Pauline Rowson - In for the Kill

‘When I can, with my husband. He also races yachts.’

‘You’ll miss living here.’

‘Not really, we’re moving to Hayling Island.

We’ve bought a house with a mooring that gives us direct access into Langstone Harbour and the Solent. It takes quite a while to sail up through Chichester Harbour until you reach the Solent.

It’s an art deco house that needs some work. I shall enjoy that.’

‘Is interior design your business? I must say you have immaculate taste.’

Whatever she answered it by-passed me.

Suddenly I was staring at a large photograph of a beautiful yacht with a full spinnaker and a hardworking crew racing in the Solent. Where had I seen the name on the spinnaker before?

Spires. Of course it had been on the notepad in Gus’s hall, beside the pilot’s licence. I took a step nearer and eagerly scanned the other photographs. There was one of the crew in harbour; the skipper was holding a magnum of champagne to celebrate their victory.

‘Is this your husband?’ I asked pointing to a tall blonde man beside the older man holding the champagne.

‘Yes, and that’s my father beside him. He was killed in a car accident the summer after this photograph was taken.’

The year before my arrest. ‘Who’s this?’ I asked pointing to one of the crew. I knew who it was: Gus Newberry. I wanted to know if she did.

‘Probably someone who worked for my father.’

I didn’t have a clue where Gus worked or what connection he had with Sidney Couldner, only that there was a connection. It didn’t necessarily mean anything. It could just be a coincidence.

Yet it niggled me.

I raced through the rest of the house with only a fraction of my mind on it. After a hasty goodbye I drove around to Chichester marina and parked the car. Opening the boot I scrabbled through my press cuttings file until I found the one I wanted. I knew I’d seen the name Spires somewhere other than on Gus’s notepad. They had been Manover Plastics accountants; there was a reference to them in one of the articles on Clive Westnam. Why hadn’t I seen the connection before? Because it had needed the photograph and the notepad to link it. Was there a connection with Brookes? I wouldn’t mind betting so.

With my heart hammering against my ribs fit to bust I used the pay phone in the marina café and called Spires. Some minutes later I had the information I needed. Gus was their senior partner, specialising in corporate finance. I rang off and headed for Petersfield.

CHAPTER 10

A

‘

lex! What’s happened to you?’ Vanessa greeted me with a horror-stricken expression.

‘This?’ I fingered my bruised face. ‘An accident.’ She looked as though she didn’t believe me, but that was the least of my problems.

It was after school hours and yet the house was as quiet as the grave. I had wondered on my drive across country to Petersfield if I would see my sons but they couldn’t be here. I was disappointed. Then Vanessa tossed an anxious glance over her shoulder and I knew I was wrong.

My heart leapt into my throat. Before I realised it I had pushed past her and was tearing down the hall, all thoughts of Gus vanishing from my mind.

I drew up on the threshold of the kitchen. I thought I was going to pass out at the sight of them in school uniform sitting at the table, their heads bent over their homework. I was sure my heart had stopped beating. I stood perfectly still afraid that I might spoil the moment by bursting into tears, something I hadn’t done since I had fallen off the roof of Grandad’s folly and broken my arm. My crying in prison had been inside me, churning my gut until the pain had become almost unbearable, sucking the breath from my lungs.

Then they both looked up. My heart started beating again; it was as if someone had put one of those resuscitating machines on it and had kick-started it into life. I took a breath. I wanted to wrap my arms around them, to hold them tight and never let them go. I wanted to save them from bastards like Rowde. But I couldn’t even move. Vanessa stepped in front of me.

‘You can finish your homework upstairs.’

Her words brought me out of my emotional rigor. Gently I pushed her aside. ‘Hello.’ I sounded like someone with laryngitis. I tried to smile, maybe I did. I hoped I didn’t look like the ventriloquist’s dummy from Dead of Night .

David glanced at his mother. It angered me.

‘You don’t need permission to speak to your father,’ I said more harshly than I intended.

‘Are you my dad?’ Philip said, excitedly and slightly in awe.

How could he have forgotten me so quickly?

He had been almost eight when I had gone inside; I had been seven when my father had died of a heart attack. I hadn’t forgotten the gentle quiet man who had read to me and taught me how to sail, so why had Philip forgotten me?

Perhaps the hair had fooled him, or possibly my bruised face. Perhaps Vanessa and Gus had banished all photographs of me from the house.

I glared at her. She flinched and I wanted to crow because I had hurt her. Suddenly I felt extremely sad.

I smiled again, more naturally I hoped this time. ‘Yes. Don’t you remember me?’ I told myself a child’s memory was very short. And I had not allowed them to send me a card or letter whilst I had been in prison. Vanessa had persuaded me it was for the best, though I hadn’t need much persuasion.

‘Your hair’s white,’ David said.

‘Prison did that to me.’

Vanessa winced. The boys didn’t bat an eyelid.

I parked myself at the top of the table with David on my right and Philip on my left. It took all my powers of self-control not to scoop them up in my arms and hold them so tight that I might be in danger of suffocating them. My heart was breaking. I hoped they couldn’t see it.

‘What’s prison like?’ Philip wriggled, impatient to be let loose. He had always been the more active child. Many a time he and I had kicked a ball around the park, while David had preferred to have his nose buried in a book. I dug my nails into the palm of my hands underneath the table so hard that I wondered if I had drawn blood.

‘Philip, your father doesn’t want to talk about it. Now upstairs –’

‘It’s horrible and smelly and lonely.’

‘Did you meet loads of crooks?’

David scoffed. ‘Of course he did. Why else do you think they’re in prison.’

‘Dad’s not a crook.’ Philip declared hotly.

I felt the tears spring to my eyes. It took a supreme effort of will to hold them back. I gripped the top of the table as if it was going to collapse if I didn’t hold onto it, when in reality it was me that was in danger of collapsing.

‘You’re not a crook, are you, Dad?’

‘No, Philip, I’m not.’ I held the clear, innocent blue eyes that gazed at me.

David, now fourteen, looked as though he wasn’t sure whether or not to believe me, but I saw something in his serious brown eyes that wanted me to be telling the truth.

I addressed them both. ‘I was sent to prison for something I didn’t do and now I have to prove I’m innocent.’

‘Like in that film with Harrison Ford?’ David eyed me curiously.

I must have looked puzzled because he explained as if talking to a rather stupid child,

‘ The Fugitive . He’s trying to find the one-armed man who killed his wife.’

‘Aren’t you a little young to have seen that?’

‘Nah, we’ve all seen it, except Philip; he’s still a baby.’

‘I’m not. I’m nearly as old as you.’

‘You’re two years younger,’ David said haughtily.

Oh my God, how I had missed this, the endless sparring between them, at one time friends, next fighting on the living room floor. Andover had deprived me of this. He would be punished. I was in for the kill now.