Alternative outcome

by Peter Rowlands

  Joanna said, “Can somebody tell me what all this is about?”

  I looked at Ashley, who replied, “Apparently my father has gone chasing off to Sheffield in his car, and nobody knows why.”

  “Is that unusual?”

  “On a Saturday morning at six a.m. it’s completely unheard-of. And apparently he’s not answering his phone.”

  Joanna yawned. “It’s a hell of a long trip.”

  I said to Ashley, “We know your father is aware that Trina is living near Chesterfield.”

  “Or we’re guessing that.” She was becoming faintly defensive.

  “OK, we’re guessing. Anyway, it so happens that Trina’s father is in hospital in Sheffield. Could he know that too?”

  “You tell me.”

  I shrugged. “It could be, although I don’t see how. But then, I don’t see how he knew about Chesterfield either.”

  Suddenly I felt we needed to be nearer this apparent centre of activity. We were due to catch a train to Chesterfield, and I felt the need to get going.

  Before we left, I decided I should try once more to contact Trina. If all this involved her father, she needed to know. I rang the number she’d given me, which went to voicemail again, and said, “Trina, this is urgent. I felt you should know that a man named Gordon Renwick might be on his way to visit your father in hospital later on today. He’s my girlfriend’s father, from Truro. I don’t know why he would be going there or what he would want, and I truly don’t know how he knows anything about you or your whereabouts. We certainly didn’t tell him. Anyway, I just thought you should be aware of the situation.”

  I paused, then added, “If you want to ring me and talk about this, you have my number. I’ll be on the train to Chesterfield this morning to pick up my car from being repaired, and I could meet you later on if you like.”

  Ashley smiled briefly at me as I disconnected. “So I’m your girlfriend, am I?”

  I smiled back. “I hope so.”

  2012

  “You have some belongings of ours. All you need to do is hand them over.”

  The two men had barged their way into the main room of Sasha’s apartment, and were standing just inside the doorway, both pointing guns at the rest of us.

  The speaker had an Australian accent and looked to be in his mid-thirties: too young to have been involved in the original security van robbery. I guessed they were both local muscle, hired by someone in the UK. They were dressed incongruously in fashionable-looking dark waistcoats and open-neck white shirts, a bit like waiters.

  “The fuck I will.” Hawkins, in a check shirt and jeans, glared defiantly at them. “I’m calling the police now.” He reached for a phone on a bookshelf behind him.

  Without even a moment’s delay, the second of the two intruders levelled his gun and fired. The silencer reduced the sound to a muted thump. I watched in disbelief as the shot hit Hawkins in the leg. He yelled out in agony and collapsed to the floor, groaning.

  Sasha shouted, “Jesus Christ!” She crouched next to her father, looking up at the two men in horror. Then she turned to him. “Just give them what they want!”

  Wincing, he said, “If I do, they’ll kill us all.”

  As for me, my head was exploding with a rage beyond anything I’d ever known in my life. I had caused this scene myself through my pointless, relentless search for these people. Me. It was my fault. I was so incensed that my thoughts seemed to have been swept up in a blinding, incoherent vortex. All I knew was that there was no time for hesitation here, no room for negotiation. I had to act.

  In front of the sofa was a glass coffee table, and on it was a marble figurine, about ten inches tall. In a single motion I seized it, lunged towards the nearest of the intruders and swung it at him with all my might, crying out with anger as I did so.

  The figurine struck him solidly on the arm before he had a chance to react, but his partner, still holding his own gun in front of him, merely shifted his stance slightly and fired at me. I felt a searing pain in my left arm and cried out, spontaneously shrinking to my knees.

  I was aware of a shriek from Sasha, and conscious that all eyes had turned to me. And in that moment there was another gunshot, not silenced this time. In that small apartment it sounded as loud as an explosion. I jerked my head round and saw that Hawkins had pulled out a handgun from somewhere and fired from his position on the floor.

  The man who had shot me collapsed, evidently out of the reckoning, but the one I’d struck raised his own arm reflexively and fired at Hawkins twice. To my horror, I saw both shots hit him in the chest.

  This time Sasha came to the rescue. She grabbed a small silver clock from the shelf and flung it at the man’s head, and remarkably it found its target. He recoiled, and before he’d recovered I managed to launch myself to my feet. I raised the figurine again and smashed it as hard as I could against his head.

  He crumpled to the floor, and when it was clear he wasn’t going to get up again Sasha crouched down again over her father, picked up the phone and shakily called for an ambulance. While she was speaking to them her father called out in a weak voice, and I shuffled over to him. “Mate, you’d better listen up. There’s something I need to say.”

  Chapter 75

  Journey time from St Pancras to Chesterfield was just under two hours. Once we found seats on the train Ashley phoned her mother again. There was no further news about her father.

  I asked, “When your mother told you she had nothing to say about Desmond Markham, do you think she meant she didn’t know him, or she did know him but she wasn’t prepared to talk about it?”

  “Difficult to tell.”

  “If you asked her again, do you think she might say more?”

  “Knowing her, I think the answer is no.”

  I considered this for a while. “What if Patrick asked her in person? Do you think she might open up to him?”

  “Possibly. She treats him more like a grown-up than she does me.”

  “Is it worth asking?”

  She nodded, already thumbing her way to his number on her phone. Fortunately he answered immediately.

  “Patrick, it’s Ash. Did you hear about Dad and this sudden trip up north this morning?”

  She nodded, listened for a while, then started throwing in snippets about our curiosity over Desmond Markham and Robert Stainer. Finally she disconnected.

  “He’s going to drive over there later on and speak to her. He’ll let us know what he finds out.”

  For a while we allowed ourselves to forget this strange turn of events. We chatted about past train journeys, or just sat in silence, abandoning ourselves to knowing smiles.

  As we pulled out of Derby Ashley’s phone jangled – a burst of heavy metal rock music. She glanced at me. “That’s Patrick’s ringtone.”

  She listened for a while, responding with the occasional question, then disconnected.

  “He’s not really getting the full picture, but basically yes, my parents did know the Markhams. They were quite friendly for a while. They also knew this guy Robert Stainer. She thought he was charming, but too good to be true.”

  “So why didn’t they tell us this when I was looking for the Markhams?”

  “My mother probably wasn’t paying any attention to what you were doing. As for my father, well, it’s beginning to look as though he was paying attention, but not letting on to us.”

  “Why not?”

  “My mum said my dad had some kind of financial involvement with Desmond Markham. She was a bit vague about that, but maybe it has something to do with all this.”

  “What does your dad do for a living?” As I asked the question, I marvelled at my failure to raise it before, or to take any interest.

  “He’s an investment advisor. He’s semi-retired now, but he still has a few clients.”

  “So he might have advised Desmond Markham?”

  “I suppose so.” She reflected for a moment. “Or Desmond Markham might have advised him.”
>
  * * *

  At Chesterfield we took a taxi to the body shop where my car was waiting. The repair work had not magically made it look any younger than it had before – just put it back to its previous condition. What did I expect? I paid the exorbitant bill and drove us out of the building and round the corner, where I pulled up on a double yellow line and turned to Ashley.

  “So what do we do now?” My unspoken question was whether or not we should head for Sheffield and try to find out what Ashley’s father was up to.

  Ashley shrugged. “Is my dad’s trip really any of our business? In all honesty, do we have any right to interfere?”

  I stared for a moment down the empty street of ageing industrial premises. It offered me no answer. I said, “I can’t help feeling it is our business. I think we’ve somehow nudged your father into tracking down Desmond Markham, and he must have gone looking for him this morning. We made it happen.”

  “Well no need to include me in this! You’re the one who was so desperate to find Trina Markham and her parents.”

  “Sorry – you’re right. I’m the one who instigated this. I know that. The point is, if I’m right, I feel as if I owe them a kind of moral duty of care. I need to take responsibility.”

  She took a moment to consider this, then said, “But we don’t know where exactly Desmond Markham is in Sheffield. You said he was in a hospital. There could be lots of hospitals. Do you even know his new name?”

  What had Trina told me? Was her new surname Marsden? I should have been listening more carefully. As for his first name, I had no idea what that might be.

  We finally hit on a compromise. We would drive up to Sheffield, which was only twelve miles away, and see if we had any further inspiration when we got there. If not, we would call it a day and head off to the place where we were staying.

  * * *

  We weren’t going to leave it at that, of course. As we made our way through the Sheffield suburbs we started planning our next move. Using her mobile browser, Ashley found that there were two main hospitals in the city, plus numerous specialist facilities and private clinics.

  “Should I ring some of them? Who should I ask for?”

  “You could try Marsden, initial D.”

  She tried four or five. Some said they had no patient named D Marsden; others refused to look on the basis of the slender information she was providing.

  I said, “Maybe this is a lost cause.”

  “Wait wait – how about this? St Anthony’s private hospital and hospice. That sounds about right, doesn’t it?”

  “OK, why not give it a try?”

  She rang their number, and yes! Dennis Marsden had been a patient there for several weeks. We looked at each other in triumph.

  Using her phone as an ad hoc satnav, Ashley directed me round the city centre and out to the west in the direction of Hallam Head, which turned out to be a comfortably middle-class area. The private hospital was a low-rise modern building set in its own grounds amongst well-heeled housing, with an imposing view across the dales.

  As we pulled into the car park, Ashley shouted, “There! It’s my dad’s car.”

  We hurried into reception area and asked to see Dennis Marsden. Surprisingly, no obstacles were put in our way; we were simply pointed down a long corridor and round a corner. Ashley’s low heels clattered on the shiny floor. As we approached the room number we’d been given we could hear raised voices.

  “That doesn’t excuse what you did.” I recognised this as Gordon Renwick. “You’ve got away with it all these years, but now it’s time to pay.”

  Ashley and I exchanged glances and instinctively hushed our footsteps as we approached the door. Renwick continued, “Don’t you think you’ve let your daughter down for long enough?”

  That comment intrigued me. I put my arm up to halt Ashley, and indicated that we should hang back. As we stood outside the door a weak voice, presumably Markham’s, replied, “She’s had a good life. She hasn’t wanted for anything, has she? What else could I offer?”

  Clearly this incensed Renwick. Spitting out the words, he said, “You have the nerve to ask me that? After all that you did?”

  There was a pause, then Markham said quietly, “Well I hate to rain on your parade, Gordon, but standing there threatening me isn’t going to change anything.”

  “Oh, believe me, it does. You can’t imagine how often I’ve imagined this moment. Give me my moment of glory.”

  “And you think this would make Ashley proud?”

  At the mention of her name, Ashley glanced at me again, then pushed past me and thrust the door open.

  “Would someone mind telling me what the fuck’s going on here?”

  Chapter 76

  It was a surprisingly large, predominantly grey room whose main feature was a bed backed against one wall. In it, propped up by pillows and flanked by various bits of technical paraphernalia, lay a gaunt-looking Desmond Markham. He had unkempt greying hair and a small moustache. A tube dangled from a gantry above his head and was attached to his arm.

  Gordon Renwick was standing on the far side of the bed, looming threateningly over Markham. As we walked in he had the vestiges of crazed determination on his face, but this was quickly replaced by a look of annoyance as he glanced at Ashley.

  “Darling, what on earth are you doing here?”

  “I might ask you the same question.”

  Gordon said nothing, and into the silence Markham said, “Would someone like to introduce us?”

  Renwick glanced back at Markham. “This is my daughter Ashley.”

  Markham looked at her appraisingly. “I’m very pleased to meet you, Ashley.” He shuffled in a weak attempt to sit up straighter. “Delighted in fact. It’s a privilege I never expected.” He continued to gaze at her, and I could see a hint of a smile playing on his lips. “You’re even prettier than the pictures I’ve seen of you online.”

  Ashley glanced from Markham to her father and back. “Why would you be looking at pictures of me online?”

  He gazed at her a moment longer, then turned to Renwick. “Are you going to tell her, or shall I?”

  At this Renwick stiffened and seemed ready to lunge at Markham. In an almost hysterical tone he said, “Nobody needs to tell anyone anything. Do they, Des?”

  Markham merely relaxed into his pillow. “That might have been true until you came barging in here threatening to attack me. Now all bets are off.”

  “I’m warning you …”

  “Warning me what? That you’re going to hit me? Go ahead – put me out of my misery. I’ll be dead soon enough without any help from you.” He turned to Ashley and me in appeal. “Could someone tell this man to start behaving in a civilised manner please?”

  Gordon stepped a half-pace closer to Markham and raised his arms, clearly planning to throw a punch at him. Ashley shouted, “Dad, for god’s sake stop this! Have you gone raving mad? This man is dying. Whatever he’s done to you in the past, attacking him isn’t going to put it right now.”

  “Ha! But it’ll make me feel so much better.”

  “For how long? Five minutes? Then what?”

  He turned to look at her, and there was a longer silence.

  Markham cleared his throat. Quietly he said, “I’m your father, Ashley, not Gordon. That’s what he’s been struggling to avoid telling you. I never had any intention of bringing this up with you, but now he’s forced the issue. I’m sorry.”

  “What?” She stared at him in astonishment.

  To his credit he looked almost repentant. “There’s never a right time to tell someone something like this.” He shrugged weakly. “I wish there was. But I’ll probably never get another chance. I don’t know what else to say.”

  She simply repeated, “You’re my father? You?” She turned to Gordon in bewilderment. “Is this true, Dad?”

  He took a small step back and gave her a pained look. “I’m afraid it is.” He turned back to Markham. “You bastard.”

&nb
sp; Ashley looked desperately backward and forward between the two of them. “For god’s sake! Does somebody want to explain, please?”

  Renwick stepped forward again towards Markham, grabbing the suspended tube as he did so and tensing his arm as if in readiness to snatch it away. He paused at the last moment with the tube still stretched taut, staring fixedly at Markham, and said, “This man stormed his way into our lives, robbed us of our savings, robbed me of my wife, then sailed off into the fucking sunset, never to be seen again. This man is a despicable, cowardly worm who doesn’t deserve to live a single day longer.”

  Now he yanked at the tube. Markham’s eyes darted between Gordon and the tube, filled with alarm.

  I’d been watching this unfolding scene in amazement. I wanted to intervene, but couldn’t think of anything constructive to say or do. I could try wading in and physically restraining Gordon, but what damage might he do to Markham by the time I scuffled round the bed to his side?

  Thinking fast, I said, “Gordon, can I say something?”

  I felt all eyes on me. Markham said, “Who are you?”

  I said, “I’m with Ashley.” I drew a deep breath. “She’s my girlfriend.”

  Markham said, “I hope you deserve her.”

  Ashley said briskly, “He does.” She turned to me. “What was it you wanted to say?”

  Quickly I said, “Gordon, all this is between us. Everyone in this room is family, more or less. We can stop this now and all go home. But any second now a nurse or a doctor might walk through that door. If that happens, things will immediately get out of hand. The police will be called. You’ll probably be arrested.”

  Gordon looked over at me without lowering his arm. At least he was listening.

  I went on, “Is this really what you want for Ashley? You’ve just turned her world upside down by coming here and raking all this up. Do you want to do the same thing all over again by killing someone? You could go to prison. Do want to leave her with the aftermath of that? If you do, you must be even stupider than you appear to be.”