the weapon and chucked it into the back of the Land Cruiser.
‘I wouldn’t recommend trying to use it,’ he said. ‘But what I would recommend is for you to get your mate into your car and drive away as fast as you can. If you’re tempted to hang around this neck of the woods, just remember that, next time we meet, I may not be in such a generous mood. Tell whoever sent you that he should find himself another landing spot. This coast is out of bounds. You got that?’
The big man nodded. His injured companion was now upright. He still looked as if his knees would buckle without the support of the other’s arms, but the gaze that he fixed on the axeman was lively enough. His eyes were black and glittered with hatred. He tried to speak but the damage to his jaw made this impossible.
‘No need for thanks, Pudo,’ said the axeman. ‘Get him aboard.’
The big man half carried, half dragged the other to the passenger door and pushed him on to the seat. Then he walked round to the driver’s side. Here he paused by the door, looking round, as if expecting further instruction.
But the axeman had vanished just as completely as the white powder scattered along the beach had disappeared beneath the onward surging waves.
10
Imogen Estover arrived at Ulphingstone Castle four days before Christmas. She parked her sky-blue Mercedes E-Class coupé, sounded the horn, and strode through the main entrance confident that her mother’s well-trained staff would take care of her luggage without need of any further instruction.
‘Darling, you’re early. How nice,’ said Lady Kira, offering the double air kiss that was the nearest she permitted to physical contact when her make-up was on.
‘London’s hideous. You can smell the fug in Oxford Street three miles away,’ said Imogen. ‘I thought of the fells in the sunshine and had to escape. I can’t wait to get out.’
Lady Kira wrinkled her nose. Though occasionally she might affect nostalgia for the great swathes of Caucasian wilderness her family had allegedly once owned, or even join a shooting party on the estate – usually proving herself a better shot than most of the men – she was no lover of the Great Outdoors. Fell walking was, in her vocabulary, a euphemism for trespass, and all that could be said for rock climbing was that from time to time it killed one of the idiots who indulged in it.
Her daughter’s enjoyment of these pursuits she treated as a sort of venereal infection resulting from her marriage to the woodcutter’s son. But if the years of motherhood had taught her anything it was that Imogen had a will as strong as her own, so she passed no comment but said, ‘Where’s Toby?’
‘Probably clearing his desk so he can roger his fat secretary on it,’ said Imogen. ‘He’ll be up tomorrow
on the train.’
Kira screwed up her mouth and for a surprised moment Imogen thought the reference to Toby’s infidelities had disconcerted her, but she was quickly reassured.
‘On the train?’ said Kira in disbelief. ‘Pasha’s driving up tomorrow, or rather being driven up in that lovely Bentley of his. I’m sure he’d be delighted to give Toby a lift.’
‘I think Toby would prefer the train.’
Her mother frowned.
‘Prefer travelling with hoi polloi rather than with someone who is his very important client, my relative, and everyone’s friend?’ she said. ‘Why would he prefer that?’
Imogen said, ‘I really can’t imagine, Mummy. Can you?’
Her father appeared.
He said, ‘There you are, my dear. Saw the car,’ and gave her a hug.
‘Hello, Daddy,’ she said. ‘You’re looking well.’
‘Am I?’ said Sir Leon doubtfully. ‘Nice of you to say so. Staying long?’
‘Well, till after Christmas anyway.’
‘Ah, Christmas. Toby with you?’
‘He’s coming tomorrow. And I gather we’re having the pleasure of cousin Pasha’s company too.’
‘What? Oh yes. Nicotine,’ said Sir Leon with no sign of enthusiasm.
‘Nik-EE-tin,’ said his wife in an exasperated tone.
Imogen smiled at her father and patted his arm gently.
‘I’ll go and get unpacked,’ she said.
Her parents watched her leave the room then Sir Leon said, ‘She know that Wolf’s back at Birkstane?’
‘I expect so,’ said his wife.
‘But you didn’t mention it?’
‘If she knows, why would I remind her?’ asked Lady Kira. ‘And if she doesn’t, why would I tell her?’
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