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‘I want you to know that I’m sorry, Mr Cain,’ he said. ‘A lot of bad apples have taken root in the force and we need to find them and turf them out. You were right to expose George Banks for what he did. And my colleagues were wrong to victimize you because of it. We should encourage zero tolerance no matter what the circumstances. Jordan and Priest have brought further shame on us and it’s something we all regret. But I want you to know that we’re not all bad.’
I told him I couldn’t get my head around how a man like Priest could suddenly turn into a killer who was prepared to wipe out an entire family.
‘It happens,’ Temple said. ‘You should know that better than most since you reporters are always writing about such creatures.’
The papers called Priest a fiend and a madman. They called me a hero. In fact one paper, a popular tabloid, asked me to write the full story of our experience. It ran over four full pages. What’s more, the editor liked it so much that he offered me a contract as a reporter. It was a surprise and came as a great relief since I’d decided not to carry on with the agency. That had died along with Vince.
So what about my marriage? Was that dead too?
Maggie and I finally got around to talking about it eight days after the fire. We had purposely avoided it until then because our priority was Laura. She had to be taken care of.
Thankfully a police officer trained in first aid had managed to revive her with CPR at the scene, despite the fact that she had effectively ‘died’ in my arms. We would have lost her for sure if it hadn’t been for Temple and his team. Their swift, professional reaction when they realized how bad she was saved her life. It was touch and go for a while, but by the time the ambulance arrived her lungs were functioning and her heart was beating.
After leaving hospital Laura started to recover with remarkable speed. The doctors and psychiatrists who treated her said that she was a strong little girl. They were impressed that she could talk about it and not retreat into herself for long periods of time. I was very proud of her. But it did seem as though she’d blocked out what Priest had said about her mother and Vince. She acted as though it never happened.
I wasn’t so lucky. Priest’s words echoed in my head every second of every hour. Talking about it didn’t help. It just intensified the pain. Maggie begged me to forgive her. She said she loved me and had made a terrible mistake. Our ordeal had made her realize what a fool she’d been and how much she had put at risk.
We both cried a lot but I didn’t allow the anger in me to surface because I felt that we had all been through enough. Instead, I told her that I would try to forgive and forget what had happened between her and Vince. But the truth is I’m not sure I can.
Jennifer Priest eventually went on trial. The jury rejected her plea of manslaughter and she was sentenced to life for murder. Dessler faced a variety of charges and ended up getting a three-year jail term. DS Jordan was kicked out of the force and given a two-year sentence on corruption charges. Nadelson was ordered to do some community service.
The lottery commission decided to give Vince’s jackpot win to charity. I told them that Vince had intended to share it with me but this fell on deaf ears, as I knew it would.
Temple told me I wouldn’t face charges for assaulting the two youths. To keep them quiet he would bring lesser charges against them. I thanked him for that and I also thanked him for saving our lives.
‘It was a team effort,’ he said. ‘Every one of my people did a good job.’
So a new phase of my life has begun. I’m once again a salaried hack and loving every minute of it. The paper has already got me working on a major investigation that will cause quite a stir when it’s eventually published. But that’s another story for another day.
Meanwhile, I spend a lot of time wondering if my marriage will survive. You see, things are not the same now. I feel differently about Maggie and she knows it. So we’ll just have to see. After all, none of us can ever really know what is going to happen from one day to the next.
And that, I suppose, is why life is really just one big lottery.
Copyright
© James Raven 2012
First published in Great Britain 2012
This edition 2012
ISBN 978 0 7198 0598 1 (epub)
ISBN 978 0 7198 0599 8 (mobi)
ISBN 978 0 7198 0600 1 (pdf)
ISBN 978 0 7090 9576 7 (print)
Robert Hale Limited
Clerkenwell House
Clerkenwell Green
London EC1R 0HT
www.halebooks.com
The right of James Raven to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988