Alternative outcome

by Peter Rowlands

  “I did. But I thought a one-to-one would be more effective.”

  “But you could just have kept your head down.”

  “Perhaps, but I felt the only way to calm all this down was to talk to you in person. And having got you here, I knew I couldn’t just paper over my history. Filling you in is part of the compact between us, isn’t it?”

  I shrugged. “I’m not pressuring you. Truly.”

  She looked at me. “I might be wrong here, but I feel I can trust you. I know I’m stupidly quick to form opinions, so I can only hope my judgement is sound.”

  “I can’t really comment on that.”

  “You don’t have to.” She resumed tapping the table with her lighter. “I suppose partly I was tempted by the idea of talking to someone external to everything – but someone with a past connection to our lives.” She smiled slightly. “As you can imagine, there aren’t many such people in my life. In fact you seem uniquely equipped for the role – and you put yourself up for it.”

  She stopped there, but I sensed that there was more. I gave her an encouraging look, and after a moment she said, “There’s also another thing. Basically, somebody has died, and somebody else might die. In a way these things take away some of the pressure. Not the hassle factor, just the original pressure.”

  She straightened her back and looked directly at me. “And for some reason, you seem to be the man to hear the story.”

  Chapter 65

  The waitress arrived with our meals, and when she’d left us Trina turned to me.

  “It all started when my father was looking for an investment opportunity. He got to know a property developer in the North West.”

  “Would that be Robert Stainer?”

  “Ha! You know about Robbie bloody Stainer, do you? You’ve done your homework then.”

  I nodded, thinking I should probably have kept quiet. However, after a moment she continued.

  “Robbie Stainer was a really charismatic guy. People just liked to work with him. I liked him. Anyway, he was running a property company that went belly-up, and my father helped bail him out. They started again as equal partners.”

  I nodded.

  “I think the original company failed because the other directors were suspicious of Robbie, but my father didn’t know that at the time. All he knew was that Robbie seemed to have access to almost unlimited investment funds. The new company started doing well right from the get-go. My father must have thought he’d tapped into the money tree.”

  She paused, staring into her memory. To prompt her, I said, “You moved to Altrincham.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “You do know a lot about us.”

  “It just came up when I was trying to work out what happened to you.”

  There was another of those pauses while she assimilated what I’d said, but then she resumed again. “For a while everything was brilliant. They were involved in loads of projects – development schemes around Greater Manchester and Merseyside, you name it. They always had the money to invest.

  “Then it dawned on my naive father that all this was too good to be true. It was tainted money. Robbie and his cronies were involved in all kinds of money-laundering scams – protection rackets, tax fraud in the West Indies, even drug money. Don’t ask me, I don’t know the half of it.”

  I nodded encouragingly.

  “The trouble was, all this money was pouring through my dad’s company, and the financial regulators were starting to ask questions.”

  “Couldn’t your father have blown the whistle?”

  “There might have been a time when he could have, but by this stage he was in it too deep. If he’d done that, the risk was that the company’s assets might have been frozen or even seized. He could have lost everything. He might even have been put on trial. And if not, he would have had to answer to Stainer and his gangland friends. He simply wasn’t into court cases and witness protection. He didn’t trust that kind of thing.”

  I waited.

  “He was really stupid in some ways, my father, but quite shrewd in others. He knew how to divert some of these funds into offshore trusts, numbered bank accounts, that kind of thing. Regulation wasn’t as tough then as it is now.

  “So overnight, he shunted a big chunk of the company’s assets into some of these accounts. Not everything, just what he felt entitled to for the work he’d done. And basically we just vanished. New names, new everything. Bye bye Catrina, hello Christina.” She laughed dryly. “He was even clever enough to go to London for the documents we needed, to avoid getting tangled up with Stainer’s crew. He was very thorough.”

  “So he knew a few shady people himself.”

  “I didn’t say he was whiter than white.”

  I sat for a while, taking all this in. I said, “But you didn’t flee the country – you just moved across the Pennines. Surely your father was worried that he would come across Stainer somewhere eventually?”

  “Oh no, we lived in Edinburgh for the first few years. And my father kept his head down. With all that money, he didn’t need to work any more. I won’t say he was a recluse, he just kept himself to himself. He was never much of a party animal in the first place. Nor was my mum. We just lived quiet, comfortable lives. I went to school up there and became a wee Scot.” She said that in a Scottish accent, then gave me an ironic smile. “And my father grew a beard.”

  “You don’t sound Scottish now.”

  “Hanging on to the vestiges of my old life, wouldn’t you say?”

  “But you must have been constantly worried about Stainer all the same.”

  “Speaking for myself, no. I just got on with my new life. I think my mother worried for the first few years, but time passed, they put on weight, they looked different, and our new life took root.”

  “But now you do live somewhere round here?”

  “My father lives in a village a few miles away.” She gestured vaguely behind her. “My parents moved down here ten years ago. I was already working in Doncaster, so it meant we saw more of each other.” She paused. “It’s just my dad now. My mother died two years later.”

  I said, “But Robert Stainer is still at liberty. Did the authorities never catch up with him?”

  “You’re out of date there, Mike. He died suddenly of a heart attack three months ago. It was in the press.”

  So the man immediately behind Desmond Markham’s flight was no longer a threat to Trina and her father. That presumably helped explain her openness. I said, “I see.”

  “But no, he was never prosecuted for anything. He was a slippery bastard, and he always had the right contacts in the right places. The firm went bust when my father bailed out, but somehow Robbie himself came out of it smelling of roses. Of course, at the time he was able to point the finger at my dad. ‘Not my problem, guv. My partner hopped it with the dosh.’ I assume that was what he claimed, anyway.”

  “What about the people he was involved with? Do you think they still have your father in their sights?”

  “I very much doubt it. If they’d been that aggrieved, they would have gone after Robbie himself. The fact that he survived tells me he was able to keep them off his back. I told you, he was Mr Escapologist.” She shrugged. “Besides, even if they found us – and hopefully they won’t – there would be no point in them thinking they could get their money back. There isn’t any – just my father’s house and a few savings.”

  We sat in silence for a long time. Finally I said, “How come you know about all this?”

  “Oh, bits and pieces from my father. He was very cagey to begin with, but he couldn’t hide everything, and once he knew I was going to buy into the whole name change thing and not make a fuss, he started to confide in me. In the end I think he told me more than he told my mother.”

  I nodded. We seemed to have covered everything. She tapped her lighter on the table again a few times, then said, “So tell me something about your life, Mike.”

  I shrugged. “Pretty mundane compared
with yours. I write articles about logistics and transport. Not a life’s calling, it’s just the way things fell. I got into a steady relationship when I was quite young, and in the end we got married, but then we split up after a few years. We weren’t compatible. No family. What about you?”

  “Long-term partner. No kids.”

  “Does your partner know about your history?”

  “Bits of it. Not as much as I’ve just told you. He doesn’t like to ask.”

  The waitress arrived with our bill, then I said, “You told me two things had happened to make you think it was OK to ring me and use your own name. One of them was presumably Stainer’s death, so what was the other one?”

  “Ah, yes. Well, my father is ill. In fact he’s dying. Might as well tell it like it is. That’s why I’ve dragged you all the way to Chesterfield. He’s in hospital up in Sheffield. I don’t want to be away from the area for too long at the moment.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it.”

  She nodded her acknowledgement.

  “Anyway, the point is, my father is the one who’s been on the run from the police and Robbie all these years, not me. And pretty soon he won’t be around to do any more running.”

  I said nothing, and she pushed her chair back. “Don’t get me wrong, Mike, I’m not about to go public with all this. I just think I’ve done enough creeping around.”

  Thinking back to our phone conversation, I said, “What about Tish? Your friend? Couldn’t you confide in her?”

  “Ah, Tish. Yes, she’s the one person I’ve kept in touch with from my old life. She knows the score. But she doesn’t know where I live, or anything else about my life. We felt it was safer that way. I just contact her very occasionally when something comes up – you and your Facebook stuff, for instance. We have a communication system that’s very hard to trace – or so I’m told. There’s no obvious electronic trail. We have a sort of code that we use when we want to get in touch.”

  “Wow. And that actually works?”

  “Well, it seems to. She has deniability. She doesn’t know anything, so she can’t give anything away. If someone starts to show undue interest in me online, she’ll simply try to discourage it – to make out that she thinks I might have emigrated, or even died.” Trina shrugged. “That’s the theory, anyway. It’s never been properly stress-tested, so I don’t know how robust it really is.”

  “But when she contacted me she actually pretended to be you.”

  “Ah, yes. That was a new strategy. You were so persistent that we thought we’d better try something different.” She smiled dryly. “It didn’t work, did it? You saw through it.”

  I looked at her in wonder. “It’s hard to believe people can actually live their lives like this.”

  “It’s easier than you think. Emergencies like that are the exceptions. Mostly you just get on with the daily grind.”

  “What do you do in life?”

  “I’m in sales and marketing. That’s why I have to go to London sometimes.”

  “Ha! My … my girlfriend is in marketing.” I liked that term – girlfriend. “She’s Ashley Renwick. You met her at the Fairmile. She sends her regards.”

  She looked at me quizzically.

  “She lived near the hotel, and used to play there sometimes. She would have been about six or seven when you were there.”

  “I think I remember her. Precocious little brat.”

  I laughed. “You were her heroine. She remembers you clearly.”

  “So how come she’s your girlfriend? Did you keep in touch with her or something?”

  “No, hardly. I only got to know her in the last few months. In a way it was through looking for you.”

  “Looks as if I have a lot to answer for.”

  Chapter 66

  We left at around four o’clock, and exchanged phone numbers and email addresses before we parted company. “I won’t give you my street address,” she said dryly. “Got to draw the line somewhere.”

  Outside the restaurant I found myself looking around again uneasily for my captors from London. I’d managed to forget the possibility that they might have made their way here, but that didn’t make it any less real. I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary.

  Should I alert Trina to the danger? It was too late really. I should have mentioned it while we were in the restaurant, but I hadn’t wanted to interrupt the flow. It would seem absurd to raise it as an afterthought.

  A weak sun was now shining. We walked together for a little way, then she said, “My car is this way, but I think you said yours was up this street?”

  I wasn’t sure what sort of parting gesture would be appropriate, but she solved the problem for me. We shook hands briefly, and she said, “Now we’ve done this, let’s keep in touch.” I watched as she walked briskly away: a poised, dignified woman with a strange past.

  It took me much less time to find my car than it had to get here from it, and I was soon driving around looking for signs back to the M1. I made my way on to a main road out of the town and drew to a halt at the end of a traffic queue.

  I glanced idly to my left across a large open-air car park, and immediately spotted Trina about thirty yards away, presumably heading towards her car. As I watched, a white Transit van slowly passed her, apparently in search of a parking space. It stopped a little way ahead of her, and a figure opened the passenger door and jumped down.

  Immediately I recognised him as one of my assailants from London. It wasn’t his face that I knew, just his stance, his way of moving. He was even wearing the same grey hoodie outfit. Aghast, I realised they must be going to grab Trina. I was about to witness a kidnapping in broad daylight in the middle of a busy car park. These people were incredible.

  I had involuntarily pulled away as my traffic queue started moving. I jammed on my brakes, and immediately there was a sharp bang and my car jerked forward. The car behind had shunted into me. Fuck.

  Thankfully the impact hadn’t caused my air bag to deploy. I yanked the handbrake on and plunged out of the car. From the corner of my eye I could see an outraged face through the windscreen of the car behind me. Ignoring him, I ran round my car and over to the roadside, and vaulted over the corrugated crash barrier.

  Beyond it there was a rough grass verge, then a wire fence bordering the car park. I glanced to either side and realised there were several jagged holes in it. I lunged through one of them and started weaving my way among parked cars towards the van.

  Its rear doors were now open and Trina had almost reached them. The man I’d seen was standing near the back of the van, clearly ready to make his move. At the top of my voice I shouted, “Trina!” Then, “Tina!”

  She stopped and looked round. The man looked round too. I was closing in on them, and I shouted “Trina! Look out! Run!”

  She didn’t need telling twice. She immediately ducked to her right and took off between parked cars. The hooded figure now turned to me.

  I felt a blind fury surge through me. How much of this incessant hassle was I supposed to put up with? Without breaking my pace I strode up to the man, almost spluttering as I spoke. “When will you fucking leave me and my friends alone? When?”

  I could see his muscles tense in readiness to throw a punch at me, but I was beyond caring. Oblivious to the danger, I kept on moving towards him and thrust him backwards with both arms against the van. He nearly lost his footing, and I thrust at him again before he had time to recover. This time he stumbled to his knees, looking at me in surprise.

  He was up in a second and ready to hit me, but then a car hooted impatiently behind us. He hesitated, then seemed to come to a decision. He turned and ran to the van’s passenger door, and dragged it open. The van’s engine revved and it drew vigorously away while he was still climbing in. I watched as the rear doors slammed shut.

  I fumbled my mobile phone out of my pocket, then remembered that the battery was flat. Explaining all this to Trina would have to wait until later.

  * *
*

  Much later, as it turned out. By the time I got back to my car a police cruiser had already pulled in front of it, blue light flashing. The irate driver of the car behind mine was standing with two policemen in high-visibility yellow jackets, remonstrating angrily.

  The policemen reminded me that it was illegal to flee the scene of an accident. I pointed out that I hadn’t fled. Here I was. OK, so what on earth did I think I was doing then? I said I thought I’d seen a woman being assaulted in the car park, and felt I had to go to the rescue. They said this was no excuse for endangering other motorists, and in fact causing an accident. I said I understood.

  They came close to arresting me, but eventually seemed to decide that the circumstances didn’t warrant it. However, they warned me I would probably be summonsed for an offence of some kind – possibly driving without due care and attention.

  To give them credit, they also asked about the woman I thought was being attacked, and made a note of what I told them. I said she’d run away and the attackers had escaped. “Maybe someone got it on CCTV.”

  I gave them my details and then exchanged insurance information with the other driver, and he was eventually able to drive away unaided. I wasn’t so lucky. The impact from his car had put a major dent in the back of mine, and body panels were pressing against the wheels.

  I then realised I’d let my motoring club membership lapse, so I had no recovery insurance. Great. One of the policemen organised a breakdown truck to tow my car away, and when it arrived I accompanied the crew to a garage on the outskirts of Chesterfield.

  They told me there was nothing they could do with the car until the following day at the earliest, so I decided I might as well leave it there and go back to London. I walked all the way into town and made my way to the railway station.

  I found a public phone box and dialled the number Trina had given me. The call went to voicemail with an anonymous announcement. I didn’t leave a message.

  2012