IN THE SHADOW OF STRANGERS: A wealthy man is about to change her destiny …but it’s a secret.

by Wendy Reakes

  “Why wouldn’t I?” she answered innocently. “What’s happened?”

  Frank Warner drained his glass and placed it on the table to the side of him. He put his cigar in his mouth, the rising smoke making him squint in one eye as he stood up slowly before walking towards her. Her trembling face twitched with fear as he moved closer, and as she stood rigid, he bent down and planted a kiss on her perspiring, reddening cheek. “Have a good day dear?” he asked.

  “All right, Frank, I get it. What do you want me to do?” She could no longer stand the husband and wife charade.

  He nodded, satisfied, clearly appreciating her candidness. He grabbed her arm and guided her over to the fire. He sat her down firmly on the chair opposite his, took some documents off the mantelpiece and placed them onto her lap. He pulled a pen from the breast pocket of his shirt, clicked the top open and handed it to her. As she glanced down at the legal-looking papers, Frank sat in the chair opposite and dragged long and hard on his cigar.

  “I’m giving you the house,” he said. “I transferred the deeds over to you yesterday. They were always in joint names so it was easy enough. All you have to do is sign,” he said, nodding to the pen in her hand. “I can’t stand the place anyway. I’ve never liked it. It’s too posh for an old barrow boy like me.” Yvonne had never heard Frank put himself down before. It was oddly endearing. “I’m taking everything else. You’ve got your little cache, which you can sell and live on that. Oh, and you can have all this crap too.” He kicked the pouf over to her. I don’t want any of it. I’ve already packed and I’ll be leaving shortly after I’ve answered all your little questions. After that, I never want to hear from you or see you again. Understood?”

  She nodded.

  “Good. Right then, fire away!”

  Yvonne remained silent.

  He spoke on her behalf. “Now let me see. How did I find out about your little business empire?” He expelled a smoke ring from his mouth and watched it slowly ascend. “Your good friend, Eva told me!” He enjoyed the shocked look on her face. “Your good friend Eva told me there was a key. Eva told me you had a secret flat and Eva told me where to find it.” He smiled. “And there was me thinking you sold the salon when we got married. At least that was what you told me at the time, wasn’t it?”

  He went on “How did I get in through the front door of the flat? Your good friend, Eva gave me a copy of the key. How did I know about all the money you’ve been stealing from me? And how did I know about you buying yourself little trinkets to line your pockets? Simple!” he said. “When your accountant does a runner he leaves all his paperwork behind. But then, you knew that didn’t you? You knew when Paddy Johnson was implicated in the little wine scam your son was operating, some secrets of your own were going to come out. That’s why you were getting ready to do a little runner yourself.”

  “Ben didn’t operate that wine scam. You did!” Yvonne spat. “And it was you who killed my son wasn’t it? You, you vindictive bastard!” She wanted to cry, and she hadn’t cried in years, not really cried. Not even for Ben.

  “Moi?” Frank Warner gloated. “I don’t know nothing about no bombs, darling.”

  Angry now, Yvonne stood up and confronted him for the first time since they’d married. “But I know you were involved in the restaurant. I know you bought and paid for it and I know you were after Ben for that money he embezzled from you.”

  “Like mother. Like son,” he said, looking up at her standing over him. Suddenly, he reached out and pulled her down onto his lap, holding her there with her hands behind her back. He put his free hand on her breast and massaged it hard as he laughed at her. She tried to break free but he was too strong for her.

  “Unfortunately for you…when Paddy did a runner he gave me a little call. That allowed me enough time to go over there and clean out his files. That means, all evidence of me connected to Paddy and Ben and the Corner no longer exists. So, if it gets out, it’ll be you I come after, got it?” He plunged his hand inside her top and tweaked her nipple. She yelped at the pain.

  He pushed her off his lap and she landed on the floor in front of the fire. Yvonne stood up, adjusted her clothes and then faced him, square on. “Don’t worry, I get it. And you won’t see me again, or that little tart of yours. You can both rot in hell, for all I care,” she shouted.

  He turned and strode away from her. Then, as he reached the door, Frank Warner turned back with a smile on his lips. “Have a nice life, dear!” And then he was gone.

  The next day Yvonne rang the bank to check her balance. It was still there. Thank god. One hundred and fifty thousand pounds! It was just a percentage of the total amount she has amassed over the years. The rest was in an account somewhere under a different name. “While we have you on the phone, Mrs. Warner,” the voice said. “There was just one thing missing off the direct debit mandate you completed yesterday.”

  “What direct debit mandate?” Yvonne heard alarm bells sounding in her head.

  “For the mortgage.”

  “What mortgage?”

  “The mortgage on your house in Didsbury.” The voice was faltering. “It was authorised two days ago. The funds have already been transferred to your husband’s current account.”

  “How much?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Yvonne screamed down the receiver. “How much was the mortgage for?”

  “For one hundred and fifty thousand pounds, of course,” she answered, before Yvonne slammed down the receiver.

  Yvonne telephoned Nicky in the Lake District. Nicky was ‘her EBay boy’, as she called him. Her voice was shaking “Nicky, babe…did you get that shipment of stock I sent up yesterday?” Yvonne asked.

  “What shipment?”

  Yvonne rang the transport company. By now, her hands were sweaty as she held the receiver tighter than she needed. “Manchester Removals” the voice said. “How may I help?”

  “Don’t you mean, ‘What can I do for you today’?” Yvonne shouted. She was so losing it now.

  The girl giggled. “Oh, I know, we’re all so pleased down here, we don’t have to say that any more. The new owners have changed it.”

  Yvonne went cold. “Who’s the new owner?” She sighed as every nerve in her body closed down.

  “Mr. Frank Warner,” the voice said.

  Chapter 64

  Yvonne walkedinto Charing Cross Police Station two days after Frank had walked out. Detective Inspector Brian Watts thought his numbers had come up. “Where is she?”

  “In the interview room, sir,” the constable told him.

  Yvonne was sitting with her head in her hands and her elbows resting on the table when D.I Watt’s went into the room. She looked up and watched him sit down on the chair opposite her. She looked like she’d been crying, a lot. He placed a file down on the table. “I understand you want to amend your statement with regards to the murder of your son.”

  She nodded as she stared at her hands clutched together on the table top. “I want to name my husband as the one who killed him.”

  D.I Watts sits back, balancing on the hind legs of his chair. “Your husband? That’s a Mr. Frank Warner?” he said. She nodded again. “Now, why would Mr. Warner want to kill your son?” She didn’t respond. “Mr. Warner was very accommodating with his statement after the incident. In fact, he gave us some very helpful leads. A model citizen, I would call him.”

  “You have got to be joking,” she said. “Frank Warner, a model citizen? That’s the laugh of the year.”

  “Perhaps the reason you’re making these accusations is because your husband found out about your affair with Paddy Johnson. Bad blood and all that!”

  “How do you know about that?” She looked stunned. “It wasn’t an affair.”

  “What was it, then?”

  Yvonne blushed. “It was nothing.”

  D.I Watts closed up the file. “You know I could arrest you for wasting police time,” he said.

  Yvonne placed her hand over
the top cover. “You have to believe me. Frank Warner murdered my son. He bought the restaurant for Ben and signed over the lease which was why there was no trace of his association. He took a return of the profits, but Ben…” she stopped.

  “Go on.”

  “Ben embezzled some money off Frank. He gave him half of it back but Frank doesn’t forgive easily and money’s important to him. There had to be something else he got from Ben to cover his losses.”

  “You mean he could have been blackmailing your son?” Clearly it hadn’t occurred to Yvonne and D.I Watts knew it.

  “Perhaps...I don’t know?” she said. “I just know Frank’s a murderous bastard, a cheat and a liar. Frank was the only other person who knew the alarm code at the Corner. I just know it was him who set that bomb. Or at least one of his men!”

  “Have you got any proof?” he asked opening the file back up to her statement resting on the top.

  She shook her head. “No. No proof.”

  Chapter 65

  1994

  It wastime to move on.

  Katherine shot out of bed one early morning in July and with renewed energy she pulled on a pair of thin cotton blue jeans and a short sleeved, plain white t-shirt. She stabbed her feet into flat beige pumps, dragged a brush through her hair, threw a few things into a bag, grabbed a cup of coffee, and pulled the door to her flat shut with a rattling thud. She unlocked the car, threw her luggage into the boot, fire up the engine and pushed a tape into the deck. By the time she hit the M6 at 7 a.m., Barbra Streisand and Barry Gibbs were belting out Guilty as she hit eighty, heading north to Manchester, to The Coach.

  It was time to get back on track.

  By the second week of August the restaurant was ready. The launch was set for Friday the nineteenth and she planned to hold a reception evening with invited guests before the opening, as she had at Kathy’s.

  It was midnight, the night before the reception, when she said her goodbyes to the managers, Nick and Susan White. Everything was almost ready; the lights had been dimmed and odd cups of coffee, left scattered around, were cleared away. Feeling exhausted from a long day setting everything up, she picked up her bag which she’d left hanging on the back of a chair and slowly walked towards the door. “Goodnight, Katherine,” Susan called one more time. She turned and saw The Coach for what seemed like the first time.

  Even though the concept was the same, The Coach was vastly different to her first place. Where Kathy’s was square, The Coach had nooks and crannies and booths and alcoves with tables positioned snugly inside. Framing the low-level multi-pane windows, short tied-back curtains hung and little glowing lamps sat on their ledges. Like Kathy’s the walls were white, covered in old pictures, but the tables, instead of classic white, were draped in dark red linen. The silver and crystal above glistened against the red, as the glasses and cutlery reflected the lights from around the room. In the middle, to the right hand side, blocking the view of the kitchen door, stood a wooden counter, stained dark, and gleaming with polished wax. On the front, intricately carved by hand, commissioned from a Mancunian artist, was a picture of an old coach and horses. Upon the counter, an opaque crystal vase displayed white lilies, their long green stems visible in clear water inside.

  She lets the door close behind her and instead of walking to her car, she turned right towards the road that ran along the front of the building. She crossed the tarmac to the green opposite. It was squared off with little thatched cottages, their lights peeping out from behind partially closed curtains. Blooming window boxes sat nicely watered and white enamel benches were placed under them.

  As she reached the middle of the green, like the night before she opened Kathy’s, she turned to look at her second restaurant, The Coach, ‘shining like a beacon’ in the dark starry night.

  She suddenly felt chilled. She wrapped her arms around herself, wishing she’d put on a jacket so that she could stand there a while longer.

  Her eyes go to the window on the left side of the building, the same window she and Ben had sat in that day, when they first came up to Manchester to meet his father. She remembered him munching moodily on a sandwich while she plotted taking ownership of the pub. She smiled and pulled a lock of hair away from the corner of her mouth. Ben Corner and his moody ways, his sarcastic humour, his clever wit… She rubbed the goose bumps off her bare arms. “Well this one’s for you, Ben,” she said softly. “This one’s for you.”

  “Is everything ready, dear?” Marjorie Willington asked, as she got up from the table to make me a cup of tea.

  “Why are you still up, Marjorie? It’s nearly one o’clock in the morning. You didn’t have to wait up for me.”

  Marjorie and Lance kept a room at the house in Didsbury for her. They’d suggested it about it a week before, knowing she’d be spending more and more time up north. “You don’t want to go wasting your money on hotels,” Marjorie had said, “Stay with us, come and go as you please, keep some things here, call it home.” She took them up on their offer without a second thought. She felt secure with them, less alone.

  The past couple of months had been so hard. She was being assessed by the Inland Revenue for the money that had gone through the books at Kathy’s. Her lawyer had insisted she wouldn’t be implicated but she couldn’t help worrying until it was all resolved. All the papers, which Paddy Johnson kept, had been destroyed, so all they had were the previous year’s tax returns and the ledgers she kept at Kathy’s. Then there was the ‘wine issue’ but that seemed to have fallen by the wayside. They’d blamed Ben, but she’d found that hard to believe...she still couldn’t believe it. Not Ben!

  The police still hadn’t mentioned if they’d found any more information about the bomb at the Corner. She’d telephoned D.I Watts many times but he was as evasive as ever. "We’re still following up on some leads,” he’d said.

  She was no longer a suspect, which was one issue resolved, but her grandmother, Rose, was frantic about Ben and Peter’s murder. “Come home,” she said every time they spoke on the phone. And “I don’t know what your mam would have said about all this, Kathy.”

  With all of that, her most urgent concern was keeping the businesses running and settling her amassed bills. And all the while she felt dreadfully lonely and suspicious of everyone. She needed someone she could trust, which was why she was staying with the Willington’s.

  “I wanted to wait up,” Marjorie was saying. “Just to see if you were all right. And Lance had a bad night so I couldn’t have slept anyway.”

  “I’m sorry! Is he sleeping now? I could go up and see him if he’s still awake.”

  Marjorie shook her head. “He does enjoy hearing about the progress of the Coach, but I think he’s asleep now. Thank you, dear. Those new drugs seem to be doing the trick. I do hate the headaches.”

  Katherine takes the hot mug from her and puts her arm across her shoulders. She kisses her on the cheek. “You’re doing well…Why don’t I tell you all about the restaurant?” she says cheerfully.

  “No, don’t do that.” Marjorie patted me on the side of my face, “Tell me tomorrow. You must be worn out.”

  “I am that!” I said sipping from my mug with my fingers wrapped around it. “I wish you could come tomorrow, Marjorie.”

  “We’ll be there in spirit, don’t you worry. I can’t leave Lance even though the nurse is here. It’s getting close now, Katherine. We’re going to have to go through it, all over again. The mourning I mean.” Marjorie rinsed out her own cup under the tap. “The two girls are being very supportive. It’s difficult for them; they’ve both got such busy lives. Especially Jane. She’s starting her internship soon.”

  “Why don’t you get off to bed? I can put the lights out.” They are in the kitchen on the lower ground floor, at the bottom of the stairs, which go straight up to the hall.

  “I think I will, dear. Yes, good idea. Goodnight then and don’t forget to tell me everything about the opening. I want to hear every last detail.” She put her
foot on the first step of the winding stairwell. “Katherine?” she said, stopping in her tracks. “Is that Frank Warner going to be there?”

  She shrugged and wondered why she’d asked. “He said he was coming a few weeks ago, but that was before he and Yvonne split up. I shouldn’t think he’ll come now, will he?” Marjorie had taken one more step up. “Why do you ask?”

  “Oh, I was just wondering. I get the feeling he thinks Ben was directly involved in your restaurants. Maybe it would be a good idea to put him right, next chance you get. I don’t want to sound harsh, but now that Ben’s gone, it may be better for you to break away from that association. Get him, and Yvonne too for that matter, out of your hair.”

  She watched her climb the stairs, as she let Katherine wondering what she’d meant by all that.

  Lance Willington died two weeks later. The end had been a relief for all.

  The wake was attended by the Willington’s closest family, friends and associates. Everyone wore black and everyone was sober…everyone, except for Yvonne Warner.

  “What’s she doing here?” Katherine asked as she watched Yvonne across the room, conversing with some of the Willington family members. She prayed for Marjorie’s sake she wasn’t giving them an account of her connection to the Willington name. She wouldn’t put it past her.

  Marjorie shook her head. “I really don’t know. I just know it’s the height of bad taste. She should never have come here. Frankly, I feel like throwing her out.”

  Katherine placed her hand on Marjorie’s arm and squeezed gently. Her friend had been a bag of nerves all week. It had surprised Katherine how Marjorie had kept it all together while making all the arrangements, but right then she looked like she was bordering on giving in to every emotion stored up in her body. Yvonne Warner was an idiot for turning up there. It was all Marjorie needed to have to put up with the woman’s constant indiscretions. “Do you want me to get her out?”