In for the Kill

by Pauline Rowson

  Now I was running out of time. She caught my agitation.

  ‘I’m holding you up. Perhaps I will see you when you have more time.’

  ‘I’d like that.’ I watched her go with some sorrow. After almost four years without sex I meet a woman interested in me and I haven’t got the time! That was sod’s law for you all right.

  I pulled up at a call box and punched in Lorraine Proctor’s number. A lady answered who told me that Mrs Proctor would be back at two o’clock.

  ‘Are you from the agency?’ she asked.

  ‘I beg your pardon.’

  ‘The estate agency. Is it about the house?’

  ‘Oh yes, that’s right,’ I said quickly, my mind racing. ‘Who am I speaking to?’

  ‘Mrs Ellis. I’m Mrs Proctor’s cleaner.’

  ‘Of course. Don’t worry about any message, Mrs Ellis. It’s not urgent. I’ll call her later.’

  Two o’clock, that gave me enough time to get to Chichester and find the house. Dear Mrs Ellis had given me my intro.

  I rang Miles first though before setting out.

  ‘What’s the latest on Joe’s death?’

  ‘Random attack. Burglar after money.’

  ‘What was he strangled with?’

  ‘Something soft, a tie or scarf.’

  Not bare hands then. Different to Westnam’s strangulation, which could possibly indicate two killers: Rowde having killed Westnam and Andover, Joe.

  ‘A burglar wearing a tie!’ I said. ‘Must be a pretty smart burglar.’ For some reason Gus, immaculate in that suit and tie sitting in the kitchen, sprang to mind.

  ‘Could have been a scarf, used to cover the lower part of the face so he couldn’t be recognised.’

  I gave him that one but I didn’t go along with the random burglar theory.

  ‘What about Sergeant Hammond, Clipton’s sidekick?’

  ‘He really did win the lottery.’

  ‘Lucky him.’

  I rang off and headed for the mainland. I reached Chichester just before one o’clock and parked in the multi-storey next to Waitrose. It was a bit of a long shot but if the house was up for sale then I guessed one of the more upmarket estate agents in the city would have the details on it.

  I struck lucky at the third one I came to in East Street after collecting a number of housing details from the others, none of which matched Lorraine Proctor’s address. Fifteen minutes later I left the estate agents clutching the details of Harbourside House and with an appointment to view, unaccompanied by the agent, which was a stroke of luck on a property worth almost a million pounds. But then I was due some luck and I had pushed hard for the appointment. I told them I had a meeting scheduled in London later that afternoon. I spun some yarn about being an IT entrepreneur with cash to burn in my pocket and the desperate need to find a house quickly for myself and family that was close to Chichester Harbour and with a mooring for my yacht. They all bought it. Goodness knows whether it would lead me to any information about Andover but I had to try. I had used the story about having an accident with a Mercedes on my return from the States to explain my battered and bruised face.

  Lorraine Proctor opened the door to me. She was exquisitely dressed in camel-coloured trousers and a cream shirt that could only have come from a top designer. She, like the house, was a bit too polished and modern for me. It made me yearn for the informality of my houseboat. The thought rather surprised me.

  Before prison I would have wet myself in anticipation of living in a house like this, individually designed and commissioned by the owners with a glazed atrium, five bedrooms, a swimming pool and access to the harbour. Now I no longer aspired to it. In fact I wouldn’t have wanted it as a gift.

  ‘Mr Hardley?’

  ‘Yes.’ I’d used my mother’s maiden name. ‘It’s very good of you to see me at such short notice.’

  ‘Not at all. Where would you like to start?’

  ‘Downstairs, I think.’

  She hadn’t recognised me behind the bruises or the white hair. I had wondered if she might.

  Neither had she shown any shock at my battered face, nor asked me questions about it, I guessed the agent had called her to explain.

  After a tour of the hall, sitting room, kitchen and breakfast room we stepped into the study.

  From here I could look out across the garden to the upper reaches of Chichester Harbour and to the South Downs beyond. It was beautiful. A sailor’s paradise with a Bavaria 42 yacht moored at the bottom of the garden.

  ‘It’s perfect,’ I said, thinking more of the yacht and location than the house. On the tour we’d chatted about how long she’d lived here: six years. What her husband did for a living: consultant surgeon. I was wondering how to bring up the subject of her father and Andover.

  Waiting for inspiration I gazed at photographs of racing yachts on the walls. ‘You sail?’ I asked.

  ‘When I can, with my husband. He also races yachts.’

  ‘You’ll miss living here.’

  ‘Not really, we’re moving to Hayling Island.

  We’ve bought a house with a mooring that gives us direct access into Langstone Harbour and the Solent. It takes quite a while to sail up through Chichester Harbour until you reach the Solent.

  It’s an art deco house that needs some work. I shall enjoy that.’

  ‘Is interior design your business? I must say you have immaculate taste.’

  Whatever she answered it by-passed me.

  Suddenly I was staring at a large photograph of a beautiful yacht with a full spinnaker and a hardworking crew racing in the Solent. Where had I seen the name on the spinnaker before?

  Spires. Of course it had been on the notepad in Gus’s hall, beside the pilot’s licence. I took a step nearer and eagerly scanned the other photographs. There was one of the crew in harbour; the skipper was holding a magnum of champagne to celebrate their victory.

  ‘Is this your husband?’ I asked pointing to a tall blonde man beside the older man holding the champagne.

  ‘Yes, and that’s my father beside him. He was killed in a car accident the summer after this photograph was taken.’

  The year before my arrest. ‘Who’s this?’ I asked pointing to one of the crew. I knew who it was: Gus Newberry. I wanted to know if she did.

  ‘Probably someone who worked for my father.’

  I didn’t have a clue where Gus worked or what connection he had with Sidney Couldner, only that there was a connection. It didn’t necessarily mean anything. It could just be a coincidence.

  Yet it niggled me.

  I raced through the rest of the house with only a fraction of my mind on it. After a hasty goodbye I drove around to Chichester marina and parked the car. Opening the boot I scrabbled through my press cuttings file until I found the one I wanted. I knew I’d seen the name Spires somewhere other than on Gus’s notepad. They had been Manover Plastics accountants; there was a reference to them in one of the articles on Clive Westnam. Why hadn’t I seen the connection before? Because it had needed the photograph and the notepad to link it. Was there a connection with Brookes? I wouldn’t mind betting so.

  With my heart hammering against my ribs fit to bust I used the pay phone in the marina café and called Spires. Some minutes later I had the information I needed. Gus was their senior partner, specialising in corporate finance. I rang off and headed for Petersfield.

  CHAPTER 10

  A

  ‘

  lex! What’s happened to you?’ Vanessa greeted me with a horror-stricken expression.

  ‘This?’ I fingered my bruised face. ‘An accident.’ She looked as though she didn’t believe me, but that was the least of my problems.

  It was after school hours and yet the house was as quiet as the grave. I had wondered on my drive across country to Petersfield if I would see my sons but they couldn’t be here. I was disappointed. Then Vanessa tossed an anxious glance over her shoulder and I knew I was wrong.

  My heart leapt into my thr
oat. Before I realised it I had pushed past her and was tearing down the hall, all thoughts of Gus vanishing from my mind.

  I drew up on the threshold of the kitchen. I thought I was going to pass out at the sight of them in school uniform sitting at the table, their heads bent over their homework. I was sure my heart had stopped beating. I stood perfectly still afraid that I might spoil the moment by bursting into tears, something I hadn’t done since I had fallen off the roof of Grandad’s folly and broken my arm. My crying in prison had been inside me, churning my gut until the pain had become almost unbearable, sucking the breath from my lungs.

  Then they both looked up. My heart started beating again; it was as if someone had put one of those resuscitating machines on it and had kick-started it into life. I took a breath. I wanted to wrap my arms around them, to hold them tight and never let them go. I wanted to save them from bastards like Rowde. But I couldn’t even move. Vanessa stepped in front of me.

  ‘You can finish your homework upstairs.’

  Her words brought me out of my emotional rigor. Gently I pushed her aside. ‘Hello.’ I sounded like someone with laryngitis. I tried to smile, maybe I did. I hoped I didn’t look like the ventriloquist’s dummy from Dead of Night.

  David glanced at his mother. It angered me.

  ‘You don’t need permission to speak to your father,’ I said more harshly than I intended.

  ‘Are you my dad?’ Philip said, excitedly and slightly in awe.

  How could he have forgotten me so quickly?

  He had been almost eight when I had gone inside; I had been seven when my father had died of a heart attack. I hadn’t forgotten the gentle quiet man who had read to me and taught me how to sail, so why had Philip forgotten me?

  Perhaps the hair had fooled him, or possibly my bruised face. Perhaps Vanessa and Gus had banished all photographs of me from the house.

  I glared at her. She flinched and I wanted to crow because I had hurt her. Suddenly I felt extremely sad.

  I smiled again, more naturally I hoped this time. ‘Yes. Don’t you remember me?’ I told myself a child’s memory was very short. And I had not allowed them to send me a card or letter whilst I had been in prison. Vanessa had persuaded me it was for the best, though I hadn’t need much persuasion.

  ‘Your hair’s white,’ David said.

  ‘Prison did that to me.’

  Vanessa winced. The boys didn’t bat an eyelid.

  I parked myself at the top of the table with David on my right and Philip on my left. It took all my powers of self-control not to scoop them up in my arms and hold them so tight that I might be in danger of suffocating them. My heart was breaking. I hoped they couldn’t see it.

  ‘What’s prison like?’ Philip wriggled, impatient to be let loose. He had always been the more active child. Many a time he and I had kicked a ball around the park, while David had preferred to have his nose buried in a book. I dug my nails into the palm of my hands underneath the table so hard that I wondered if I had drawn blood.

  ‘Philip, your father doesn’t want to talk about it. Now upstairs –’

  ‘It’s horrible and smelly and lonely.’

  ‘Did you meet loads of crooks?’

  David scoffed. ‘Of course he did. Why else do you think they’re in prison.’

  ‘Dad’s not a crook.’ Philip declared hotly.

  I felt the tears spring to my eyes. It took a supreme effort of will to hold them back. I gripped the top of the table as if it was going to collapse if I didn’t hold onto it, when in reality it was me that was in danger of collapsing.

  ‘You’re not a crook, are you, Dad?’

  ‘No, Philip, I’m not.’ I held the clear, innocent blue eyes that gazed at me.

  David, now fourteen, looked as though he wasn’t sure whether or not to believe me, but I saw something in his serious brown eyes that wanted me to be telling the truth.

  I addressed them both. ‘I was sent to prison for something I didn’t do and now I have to prove I’m innocent.’

  ‘Like in that film with Harrison Ford?’ David eyed me curiously.

  I must have looked puzzled because he explained as if talking to a rather stupid child,

  ‘ The Fugitive. He’s trying to find the one-armed man who killed his wife.’

  ‘Aren’t you a little young to have seen that?’

  ‘Nah, we’ve all seen it, except Philip; he’s still a baby.’

  ‘I’m not. I’m nearly as old as you.’

  ‘You’re two years younger,’ David said haughtily.

  Oh my God, how I had missed this, the endless sparring between them, at one time friends, next fighting on the living room floor. Andover had deprived me of this. He would be punished. I was in for the kill now.

  ‘Philip, David, upstairs at once and take your homework. Your father and I need to talk.’

  David rolled his eyes but scooped up his textbooks. I watched the boys slide off their chairs. At the door David hesitated.

  ‘You will find out who really did it, won’t you, Dad?’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘And you’ll come back and play with us like you used to?’

  I nodded. I was beyond speech. He remembered.

  ‘That’s what I told them at school.’

  ‘David,’ I called him back, finding my voice.

  ‘What did you tell them?’

  ‘That you were going after the man who put that stuff on your computer.’

  ‘You think someone did.’

  ‘Of course. Anyone can hack into computers.

  You can make them say what you want and people believe it because they think computers can’t lie. It’s easy.’

  ‘Room now,’ came Vanessa’s stern command.

  David grinned. I smiled back and he ran off.

  ‘Alex –’

  ‘They’re great; they’re so grown up. They’re so…’ My voice faltered. I rose and turned away from her. I could hear them scuffling about upstairs, a toilet flushed and a door banged. When I had myself under control Vanessa had a whisky in front of me but I shook my head.

  ‘I’m driving. Coffee would be good though; help keep me awake.’

  She turned away and flicked the switch on the kettle. I was glad that Gus hadn’t been here. It had given me the chance to be with my sons. I felt sick to the pit of my stomach at the thought of what Rowde threatened to do to them. If Gus had any part to play in framing me then I’d kill the bastard. But how could he have? And why?

  It wasn’t possible and yet there was that pilot’s licence, the fact that he knew Couldner, and that he worked for Spires: Clive Westnam’s accountants. I told myself that knowing two out of the three victims wasn’t proof that Gus had any connection with Andover. And yet…

  ‘When will Gus be in?’ I asked, wondering if Vanessa would notice the hardness in my voice.

  ‘Monday evening, if all goes well with the deal.’

  ‘What?’ I shouted. I hadn’t expected this. It spoilt all my plans.

  She gazed at me surprised. ‘He’s in Guernsey, on business.’

  Guernsey! My heart sank. How long would it take me to get there, get some answers from Gus, and then fly back again? A day at least and I didn’t have a day to spare. I wouldn’t be able to get a flight until tomorrow, Friday, if I was lucky.

  Maybe not until Saturday. There was one good thing though; at least I didn’t need a passport to get to Guernsey. It could have been worse; it could have been Hong Kong!

  ‘What kind of business?’ I forced myself to keep calm. If I couldn’t get to Gus until tomorrow, then I could at least get some answers to my questions from Vanessa now.

  ‘I don’t know. Something to do with one of his clients, I expect.’

  ‘Who is he seeing in Guernsey?’

  ‘Alex, what is this?’

  ‘Just humour me.’ I tried to keep a lid on my impatience.

  ‘Fosters, they’re private bankers based just outside St Peter Port. I think there’s a
big deal going down with some property developers. I don’t understand it and I don’t ask.’

  I could hear David and Philip talking and laughing, not a lot of homework was being done.

  ‘When did you meet Gus?’ I asked steadily.

  A faint flush spread up her neck. The kettle boiled and flicked itself off. Vanessa made no attempt to make me a coffee. She sat down, looked at her hands and then up at me with a defiant gleam in her eyes. I could see that she had come to a decision. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to hear this, but I had asked for it.

  Somehow I knew it was going to be painful.

  ‘We first met when I was a student at Manchester University. I was twenty. Gus was twenty eight.’

  I kept my eyes on her and my expression blank, but my brain was whirring around like a demented dervish. She’d never said. She’d never spoken of Gus Newberry before. I didn’t even know he had existed until Miles had told me she had married him. When Vanessa had asked for a divorce she had said it was because she had wanted to make a new life for herself and the boys. Oh, she’d done that all right.

  ‘He was attending a conference in a nearby hotel. We met in a pub by the canal, not far from China Town and we hit it off immediately. I thought him very sophisticated. Even when he returned to London he used to call me. At weekends he’d come to Manchester, or I’d go up to London. After six months we got engaged.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me this before?’ I felt betrayed.

  ‘It wasn’t important. Gus and I had finished long before I met you.’

  ‘How long?’ I asked curtly, wondering if I had been taken up on the rebound, a thought I didn’t much care for. No one likes to be thought of as second best.

  ‘Five years.’

  ‘Why did you break up?’

  She ran a hand through her hair. ‘Alex, is this necessary?’ She must have seen from my expression that it was because she added, ‘You’ve grown hard.’ She rose and began to pace the floor.

  ‘Funny, you wouldn’t think prison would do that to a man, would you?’

  ‘There’s no need to be sarcastic. If you must know we broke up because he was very ambitious. He was offered a promotion, which meant working in the States. He wanted me to leave university and go with him. I said no. I wanted a career too. We kept in touch for quite a while then it fizzled out. I met you.’