Final Beat of the Drum, page 15
Instead, he had focussed his intellect on home security. He had started out by devising locks that couldn’t be picked, windows that couldn’t be forced, and alarms that couldn’t be tampered with. As technology developed, he had moved into software, and had devised programmes that even Moscow’s most dedicated hackers had trouble breaking into.
His business had grown and grown, though he had never been tempted to expand it beyond the north-west. In the process, he had become really rather prosperous. But unlike many tycoons, he had not, along the way, accumulated a wife – or wives – and children. Thus, at forty-five he was still a bachelor, and though he had a number of business associates who he might choose to call friends, business associates were essentially all they were. And so he lived alone, in a large house filled with the latest labour-saving devices, and guarded by a security system which would have cost a fortune if it hadn’t been his own.
So why was he so worried, he asked himself, as he gazed at the bank of monitors which were relaying images from the half a dozen cameras he had positioned around his property. His windows were bulletproof, his doors had steel cores. He was as safe as any man on earth.
But he didn’t feel safe, because he knew that for most of the day, someone had been watching him. He couldn’t say how he knew this – he had seen nothing – but he knew.
He picked up his phone and dialled a mobile number he knew by heart.
‘Yes?’ said a voice on the other end of the line.
‘It’s me.’
‘I know who it is. What do you want?’
‘I’m afraid,’ Hadley said.
‘Oh, for God’s sake!’
‘Could you come round? I’d feel safer if you came round.’
‘It’s too risky.’
‘It isn’t. Not if you were careful.’
‘Learn to stand on your own two feet,’ said the voice – and he could hear the contempt in it. ‘Be a man’
And then the line went dead.
He paced up and down his living room. He had nothing to worry about, his very logical mind assured him. In his whole life, there had only been one man who had cause to hate him – and that man was dead.
So relax Jim, he told himself. Pour yourself a drink, put your feet up, and watch some television.
But his hand was already reaching for the phone to ring the number again.
FOURTEEN
Friday, 4 February, 2000
The snow had failed to establish itself in the town, but it had managed to lay a thin white carpet over the moors, which even in the weak early morning sunlight seemed to glisten.
Monika Paniatowski moderated her speed for once, which she took as a sign that she was finally developing a mature attitude to road safety, but may have had more to do with her reluctance to reach the end of her journey.
She reached Blackthorn Remand Centre at just after nine. It stood in splendid isolation against the backdrop of an anaemic winter sky. The Centre was a Victorian building, and shared a number of grim and imposing architectural features with other institutions of the period, so that while it was easy to see it as a prison, it would have required no more effort to accept it as a workhouse or fever hospital.
She presented her papers at the guard house, and the big central gates swung slowly and ominously open. Ahead of her was the main prison building. It was made of sturdy Accrington brick, and seemed hardly at all affected by a century of merciless moorland weather.
Many of the windows were small and barred. She wondered whether it was possible for the prisoners to look out of them, and whether looking out of them would be a good idea, given that the view was of those big gates, opening with a promise of freedom and then remorselessly slamming closed.
The warder who was assigned to her at reception led her down a long windowless corridor with acoustics which made the click of Paniatowski’s heels bounce off the walls like ricocheting machine-gun bullets, and the dull thud of the warden’s boots sound like bodies hitting the ground. The interview room was empty, save for a table in its exact centre, and two chairs, one each side of the table. Paniatowski noted the legs of both the chairs and the table were bolted to the floor. As she sat down, she saw that two sturdy metal rings had been sunk into the tabletop opposite her.
‘When the prisoner is admitted, he will be instructed to sit in the other chair,’ the warder told her in a voice which managed to sound both bored and menacing. ‘Under no circumstances are you to touch him, nor pass anything across the table to him. You must not ask questions about the centre’s regime, nor invite the prisoner to comment on it. You will be permitted to talk about family matters, but must not say anything likely to provoke the prisoner to behave in any manner which does not conform to standing orders. If I am not satisfied you are adhering to these strictures – or if I judge that you are failing to conform to any of the other conditions laid down in the handbook – I will terminate this meeting. Do you understand?’
‘Yes,’ Paniatowski said.
The warder nodded, and pressed a button on the wall. The door opened, and Philip entered the room. He looked somewhat like his brother, but where there was calm and nobility in Thomas’s face, there was only danger and uncertainty in his brother’s.
Philip was flanked by – and handcuffed to – two large officers. The officers marched him over to the table.
‘The prisoner will sit down,’ the warder barked.
The escort executed the sideways shuffles necessary to get Philip into the right position, and once he was there they unlocked the handcuffs which had attached him to them, and fastened them to the metal hoops. Once that operation was completed, they left the room.
‘Is that really necessary?’ Paniatowski asked the warder, looking at her son’s manacled hands.
‘It’s the standard procedure when handling violent inmates,’ the warder replied.
‘But I’m his mother!’ Paniatowski protested.
‘That doesn’t make any difference,’ the warder said. ‘Men like him are as likely to attack their own mothers as they are to attack anybody else.’
‘How dare you—’ Paniatowski began.
‘Leave it, Mum,’ Philip said urgently. ‘Leave it before he takes it as an excuse to stop this meeting.’
‘You’d be wise to listen to your son, madam,’ the warder said. ‘In fact, before we go any further, I’m going to insist you promise to behave.’
‘I promise,’ Paniatowski said, as she pictured the warder’s guillotined head bouncing down the scaffold steps.
‘Well, just be careful,’ the warder advised.
Boing, boing, boing, Paniatowski thought, as she watched the imaginary head reach the ground.
Philip had his hands on the table, and she saw that since the last time they’d been together, he’d had letters crudely tattooed on the backs of his fingers, so that even when he made his hands into fists, the letters would still be visible.
‘My left hand spells out “Hell” and my right hand spells out “Shit”,’ he said, noticing that she was looking at them.
Paniatowski smiled. ‘Well, if you have an “o” tattooed on your right thumb, it will become a much nicer message,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what we can do about your right one, though.’
Philip did not return her smile. ‘Why are you here?’ he asked.
‘Thomas told me you wanted to see me, Philip.’
‘And that’s the only reason, isn’t it?’ Philip asked bitterly. ‘You’re here because your beloved Thomas wanted you to come!’
‘No, I’d have come before – but you wouldn’t let me,’ Paniatowski protested.
‘I just couldn’t bear the idea of seeing the look of contempt in your eyes,’ Philip said.
And can you see it now? Paniatowski wondered.
‘I’ve always loved you, you know,’ she said.
‘Do you love me as much as you love Thomas and Louisa?’ Philip challenged.
‘Yes,’ Paniatowski said firmly.
‘But you don’t like me as much, do you?’
‘You haven’t always made it easy to like you,’ Paniatowski admitted.
‘If you love me, prove it,’ Philip said. ‘Do one thing for me.’
‘What?’ Paniatowski asked, dreading what he might say.
‘When I’m sentenced next week, they say I’ll get at least twelve years,’ Philip said. ‘They’ll send me to a maximum-security prison like Durham, for at least the first half of my sentence.’
‘Yes?’ Paniatowski said.
‘I need a week’s parole before I go.’
Paniatowski gasped. ‘But that’s impossible, Philip. You’re considered dangerous. That’s why it took two guards to bring you here. That’s why you’re chained up now.’
‘Look, I got into a fight …’ Philip began.
‘No, you didn’t. You attacked a man who was a complete stranger to you in a pub. And you didn’t just knock him down, did you? You deliberately broke both his legs.’
‘I had to do that,’ Philip muttered. ‘I had to make sure he’d be out of action for a few months.’
‘For God’s sake, why?’ Paniatowski asked, exasperatedly.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Philip said.
Thomas knew, Paniatowski thought. Philip had told his brother – but he wouldn’t tell his mother.
‘Doesn’t matter?’ she said. ‘Of course it matters. If you had what you thought was a good reason for what you’d done, you just might get a lighter sentence. As it stands, it’s just mindless violence, and society wants you off the streets for as long as is legally possible.’
‘I’d behave while I was out on parole,’ Philip said, and he was sounding desperate now. ‘I’d wear an ankle bracelet if they wanted me to. I’d live with you, and I’d stay away from pubs and never go out after dark.’
‘I don’t understand why it’s so important to you,’ Paniatowski admitted. ‘What do you want to do with this week of freedom?’
‘You used to be a chief inspector,’ Philip said. ‘You’ve got influence with all sorts of people. You could persuade them to let me out – if you really wanted to.’
‘It doesn’t work like that, love,’ Paniatowski said. ‘I could be the current chief constable, never mind a retired DCI, and I still couldn’t swing it.’
‘But if you could swing it, would you do it?’ Philip asked.
‘Before I did anything, I’d need to know why you’re so desperate to get out,’ Paniatowski told him.
Philip stood up. ‘Get the guards to take me back to my cell,’ he told the warden.
The warden pressed the button and the guards appeared in the doorway.
As they were reattaching the handcuffs to their wrists, Philip looked at his mother one more time.
‘Do this one thing for me,’ he begged. ‘Do it – or you’re dead to me.’
Kate Meadows never locked her office door. This was a deliberate decision on her part. It was designed to send a message to the other residents of the house, and that message was, ‘We’re all in this together. Your fight is my fight. But we have to trust each other – because without trust we have nothing.’
And it had worked. Though any member of the household could have entered the office, she believed that no one ever had.
Until now!
Now, the office felt as she had felt on the first night of her honeymoon – violated!
She looked around for evidence with which to back up her gut feeling.
Had that file lying on the desk been positioned at exactly that angle?
Hadn’t the cup containing all her pens and markers been moved slightly to the right?
She couldn’t know for sure.
She opened the desk drawer. She always had a hundred pounds in there to meet emergencies, and when she counted the notes, she found it added up to exactly that amount.
This was ridiculous, she told herself. The house was a sealed unit, and if anyone had entered the office, that was where they had come from. Yet if she discounted the three small children, there were only five other adults to consider – no, she corrected herself, there were only four other adults now Jane had gone – and she trusted them all absolutely.
She was getting paranoid, she told herself, but after everything that had happened, it was hardly surprising, was it?
The woman leaving the solicitor’s office was wearing a navy-blue suit. The skirt part of the suit was slightly too short for her somewhat stumpy legs, but the jacket had been cleverly cut to disguise the fact that those legs were topped by a rather square body. Her hairstyle was elaborate and expensive, her make-up carefully applied. In other words, thought Beresford, she was a woman who tried to show herself off to some advantage – and was almost successful in that aim.
What else did he know about her? He knew her name was Cecilia Maitland Williams, that she was thirty-eight years old, and that she was divorced. She was a successful solicitor – a senior partner in her firm – and a part-time magistrate. And unless he was very much mistaken, she was one of the two women who regularly accompanied Andrew Lofthouse to the Hellfire Club.
He followed her down the street, and when she entered the Copper Kettle Café, he was right behind her.
She ordered an espresso coffee and a croissant, and took her order over to one of the tables.
Beresford waited until she had sat down, then said, ‘Mrs Williams?’
‘Maitland Williams,’ the woman said, sounding annoyed. ‘Ms Maitland Williams.’
‘My name’s Beresford,’ he told her. ‘I used to be a policeman – a detective inspector in the Mid Lancs Constabulary. Do you mind if I join you?’
‘I most certainly do,’ Ms Maitland Williams replied. ‘I don’t believe, even for one second, you were ever a policeman at all, and if you don’t stop bothering me, I’ll summon someone who is.’
Beresford laughed. ‘Nice try,’ he said, ‘but I can tell from the look in your eyes that I’ve got you worried.’
‘I most certainly am not w—’
‘And you’ve got a lot to be worried about – dead lover, nocturnal visits to places part-time magistrates really shouldn’t go to—’
‘Is it money you want?’ the woman demanded.
‘No. All I need is five minutes of your time.’
For a moment, Maitland Williams hesitated, then she said, ‘All right, sit down.’ Her voice was trying to create the impression that she knew she was granting him a privilege he was not really worthy of, and once he had sat down she looked at her watch and added, ‘Five minutes and no more.’
‘All right,’ Beresford agreed. ‘Firstly, do you admit that Andrew Lofthouse was your lover?’
‘No, I do not. He was just a friend.’
‘But a very close friend?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Didn’t it bother you that you were going out with a wife beater?’
‘Andrew never beat Jane. She made all that up.’
‘She was living in a shelter for battered women, for God’s sake.’
‘It was all a pretence. Overcroft House was never more than the stage on which she chose to play out her own little melodrama.’
‘How do you know she was in Overcroft House?’ Beresford asked.
‘Andrew told me.’
‘And how did he know?’
‘He got an anonymous letter.’
‘Do you have any idea who sent it?’
‘Of course not,’ she said scornfully. ‘As I’ve just told you, it was anonymous.’
‘Lofthouse took you to the Hellfire Club, didn’t he?’ Beresford asked.
Ms Maitland Williams began to look uncomfortable again. ‘Once or twice,’ she admitted.
‘It was a lot more than that,’ Beresford said confidently. ‘So what’s your particular kink?’
‘I don’t have a kink, as you so crudely put it,’ the woman said haughtily. ‘It amused Andrew to watch the perverts down there, and I went with him, just to keep him company.’
‘Yes, he seemed to like company,’ Beresford said, whimsically.
‘What do you mean?’
‘He often took another woman to the club.’
‘That’s a lie!’ Ms Maitland Williams said so loudly that several other customers turned round. ‘It’s a lie,’ she repeated in a hiss. ‘He wouldn’t have taken anybody else. I was the only one he lo—’ She stopped abruptly, and looked as if she would gladly have bitten off her own tongue.
‘The only one what?’ Beresford asked.
‘Nothing.’
‘The only one he loved?’
‘No, I …’ the woman glanced down at her watch. ‘Your five minutes is almost up. Ask the rest of your questions.’
The question Beresford wanted to ask was, ‘What did Andrew Lofthouse see in you?’ because Lofthouse had been a good-looking man, and by no stretch of the imagination could Cecilia Maitland Williams be called an attractive woman.
He had considered the possibility that Lofthouse had not been as superficial as he was himself – that the man looked below the surface for an inner beauty – but having spent a few minutes with this woman, he could find no inner beauty to speak of, and dismissed the idea.
He had wondered if perhaps beauty didn’t matter because it had no part to play in a sadomasochistic partnership, but he found it impossible to imagine Meadows with an ugly partner, and assumed that Lofthouse had been the same.
All of which brought him right back to the question he wanted to ask, but knew that he couldn’t.
He decided to approach the problem from a different angle.
‘Were you Andrew Lofthouse’s solicitor?’
‘I used to be, but as things developed, I turned his business over to another member of my firm.’
For ‘things developed’ read ‘once he seduced me’ Beresford thought.
‘But you must know a great deal about the business from the time you did represent him,’ Beresford said.
‘It doesn’t matter whether I do or do not,’ Maitland Williams said primly. ‘As a solicitor, it is my duty to keep my client’s business confidential.’
‘Unless you know he’s done something illegal,’ Beresford said.
