by Wendy Reakes
She was stunned. “I had no idea you felt that way. Why haven’t you said anything before?”
“You wouldn’t have listened. You always have to do everything yourself. When are we ever going to be a proper team? A couple!”
She had never seen Ben like this. She just assumed he took it for granted how independent she was. The hurt look on his face was almost endearing. “I’m sorry, Ben. I can’t just let this go. Kathy’s is everything to me. I can’t just sit back and let you take over.”
“I’m not asking you to. I’m just suggesting I check things out. Maybe put someone in to watch him. Once we know what’s going on, we can decide how to proceed from there.” He was searching her face. He knew she doubted him. “You know what? You’re as bad as everyone else. I get shut out of everything, even my own father’s imminent death!”
“What?”
“That’s why he wanted to see me. He’s dying.”
Katherine was overcome. She sat down on the sofa, collecting her thoughts. “I’m sorry,” she said softly.
“Why? I hardly know him!”
She looked at him, disdainfully. “Actually, Ben, I wasn’t thinking about you. I’m sorry for him and Marjorie and the family. I know you couldn’t care less about him.” She watched him dig his hands in his trouser pockets as he always did when he was upset about something he couldn’t admit to. “So what did he say? What’s wrong with him?”
“Tumour!” Ben said, tapping a finger on the side of his head. “They’ve given him four months.”
“I’d better ring Marjorie.” She reached for the phone.
“Hang on. What about me?”
“What?”
“He told me he doesn’t want to see me again,” Ben said quietly. “He said there’s no point trying to build a relationship now and that he needs to give all his time to his girls.”
“Well, you can understand that.”
Ben looked upset, but somehow his reaction didn’t ring true. She wondered what he was up to. Or could it be that he really was upset about his father dying? She couldn’t tell. “Look, Ben. On second thoughts, why don’t you look into this business about Peter for me?”
His humour changed just like that and she instantly regretted her decision to let him handle things.
She thought things through for a minute and then she realised she’d just been had.
Chapter 53
Ben rangFrank Warner. “You had a delivery arrive here today and Katherine was here.”
“That idiot manager of hers!” Frank Warner yelled down the phone. “Talk about incompetent! You’ll have to do something about him. He’s going to blow the whole deal.”
“Don’t talk to me as if I’m an accomplice in all this,” Ben yelled back. “This has got nothing to do with me. I told you I’d turn a blind eye about you peddling wine through Kathy’s, but now Katherine’s involved and it’s going to have to stop.”
“Where’s the load?”
“She sent it back.”
“Jesus Christ. She’s landed me in it now. The transport company is going to start asking questions. You should do something about that wife of yours. She’s too big for her bloody boots.”
Ben stopped speaking. Alarm bells were sounding in his head. The whole thing was getting out of hand. Frank Warner was a madman and Ben needed to diffuse the situation. He tried to calm Frank down, so that he could think more rationally. “Look! All you have to do is ring them and tell them to deliver it somewhere else and that the first address was a mistake. I’ll have a word with Peter Blue. I take it he’s one of yours and he knows all about this?”
“You’ll have ‘a word’ with him!” Frank Warner guffawed. “Are you mad? You don’t have a word with idiots like that. You get rid of ‘em.”
“What?”
“You heard me…Get rid.”
And then the phone went dead.
Chapter 54
Early the next morning Ben and Katherine awoke to the sound of banging on the door downstairs.
They were in Ealing, in the flat above Kathy’s. Ben switched on the light and looked at the clock as she pulled on a robe. It was one-thirty. “Who the hell is that, this time of night?” he croaked.
“I’ll go and answer it,” she said running her fingers through her hair.
“Are you out of you mind?” Ben watched her move over the floor to the bedroom door. “At least put some shoes on,” he called after her.
Ben got out of bed and tied his robe around him. He jabbed his feet into his leather mules, sitting side by side on the carpeted floor. He shuffled into the lounge just as she came up the stairs with two policemen following her. She moved to Ben’s side and he placed a protective arm around her as one of the officers began speaking.
“I’m afraid we have some bad news. A man has been found in the yard at the back of your restaurant.”
Katherine looked to Ben for clarification. She didn’t know what the officer meant by ‘found’. “Who?” she asked.
The policeman looked at the note-pad in his hand. “We believe he works here. A Peter Blue, although we’re not sure yet if that’s his real name.”
“Peter?” she repeated. Ben was silent, letting her do all the talking. He looked like he was in shock. “What do you mean by ‘found’ exactly? Is he all right?”
“No, I’m afraid he’s dead. He’s been murdered.”
She gasped and sat down on the nearest chair. She looked at Ben. He was deathly pale, like all the colour had been sucked out of him. “How?” I ask. “I mean…how did you find him?”
The officer read from the notebook in his hand. “At precisely five minutes to midnight, a gentleman…a Mr. Denis Underwood…was walking his dog along the pavement at the front of Kathy’s restaurant. As he was cutting across the driveway to the rear of the property, a vehicle pulled out of the back holding area.” The officer read without emotion. “Mr. Underwood was alarmed at the speed of the vehicle, so he proceeded to the back of the restaurant with the intention of issuing a verbal complaint to the proprietors.” The officer looked up. “It was at that point he noticed a body lying on the left hand side of the yard. Mr. Underwood subsequently reported the incident to a police officer doing his beat on Ealing Broadway, at approximately two minutes after midnight”
Katherine looked at Ben. “I can’t believe it. That poor boy!” She spoke directly to the policeman. “Why would anyone kill Peter?”
“I’m afraid we don’t know that at this stage of the investigation.”
“But, how was he killed? And why didn’t we hear anything? We’ve been here all night.”
“It was a knife attack and we have reason to believe he died at a different location.”
Ben spoke for the first time. “What do you mean?”
“The body was left there, sir. We’re assuming it was transported by the vehicle that Mr. Underwood saw pulling out of the drive behind the restaurant.”
Ben moved towards the sideboard to pour a brandy. He handed a glass to Katherine, but she shook her head. “I don’t drink brandy, Ben,” she said for the hundredth time since they’d met.
“How often do you replace broken bulbs, sir?” the policeman asked.
“Why do you want to know that?” She pulled her robe further around her body. She felt cold and she couldn’t stop trembling.
“We think it’s relevant that the bulb on the night light was smashed. The body was clearly deposited quickly. There doesn’t seem to be any obvious reason why the perpetrators would smash the bulb, but we are almost sure the glass remnants on the floor are recent.” The policeman looked hesitant. “We think perhaps it was a signal or perhaps a message of sorts. To let someone, know, perhaps yourselves, who they were.”
Ben downed his brandy in one. He took Katherine’s glass and held it in his hand, staring into it. Katherine was still looking at the officers, wanting to ask a thousand questions but not knowing what to ask.
The officer addressed them both. “Do you know i
f Peter Blue was involved in anything suspicious? If there was some reason why someone would want him dead?”
Ben closed his eyes when Katherine gasped, as realisation hit her. “Yes!” she said, “Yes there is something.”
Chapter 55
Katherine and Ben were up all night, answering the police’s questions and taking phone calls, and they spent the next day making statements, talking to reporters and making arrangements with staff to cover shifts at both restaurants. By Sunday evening they were both exhausted. They agreed to an early night, holding each other as they laid in bed, their limbs entwined, not sleeping. The next morning, on Monday, Ben telephoned his mother at the salon.
“Why are you ringing me here, Ben? What’s wrong?”
“I need to talk to you and I don’t want that crazy bloody husband of yours in earshot,” he said. “You’ve got to get out, Mother.”
“Get out of where?”
“Out of your marriage,” Ben yelled, “Away from Frank Warner!”
“What have you done now, Benjamin? I thought that business with the money was all over. Frank told me you two worked things out, babe.”
“You’re not hearing me. It’s nothing I’ve done. It’s what he’s capable of doing that worries me. You’re not safe, Mother. No one’s safe.
It wasan hour to midnight on a Tuesday evening in May 1993 when Ben closed his restaurant for the last time. The lights shining over the sign outside were switched off, putting the name, The Corner, into darkness.
Ben was tired. Recent events had seen to that. He could really do with a holiday. When all the business with Frank Warner and Peter Blue was over, he was going to take Katherine on that honeymoon they never had.
He locked the kitchen door at the back of the restaurant. He checked all the windows were closed and all the extractor fans were turned off and then he walked back through to the service area and opened up the panel of light switches at the rear of the bar. Click, click, clack, click, click, clack as all thirty lights were systematically shut down. Kathy never wanted a honeymoon. She preferred to get her restaurants up and running. She was a damn crazy woman, Ben thought with a smile on his lips.
He opened the bottom door leading to the flat above and as he put one foot on the stairs to go up, he turned slightly to input the code into the alarm, 69-69-69. He wished she was with him tonight. He felt lonely without her.
The buzzer sounded for the thirty-second warning, allowing him time to shut the two bolts on the inside of the door. He climbed the stairs, one slow step at a time…She went up north this morning. She even closed the restaurant all day on Monday, out of respect. Respect! For Peter Blue! Crazy woman! Now she was spending the night with Lance and Marjorie. She said she didn’t want to stay in a hotel. She said she needed to be with someone…He wished he hadn’t got her involved in all that business with Frank Warner. He would never forgive himself if anything happened to her.
The alarm buzzer silenced as he took one more final step.
Chapter 56
She sat with hershoes kicked off and her legs tucked under her on the sofa, watching Lance Willington on the chair next to me. He was reading the London Evening Standard. It was midnight and Marjorie Willington was lighting a small fire even though it had been hot that day. “This should warm you up a bit, Katherine.”
“Thanks Marjorie. I don’t know why I feel so cold.”
“It’s the shock, dear,” she said, sitting down next to her.
Lance folded up the paper and placed it on the arm of the chair. “Well, that’s a very informed report considering it was just a local murder,” he said. He picked it back up again and looked at the date. “It’s Monday’s paper. There’ll probably be something more about it in tonight’s Standard.”
“Yes, I’ll pick up a copy when I go back tomorrow,” she said. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m fine, dear. I don’t really feel any different. It’s only these blasted headaches and the dizzy spells I get,” Lance replied.
“But the medication he’s getting is beginning to control that now,” Marjorie interrupted. “Isn’t that right, dear?”
“Switch the news on, Marj’,” he said.
She looked at her watch. “The news at ten is over now, Lance.”
“You can catch the local news. Turn it onto that new channel. Channel 4!”
“Ha! Did you hear that, Katherine? This man hasn’t watched TV for a decade.” Marjorie switched the television set on.
Granada News, special bulletin came up on the screen. “We’re interrupting this programme…” a voice said “…to bring you a special report.” All eyes turned to the television on the cabinet in the corner of the room.
A female news reader came into view as they began to read the prompt at the bottom of the screen. We all watch as the film behind the reporter ran pictures of fire engines and people screaming. “A bomb has exploded in central London...,” she was saying. “We understand the attack took place at eleven o’clock this evening at a restaurant in Covent Garden…”
Katherine didn’t hear any more. She’d grabbed a cushion and hugged it to her. And as she buried her face into it, she heard the voice say. “The police suspect the IRA is responsible for this current attack.”
Chapter 57
dressed in black. It was a hot day in June and yet she was wearing a jacket over a plain shift dress to keep warm from the cold emanating from her own body. Her hair was tied severely off her face in a tight chignon and black glasses hid her colourless features. No smile, no creased eyes, no warming cheeks. Her face was empty, expressionless and devoid of emotion, just like her heart
Ben’s coffin descended into the shaped pit. A tribute was spoken, a prayer whispered. She dropped a single white orchid, from her hand and it fell feather-light over the grave, sending a message of remorse and heart-felt pain; something symbolic for the soul to take with it to the afterlife from the ones left behind.
She heard the minister speak, “Amen,” and then Ben was gone.
She watched the crowds disperse, not knowing who had kissed her, patting her shoulder, spoke to her. They were just people. They all had their own lives to get on with, appointments to make, things to do. They’d taken an hour out of their lives to attend a funeral and soon they’d all move on. Except her.
She stood at his graveside watching the people get into their cars and drive away. It was the end for them, but for her it was the beginning; the beginning of a life on earth without Ben, on a planet that housed her and his killers.
“Come on,” Marjorie said taking her hand. “It’s time to go.”
She walks to the car, her steps slow and laboured. The door to the limousine was held open and she offered a nod to the driver standing aside waiting for her to get in. Before she bowed her head to step inside, she stopped for a moment, as she was suddenly taken by the appearance of two men standing a short distance away. She couldn’t see their faces, they wore sunglasses and they were standing next to an over-hanging elm, shading them. When she saw them looking at her, she had the oddest feeling that they were there for her, not for Ben, that it is she they were waiting for to leave, and until she left they couldn’t leave themselves.
“Come on, Katherine,” Marjorie said again. “Time to go now.”
As the car drove away, she turned to look out of the rear window, to catch a glimpse of them one more time. She searched the area under the elm but they were gone.
Sitting back in the seat she turned her eyes to the front, waiting for the car to pull away, leaving curious onlookers at its side.
Jack watchedKatherine get into the car. She looked straight at them before she left. Gordon followed him to the car parked behind the elm. “She’s in a bad way,” Jack said, as he turned the keys in the ignition.
“She’ll get over it,” Gordon answered.
Jack gazed at his friend sitting at his side. It wasn’t like Gordon to say something so dispassionate, especially when it came to the Killa girl. His fac
e was rigid. He was upset, but Jack couldn’t work out why. Of course he must be sad for Katherine; she'd looked so lost, so vulnerable, it was all Jack could do to stop himself from running over and holding her, but it was more than just that…Gordon seemed touchy. “What’s up?” Jack asked.
His friend looked straight ahead and spoke quietly. “It’s all my fault.”
“What? Are you crazy? How can Ben Corner’s death be your fault?”
“It’s not about him, Jack,” Gordon answered. “It’s about Katherine. It’s always been about Katherine.” He turned to look at Jack, sitting at his side. “Look, if it wasn’t for me she probably wouldn’t have married him. I realised it after I saw Frank Warner at the funeral today. I had no idea he was Ben’s stepfather when I set up the restaurant deal.”
Jack looked confused. “What are you saying? Frank Warner’s got nothing to do with any of this.”
“No, I know,” Gordon answered. “I’m just saying. Seeing him today jogged my memory of my involvement here, how it all began.”
“Oh, come on, Gordon. Now, you’re just looking for reasons to blame yourself. You’re a bloody sadist.”
“You don’t get it, Jack. Think about it. If I hadn’t interfered and bought the café in Ealing for Katherine, she probably would have just continued her life at The Savoy, or even moved on to bigger and better things. The romance she had with Ben Corner would probably have fizzled out.”
“You can’t know that for sure,” Jack said. “Did you see her today? She looked like she was in love with him.”
“That wasn’t love. That was just Katherine.”
“She must have thought a lot of him. She married him didn’t she?”
“Who knows? It was just the look on her face today. There’s something else, not just a widow’s tears.”
