‘Good boy.’ He raised his hand and pointed a finger in Johnson’s face. He was still holding the knife. ‘If you don’t do this, I swear I’ll cut your dick off. You got that?’
Johnson nodded and sagged to the floor as the grip from the two men lessened. Wylie bent down and whispered in his ear. ‘I mean it, wanker. If you don’t speak to your wife and tell her by the end of the week, your dick’s coming off.’ He slapped Johnson on the back of the head, pulled his dick hard and walked out of the shower room.
As he passed Ransom he nodded and smiled pleasantly. ‘Someone fell over in the showers, Mister Ransom. No harm done. Just a little shaken, that’s all.’
Ransom didn’t answer, but went along to the shower room where he found Johnson sitting on the tiled floor. He was shaking like a leaf and crying like a schoolboy.
‘He’s being moved to Dorchester prison.’
Laura’s expression changed. One moment she had been listening to Emma talk about her lunch date with Max and her husband’s decision to challenge the divorce, the next moment her face was a picture of incredulity.
‘Ian?’
Emma nodded. ‘Yes: Ian.’
Laura frowned. ‘But whatever for?’
Emma shrugged. ‘I don’t know, but he wants to see me; says it’s important.’
‘Do you think this has something to do with Max?’
Emma looked mystified. ‘Beats me. One minute Max is promising to do something and the next Ian has been transferred to Dorchester and wants to see me.’ She shrugged and began fingering the scar on her neck. ‘It’s strange, Laura,’ she admitted. ‘How can a newspaper reporter have that kind of influence?’
‘Are you sure he’s a newspaper reporter?’
The question was like a barbed hook: it pierced Emma and held fast. The thought of Max deceiving her was a difficult pill to swallow. ‘Perhaps when I’ve seen Ian, I’ll have a better idea.’
Laura dismissed that immediately. ‘You’re not going to believe that lying shit, Emma, surely?’
Emma gave her sister a stern look. ‘Who else am I to believe?’ she asked. ‘Max won’t tell me; that’s for sure.’ She put the cup she was holding onto the coffee table. ‘I’m going up tomorrow.’
‘Let me come with you, Emma. I’ll drive you up there.’
Emma laughed softly. ‘Laura, you know you won’t be allowed in. And what would you do?’
Laura made a face. ‘Oh, I’ll find a Starbucks or Costa Coffee. That’s if they have those in Dorchester.’
Emma agreed. She felt that she might be glad of her sister’s company, particularly if her husband had some bad news for her. Laura arranged to pick her up at midday, which meant Emma had about twenty-four hours to wonder and worry. She showed her sister out and began looking for something to do, just to get her mind off the following day.
Emma opened her small purse and showed the prison officer as she went through the door to the visiting room. The search was cursory, but Emma did know that some women were searched more vigorously because of the various places on their bodies they chose to hide drugs. The officer nodded her through and she made her way to a vacant table. She only waited about two or three minutes when the door at the other end of the room opened and her husband walked in.
Straight away Emma felt a tingle of fear trickle down her spine. It was irrational now but understandable in view of what had happened to her at the hands of this monster. There were other people in the room, and Emma tried to draw some comfort in the normality they showed in the way they laughed and chatted. Did others have the same problems that she had, she wondered?
She watched her husband as he walked across the room. Her eyes never left him, even as he sat down opposite her. She knew how intimidating he could be but was determined not to show her fear of him.
‘Hello, Emma.’
‘Hello.’ Her throat felt dry, making her voice weak. ‘Why have you been moved?’
He shook his head. ‘It’s not important.’
Emma waited for him to say something else, but he remained silent. She could see he was struggling, so she prompted him.
‘Why did you want to see me?’ she asked.
‘I’ve decided not to contest the divorce.’ It snapped out of him like something that had been fouling his mouth and he wanted to get rid of it.
Emma straightened up in her chair, her mouth open in shock. ‘Why?’ It was all she could think to say.
He glared at her. ‘Why doesn’t matter; all you need to know is that I’ve changed my mind.’
Emma could see Max’s hand in this but she daren’t say anything to her husband. ‘If it was that simple, Ian, what’s to stop you changing it back again?’
He shook his head rapidly. In his mind was a vision of Wylie holding the knife on his penis and slicing it off. ‘I won’t. You have my word on it.’
Emma looked at him with a pained expression on her face. ‘Ian, how can I trust you?’
‘You just have to, Emma. Believe me.’
There was a spell of silence between them that lasted almost a minute. Emma was the first to break it.
‘Has this got something to do with your move from Winchester?’
It was the truth, of course, but he couldn’t tell her that. He daren’t admit to her that he had been ordered in the most perverse, horrifying manner to change his mind. When the prison officer found him weeping on the shower-room floor, it was obvious he had been ‘seen to’ by the psycho, Wylie. The prison governor decided it was in Johnson’s interest to have him moved to another prison. Although he had been transferred, Wylie had told him it made no difference; someone would be paid to do the job anyway.
‘It’s best you don’t know, Emma,’ he warned her. ‘But I suspect you know already.’ He sounded hard and bitter.
Emma was completely mystified. ‘What on earth do you mean: I know already? I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Johnson leaned forward and lowered his voice. ‘Whatever you said, or whoever you said it to, Emma, it means you have powerful friends: very powerful.’ Before Emma could protest he put his hand up. ‘Now I think you’d better leave. You won’t see me again. You’ll get your divorce, and that will be the end of it. Goodbye, Emma.’
Emma knew the visit was at an end. No amount of talking was going to get him to say why he had changed his mind. And rather than allow the visit to develop into an argument, it was time to go. She stood up slowly and stepped away from the table.
‘Goodbye, Ian.’
He nodded but didn’t say anything: he just kept thinking of Wylie and that knife.
Laura bombarded Emma with questions during the journey home: questions that Emma had no answers to. As much as she tried to pare back the few layers of information she had about Max Reilly, Laura simply ran up blind alleys, which added to her frustration. Emma seemed quite oblivious to the concerns her sister had about Max’s influence. She had even discounted the idea that Max had anything to do with her husband’s change of mind. This simply infuriated Laura even more, because she was convinced that Emma’s liaison with Max was more to do with infatuation and being caught on the rebound of a traumatic marriage.
It was natural for Laura to be concerned and worried over her younger sister, and she was aware that this sprang from the strength of her own marriage when compared to the disaster her sister had been drawn into with Ian. Laura wanted so much that her sister be free of a man who could dominate her and was terrified that she would sleepwalk into another disastrous relationship.
These thoughts were still troubling her when she dropped Emma off at her house with a promise to see her the following day. Twenty minutes later, Laura arrived home and headed straight for the phone in her lounge. She dialled 118 for the number of the newspaper Max had told Emma he worked for. She scribbled the number down on a pad and dialled immediately. As the ringing tone announced itself in her ear, Laura began tapping her fingers on her legs. Suddenly a voice came on the line.
&nbs
p; ‘Good afternoon, Cambridge Gazette, how can I help you?’
‘Oh, good afternoon. I would like to speak to one of your reporters, please.’
‘I’m sorry, but there aren’t any here at the moment. It’s usual about this time of the day that they are out chasing up stories. Can I take a message for you?’
‘Well, I was trying to contact Max Reilly.’
There was silence for a few moments, and then the voice came back on the line.
‘I’m sorry, but we don’t have anyone of that name on our staff. Is there anything else I can help you with?’
Laura sagged visibly in the chair. ‘No, thank you. Perhaps I have the wrong newspaper.’
‘Would you like me to give you the number of our sister paper?’ the voice asked.
Laura shook her head. ‘No.’ She put the phone back in its cradle and sat there with the unwelcome feeling of grim satisfaction.
TEN
Clanford Hall, 1978
Paul and Michael were now eighteen years of age and had cele-brated their birthday in style by getting drunk. Because of the way they had both taken to drink, and because of their so-called status in the area, they often found themselves being treated like pariahs in some of the haunts around Petersfield, with the inevitability of fights breaking out between the twins and the local lads. Paul’s indomatable spirit, supreme self-confidence and natural physical ability meant that he always came out of these fights as the victor. It didn’t mean that the other local boys would leave him and Michael alone, far from it; there was always someone who fancied his chances against Paul. Michael was reluctant to get involved and preferred to leave the fighting to his brother. The consequence of these struggles meant that Paul was soon top dog, and Michael was happy to go along with it. Because of Paul’s unassailable position, he attracted both the young girls and young men who wanted to be seen with him. It wasn’t long before Paul had organized them into a structure that meant each one was used according to their strengths.
Another powerful attraction for the youngsters in the town was the car Paul drove. His inheritance became available to him on his eighteenth birthday. Michael had decided to invest his money, whereas Paul bought a second-hand Jaguar XK 140 roadster. It was a right-hand drive with C-type head and chrome wire wheels. It cost £5,500: just over half of his inheritance. It was a high-end price because right-hand drive roadsters were quite rare. It was older than Paul but immaculate and measured Paul’s own opinion of himself. It was also a magnet for the girls.
When Kate found out that Paul had spent a huge chunk of his inheritance on the car, she was furious. It wasn’t that she expected Paul to invest his money back into the estate because she knew it would be like pouring money down the drain, but she had hoped he would have been more sensible with the money. She knew he was headstrong, more so than his brother, and she worried how the estate would survive when Paul became the legal owner on his twenty-first birthday.
‘Don’t you realize, Paul,’ she had argued when she found out about Paul’s youthful extravagance, ‘that you will be the owner of Clanford Estate in three years’ time?’
He shook his head. ‘It’s not a problem: I’ll worry about that when the time comes.’
‘Paul, we’re broke. The estate can barely pay the wages of its employees, let alone cover the upkeep.’ She was imploring him. ‘Instead of running around in a flash bloody car, you should be getting your head down and investing in further education.’
Paul laughed. ‘Ha! Doing what?’
‘Business management, accountancy, husbandry.’ She threw her hands up in the air. ‘Oh, I don’t know, Paul, but something that will help you run Clanford sensibly.’
Paul studied her with a vague expression on his face. ‘You’ve managed up to now, Kate; there’s no reason why you can’t keep on managing.’
His response just sent Kate further up the wall and she flapped her hands at him and walked out of the room.
That little domestic argument didn’t bother Paul, but it left a seed of doubt in his mind that he nurtured into a plan and allowed to grow until it became a firm idea: one that he intended to put to his brother when he had the chance.
The build-up to the Jubilee parties the previous year had meant a great deal of money changed hands as material had to be moved, halls rented out, street parties organized and roads closed off when the time came. One thing Paul learned in the build-up was ‘logistics’. He hired a box van from a local hire company and set about delivering anything he could lift from one place to the other. Michael helped him, of course, and none of their clients could get over how exactly alike the two boys were. This strengthened Paul’s notion that there was a way out of his dilemma over the estate.
As the business grew and a new van was purchased, Paul began to pick up on schemes that promised a bigger income. One of these was delivering drugs on the routes he used to deliver the legal merchandise. Michael hadn’t been aware of what his brother was doing at first, but soon cottoned on to the idea that he was up to no good. Because Paul shared his profits equally, Michael was on a nice little earner too. It was on one of these so-called ‘drops’ that Paul encountered his first taste of real violence. Not the unsophisticated challenges he experienced from callow youths wanting to test themselves against him, but men who meant real business. It was late one evening when they had stopped at one of the ‘addresses’ to deliver a package. Paul had stayed in the van to catch up with some paperwork. The delivery was no more than a two-minute drop, but after five minutes, Michael hadn’t returned. Paul closed his book and slipped it into the glove box, then got out of the van. But as he opened the door, it was pulled open viciously and someone dragged him out onto the road and began kicking him where he fell.
Paul rolled himself into a ball, brought his knees up to his chest and covered his head with his hands. The blows were coming in hard and fast, and Paul knew he was in serious trouble. But even in that state, he realized his brother hadn’t appeared, and this worked on his mind until he suddenly forced himself to his feet, ignoring the blows, and swung a fist at his assailant. It connected well enough to stop the man, but not the other one who had been kicking him. Paul felt an arm close round his neck so he back-heeled the man in the shin. The arm lock came off immediately and Paul then set about the pair of them, using his natural strength to beat the living daylights out of the two men.
Paul looked down at the prone bodies and then to the door through which Michael had gone. His temper was now off the scale and he wanted answers to why he had been attacked, but more importantly he wanted to find his brother. The door opened up into a passageway which led into a nightclub. It was too early for punters, but Paul knew Michael had to be in there, possibly in a worse state than him.
He walked into the club, which was empty except for Michael, who was prone on the floor. He was conscious but groaning. Paul helped him to his feet and together they made their way to the door. Paul saw the package lying on the counter. He picked it up. Once they were outside he helped Michael into the van. Then he went round to the other side where the two men were sitting up nursing their wounds. Paul squatted down beside them.
‘You want to tell me why?’ he asked.
The man he had spoken to struggled to his feet. Paul guessed he wasn’t in any fit state to launch another attack on him. ‘The boss says you’re dealing on his patch.’
‘Who’s your boss?’
‘Ringo.’
Paul knew Ringo; so called because of the gold-sovereign rings he wore on eight fingers. He took hold of the man by his jacket lapels and turned him so that he was looking straight at him. ‘You tell Ringo I’ll be back here tomorrow night, same time. And if he has a problem with that, he can tell me to my face. Understand?’ He let the man go. ‘Tomorrow night.’ He climbed into the van and started the motor.
‘You all right, Michael?’ he asked his brother.
Michael nodded. His face was swollen and even in the poor light, Paul could see the brui
sing on his face. ‘I’ll take you to hospital. Get you checked out.’
Michael muttered something indecipherable, and the only word Paul thought he understood was ‘Kate’. He pulled away from the kerb and started laughing. Going through his mind was the fact that he had won his first, real battle; and although it was only a couple of heavies trying to put the frighteners on him, he knew deep down that he was heading for a new direction in his life.
Before Paul could make any plans for his meeting with Ringo that evening, he had his work to do around the estate. This had been their daily routine since they were quite young when it was something quite menial and meant to instil the work ethic in them. As she grew older and stronger, Victoria would help. Often the boys would chastize her and play games on her which turned their morning chores into fun. But as their bodies grew and filled out, so did the level of their jobs, and soon Victoria spent a great deal of her work time inside the hall rather than attempting some of the more manual, heavy work out on the estate.
Because he worked on his own, Paul was able to search for something he had come across a couple of years earlier in the tackle shed. After the dairy herd had been sold off, much of the equipment associated with rearing cattle had been removed. But there was one item that had been missed, and it was this that Paul believed might swing the odds in his favour later that evening.
At the end of their morning, they all gathered in the large kitchen for their lunch. It was something Kate preferred: that they ate at the large table there rather than formally in the hall’s well-appointed dining room. She felt it was inclusive knowing that the family wasn’t just her, the twins and Victoria, but also Emily, who had worked in the kitchen at Clanford Hall longer than Kate had lived there. Emily had taken on an assistant who had become such a good friend and workmate for her that she was regarded as part of the Clanford family too. Her name was Christine Topper, but she was always known simply as Topper. Both the boys liked her. She was a year younger than them and quite attractive. Kate kept an eye on any developments she might not approve of, while Victoria had the usual adolescent attitude towards older girls; for Victoria could only see Topper as a girl, and would usually affect coldness towards her.
Past Imperfect Page 12