Alternative outcome

by Peter Rowlands

  I painstakingly worked my way through the streets of the town on screen, and finally, after many wrong turns, there it was. Those lanterns were unmistakable. So in theory I could go there. But what would I say? That rather depended on my next phone call.

  Getting hold of Rick Ashton was as convoluted a process as ever, but finally he picked up the phone to me.

  “Rick, thank you for the heads-up on the funding.”

  “Least I could do, mate.”

  “Look, could we meet up? There’s something personal that I need to discuss with you, and I don’t think it’s really something for the phone.”

  He seemed to consider briefly, but then perhaps recognised that he had to say yes. “Tell you what, I’m working at our old offices in Hemel Hempstead today. Do you want to come over here this afternoon?”

  As ever, getting from south London to somewhere out to the north took far longer than it should have, but there were direct trains from Euston to Hemel, and after an unexpectedly long walk across a common I finally found myself approaching Rick’s offices. He’d told me they were near what he called “the magic roundabout”, which had presumably once functioned as a normal roundabout, but now had mini-roundabouts at every exit. For once I was glad to be on foot.

  Chapter 70

  Rick had an office on the fifth floor, with a striking view across the town and surrounding countryside. He smiled almost warmly as I walked in.

  “Michael my boy, good to see you.”

  I asked how things were going under the new regime. “Not bad at all,” he said briskly. “Not sure how long they’ll put up with having me in charge, but I’ll always land on my feet.”

  “You mean you might not survive here?”

  “We’ll see. Early days yet.”

  “You’re finding it hard to work with Janni Noble?”

  He laughed dryly. “No, on the contrary, he seems very straight. Doesn’t want to interfere. Tough cookie though. I think I misjudged him.”

  “At least your own investment is safe, is it?”

  “Seems to be.” He straightened. “So what was it you wanted to talk to me about?”

  I looked round to check that the door was shut. “It’s about Liam Stone.”

  “Oh yes?”

  “That is, Andy Davidson.”

  He waited expectantly.

  “I understand you’re not pressing charges.”

  He shrugged expansively. “Well I couldn’t, could I? You spelled it out yourself the other day. In some ways I was no better than him. Who would I be to cast the first stone, if you’ll pardon the pun?”

  “And … no gun?”

  “Surprising, that, isn’t it?”

  I thought back to the day in question. After we’d returned from the pub I’d left Ashton on his own at the parcel centre. He said he would get a lift home from one of his staff. He must somehow have managed to grab the gun and hide it while the police were moving in, and then later hidden it or disposed of it.

  I said, “Fair enough. Anyway, that’s not exactly what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  “What then?”

  “Well, are you still in contact with Stone? I mean, could you get a message to him?”

  “I presume so. I imagine he’s still living at home in Chipping Norton. Needless to say, I haven’t checked.”

  I sat thinking for a moment. Rick knew little or nothing of what had been happening in my life, and I was unsure how much to explain. Finally I said, “You know how you worked out Liam Stone’s identity from my book?”

  He nodded.

  “Well, I need to put you right on something. That book was never a true story. The actual robbery was more or less true, but I made everything else up. I certainly never talked to Stone, which you presumably realise, and I didn’t contact anyone else either. It was pure fiction. I just happened to hit on a few truths by pure chance.”

  He simply stared at me.

  I added, “So when you worked out Stone’s identity from the book, it was just a lucky guess.”

  “My god.” He stared out of the window for a moment, then turned back to me. “All I can say is you were remarkably lucky with your guesswork. I took that book as being basically true. That’s what gave me the confidence to confront Andy. And it did the trick. He never denied who he really was.”

  “What can I say?”

  He gave a single explosive laugh. “Bugger me!”

  I waited a moment to get his full attention again, then said, “The next thing you need to know is that you weren’t the only one to take the book seriously. Amazing as it may seem, some of the other people involved in that robbery, people who were convicted and put away for it, also got hold of the book, and they believed it too. They concluded that I must know how to get hold of Stone. They have a grudge against him. They think he skipped out with part of their share of the proceeds. And they’ve been giving me all kinds of grief, trying to make me tell them where he is. They’re quite violent people.”

  “Struth.”

  “You can say that again. You don’t know the half of it.”

  “So what are you thinking now?”

  “Well, to begin with I didn’t know where to find Stone. I couldn’t have told these people anything because I didn’t know anything. But now I do know … thanks to you. It’s an amazing coincidence that you got to know him, but there it is. You did. In a way you’ve squared the circle for me. So now I could tell these people exactly where he is.”

  He was watching me carefully, reading the implications. “But if you did, presumably they would go and beat three kinds of shit out of him, trying to steal back money they think he owes them.”

  “That’s about it, yes.”

  “Jesus.” He gave me a long look. “So what do you plan to do?”

  I shrugged. “My problem is that the police might never find enough evidence to prosecute him. He might just walk away. But if that happens, I’m still exposed to these people who are after him.”

  “So …?”

  “So basically, I need them to find out where he is and who he is. That seems the only way to convince them to stop hassling me. How I do it is irrelevant in a way. I could leak it to the press, I could find a way to put it on the internet, or I could actually tell these people face to face.”

  “But does he deserve that? He’s not a bad guy at heart.”

  “Ha! More to the point, do I deserve it? He’s the one who made wrong choices in his life. All I did was write a book – a work of fiction.”

  He stared at me, perhaps unable to find a reply to this. Finally he said, “But my god, Andy will love you if he finds out you gave him up to these people.”

  “Well, I’m not exactly planning to put myself in front of him. The less he knows about me the better.”

  Rick nodded slowly as realisation dawned. “OK, I’m getting this. You want me to get hold of him, and basically warn him off. You want him to know that the net is closing in.”

  “Precisely.”

  I could see him thinking fast. “So wait a minute, how am I supposed to know all this?”

  “You could tell him anything you like. You could say the police have hinted that they’re going to prosecute, or you’ve had an anonymous phone call saying the baddies are after him. You can make it up as you go along.” I paused. “Tell him I’ll wait forty-eight hours after he gets the message before I go public.”

  “OK OK.” He paused. “And why am I doing all this for you?”

  I gave him a long look. “I’m not answering that.”

  The words didn’t seem like mine, nor the implied threat behind them. Circumstances seemed to have hardened me. I no longer had the patience to finesse this kind of negotiation.

  “So you’re prepared to ruin this man’s life, to make him a fugitive again?”

  I sighed. “Give me a break, Rick. He made himself a fugitive. He’s had a good few years on the run – and if he’s clever, he’ll find a way to give himself a good few more. Do you thi
nk he deserves more than that?”

  “Point taken.” He picked up a pen from his desk, clicked it reflectively a few times, then put it down decisively. “OK, leave it with me. I’ll see what I can do.”

  It was as if we’d been doing a magazine interview, and my allocated time was up. But as I opened the door, he said, “So are we even after this?”

  I looked back. “I’ll let you know.”

  2012

  I bought her flowers. It was our undoing.

  Our conversation yesterday evening had more or less petered out. In the end Sasha seemed not resentful or hostile, just disappointed. If there had been any magic between us as adolescents, I picked up no hint of it now. It was plain that all she saw in me was a threat. I represented evidence that her new identity, painstakingly built up over two thirds of a lifetime, had finally been unpicked. I was her harbinger of doom.

  We’d parted on reasonably amicable terms. I told her I would make a holiday of my trip – travel on up the Gold Coast, check out the Great Barrier Reef. But today I’d felt things between us were still unresolved. I bought flowers and headed back to her flat that evening, hoping to make my peace.

  Her voice when I pressed the entry buzzer was much more guarded than yesterday. “This really isn’t a good time. I thought you were heading off up north?”

  “I bought you some flowers. I’ve got them here.”

  There was a pause. “That’s good of you. You’d better bring them on up.”

  But when I reached her apartment, she merely held the door ajar.

  “Thank you for the flowers. Do you mind if I just take them? It’s not a good time.”

  I held them out. “Good will gesture.” I tried a friendly smile.

  And then things came unstuck. I heard footsteps behind me, and abruptly I was thrust heavily against the door. It swung inwards, hurling Sasha backwards. I was shoved again, and I half-turned to see two men looming behind me. One of them was pointing a handgun with a silencer at me.

  A man’s voice from inside the flat called, “What’s going on, Sash?”

  The man with the gun said, “Let’s tell him, Sash.” He pronounced her name with malevolent irony. He hustled us through to the main room, where a bronzed man in his late fifties was staring at us aghast.

  The gunman said, “Mr Hawkins, we have some unfinished business to tidy up.”

  Chapter 71

  Dusk was falling as I drew up outside Derek Flynn’s house in Warley. Lights were on in several rooms, which I took as an encouraging sign.

  I parked obliquely opposite and got out, then took out my phone and lined up a selfie with the house clearly in view in the background. I emailed a copy to Ashley and another to Joanna.

  Rick Ashton had come through with a terse email the day after I saw him. “Message passed on and understood at 11.20am today. Are we done?” I’d sent a one-liner acknowledgement without answering the question.

  That evening I’d phoned Ashley and told her about my plan to visit Flynn. She was initially horrified, but I convinced her that my idea would work if we kept to the plan. The arrangement was that unless I contacted her at the end of the evening, she would get in touch with Dave Matthews and raise all kinds of hell with him. I didn’t doubt that she could do it.

  I’d waited another day in order to give Stone the promised 48 hours’ notice, then borrowed Joanna’s car. Getting to Warley involved a drive round the south-east corner of the M25 and through the Dartford tunnel, then out eastwards.

  I walked nervously up to the front door and pressed the bell push. A resonant gong sounded somewhere inside, and as I stood there one of the ornate lanterns on the front wall flickered into life, followed by its twin.

  The door was opened by a well-preserved blond woman in her mid-fifties. “Can I help you?”

  “Is Derek Flynn available please?”

  “Who wants to know?” Her tone was neutral: not exactly tough, not friendly either.

  “Michael Stanhope.”

  “Is he expecting you?”

  “No, but he’ll know who I am.”

  She started to turn, but then a man came into view behind her. He looked about sixty, and was sparely built with receding fair hair. He was wearing khaki chinos and an open-necked white shirt.

  “You say I know you? I don’t think so.”

  The voice was less freighted with menace than it had been that night in the underground meeting room, and the Essex accent less pronounced, but it was definitely him.

  “Indeed you do, and I have something to tell you that you might want to know.”

  I started to enter, but his wife blocked my way. He said, “It’s all right, Marcie, let Mr Stanhope come in.”

  I took a step into the hallway, and as I did so Flynn slipped a phone out of his shirt pocket and started tapping at the screen.

  I said, “I wouldn’t make that phone call if I were you.”

  He broke off. “I beg your pardon?” He was looking up at me with disbelief. “You’re telling me who I can and can’t phone in my own house?” There was menace now in that smile.

  “You want to call up your merry men to come and kick the living shit out me. Well don’t. There’s no need.”

  He turned to his wife and shrugged – a gesture saying “I don’t know what this man is talking about.” His wife, however, merely shut the front door loudly, wheeled round and headed off to some interior room.

  Flynn lowered his phone, looked indecisively at me for a moment, then said, “OK, you might as well come in.”

  I followed him into a large, well furnished lounge. A giant TV screen was flickering on the wall, showing a football match. He picked up a handset and silenced it.

  “So what’s this about then?”

  “You know perfectly well what it’s about. You’ve been taking a lot of time and trouble trying to get me to tell you something. Well, I’ve come to put you out of your misery.”

  “Oh you have, have you? That’s very generous of you, I must say. So what’s this fascinating information that you think I want from you?”

  “You want to find Liam Stone. Well, I know where he is, or rather where he was. If you ask me nicely I’ll tell you.”

  “If I – if I ask you nicely?” His face broke into a malevolent grin. “Do you realise who I am?”

  “Clearly, otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”

  He gave me a long, steady stare, then chuckled slightly. He turned and sat down in the middle of a long cream-coloured sofa. He thrust his legs out and put his hands behind his head. “Tell me more.”

  There was an easy chair opposite him and I was tempted to sit down, but I decided that on the whole I felt better standing. I said, “Just so you know, people know where I am at this precise moment. People who will come knocking in double-quick time if I don’t walk safely out of here.”

  He nodded. “I was getting that impression.” He looked me over. “I suppose you’re wearing a wire as well?”

  I raised my arms. “No I’m not. You’re welcome to pat me down if you want to.”

  “Pat you down? You’re watching too much TV, young man.”

  “Whatever.”

  He waited a moment, perhaps inwardly debating the truth of what I’d just told him. Then he said, “So what makes you think I want to contact this Liam Stone?”

  I stared at him in frustration. “Look, do you want this information or don’t you?”

  He seemed to consider this for a moment, then said, “OK, suppose I did want to contact him, how would I go about it?”

  I said, “OK, well here’s the thing, and you need to hear this first. For most of the time that you’ve been hassling me and giving me grief, I didn’t actually know where Stone was. Not a bloody clue.”

  I couldn’t read his reaction, but he was staring intently at me. I went on, “If you’d been courteous enough to listen to me, you would have realised I was telling you the truth. I made that bloody book up. The whole bloody lot. Some of it turned out to be qu
ite close to the truth, but that was sheer bloody luck. I never actually had any dealings with Stone or anybody else involved in that robbery. Never! That wasn’t part of my plan.”

  I was practically shouting now. I paused for a moment, staring down at him. I could feel the blood pulsing through my temples. “If you want to know the truth, I was too bloody lazy. A decent novelist would at least have made an effort.”

  He leaned forward, and in a low voice said, “You’ve got a fucking nerve, standing in my house shouting at me.” I could see him struggling to gain control of his anger, and I did my best not to flinch from his gaze.

  “Ha! And you’ve got a nerve having me assaulted and beaten up in order to tell you something I didn’t bloody know. What the hell kind of world do you live in?” I could hear my voice rising again. “And then you send people to kidnap a friend of mine in Chesterfield – someone who has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with any of this. Stone’s wife and daughter went into witness protection years ago – I happen to know that. If you’re looking for them, I suggest it’s a lost cause. Even if you found them, they wouldn’t be able to tell you where Stone is. They wouldn’t have the faintest idea.”

  He watched me for a moment without speaking, apparently processing all this, then took a deep breath and settled slowly back on the sofa. “You told me a minute ago that you did know how to find Stone.”

  “As it happens I do, but it’s completely by coincidence. I only found out a couple of weeks ago. After we met.”

  “Did we meet? I don’t seem to remember that.”

  “Well I do.”

  There was a silence. Finally he said, “So you found out how to get hold of Liam?”

  “Yes. He’s been living in England for the past few years under the name of Andy Davidson. He has a house at Chipping Norton in Oxfordshire. You can Google him. He’s a solid citizen, but it’s him.”

  “Is that so? How come we didn’t find this out, I wonder?”