Pauline Rowson: In for the Kill

It had started long before my arrest. Six years ago James Andover had set up a registered charity to raise money to research into the causes of heart disease. Andover had named himself, me and two other businessmen as his fellow trustees. He had complied with all the regulations of the Charity Commission and filled in the forms. Then he had targeted three men: Couldner, Westnam and Brookes, all of whom had donated over a two-year period the sum of one million pounds each.

The money had gone into the charity bank account, and then into another bank account in my name, only I hadn’t opened it. The money had then been transferred, all electronically without me even being aware of it. Where it was now I had no idea, though the police had thought differently. When Couldner had died in a car accident in the May before my arrest, his daughter had become suspicious over her father’s dwindling bank account and reported it to the police. They had traced it to the charity and hence to me. Andover had disappeared, and the other trustees had proved to be fictitious, names taken from gravestones, signatures forged. The registered office of the charity had been my mother’s house in Bembridge. A divert had been put on the mail though, to another address which was an empty one-room office in the middle of London, registered in my name. The two surviving businessmen, Roger Brookes and Clive Westnam, swore they had been contacted by me and had donated money in good faith. I was left as the one tangible person to carry the can.

I’d never heard of the charity and neither had I ever been a trustee. Of course the police didn’t believe that; not with the overwhelming evidence they uncovered. The Hi Tech Crime Unit had also discovered deleted e-mails from me to Andover on my computer hard drive. I hadn’t sent them. No one believed me. They were on the computer therefore it had to be true.

Computers didn’t lie. Humans did. I’d since discovered that a computer hacker could easily have hacked into my computer via the Internet and put them there.

‘I’ve got to go,’ Miles said, interrupting my thoughts. ‘Crisis with a client. Will you be all right?’

‘I’ll be fine,’ I replied, trying to hide my relief.

‘Thanks for the lift and the champagne.’

‘You sure you don’t want to come over to Portsmouth? You can stay with me.’

‘No. Thanks.’ Company was the last thing I needed after sharing my life with almost six hundred men.

Miles opened the boot of his car and reached for a mauve folder. ‘The press cuttings you asked for.’

‘Are they all there?’

‘Yes.’

He looked as if he wanted to ask me why I needed them. It wasn’t to start a scrapbook.

I watched the Mercedes glide towards St Helens, past a black van with tinted windows parked on the slipway. It was the same van that had followed us across Brading Down. I wasn’t sure if it had been behind us before then. It could just be a coincidence, but I was edgy. What if the police were watching me? I didn’t want them dogging my footsteps in my search for Andover.

And I didn’t want them anywhere near me when I found him.

I wouldn’t have put it past DCI Clipton to have me tailed. He’d never believed in my innocence.

How I hated that man for the torment he had put me through. My conviction had been a feather in his cap, a step up to Detective Superintendent, and head of the Specialist Investigations Unit in south Hampshire. Well, I hoped his workload was so huge that it gave him sleepless nights and ulcers. If he had detailed someone to keep an eye on me, then somehow I would have to shake him off.

I put the press cuttings file on the houseboat, pushed a baseball style cap low over my face to avoid being recognised by any of the villagers, and went back out into the sunshine. It was too good a day to waste and I needed to stretch my legs.

At the end of the Embankment I ducked down onto the beach by the Toll Gate café, where a handful of holiday-makers were sitting at the wooden picnic benches making the most of the April sun, and I struck out along the beach. I resisted the urge to remove my trainers and socks and feel the soft sand between my toes. I would save that pleasure for another day just as I would the sensation of cold seawater on my feet and body. Now I simply delighted in hearing sounds that had been lost to me for so long: the calling of the seagulls, the gentle ripple of the sea as it rolled onto the shore, and the rustle of the breeze through the trees as I stepped up onto the coastal path. I nodded at the occasional dog walker but didn’t meet anyone I recognised. I removed my cap and lifted my head higher.

Soon I was striding across Bembridge Airfield on my way to Brading, feeling the sun on my back and the gentle breeze on my face. I thought I was in heaven. But I couldn’t relax, not with Andover hanging over me.

Why had Couldner, Westnam and Brookes given so generously and willingly? Why had Andover chosen them as victims? There had to be a reason, some kind of connection between them, and I had to find it. There had been no hint at my trial that they had been blackmailed by Andover, even though my barrister had put it to Westnam and Brookes. I knew they had, because I knew I was innocent. All three men couldn’t have been so modest that they hadn’t wanted their donations to be made public!

Whatever Andover had threatened them with it had to be something big enough for them to pay up and then remain silent when questioned under oath. Joe Bristow hadn’t discovered it, though he had dug deep into their affairs, I might not either, but I had to try.

I pushed back the door to Brading church and found myself face to face with a vision of such beauty that she made me go weak at the knees.

Embarrassingly I found myself blushing, something I hadn’t done since a teenager. I guessed she was in her early twenties. Her legs seemed to stretch up into infinity and her shoulder length hair was so thick and golden that it reminded me of a field of ripe corn. Despite my best efforts at self-control my body responded to three and a half years of enforced celibacy. I cleared my throat and tried to speak but the words wouldn’t come. If she noticed my discomfort she didn’t show it. Instead she smiled and said:

‘It’s incredible that there was once an Anglo-Saxon village here, right where we are standing.’

I think I mumbled something in reply, but wouldn’t swear to it. I felt like a bloody adolescent schoolboy.

‘I’m a historian,’ she added, apparently undaunted by my silence. ‘I get carried away sometimes, occupational hazard. I think I live more in the past than the present and that’s not very healthy.’

Tell me about it I thought, her words striking a chord with me. Had she just given me a message: stay away from the past, from Andover, or else? No, that was ridiculous.

‘Are you researching the church’s history?’ I finally found my voice. I was curious about her.

‘No. I’m writing a book about the Island during the Second World War.’

‘That shouldn’t take you long,’ I said jokingly.

The Island was very small, only twenty-three miles from east to west and just over thirteen miles from north to south. Its population of about a hundred and twenty thousand increased by many in the summer holiday season. I didn’t know much about the part the Island had played during the war, apart from the tales Percy Trentham used to spout about the radar station.

I hadn’t really been interested.

‘On the contrary,’ she said, ‘The Island is most fascinating and the past can often help us put things into perspective. We’re all so self-obsessed with our own petty problems today, and yet in a hundred years’ time we’ll all be dead and what we thought so important will be forgotten.’