The Knapthorne Conspiracy

by Malcolm Ballard

  “Of course! Not a straight steal, so to speak, but bits of them, integrated into one character or another. Everyone’s got their little quirks and mannerisms. Studying the human condition becomes second nature.” She turned on her chair, to look around. “If we were to watch those two people, over there, for instance,” she said, nodding in the direction of a couple seated at a table by the wall, “I bet you it wouldn’t be long before one of them did something out of habit.” Turning back to him, she continued. “One friend of mine is always touching her hair, patting it, you know, here.” Bella put a hand on the crown of her head. “Especially when she’s nervous or uncertain about something. She thought of Jane. “Another is always looking at her watch, seemingly unable to relax, a legacy of her working day.” Bella paused to sip her coffee. “People are never dull, Ben. Even Laura.”

  “Especially Laura!” he exclaimed. “Now why did you have to go and spoil my day when I was having such a good time?” She covered his hand with hers.

  “I’ve enjoyed myself, immensely too. Thanks for coming down.”

  “I couldn’t go any longer without seeing you, you know that. And you will think about what I said, won’t you?” Her eyes seemed to mist over, as he studied her face intently.

  “Of course I will, Ben. You just took me by surprise, that’s all.”

  “I meant it, Bella. I need to get my life in order. I don’t expect an immediate answer but think about it, for my sake, eh?” Sitting back, then, he looked at his watch. “We’d better be going soon then I’ll have to make tracks back to London straight away.” He reached for his cup, to finish the coffee.

  “You poor thing, having to drive all the way back. It’s a pity you couldn’t have flown down.”

  “Yes, it is a shame,” he agreed. “But I’ve leased the Robinson for three weeks and I couldn’t get another chopper. Never mind. Come on, let’s be off” he said, standing up. “At least we shouldn’t have your sister to contend with when we get back. I’d like to think I’ve seen the last of her.”

  The journey back had been marked by long periods of silence between the two of them. When they turned off Spinney Lane into the drive neither of them had expected to see Laura’s car still parked there and were relieved to find that was the case. They said their goodbyes in the car, Ben taking her in his arms and pulling her close, until their lips met in a gentle encounter which increasingly became more intense, spurred by desire, until Bella finally pulled away, her breathing ragged, the flame of passion lighting up her eyes.

  “I’d better go, Ben, for both our sakes,” she grinned, smoothing out her dress and flicking her head back to arrange her hair.

  “Please remember what I said, though won’t you?” As he spoke he took her hand in his.

  “Of course,” she replied, pulling away and opening the door.

  “When can I see you again? Are you coming up to London?” Bella was out of the car, leaning on the open door and looking in at him.

  “I don’t know yet, Ben. Possibly. Let me have a think about it and I’ll call you at the office. Give me a ring if you’re able to get away again.”

  “You know I will,” he answered, with a smile, his green eyes soft and sparkling, accentuating the youthfulness of his face as he reached to close her door.

  “You brought an umbrella, didn’t you!” Bella exclaimed, suddenly recalling his arrival. “Hold on, I’ll get it for you.” Retrieving it from the lobby, she spied Laura’s there too. Serves her right, she thought, imagining what must have gone through her sister’s mind when she came back and found nobody home. It occurred to her that there was every likelihood of receiving a most unpleasant phone call that evening. Ben departed, with his umbrella, and Bella closed the door on the outside world, suddenly feeling very weary. A now familiar sensation caused her to look down at her feet to see Ubix smoodging round her ankles.

  “Hallo, puss! Where have you been?” she said, bending down to pick it up. “Staying out of my sister’s way, no doubt!” Lifting the cat to her shoulder, she was rewarded by Ubix’s deep, regular purring in her ear and began to make her way to the kitchen.

  “Well, what am I going to do about Ben, Ubix?” She murmured, thoughtfully. “He’s getting a bit serious for someone who doesn’t really know me.” The cat gave a short, sharp miaow and Bella put him down on the kitchen floor. “I guess you’re more concerned about your dinner, aren’t you. Let’s see what we can find then.” With the cat attended to, Bella took herself upstairs, intent on having a long, lazy shower and allowing herself the luxury of contemplating the day’s events. Before she had even reached her bedroom, the phone rang and she knew it had to be Laura. There was no way she wanted to be exposed to her sister’s venom and spoil what had otherwise been a nice day so she let it ring until finally the caller gave up. While Bella showered, the phone rang on another two occasions and she could just picture Laura’s irate face on the other end of the line, getting meaner and more angry with every call. It really gave her no satisfaction to treat Laura this way but she was not the kind of person that one could apply the normal rules of human relationships to. Closing her eyes and forcing Laura from her thoughts, she let her mind focus on the memory of something altogether more pleasant, allowing herself to dwell on what might have happened, on the clifftop, with Ben. Bella gave her imagination free reign, a very basic instinct crying out for fulfilment, her body seeking satisfaction, and her hands became his as she dreamed of the two of them in the grass. Dreamed of hands that undressed her, caressing her tenderly. Hands that lay bare her body, exposing her most private places. Hands that explored, touching, teasing and exciting her, finally finding a secret, hidden place that made her tremble and gasp. Expert hands that manipulated her confidently, arousing her slowly at first and causing her to react in a series of languid, sensuous movements in response to the stimulation. Movements which became more exaggerated, more wanton as the most divine feeling suffused her, increasing in its intensity, until her whole body was awash with the sensation, riding a surging tidal wave of excitement and lifting her inexorably towards the sublime pinnacle of pleasure. Suddenly, her back arched upwards and she cried out, shuddering with an explosive release of tension as the most exquisite feeling of ecstasy flooded through her. And then she was limp, sated, her breasts rising and falling as she struggled to control her breathing and she stood exhausted, head on one side, smiling a dreamy, self-satisfied smile.

  Being the weekend, traffic was heavy as Ben made his way home, his thoughts filled with everything that had happened that day. From the unpromising start of discovering Laura at the cottage, events had taken a welcome upturn. He found it difficult to dismiss Laura from his thoughts, her presence almost seeming to have followed him into the car. In the back of his mind he knew it was obvious she’d assumed there was something going on between the two of them but what proof had she got? So, she had seen him there. So what? That could be easily explained. And anyway, what was he worrying about, he asked himself. He and Bella hadn’t actually done anything. Ever since his close call with Tina, he had become a little paranoid about one of his dalliances being discovered and Laura could ruin everything. She didn’t strike Ben as the kind of person who would let an opportunity to make mischief pass her by. It wasn’t a nice thought and something which he didn’t choose to dwell on. The blast of a car’s horn focused his attention immediately back on the road. With his mind concentrating on Laura, he had strayed out of the centre lane as a car was about to overtake. It brought him back to his senses, in more ways than one, as the driver of the overtaking car shook a fist a
t him in anger and mouthed obvious obscenities relating to Ben’s capacity as a driver. The close call had brought perspiration to his forehead and he wiped it away with a tissue. In a couple of hours he would be back with Tina, if she was home yet, and immersed in all the problems of his marriage. He had to find some way of extricating himself from the mess without finding himself ruined in the process. Tristram’s discovery had nearly blown the whole thing wide open but, thankfully, at least Barbara was still happy to go along with their arrangement. Both sexually and financially. Ben couldn’t deny that she exerted a certain power over him and not only because she was very inventive, athletic and insatiable. She was also a party to his fraud and didn’t lose any opportunity to remind him of the fact. The whole thing was becoming very complicated, he admitted to himself, and he would need to be more careful than ever. His brow creased at the memory of something Barbara had said, only recently, referring to a new scheme she had thought up to milk even more money from the firm and he had realised then the similarities between his wife and Barbara. Give them an inch and they’d take a yard. Give them enough rope… Where would it all end? An image of Bella strayed into his thoughts. They had come so close to making love this morning and what he wouldn’t have given for it to have happened. He pictured them in the grass together, her naked in his arms, and his excitement stirred him. Somehow, she offered the solution to his problems, he knew, but he had to get her confidence. The pressure on him was beginning to tell, there was no doubt about that. He’d made two serious errors at work, recently, the worst of them involving one of the firm’s oldest clients and even though he’d salvaged the situation it was serious enough to have been raised at a partner’s meeting. Sometimes it felt as though the net was closing around him and he wondered, for the umpteenth time, how he could have let his life get in such a mess. The interior of the car suddenly felt chilly and he flicked the heater switch, appreciating the instant flow of warm air. A deft touch of a button brought the strains of a Greig piano concerto to his ears and he took a deep breath, expelling it as a long sigh.

  “Bella Foxton,” he said, quietly, picturing her in his mind, once again. “Bella, Bella, Bella,” He repeated her christian name slowly in an Italian accent. Ben Hollingsworth was not in the least way a religious person, and he was driving up the M3 towards London, hardly the road to Damascus but he had a revelation, nonetheless. In an instant, the solution came to him, a moment of electrifying clarity, with the intensity of a lightning flash and his boyish face lit up as he realised he’d hit on the answer. Without the shadow of a doubt he now knew, with unfailing certainty, exactly what he had to do.

  The air was still and unmoving around Willow Cottage, the night warm and humid. Bella checked the doors and windows before going to bed quite early, happy in the knowledge that she planned to get up around 6am to resume work on the book. During the evening Ben had never been far from her thoughts as she considered the implications of his question. She couldn’t deny she was attracted to him and they seemed, on the surface, to be quite well suited. The urgency of her need for a physical relationship had to be discounted if she wanted to analyse her thoughts dispassionately and view their long-term prospects. Love? Now there was a question. It was an abstract notion that she had long ago given up on trying to quantify. A sentiment best left to writers and pop stars to anguish over. On a personal level, Bella had had her share of emotional highs and lows but it was so difficult to isolate love from the tangled web of human experience. If love could be certified by identifying specific criteria, as in a doctor making a diagnosis, then was it an essential for guaranteeing a successful relationship? In her experience, among people she knew, love evolved into a comfortable acceptance of one another, warts an’ all. An entirely different concept from the heady passion fuelled by the hormone-driven exuberance of youth. There was something missing between Ben and her which she couldn’t immediately identify and she still harboured a vague reservation about him which was also shrouded in mystery. Fatigue eventually overcame her until she couldn’t keep her eyes open, none the wiser for all her mental peregrination. Within minutes of her head hitting the pillow she was asleep, her breathing slow and rhythmic, eyes firmly closed. But, in the depths of the night, with her room bathed in eerie light from the incandescent glow of the full moon, Bella’s eyelids began to flicker as images came to her in the form of a dream. Under the duvet, her body twisted and turned as, in her mind, she tried to evade her pursuers. The shouts and cries came ever closer, occupying her attention, and she missed her footing, falling forwards, tumbling headlong into darkness.

  Chapter Twelve

  He had been cruising the city’s red light area for nearly ten minutes looking for a likely pick-up. Backwards and forwards, up and down, blatantly staring at the youngest of the girls as they stood, hips thrust out provocatively with their little micro-skirts barely covering their buttocks, calling out to him as he slowly drove past. Displaying their wares as they did, in one of the oldest shop windows in the world, little was left to the imagination in their efforts to attract the punters. It was late, after 1am, and the rain which had earlier lashed the city had died away to a fine misty drizzle, creating fuzzy halos around the regiments of street lamps and softening the glare from the nocturnal overseers of the city’s highways. It invested the area with a patina of unreality, as though it were an elaborately staged film set rather than the sleazy, fertile breeding ground for innumerable sexual liaisons that it really was. The sweet smell of marijuana perfumed the interior of the station wagon, the occasional joint seeming not only to relax him but also further stimulate his compulsive desire. The urge for sex was overwhelming but he just couldn’t bring himself to pull up by one of the girls although the sight of their barely-clad young bodies, with so much flesh exposed was sorely tempting. Finally, he depressed the accelerator firmly and took off with a squeal of tyres, fuming at himself in an angry response to the knowledge that he simply didn’t have the nerve to sink so low. Two of the girls, in shouting distance of one another, exchanged vulgar, derogatory comments, accompanied by loud hoots of laughter, as they watched the station wagon’s tail lights disappear in the mist. Often potential punters would turn up, cruising the streets, on three or four different occasions before they plucked up the courage to stop and, even though the driver of the station wagon wasn’t yet aware of the fact, they knew he’d be back.

  There were other places he could go, looking for someone who needed a lift, perhaps. Someone a little drunk after a party, grateful for a ride and willing to show it. All the while, as he drove around checking pavements and doorways like some hungry raptor, memories of the past months flashed into his mind stirring up the embers of a fire that had ignited once too often and destroyed his marriage. Remorse and self-pity gnawed away at him, combining to kindle the spark of hurt and frustration into the dull glow of anger. The loss of his wife, Kay, had proved difficult to come to terms with but it was he who had driven her away with his outbursts of temper. For much of the time he had remained the same brash, some would say slightly arrogant, and amusing man she loved, outwardly charming and personable. But another, darker side of his character had begun to surface, prompting sudden, ugly mood swings and alienating those around him. These were sometimes prefaced by a brooding silence and Kay had learned, by bitter experience, not to enquire if he was ok. Suddenly, she had to watch her step for, without warning, the slightest difference of opinion or a silly argument could provoke him to suddenly erupt like an angry volcano. One of the reasons their relationship had endured was because they loved to talk to one another. Not only talk but, from time to time, get involved in heated debates over issues that were of concern to either one of them. From the most trivial topic of conversation to matters of great importance, they discussed everything. There were no taboos of a personal or intimate nature and sometimes they were liable to shock friends or acquaintances with their fran
kness. Couples often lose the art of conversation after being together for many years or just make do with the minimum to facilitate a sustainable relationship. It was not surprising then, that in the social circles they inhabited they were viewed with some admiration, people often remarking that they behaved more like a couple on their first date, each interested in what the other had to say. When they went to their local, Kay would often remark with great amusement on the behaviour of some of the older couples who sat, motionless as Easter Island stone statues, with their drinks on the table in front of them, staring into the middle distance without a word passing between them. Once, she had pointed a pair of old codgers out and said, laughingly, “That’ll be us one day, just you wait and see!”

  Kay had found herself living on her nerves, unable to cope, never certain if the least inconsequential thing would act as a trigger. A marriage of nearly fifteen years blown away, like confetti scattered on the wind, by the demons that had beset him. She had begged him to seek help after suffering his verbal and physical abuse for almost six months, stunned by the bewildering change in his personality, but he had stubbornly refused afraid of what the outcome might be. They had known each other from university and her departure devastated him. At first, all he wanted was to get her back and when she steadfastly refused he began dating other women to spite Kay as much as anything but could find no surrogate capable of matching her looks or personality. For weeks he buried himself in his work, dispensing with a social life, his occasional fits of temper upsetting the once happy-go-lucky atmosphere of the workplace. Colleagues dismissed his behaviour as a temporary aberration, citing the breakdown of his marriage, but trod warily in his presence. As the urge for sex grew stronger he began to indulge in casual relationships of the most basic kind, picking a girl up in a club or a bar. Once or twice before, like tonight, when he had been working for days on end and wanted quick gratification with the minimum effort, he would cruise the streets. There was going to come a day, he knew for sure, when the temptation of those soft young bodies for sale would prove too much. In the meantime maybe he was going to be lucky tonight. As he approached the railway station Kyle Lucas spotted a girl thumbing a lift.