Pauline Rowson: In for the Kill

IN FOR THE KILL

For Jackie

Mine honour is my life: both grow in one; Take honour from me, and my life is done.

Richard II Act 1. Scene 1.

April

There is before and after, like one of those slimming adverts you see in magazines and newspapers. Only my before and after had nothing to do with diet, unless you counted prison food. Before prison I had been confident and successful. I had a family and a career. I had friends. And after? Well, here I am standing outside Camp Hill on the Isle of Wight getting high on the smell of diesel and petrol fumes, hesitant, with a prison pallor and a prison stoop.

For forty-two months, one week and two days I had dreamt of this moment. Now that it had arrived I felt a flutter of panic that almost had me scurrying back to the gates of Camp Hill pleading to be allowed back in. Goodness knows what lifers must feel!

‘Hey, Alex! Over here.’

I pulled myself together and headed towards the black Mercedes. Remember who you once were I said to myself. But that Alex Albury had vanished one September when, in the early hours of the morning, the police had burst into my home on the Hamble and had arrested me for something I hadn’t done.

I climbed into the waiting car and glanced at my defence lawyer. Miles gave me a brief nod before pulling out into the traffic. We didn’t speak. As the prison receded my breathing became easier. My pulse settled down and I felt the tension drain from my body. As we climbed Brading Down, the sparkling blue of the Solent in the distance stole the breath from my body.

It was then that I knew no matter what the cost I would find James Andover. I would ask him why he had framed me. And then I would destroy him as he had destroyed me.

CHAPTER 1

‘To freedom and the future.’ Miles Wolverton peered at me over the rim of his glass.

Chink. I swallowed and pulled a face. I’d forgotten how dry champagne is. I stared around my immaculately clean houseboat, courtesy of Miles’s cleaning lady, Angela. It didn’t seem real.

This was a dream and at any moment I would wake up and find myself back in my cell.

‘So what now?’ Miles asked, easing himself down on the blue and white striped cushioned bench that ran either side of my narrow lounge.

He stretched out his short legs, eyeing me curiously with those green penetrating eyes that I had seen so often across the courtroom and in the prison visitors’ centre. I thought how out of place he looked in his pin-striped suit. And, to me, his broad physique, bull neck and rugged face made him much more a candidate for the building site than the law courts. I hadn’t wanted him to meet me from prison; I would have preferred to be alone, but Miles had meant well.

I guess he still felt guilty for not getting me off the charges of fraud and embezzlement.

I turned to stare out of the patio doors at a scene I had dreamt of so many times in my prison cell.

The tide was rushing out of Bembridge Harbour, carrying with it a small yacht, its sails as yet unfurled, its diesel engine chugging gently. To my right, on the curving sandy beach, a woman was throwing a ball into the sea for a liver and white spaniel.

‘Now I find the truth,’ I said, quietly.

‘Alex, it’s over. Put it behind you and move on.’

I spun round. ‘Move on? Where? Doing what?’

‘You can work for us.’

I gazed at him disbelievingly.

‘I’ve told your probation officer and I’ve squared it with my partners.’

‘I can’t –’

‘You don’t even have to come to the mainland for the partners’ meetings. I can get our marketing manager to e-mail anything that’s required and you can start by writing some press releases and articles for us.’

‘No.’

‘You needn’t start right –’

‘Miles, you don’t understand. How can I go back to being a PR man when my reputation has been destroyed? Andover’s still out there somewhere and I have to find him – whoever he is – otherwise how do I know that he won’t frame me again? And I need to know why he hated me enough to have me convicted for five years.’

I poured myself another glass of champagne, but didn’t drink it. I’d finally been given parole two-thirds of the way through my sentence. I’d had to tell the parole board that I was sorry I had swindled three prominent businessmen out of one million pounds each, and admitted that Andover had been my partner and had absconded with the money.

‘ Words ,’ my cellmate, Ray, had said, ‘ mean nothing. Only action counts .’

Well, now I was going to take some action and it wasn’t finding myself a job. I had some money from the sale of my mother’s house on her death and the houseboat was in my name. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to keep me going until I got to the truth. Or, at least, I hoped it was.

Miles shifted his squat body and scowled at me. ‘I don’t think the parole board will like it.’

‘Then we’ll just have to keep it from them,’ I replied sharply, and then almost instantly relented. It was hardly Miles’s fault. He’d done his best to keep me out of prison.

‘What if you never find Andover?’

‘Then I’ll die a bitter, frustrated man.’

‘I understand what you must be feeling, but –’

‘You don’t!’ I rounded on him. ‘How can you?

You haven’t lost your wife and your children, your home, your future, your reputation, your freedom. You’ve lost nothing. I’ve lost everything, even my sodding confidence.’

My words fell into a pool of silence. I stared at the photograph on the narrow shelf behind the bench seat. My sons smiled back at me, their hair ruffled by the wind, their faces tanned, red lifejackets swamping their small chests. The picture had been taken on my boat during our last holiday before my arrest. David was aged ten then, dark-haired and two years older than Philip.

God, how I missed them!

A tight band gripped my chest and I pushed back the patio doors and stepped onto the deck, trying to catch my breath. An unseasonably warm April breeze caressed my face, bringing with it the smell of seaweed and sand. A large white butterfly settled for a moment on the guardrail, opened its wings and then took off again. I followed it with eyes that were moist and a lump in my throat the size of a golf ball. Before prison I wouldn’t have noticed it if it had perched on the end of my nose!

I took a few deep breaths and told myself that big men don’t cry, but my heart had been weeping since the day they had taken away my freedom.

Miles’s voice came quietly from just behind me. ‘I let you down, Alex. I should have found a way to get you off, or at least get you a community sentence, but your trial came at the wrong time.’

Yes, January is always a dry month for news.

And I had to be made an example of, the PR man who had swindled three respected businessmen.

It was a good story.

I turned to face Miles. ‘You did your best.’

‘And it wasn’t good enough.’

No, it wasn’t.

‘Joe Bristow couldn’t trace Andover and neither could the police, so how can you?’ he asked.

Joe had been the private investigator that Miles had hired on my behalf. He had stopped looking for Andover just over a year ago. Joe had told me to save my money. As far as he was concerned Andover had flown.

‘I have to try,’ I said.

Miles sighed in capitulation. He saw that he wasn’t going to get me to change my mind. ‘If there’s anything I can do to help find him just say the word.’

Before I could answer his mobile phone rang.

Miles went inside to take his call.

My mind trawled through the events of my arrest and trial, just as it had done a thousand times before. Each time I hoped for some clue that could tell me why Andover had framed me and each time I drew a blank.